Prepping the rear differential

I rolled the truck into the driveway this afternoon to clean up the differential a little bit. I want to get everything back in place some time next week.

I won't have time to work on the truck this weekend, but hopefully The Talker and I can cruise the truck to soccer a week from Saturday.

Disaster delayed

It looks like there is a simple explanation for the gear oil all over my truck. I overfilled it when I replaced the oil seal. And evidently the excess backed up the vent hose. It dumps right above the driveshaft, which slung the oil everywhere.

Sounds plausible. So that is the story I am sticking with.

I opened the rear differential and everything looks fine inside so that leads me to believe the vent theory.

Thanks to Racecar Man for enlightening me.

Vac Gauge Check

Before I cruised the truck yesterday, I hooked up my new vacuum gauge to the intake manifold. Pops has talked me through tuning the carburetor using the vac gauge a couple of times. I have been tweaking the carb a little at a time just based on the way the engine sounds at idle and the way the exhaust smells.

Anyways, I picked up a gauge at Harbor Freight and I got a pleasent surprise. The vacuum gauge shows that the carburetor is adjusted properly. Cool!

Too bad I only got to drive it about 10 miles.

That did not sound good

The weather today was awesome so I took the truck out for a cruise this afternoon. Just a few miles near the house. No real destination.

I was headed back to the house and I noticed a grating sound when the truck was idling at a stop light.

When I got home I found part of the problem. The rear end fluid is no longer safely contained in the rear end. It is mostly sliming up the bottom side of the bed and frame. Gear oil is everywhere. I don't know what caused the leak. And I bet it isn't pretty inside there.

I'll save that for another day.

Edit: From taking a quick peek under the truck this morning, I am guessing the rear oil seal went out. The gear oil looks like it was slung everywhere under the truck, from the muffler back. The driveshaft looks OK and the carrier bearing looks OK.

It's all good and round here

I walked out to the garage a few minutes ago to make sure Marge was still locked safely inside. She is.

While there I checked to see if all four tires are still holding air. They are.

Rick jinxed me again.

Rick, keep your tire problems to yourself. Guess that is what I get for being a wise guy about his flat.

I headed out this afternoon to take Marge out for a drive. And what did I find in the garage? Marge had a flat.

Unless your short term memory is as bad as mine, or you are new here, you'll remember that I just put new tires on the old girl three days ago. The 15 year old tires were still holding air, but I figured a blowout was imminent.

The tire shop had a hard time getting one tire to seat properly on the rim. So I was not really surprised by the flat tire. Seems that the old tires had inner tubes in them and the tubes allow water to get trapped next to the inside wall of the wheel. The wheel rusted out next to the valve stem, so it would not hold air for long.

They swapped my new tire onto my spare rim and all is good with Marge again. Once I got the tire installed she and I went for our cruise around the neighborhood. Just because we could.

After all this, I am not really in love with the new tires. They ride nice and all, but they look too small for the truck. The guys at the shop assured me that if I went with wider tires I would have wear problems quickly. Now that I have no spare wheel, I may have to look for some wider wheels and tires when these need to be replaced.

I bet I would like this guy

A guy who enters his primered Gremlin in a car show is my kind of guy. Especially when he is cruising that sweet ride on Antique Vehicle tags!

By the way, did you know that you could get a factory built V8 Gremlin?
Well, at least you could until mid- year 1976.

Babys gots new shoes

I have only been putting it off for a year and a couple of months. This is the first mention I could find of my tire woes, from back in July of '05.

But I finally got some new rubber for the truck this afternoon. $40 a tire installed. Heck of a deal for a set of whitewall 215 35 R15's. Whitewalls out, of course. Surely not the best tires ever made, but now they make up almost 25% of the value of the truck.

Best of all, when I was asking the sales guy about sizes and such, he assured me that they would have no problems with the old truck because "we are all up to date on our tetanus shots."

Zoom-Zoom Live

In a couple of weeks I am heading up to Zoom-Zoom Live. I registered several weeks ago, but I forgot to mention it here.

More about Zoom-Zoom Live over here.

Racecar Man went last year and had a blast. He and some of his other buddies are going up again and I am tagging along. I wonder how hard it is to roll-over a Miata?

Just FYI, Atlanta Z-ZL is on September 30 and October 1 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Family ride night

The kids and I took the truck to the YMCA this evening. The furthest trip yet. I played it safe and The Boss Lady followed behind in her car. The boy rode over there with me and little sis got to ride back home.

Big fun and a good time. It was a pretty good payoff for the work we have done so far to our cool old ride.

Before taking the truck out this evening I checked everything over and got the carb working a little better. It has been running really rich for a long time. Today I think I got it pretty close to dialed in.

Pops wants me to put a vacuum gauge on the engine to really get the carb working properly. Before he comes back to town I'll pick up a gauge and have him help me out.

My first car show?

I was planning to enter the truck in the Texas Classic Car Show this weekend, as a "Work in Progress". But with this week's schedule and the hassles of having the Mazda in the shop, I am going pass on taking the truck this year. I'll probably go for a few hours and check out the rides. I'll post some pictures if I remember the camera.

Truck Run

I pulled the truck out of the garage Tuesday evening and went for a spin around the block. I was going to cruise a little more, but she was idling for crap and I don't know what is up with that. Haven't taken the time to look yet.

Yesterday the kids and I were driving to dinner in The Boss Lady's 626. While we were still in the neighborhood, the clutch pedal dropped to the floor and stayed there. I could not get the car back into gear.

I pulled over and was able to bring the clutch pedal back into position by hand. Seemed like it still had decent hydraulic pressure after that, but it has since done it several more times. The clutch shares fluid with the brake system and the reservoir is still full. So I don't think it is leaking fluid.

Assuming that the slave cylinder or the clutch master cylinder are going out. Either looks to be a reasonable repair. Hopefully it is just the slave cylinder. I ordered a replacement for $40. The master cylinder was $80, but I went ahead and ordered one in case.

Either way, I sure as heck hope that one or both of these solve the problem. I sure don't want to be dealing with transmission problems in this car for long.

A friend loaned us her car for a couple of days while she is out of town. Which is awesome, because we have several errands to run today and The Boss Lady would have taken the truck to work this morning. And no one really wanted that, especially the truck.