automotive

The Golden Bonnet

Presidential debate night tonight and I have the TV on. Typically I write about what I see, this time I will tell a story. Back when I was 16 years old, through luck, persistence, gifting, work and prayer I became the proud owner of my first real car(The Studabaker and Dune Buggy don’t count). A gold 1963 Jaguar XKE convertible. At the time it was nine years old and a bit rough. It needed brake work and a few other things. As a teenage boy I had chosen the car because it was the fastest car for the money. Like now, American muscle cars were a lot more money. I thought I was being practical and efficient. That was my logic.

I may have been a little unhappy with my home life. I just wanted to hit the road. Drive and drive. I drove all over the place. I took the car on many road rallies. I went looking for the Jersey Devil in the sand. Set records going to Syracuse. Spent more time with the Jag at Lime Rock than at home. Went on parades through Newport RI. Plus it was my favorite ride to the family farm.

I may have mentioned in some other writings that the car started with four bias ply tires that were four completely different brands. When I drifted through the corners each tire would have its own pitch. On a winding road drifting through different phases of brake induced understeer and throttle powered oversteer different tunes would emerge from the tires. Winding roads without much traffic could be extremely entertaining. With the skinny bias ply tires the cornering speeds were not that high. I spent my summer working at a bicycle shop so I could afford some new Michelin XAS tires. The car cornered much faster, though not as quite entertaining musicly with a single pitch from the squealing tires.

Speaking auditory entertainment, I worked a bit more and bought an Ansa exhaust system. I needed to do this because one of the problems the car had was the brake fluid would boil during spirited driving. Surprisingly when the fluid boils there would be no brakes. So I would turn of the ignition key off to slow the car down with engine braking. When the ignition was off the exhaust system and beyond would be filled with unburned hydrocarbons. When the automobile was sufficiently slowed I would turn the ignition key back on. Turning the ignition back on would introduce a spark that would ignite the hydrocarbons in the exhaust system with a loud bang. The explosions actually split the mufflers. The split mufflers not only let the noise out, they let the heat out setting the carpet on fire. That was a surprise. So I put out the fire and went shopping for a new muffler. I went for a good one. The exhaust was, and still is music to my ears.

I used to like to do all night road rallies. Illumination was important. Because the headlights are under glass there was not much side Illumination so I added three axillary Marchell 8″ lights to a light bar protruding from the grill. There was a spot light in the middle with a fog light on the right and a driving light on the left. I had switches under the dash so I could turn the lights on individually, the car wasn’t capable of providing electrons for all. However I liked the lamps so much I also replaced the headlights with Marchal Amplilux halogen headlights.

My old E-Type was almost a complete and proper sports car. The shocks were a bit soft and I wiped out the drain sump on the fuel tank over an intersection hump. I lost all the fuel and had to repair the tank. At that point I was broke. My dear mother then bought me new Koni shock absorbers.

Another modification I made was to install racing harnesses that came from J.C. Whitney, I believed in safety. One time when I was at Lime Rock Paul Newman’s mechanic borrowed my racing harness for Paul to use in his new racing car. I had to ask for it’s return. I still not really trust those actor types. Yet I will still tell the story.

During my time with the car I put five high school students in the car to drive them home in a blizzard. I had a collection of hats in the car, so if I gave anyone a ride they could have a hat of their choice. I almost always had the top down. Hauled wood for the Boy Scouts campfire, and drove myself to work and school. I even had murder of crows poop on me. Poop landed on the steering wheel windshield and even the shifter. I sacrificed one of the scarfs I had for cleaning.

The most distinctive feature of the car was its long hood. On hills and intersections it was sometimes hard to see where you were going as you were sitting so far back. Yet historically a long hood was a symbol of power. Think of the prestigious cars of the 1930’s, Dusenburgs and Packards come to my mind. Some people would say the long hood is simply phallic. However this is an English car with French illumination and an Italian sound track and a Dutch vibe. So I should say that it is not a long hood, properly it is a bonnet.

So this is a story about memories, I have so many memories about my time behind the long golden bonnet. I sold the E-Type after 50 years, and bought the Mark V. They both have long gold hoods. On the Mark V it is actually called a hood because the car is American. Still the effect is the same. The E-Type may be gone, but it’s essence isn’t. Even the auditory experience is replicated by the Miata from Asia. Even though the NA Miata has two fewer cylinders the revs are proportionally higher at the same road speeds giving an equivalent tone to my ear. Even the stupendous halogen lighting is met with equivalence by the LED illumination in the Cadillac ELR.

So many new roads to explore with emotion and feelings of the past.

Idle Time

How do you stop working and enjoy some idle time? Think of something easier to do. For me it was to drive around in an old car. Of course I picked an old car that just needs a wee bit of work. I had picked a pretty darn original Lincoln that just appeared to need some routine maintenence. See my story Continental Mark V. So here I sit, contemplating idle time.

I had left the Mark V story with a car that did not idle. I have been thinking of different ways to correct that problem. Then life handed me a different problem. Lots of pain and a bag attached to my pee wee. Ugh. With respect to my childhood hero Speed Racer I just wanted to hop into the powerful Mark V and drive to the nearby Fells and then go for a walk. Unbelievably my plan was foiled by that villain KAOS. Thank you, Get Smart! Seems there is always an unknown villain in real life?

What I had been planning to do was to grab a 3/4″ socket and a breaker bar. Then I was going to twist the bolt that attaches the harmonic balancer to the crankshaft till the rotor atop the distributor pointed at the number one cylinder wire. Then I was going to remove the number one plug and and place a pencil or something that similar in the hole. I would the twist the aforementioned bolt until the pencil was at its highest.

Now there would be two important things to do. First would be to check the numbers on the harmonic balancer to see if 0 degrees is indicated. I have read that the balancer can shift and the numbers can be in the wrong place. If the numbers are in the wrong place the car will be impossible to time correctly. The other thing I would do is to rotate the bolt back and forth and see if the distributor rotor moves.

Back when I was in college I had a 1970 Mustang convertible with a 302. Sometimes it ran a bit rough, and eventually it did not start. I called a garage and they came and towed it away. It turned out that the timing chain had jumped. The timing sprocket was made of plastic to reduce noise. The plastic fell apart and the chain jumped time. It is a common problem with cars of the era. It is a pretty good chance that the same problem would happen to my car. Anything more than a few degrees of play or lash when I rotated the crank and observed the rotor would indicate a problem.

Before I make any more decisions about what to do with the car I want to check the timing. Maybe all my problems are related to bad timing. Of course I expect the worst, that way I won’t be disappointed. So I have made plans for if there are problems. Ideally there is no play in the timing chain andthe timing is off, I reset the timing and the car runs fine. Or the timing is fine, and there is no play in the chain. Then would have to check for problems in the distributor. Replacing the distributor is not to bad, they are under a hundred dollars. Yet problems with the distributor are unlikely cause idling issues.

My best guess at the moment is there is a problem with the timing chain. Parts are under $300, however there are a few dozen hard to get at bolts. Included in the estimate is a new water pump and harmonic balancer. While in there might as well replace things that may also fail. Unfortunately I am in no shape at the moment to do this work. So I will write about my plans instead.

Something I did not realize when I bought the Mark V was that emission standards for automobiles came into place in 1970. It is illegal to modify a engine built in 1970 or later. What if I were to want to make it better? New cars are so much cleaner and better than cars built in 1978. Legally I could improve a 1969 Lincoln, but not a ’78. Before I knew this I was thinking to restore the car to original and get some baseline measurements. Also to see what it was like in 1978. I do remember people complaining about drivablity back then. I also remember the smog. We are so much better now, in both drivablity and smog.

Back in 1978 cars were allowed 3.38 grams per mile of Hydrocarbons and .40 grams per mile of Nitrogen Oxides. Hydrocarbons are unburned fuel in the exhaust and Nitrogen Oxides are caused by high combustion temperatures. A very simple explanation is a very efficient burn of fuel causes high temperatures that resulted in high Nitrogen Oxides. Nitrogen Oxides were actually visible. Something that could bee seen as smog. The way to reduce smog was to make combustion less efficient. Oh, burn more gas to make a cleaner sky, OK. Then again less efficient combustion causes unburned Hydrocarbons. Back in the day part of the solution was to pump fresh air into the combustion chamber. Adding external air would lower the temperature and displace fuel intake. By all counts today, it was a primitive method of reducing emissions. Almost all cars back then had carburetors and air pumps. Porsche and a few others used mechanical fuel injection. I belive they all used air pumps. The exception was Volkswagen. Volkswagen introduced Boch D-Jetronic electric fuel injection in 1967. In 1978 Volkswagen did not use air pumps to get their emissions down. D-Jetronic is the system that is the grandaddy to all the little computers and sensors carefully measure parameters to determine the best fuel air ratio in today’s automobiles. Interestingly Boch bought the patent rights for this system from AMC Rambler who developed the system way back in the 1950’s. This was the beginning of today’s EFI (Electronic Fuel Injection).

It would be seemingly obvious that if I wanted to improve my old Lincoln I would modify it with EFI. In fact the number one advertisement in my Facebook news feed is Aces Fuel Injection. Talk about Artificial Intelligence! Clean air is essentially a balancing act in combustion. The computer does a better job. Problem is that it is basically illegal. Looking closely at the Aces website it say it is only for use on non emission vehicles sold before 1968. Huh? I had read that you could modify your old car if the new parts were CARB compliant. CARB being an acronym for California Air Resources Board. Yes, I want to replace my carb with EFI. After looking for CARB compliant EFI’s I found the Holly Atomic EFI, and only the Holly Atomic. Reading the fine print on their website I discovered that it was only compliant for GM vehicles. Here is my sad face 😞.

However I persevered. On the internet I found 460 efi guys. I should explain that the engine in the Lincoln is a 460 cubic inch engine. 1978 was the last year it was used in Lincolns, however the 460 carried on till 1997 in trucks. In 1998 Ford put fuel injection on the 460. The “460 efi guys” put the newer 460 efi systems on older 460 engines. On their website they even have a $3600 conversion kit. They also claim I can put my original air cleaner on the kit. Technically this should be legal, as it is a newer system in an older vehicle. Yet it could be argued as it is a truck system in an automobile it would be noncompliant.

Actually keeping my original air filter is a priority. My insurance company says that I am allowed to modify my engine with up to 50 additional horse power. Modified engines almost always have a modified air filter. Plus I like my air filter, it is very cool because it has an oil filter. Or what looks like an oil filter. lt is actually an intake muffler. Whatever, I want to keep it original. I think it looks better that way. It will also keep me insurance compliant.

So as much as I want to keep my car original, it is not that common. In advertisements for old Lincoln’s that say they run good, there is typically an aftermarket carburetor. Either an Elderbrock or Holly. Most often there is a aftermarket intake manifold. Typically an Elderbrock. Drivablity is what is most important to me. Then I would like to be emissions compliant. A little more efficiency and power would be good too.

Looking at my Facebook friend Aces I see that I would need to change my intake manifold. My car has a spread bore carburetor versus the Aces square bore throttle body full injection. To be fair, any choice of throttle body would require a new intake manifold. The Ford spread bore is unique, and not supported. So, a full Aces kit would be around $1500 with another $400 for a intake manifold. As with othe systems, I would have to modify my fuel tank for a fuel pump. So we are talking a couple grand.

There are a number of other similar systems with similar prices. All quasi legal. I have found no good documentation showing these systems work. In a way I could understand why. To show that the system works for you, you would be admitting that you have modified the original system without documentation. Documentation costs money. Lots of testing machines and certification. There is no easy way to document emissions without paying lots of expenses.

In 2015 West Virginia University published a report on Volkswagen diesel emissions. Unable to afford the latest emissions equipment with their $70,000 grant they managed to make some substitute equipment. The sophisticated emissions software in the Volkswagen was not programed to detect that it was actually being tested for emissions in that case. I had some thoughts on trying to replicate West Virginia’s methodology as I have their actual paper. But that would be an absolute bother. Really, how do you actually test programming in individual cases.

Looking at the 460 EFI guys kit I see that it has multi-port fuel injection. That is a system where each cylinder receives its own shot of fuel. In other kits the fuel is injected at the throttle body and the manifold delivers the fuel. The fuel distribution may be slightly uneven. Newer cars almost always have multi-port injection. Looking at the EFI guys kit I see it uses an Elderbrock manifold.

Elderbrock also has a multi-port EFI system. It is only $2200. That includes the manifold. I would have to add a fuel pump and a few other thing. Maybe $500 max. No mention if I could use my original air filter. EFI guys may have better support though?

I just want the car to idle well, sure I could just turn up the idle and it would run. I think that is what the previous owner did. I hope that maybe a timing adjustment would fix it. Yet I fear I may have to bring it up to the modern era. Cars these days are so much better to drive than the cars back then.

Wish me luck, I want to get better, and go for a drive. Then maybe a walk through the Fells.

Continental Mark V

I had thought I bought a Lincoln. However nowhere on the car does the word Lincoln appear. It does say “Continental”, “Mark V” & “Built by Ford” on the car. The Lincoln emblem is promently displayed in a number of places. Yet the word Lincoln does not.

Henry Leyland respected President Lincoln and named his second auto manufacturing company after the President. I will probably have more to say in a prolog or epilog that will appear later. This story is about I have done to make the car better in the last year or so.

The first thing I did is replace the oil and filter, I discovered that the drain plug was stripped. I replaced it with a new one. But I am not happy about that, I will want to do something better.

One reason I bought this internet car is because of the pictures of the underside featuring the original exhaust. I knew if the car had its original exhaust, it would not be too rusty. My belief was the car had been unmolested and in reasonably good shape. So I bought a low cost exhaust system off of Ebay, it did not fit. I had to pay an exhaust system expert to install the the exhaust. He also inspected the car and replaced the rear brakes and master cylinder. Now I could legally drive the car, and safly stop if need be.

The third time I went to start the car the starter solenoid stuck on and the starter continued to spin after the engine started. Fortunately I was at home and I quick grabbed a wrench and disconnected the battery. The battery cable was really hot. Then I bought a heavy duty solenoid and a new battery. I figured the old battery did not fully engage the solenoid and it welded itself closed. To help prevent further issues, a battery cut off switch was also added.

The carburetor would also have a variable idle. I fiddled with it and wished it was a bunch of old SU carbs like my old Jag E-Type. I could get those to work pretty well. I began to think a 4-Barrel was more complicated. So I bought a rebuild kit and disassembled the carburetor. It actually turned out to be quite clean inside, however there was an extra flanged nut inside the secondaries. It was the same type of nut that bolts the carburetor to the intake manifold. Yes all four nuts were were holding the carburetor on, none missing. I was so shocked by the presence of the extra nut I put a quick video on Snapchat. Fortunately the nut was just large enough so when the secondaries were wide open the nut would not fall into the intake manifold. Sometimes the secondaries would fully close, sometimes they would not. One time the car went 45 miles per hour whilst is was idling. That is why I took it apart.

Three of the tires were 20 year old Fisk tires, so three Armstrong tires were purchased to match a New Armstrong tire that was on the car. They told me one of the Fisk’s went flat before they delivered the car. The Fisk tires were not worn at all. So the car had not really done much travling in the last 20 years.

After driving the car a few times I discovered the radiator was leaking, so the radiatorcap was replaced. The reality was there were lots of small leaks all over the radiator. Fortunately I managed to score a good brass and copper radiator from Amazon at a good price. The hoses all looked good so I did not replace them. The plastic overflow tank was cracked too. I managed to glue that back together.

The door latch posts had electrical tap wrapped around them so I replaced them with latches from Ebay. That helped with a door rattle that I had been hearing.

I also replaced the spark plugs and spark plug wires. After that the car started Backfiring? I did not mix the wires up, they were actually numbered. It turns out the newer iridum plugs had more resistance than the old type of coil could handle. So I found some copper core plugs and replaced the distributor cap and roter along with a new coil. All the new parts were blue, to nicely match the Ford Blue air cleaner.

When the car was delivered, it was delivered to Keene, I ended up driving it home on a rainy night. It was hard to see, so I upgraded the lights to halogen led lights. I also bought new windshield wiper blades. I should be ready the next time there is a dark and stormy night.

Also I bought some quadrophonic 8-Track tapes, turns out only the rear speakers work. So I then bought some Sinatra tapes and a Bluetooth adapter so I can play music from my phone.

When driving with the windows down I thought I heard a slight noise when turning right from the left front wheel. I once owned a 71 Mustang and it had made the same noise. After a while the noise became worse and the wheel almost fell off. I bought some Timken bearings and replaced the wheel bearings. Surprisingly the races on the bearings did not match. The inner race was Timken and the outer was Koyo. The same bearing had two different manufacturers name on it. Someone was being lazy. While I was in there I replaced the brake pads and the inner fender splash shield. So far I have only done the left side. That was the side making the noise. I will probably do the other side at some point.

These cars are known for setting themselves on fire form some sort of short in the window and seat switches. I disassembled and cleaned the drivers side window and seat switches. I also replaced some bits in the window motor that fall apart and causes the window stop going up and down. These were not problems but would be in some time. I also cleaned and greases the window tracks and assembly.

There was a little bit of rust behind a couple pieces of the trim molding. I removed the trim and repaired the rust. Tried a couple of different types of paints, I think it came close. It is really not noticeable more than a couple feet away. I guess this is what is called paint correction. I also touched up a few other areas, it does make an improvement, you now have to look very closely to see the imperfections. There were a couple dings in the trim before I removed the trim. So I straightened the trim before I reinstalled the trim. It was nice to fix a couple of problems at the same time.

I did the previous two project during the winter when the car was in the garage. I could only get to one side of the car during this time. I cleaned up the car and went to drive it around the block. When it was warm the idle would surge, the car then stalled. I managed to shift into neutral and restart the car. And continue on. It was a bit of a trouble because I was going around a corner and the power steering did not work. An old lady walking her dog was watching me, she smiled. I do not know if she realized that the car stalled. She may not of noticed as the car is very quiet. Anyway I made it back home with no problem.

Now back to figuring out that carburetor, I need to have a good idle.