Anglia4’s Galaxie Wag

[anglia4]

It was a few hours of work, but it did drive out of the shed. I had to pull the hard line back out and re-make one of the flare connections.

IT IS SO NICE TO DRIVE NOW 😁

The engine runs miles nicer since having the timing tickled up, new fuel pump, leads etc. It pulls beautifully smoothly. The transmission works, like straight away, like it should, like IOL.

The last major piece of the puzzle is the little rust repairs. I wasn't sure on the order of events between the VIN guys, the panel beater, and the repair certifier (if required - probably).

So I drove it to my panel beater, who told me he wouldn't touch it until the repair certifier had seen it, otherwise they think you are trying to hide things and come down hard on it.

So I talked to the repair certifier, who told me to start with the VIN guys, because if they find something they want the repair certifier to look at after the fact, then I'll have to pay him twice.

So I went to the VIN guys, who said yeah best to bring it in pre-repairs and see what they think it needs.

Almost by accident, its now booked in for its VIN check inspection TOMORROW and is still seeming so far from finished. I'm going to write them a list of the things that I know it still needs, just so they can see I'm not being totally useless and clueless about what is and isn't OK. For example, I don't want them to look at the missing bolt on the seat that I clearly just installed and go "OK what else has he half arsed", they can see it on my list and go "OK he was a bolt short and has it on his to-do list".

I did decide that it needed to be a little more complete than it was, and that its finally time to install the carpet. I had been putting this off for fear of getting it dirty while working on other things. But now its in there, and it makes it feel like much less of a project car!

[anglia4]

Bonus pictures:

[anglia4]

I also just got home from a quick lunch time scooter strop to the hospice shop.

That's the red rear seat base and the stained front seat base fixed for $9.

[anglia4]

Picture-less update time.

So I’ve got the beast back home again now, and I’m bloody stoked.

Aside from the panel work I knew it needed, the list consisted of lights, wheel bearing adjustment and brake balancing.

Piss easy mate! 
No majors. Absolutely stoked with that.

[anglia4]

So I haven’t taken enough photos…

The panel work did end up being more than I knew about. It needed a new boot floor as well, as it was totally rotten but hidden behind a rubber cover and under seal.

That was all as easy as paying a bunch of money and it was fixed.

I got the fuel door scanned for a matching paint colour to the faded paint, and it came out mint for the patches where rust was removed. You would never know.

i knocked out all the other little things and ran it back through, and try as I might, I couldn’t get the brakes to pass. I stripped them back down and took them to the specialists to get dressed and radiused. It feels like it could do stoppies now, and better yet, it passed the brake test and now it has a number plate! (Yet to be attached)

Straight into school run and supermarket duties.

[anglia4]

We've been rego & wof'd for a few months now, and still really chipping away at working through a few little issues.

I haven't ventured far from home yet, but was finding that when I got out into about 80km/h it would start running like an absolute bag of dicks. Popping and backfiring and running terribly.

I cleaned up the points, checked some voltages and found that the coil was not compatible with the balast resistor, so bypassed that. Still a bag of dicks.

Went to double check the timing, and when I clamped the vacuum line to disable the advance I discovered that a hissing noise I hadn't noticed, stopped. The diaphragm on the advance unit was stuffed. So I've put a new one of those in, and am yet to venture back onto the open road, but have my fingers crossed.

I also need to do some carb tuning, I think it is super lean just off idle, or the accelerator pump isn't working properly. It is sooooo flat pulling away from intersections, but comes to life if I feed it the beans.

Aside from that its just been typical wagon stuff.

So much to do and so little time.

[anglia4]

Yeah it was still running terrible 🫠

I’ve brought myself a vacuum gauge and watched a few YouTube videos and set about going over the basics, one thing at a time.

I’ve never really played with carbs on a car before and only gone as far as setting the timing.

I rechecked the timing, and tested the new vac advance unit to make sure it was working. Doing that showed up the first issue, I had clamped the hose to set the timing but it either already had vacuum, or it sneaked by anyway, so instead of 12deg base timing, it had 2deg…

So I fixed that.

Then I checked the float levels, the front was spot on. The rear had the screw wound in to the point the adjuster hex wouldn’t pick it up to wind it back out. I pulled the bowl off (which was dry), adjusted it out to what looked reasonable and refitted it, but then no amount of adjusting was getting the level up to the weep hole. So I gave the bowl a tap with the screwdriver handle, which freed up the stuck float valve and then sent a fountain of fuel out the top. A few more taps and it seemed to be working properly, so I adjusted the level and suddenly the idle smoothed out quite a bit.

Next I hooked up my vacuum gauge and set the air idle. 
At the end of this I had a beautiful smooth idle, and really nice snappy response. It had a nice 20in-hg vacuum and I was a happy boy.

So I shut it down, and came back a few minutes later to find a puddle in the manifold and one of the secondary throttle shafts dripping a teensy bit.

Bugger.

I was hoping that it might just be that I had left the rear bowl a little high, and was planning to take the kids for a drive, so I fired it up, brought the rear bowl down to where it should actually be and set off for town.

 Now my beautiful smooth idle is utter shit again… But it does all drive much better with proper timing stuff happening!

My current working theory is that it probably has a vacuum leak at that throttle shafts, and that my nice idle was probably being supplemented by the bowl level being high and feeding it extra juice. In driving, it really feels terrible in light throttle (high vac) cruising, like 70km/h slightly downhill.

Ill get a can of carb cleaner to squirt at it and test for leaks tomorrow.

It is nice to know that several problems are now solved though, and hopefully I’m nearly there…

I don’t have any photos with sharing, so here is the mockup my kids and I did today of our trolley derby racer.

 

 

[anglia4]

I did a little more adjusting today and have got it running really nicely now. It’s got a nice smooth idle and pulls away really clean.

stoked.

Here are some photos of it in various carparks today displaying how badly the front end needs to meet my grinder.