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Hi all,
We're fixing up a '73 Wagoneer with 258 and 3-speed manual. It's an old fire brigade vehicle. Here's an old photo of it circa 1980:
The hi-viz paint hasn't aged well and is peeling away on the most sun-exposed areas, here's how it looks like now:
Between us and the fire brigade there was one private owner who managed to drive about 2000 km in fifteen years.
The body and frame are pretty solid for a 47-year-old vehicle. I've found a grand total of two rust spots that need fresh sheet metal - tailgate corner and driver's side rear wheel well. The rest is just surface rust - wire wheel, epoxy primer and some decent topcoat should take care of it. The vehicle has been painted Butterscotch Gold at factory so that's our colour of choice too.
As it arrived, the engine had rough idle and erratic high rpm behaviour and it did not charge. Also the transmission makes a sort of rustling sound - probably rebuild time. Previous owner had new brakes done just before "the engine became weak".
So far we've put in a 63A Delco alternator, swapped almost all rubber hoses, changed probably 20-year-old oil + filter. Also we've dismantled a couple of generations of fire brigade electric installations with some interesting properties, such as having the fuses last in the circuit before the ground instead of just after battery. Well, I suppose the firemen are used to putting out fires. The good thing here is that all of their wiring is completely separate from factory wiring.
I've done compression test on the engine, no problems there. Weakness seems to be caused by the Carter YF having given up the ghost, and apparently in the process of trying to fix this someone had misadjusted the ignition timing somewhere like 15 degrees after TDC. After resetting ignition timing it turned better, but the Carter is still giving us trouble. Even with fresh repair kit installed it does not work like it should - there's intermittent flooding and other misbehaviour that just does not make sense when the needle valve is new, everything is carefully cleaned etc. Our best guess is that something in the body is either worn or warped in a way that prevents normal operation. We've thought of replacing it with a Weber because that's way more familiar to us and could possibly get slightly better mpg too.
So that was a long way of saying "hello"!
We're fixing up a '73 Wagoneer with 258 and 3-speed manual. It's an old fire brigade vehicle. Here's an old photo of it circa 1980:
The hi-viz paint hasn't aged well and is peeling away on the most sun-exposed areas, here's how it looks like now:
Between us and the fire brigade there was one private owner who managed to drive about 2000 km in fifteen years.
The body and frame are pretty solid for a 47-year-old vehicle. I've found a grand total of two rust spots that need fresh sheet metal - tailgate corner and driver's side rear wheel well. The rest is just surface rust - wire wheel, epoxy primer and some decent topcoat should take care of it. The vehicle has been painted Butterscotch Gold at factory so that's our colour of choice too.
As it arrived, the engine had rough idle and erratic high rpm behaviour and it did not charge. Also the transmission makes a sort of rustling sound - probably rebuild time. Previous owner had new brakes done just before "the engine became weak".
So far we've put in a 63A Delco alternator, swapped almost all rubber hoses, changed probably 20-year-old oil + filter. Also we've dismantled a couple of generations of fire brigade electric installations with some interesting properties, such as having the fuses last in the circuit before the ground instead of just after battery. Well, I suppose the firemen are used to putting out fires. The good thing here is that all of their wiring is completely separate from factory wiring.
I've done compression test on the engine, no problems there. Weakness seems to be caused by the Carter YF having given up the ghost, and apparently in the process of trying to fix this someone had misadjusted the ignition timing somewhere like 15 degrees after TDC. After resetting ignition timing it turned better, but the Carter is still giving us trouble. Even with fresh repair kit installed it does not work like it should - there's intermittent flooding and other misbehaviour that just does not make sense when the needle valve is new, everything is carefully cleaned etc. Our best guess is that something in the body is either worn or warped in a way that prevents normal operation. We've thought of replacing it with a Weber because that's way more familiar to us and could possibly get slightly better mpg too.
So that was a long way of saying "hello"!
dave.
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