My eBay purchased 74

[Jamiez]

On Thursday there was a break in the weather and it was finally cool enough to work in the garage.  A while back I read about changing the oil in the diff.  I bought all the supplies (oil, suction pump, input pump) but never got to it until this week.  Nothing seemed wrong with the rear, but given how some of the other fluids looked, I figured I might as well change it as well. 

Draining the oil out wasn't too bad, but putting the new oil in took some creative work with the jacks, since I don't have a lift.  This is the oil I pulled out:

That's a work light positioned behind the jar and not a bit of it is showing through. I know if regular oil looks like that it's well past due so I'm guessing the swap was worth the investment.

That's probably all I'll get to do on the car this weekend as my dad needs help getting his Impala dialed in.  He's finally got the 4 barrel in and had the car running but needs an extra set of hands/eyes/ears to get it running better.

[Jamiez]

Week 60:

So far I've changed the brake fluid, diff oil, engine oil, and coolant.  So I figured I  would change the transmission fluid and power steering fluid.  I mean why not right?  So I ordered new fluids.  I figured I'd start with the power steering fluid.  Based on what I read the way to change it is to disconnect the hose, route it to a jug, turn the wheel lock to lock while adding new fluid in...when it's clean you're done. Well that was messy.......
Power steering fluid everywhere.  I guess the initial container was too small and I way under estimated the pressure.  After I wiped most of it up, routed the hose to a MUCH larger container and put new fluid in, I managed to get it flushed and new fluid in.  Then I got to burn all the old fluid off the headers.  Here's what the old stuff looked like:

I also had a speedo gear show up, but the seals won't be around until next week.  I'm sure I'll find a way to get transmission fluid everywhere....

I also noticed that my jack was missing the hold down spring, so I picked one up off ebay.  At least this install didn't end in me spreading kitty litter all over the garage floor.....


And while I was under the car I discovered the bell housing/clutch dust shield was way out of alignment and barely hanging on.  Apparently somewhere along the way the bolts that go on the bottom of the dust shield were lost...leaving only the bolt through the starter to hold it on.  Well months back when I replaced the positive battery cable I loosened the starter and at that point the dust shield pivoted and was hanging way down and banging against the passenger side exhaust.  I loosened the starter again, rotated the shield back into place and then put some screws to temporarily hold it.  I've ordered some correct bolts which will hopefully show up next week.

[joelson6]

that's typical for gear (rear) oil. as long as there's no floaters in the old oil you shouldn't have any problems

[Jamiez]

Week 61:

I spent a lot of time under the car working on transmission related issues.  First I noticed the transmission had developed a leak.  A little investigating found fluid leaking out through the speedo cable. 

I bought a new seal kit (as I was going to replace the gear anyhow) and crawled under there to remove it.  I found the existing adapter was missing the metal ring for the seal and at some point it was badly crossthreaded.  Probably when I replaced the speedo cable a few weeks back.


So I ordered a replacement one from Brewer's Performance, swapped in the new gear, clocked it to the correct position and reinstalled it.

I had planned on doing a fluid swap as well, so I spent a day under there draining the old and pumping in new stuff.  I had some spilled on a drip pan so I did a side by side:


After that I put the car up on jack stands and babied it through the gears a few times and then checked the fill plug to make sure the fluid was still topped off.  Everything looks good so hopefully next week I'll be able to drop the car and take it for a little cruise.

[Jamiez]

Week 62

A while back, I purchased a set of bumper fillers.  The ones on the car have some paint issues:

So I took to stripping the set I purchased, the only thing I found that worked was wet sanding them which was a messy project so I put it off until this weekend.  Here is a comparison of them during the stripping process:


And of course like all the paint on my car, the bumper fillers have custom paint.  It took a few tries but I managed to get a pretty decent match for what is on the car.



Now all I have to do is get around to installing them....

[Jamiez]

Week 63:

I took the rear bumper off to install the newly painted fillers....and then spent 3 days trying to get the thing back on.  I'm not sure why exactly but lining it up and getting all 4 bolts in was a real struggle.  I ended up taking it off a few times and cleaning up all the threads before I finally got them all in. 

A few weeks back I finally managed to track down a correct model OE carb.  It's not in great shape so I'll get to hone my carb rebuilding skills.

Here is the stamping:

Here is what it looked like when I unpacked it:

After a night of soaking and some light brushing:


New floats and a gasket kit should be showing up next week and I'll start pulling it apart for a more intense cleaning.

[Jamiez]

Took the car down to my dad's place, google maps shows it as 4.6 miles one way, the trip odometer ended up showing 10.2 for the round trip so it's still reading a bit high but not terrible.  I might go with another tooth change on the speedo gear, but I might want to swap the tires during the winter so I'l probably leave it for now.  I did notice the car has a few rattles that I should be able to track down and fix.

On the carb front...there's good news and bad news.  The good news is that I have it mostly disassembled, cleaned and ready to go.  The bad news is the accelerator pump was rusted solid, and once I got it free it disintegrated.  Fortunately that part is common across a lot of Carter TQs in that era so sourcing a replacement won't take as long as finding the original carb.  Anyhow here are a lot of nice clean parts, you can look at earlier photos of the carb to see how far they have come.

[MizzouRT]

One look at the carb reminds that OE can be more, er, challenging!!!

[Jamiez]

I rebuilt my Holley a few months back (it was leaking like crazy).  Comparing the two, the Holley actually has a lot more gaskets and seals, etc than the Carter.  The TQ does seem to have a lot more pieces but I also pulled apart a lot of the linkage just to clean the rust off it. For example on the Holley I didn't bother to pull the butterflies apart as they just needed some quick brushing to knock off the carbon.

The real fun will be trying to put it all back together....

[Chryco Psycho]

Everything being upgraded step by step !!
 Looking good , should drive better now too with all new fluids 

[Jamiez]

Everything being upgraded step by step !!
 Looking good , should drive better now too with all new fluids 

It's definitely come a long way, largely due to the helpful posts and advice from this board.   There's always more to do, but now it's mostly upgrades versus necessity. Thanks for all the help, it's been quite the ongoing learning experience.

[brads70]

I like this thread!...as it makes me get off of my butt and work on mine! 

This has got to be my favourite 72-74 Challenger!   Great job!

[Jamiez]

I'm still trying to win a cheap auction for a TQ for the piece I need (I'm not interested in dorking up a nicely rebuilt $150 for the few parts I need off it).  So I was looking for another project to pass the time.  The steering pump looks like it might be leaking..but that is a messier job than I was looking for.  I happened across Cuda Jas thread on tuning with an O2 sensor ( http://www.cuda-challenger.com/cc/index.php?topic=86994.0 ) and instantly became intrigued.  I ordered a FAST kit from Summit on Friday at 6PM and it showed up at my door at 8:30AM Saturday morning!  Guess living close to Summit helps.

Unfortunately the tail pipe adapter shipped from another location show that won't show up until next week.  I rigged up the O2 sensor on the end of one of the socket extensions and placed it in the tail pipe for some readings.  At idle, the Air Fuel ratio was maxing the scale up around 20!  I guess that explains why the car idles so poorly.  I pulled out a vacuum gauge I got a few weeks back and my Holley tuning manual.  My initial vacuum was just below 10.  A few turns of the idle mixture screws and ...

I also pulled some more readings from the FAST meter:


Much better...  I'll have to see how it handles out on the road now.  I'll probably have to do some fine tuning and possibly research some jetting options.  But a good weekend worth of work on it....

[burdar]

Maybe I missed it Jamie but what do you have the timing set at?  When I got mine running, it was set on "0" which was the factory spec.  Vacuum was only 10 and it really stunk up the garage.  There was a dead spot when you touched the gas and the car almost died.  After bumping up the timing to 15 degrees and adjusting the mixture screws, the vacuum went up to 20 and the dead spot was gone. 

Where do you live?  I really want to see this car in person some day.

[Jamiez]

Maybe I missed it Jamie but what do you have the timing set at?  When I got mine running, it was set on "0" which was the factory spec. 

The simple answer is...I have no clue   I don't have a lot of automotive experience. Ever since I got the car, it wasn't running as I'd like it to be.  For a while I wrote it off as just being an old non-fuel injected car.  I hadn't driven a carburated car since the 90s.  Eventually the car became very difficult to start and took a long time to warm up.  So I replaced the positive battery cable (which was frayed) and swapped the plugs.  No real improvement, so I started poking around and it quickly became obvious the carb needed to be rebuilt (leaking fuel everywhere).
Rebuilding the carb and setting the float level, fixed the hard starting.  It still idled rough and took a long time to idle without stalling. But the starting improvement made the car tolerable to drive so I moved on to other projects (speedometer, fluid swaps).

Now that I've had the idle problem for a while, I've decided to try and fix it.  Since I touched the carb, I figured that'd be a good place to start.  I've never touched the timing, but I definitely should take a look at it.

I'm in northern Ohio, about half an hour outside of Cleveland.