Mihai's Progress Thread!, One more. Options

[mihai914]

OK, here goes.

I bought this car last year in Connecticut, it was non running, original somewhat documented with 63K miles. Last time the car was registered was in 1990. The reason it stopped running was because of a fuel leak at a shop and the car got evicted from the premises right away and that was it.

[mihai914]

Oh yeah, it's a 74 2.0. There was nothing missing from the car at the moment of purchase except a fog grille and the rocker panels. All the trim was there, an unmolested car which is a big advantage IMO when tackling a project.

[mihai914]

Interior shot (picture).

[mihai914]

Front trunk.

[mihai914]

Rear trunk.

[mihai914]

Now the bad part. Being a North East car, rust was free. The battery tray is solid but there are other areas that would have made this clearly a parts car in California. Seems to me, that no one ever cleaned under the rockers, with these results.

[mihai914]

One more, driver's side!

[mihai914]

Driver's door gap.

[mihai914]

Now the really fugly stuff!

[mihai914]

Rust!

[mihai914]

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[mihai914]

Upon massive shop-vac work the hell hole seems to be solid but the engine shelf will have to be patched.

Mechanically, there has been a bit of work involved. It was hard to know from where to start! I guess the fuel leak(s) were in order. The gas tank was removed and the crap that was in there is unbelievable. I ended up replacing it with a slightly better one despite the rust it had inside which I cleaned the best that I could.

The car has the fuel pump relocated to the front, what a mess with the 70-74 style pump. Still I replaced all those fuel hoses with a new filter and tank screen to get things started up.

As my luck would have it, the car was leaking fuel at the back also where the fuel pump was originally. An interesting fact is that the varnish that formed in the lines completely blocked the Y fitting for the return and bypass lines. It had to be cleaned with a drill bit!

Injectors were replaced immediately even before trying to start the car, upon inspection, two were blocked.

New cap, rotor, plugs and wires and oil change, the points looked good, so we tried to fire up the car, nothing, there was no spark. Screwed around with coils and other crap, it ended up being bad points even though they looked like new. Put in the replacement points and after that tried again and it fired right up after 15 years of sitting idle.

The shocking part is that the engine actually runs well. Fuel pressure is way up there at 60 PSI, me thinks I forgot all about checking the return line if it was gummed up (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/headbang.gif)

[mihai914]

Next step, stopping the car. It had absolutely NO brakes. No fluid in the reservoir, I filled it up pressed the pedal and it stayed down, crap pedal cluster rebuild, I had purchased the bronze bushing kit years ago and never got to use it before now. Took me two three days just to get the clutch pedal off the shaft, I had to bring it to a shop and they applied the torch to it. A big thumbs up to Eric Shea who has to put up with this on a regular basis!

I clean, repaint and reassemble the cluster and put it back in the car. I then find out there is a big leak at the front left wheel.

The car had been sitting so long that the front brakes froze to the point that the PO split the calipers on the car to probably push it around.

Since I had four rebuilt calipers sitting on a shelf, I just swapped them with new rotors up front and some used ones in the back. Buttoned everything up and bled the system with a Mityvac. I was really afraid that the master or proportioning valve would also be shot; they seem to be holding until now.