Glad to hear ya got her straightened out. A nice rip down the street always makes ya feel better. What ya find wrong? points close up, sticky needle and seat, other? No matter enjoy the ride! Go pick up a new rifle for me Saturday out near my old home, will check in with my ford guys at the yard out there see if they have anything squirreled away. I've given them cars before and used to do a good bit of business there. Ran them out of 350's at one point, used to do a decent amount of engine swapping.
Best I can figure... Carb was way out of tune... Ended up replacing the points and Condenser while I was at it. So now: Dwell: 29 Points: .019 Vac: 20+ inches Timing: 12 Degrees BTDC, without Vac. My Timing light doesn't give me total so , its somewhere above the scale on the damper. I would guess in the 30-32 range. Set initial air mix to 1.5 turns, set RPMs to about 950. Screwed in drivers side until motor began to stutter, backed out until MAX vacuum, back in half a turn. Repeated on passenger side. Reset RPM's. She is healthy again.
Finally back to making some progress, got a drivers quarter out of Texas will patch qtr area that had a bad patch before. Also found a front fender locally, yeah all of a sudden one turns up! Here's some pics.
"All of a sudden" means someone else's rig got in an accident. But it means yours will be rescued. Let's hope you don't run into another problem with the fender.
Don't know what happened to car fender came from all the guy had was the pieces, he does parts all the time. Has a number of adds on craigslist. Need to go check out his '69 4 speed CJ chero sometime.
If its an R code... Only 83 of those made... Can only imagine how few still exist in their factory configuration! PLEASE TAKE PIC'S!!!!
Stopped by body shop yesterday just to check progress not a lot has changed since a few months ago on my car. But here's a couple pics of it looking more like a car than it has for a while. Body shop will have a little more time now that show season is over, owner usually takes Linda Vaughn around to lots of the shows she does.
So cool when it starts coming together... just a heads up... check the drivers door for cracks on the latch bolts. Recently had to do some work on mine because the metal is so thin that the new gaskets put additional stress on the door. All three bolts that hold the latch in the door had cracks in the metal, the top one was the worst. A days work, and repainted the rear of the door to make it right again! Wasn't expecting that this soon!
PER : Saw the cracks on mine when all the way to bare metal, looked welded long ago. There are reinforcement pieces made for these cars in that area, think I saw them in MAC's catalog. Bummer you had to go thru that so soon after completion. Andy think it might have cracked from new seals , not old compressed ones.
I guess these Rancheros and Torino's suffered from the same issue, when new. New seals are not as forgiving when closing the door. Usually requiring a little extra force to get it to latch full closed! It is getting better with use. BUT!
My problem is that everyone assumes "old car, old latch," so they slam my damned door. The passenger door latch pin is screwed into bent metal, and so it needs extra care to get it fully latched, but nobody cares. It's almost worth it for you to shut their door.
I keep my doors "One Finger Click Shut Adjusted" even with new gaskets and it is infuriating to have someone slam them shut . Most times you get this from GM owners who have to body-slam their sagging doors to get them latched. Noticed that a lot of new gaskets do not have the air release holes in them that let the compressed air out when you close the door on them. A few tiny "X" cuts in the new gaskets lower edges solves that problem. First slam get's you a short lecture, second a warning that you could be walking, third slam means you really are banned from getting near my car.
I have a granddaughter that always tries to throw any car door into the middle of the vehicle when she gets in or out — needless to say she has never been in my Ranchero !! Denis.
I don't know how old your granddaughter is, but my grand nephew, since he was four, or so, has always known how to properly shut a door, even a sagging pickup truck door, and has never slammed them. So I guess it depends on the child, in the absence of instruction.
I am in the process of adjusting the doors, I just rebuilt the lower hinges. I started with the passenger side and that went very well, driver side was another story. Unbolted it from the body and the door and went to the work bench to start disassembly. (I knew that the door check and roller were missing so I thought it would take less time ) but what I didn't anticipate was that the pin for the door check was broken flush with the hinge. So a half hour job went into 1.5 hours since it is a blind hole I couldn't drive it out so I had to center punch what's left of the pin and start drilling from very small bit and progressively go to bigger bits and hope I was close to center.(It was close enough). It was done by hand with a very low speed geared B&D drill. I do not have a drill press so breaking on of the smaller bits was a possibility. After all that was done I went to install the hinge back on the door only to find out the door skin where the hinge bolts up to was bent in and very distorted I took another 45 mins. to get that sorted. Now I have the big challenge of getting the doors to close right without the hard slam to catch the latch right. Before you ask ..Yes, I marked the sheet metal where the hinges were before taking them off Well, it keeps me busy and thinking.
Hi Andy , she is a very intelligent artistic 22 yr old , just not able to be educated on door closing ! Denis.
