Gremlin work postponed...worked on a '81 Concord today for a lady....

[Gremlingts@xxxx]

 I worked half a day at my job, then hit a flea market, then called up 
this lady who had contacted me via Email about her Concord...seems she lives 
only 10 miles from where I work, so I decided to go visit her this afternoon. 
We hooked up, and checked each others cars out ( I was driving the '74 bronze 
Gremlin today ), and together we looked over her cream yellow with vinyl top 
Concord. We got it started, then she let me drive it around,and once it 
warmed up in about 2 miles, it started dying and stalling. Had to drop it to 
neutral to get it to run at the lights. Then under load, it would shudder and 
seem to knock. We made it back to the parking lot at her apartment, then 
proceeded with the process of elimination of problems. Found the fast idle 
vacuum line disconnected. Found a small screw missing in the top carb pump 
cover ( no biggie ). Then found the REAL culprit - one of the small coolant 
lines from the water pump ran up and over, and was laying on the fuel line to 
the carb! I 'bout burnt the skin off my finger touching the gas line at that 
spot! Whew! The rest of the line was cold to the touch, even with the engine 
bay hot, but not THAT spot! I took several tie wraps and pulled the hose off 
the line...the idle smoothed out a bit, and ran fine...so we took it out 
again....this time, no stalling, loss of power, or knocking. Looks like the 
problem is solved! She's been having an H of a time , as that's her only 
transportation. Glad I was able to get it fixed for her. She had turned in 
her rental car today, hoping I'd show up. :) She took me out to a nice 
Italian restaurant for a reward, as I refused to take any money...it was fun 
working on it, and getting it going again. She's an artist, and has drawn 
pictures of her '77 Gremlin ( yeah, one of those "rare" ones you never see ), 
although it's been stored out in Kansas at her parent's place for the last 10 
years, and hasn't seen the road since. She is VERY sentimental about her 
AMCs, so I can relate. Hopefully I can talk her into doing some artwork on 
Gremlins for me. heh heh! We'll see. Anyway, just got home, it's late, and 
it's been a long day. Guess I"ll go thumb thru some more old '50's Popular 
Mechanics mags looking for AMC-related stuff ( and model trains, etc. ) It's 
beena good AMC day, as I helped save another one from a frustrated owner. 
Hopefully I can get her interested in joining our local club, but she needs a 
job first ( she can do EXCELLENT technical drawings, so I hear ), so if any 
of you know of jobs in the Wash. DC area for artistic technical talent, let 
me know. Later,

Jerry CAsper
Woodbridge, VA
74 Gremlin cruisin'....