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Okay, first time doing a true build thread so this might be an adventure.
cruising kijiji last summer when I came across a decent looking '82 for $1000 bucks. Wasn't really I'm the market for a fb but went and checked it out regardless. Ended up going back the same day to buy it. Car ran good, started strong but has 220k km on it. Get the car home and I'm going through all the paper work the guy gave to me with the car to stumble across a bill of sale for two weeks earlier and for a $1000 more. Ended up fearing the guy sold me a lemon so within the next week or so I got a proper compression test done on it. Good news, rotor one has an average of 96 across the three faces and rotor two has an average of 98. I couldn't have been happier.
Drove the car off and on for the summer and then parked for the rough Canadian winter
now about mid January I decided to treat the car, ordered up a set of emission block off plates from lrb speed, two msd blaster coils and a carb rebuild kit. Started off with the carb and made good use out of my kitchen table rebuilding it. Since where I live I don't have emission testing I also decided to strip the carb. Took quite some time to clean off all the gunk and clean up the carb, really that took the longest. Reassembly took maybe a few hours. Longest amount of time was spent setting the floats just right.
now last Saturday I finally decided it's time to get to actually wrenching on the car. In preparation for this I went out and got all the tune up items I had on my list and parts needed for rats nest removal. Most I was able to get from Napa or Canadian tire. Some I had to get from mechanic friends. So Saturday I finally pop the hood for the first time in a while, carbs off so I went ahead and removed the rats nest, acv and all the other miscellaneous crap associated with it. Also went ahead with installing my beautiful block off plates.
Now with all that jazz done I called it a day. Fast forward to today and it's the real dooms day. On the list; remove air pump, instal 3L220 belt, reinstall carb and finish capping vac nips on carb and reroute new lines needed with rats nest removal.
now luckily I did a dry run of putting my carb on because I noticed that the acv block off plates stuck up the lower intake manifold just enough that my carb spacer teetered on it. Unfortunately i gasket sealed that on Saturday so out came the masking tape and file and I had to file it down on the mani. Other then that the block off plates worked pretty slick. Carb ended up going on like a dream and with all the random crap removed putting the throttle cables and that last 12mm bolt on the carb went way easier then ever planned. Spent a little time dinking around with the 3l220 belt. Went to remove the air pump to see previous owner stripped the bolt at one point in time. Vice grips didn't do any good so it looks like I'm going to have to call in a favour. Belts already off the air pump so it isn't doing any harm. Now with the finish line in sight i quickly switched out the coils for the msd ones, ran my needed vac lines and then replaced a couple extra that I noticed were dried out or straight up split in half (i swear it wasn't like that when I parked it)
now the moment of truth, key in the ignition, key on, cycle two or three times to let the bowls in the carb fill up and it's time..... to just endlessly turn over. Nothing, no start. What the actual f**k. How could this be, I did all this for you car, don't do this to me. Okay, let's start going through it, gas is pretty low, let's put some in, found a Jerry can with some fresh gas, in you go. Do I have spark? Hell yea I do, do I have fuel to the Carb? Well the keys still on and the fuel pumps still going. Let's pull the fuel line off the carb. HOLY **** THERE'S FUEL EVERYWHERE. Okay let's let the car sit for a couple minutes. Is there compression? Well I sure hope so. But at the end of the night I still wasn't able to get it to fire. Just one decent backfire from flooding it. Ended up calling it a night and heading home ( cars stored at a friends) was too flabbergasted to take any pictures. On the list for tomorrow, Jerry can of fresh gas, check floats again, possibly deflood and then if anything, atf down the primaries. List for when the cars running, cut the cat and let this sucker breath, strip old carpet, figure out what to do with my nonfunctioning radio, fix rust spot by antenna and if bank account allows it, suspension. Ill update tomorrow with pictures and progress as to weather or not I got the car started. I will leave you with this gem I found last summer when I investigated why the radio wasn't working
Went to the car today to see if the rotary gods will have mercy on me. Praying that it was going to start I gassed up, pumped up the flat tires, cleaned the tools out of it and then triple checked my new vac lines, vac caps and see if There was fuel in the carb. Everything was looking promising but In the end it didn't start. Major disappointment. Ended up pour a little atf down both primaries while my buddy cranked it over. Ill let the atf soak in for a few days then try again. Hopefully it goes. May have to check timing to just cross that off the list but I never touched the distributor at any point in time. Well see how she goes in a few days
We see issues like this when someone rebuilds a carb and removes the rates nest. I suggest putting the rats nest back on and not blocking anything off until it runs properly. Try to avoid using the rebuild needle, seats, and base gasket.
Well I somehow missed it earlier but caught it today when I was messing around with things. Carb ain't getting fuel. Sight glasses on the sides of the carb are at the right level but I'm still not getting fuel through. Also noticed my AP wasn't putting anything through. I'm suspecting it's the weight and check ball. so if time permits tomorrow or this weekend the carbs coming back off and I'm combing through all that stuff again. Hopefully that solves my issues
Screwed around with the car a bit more today. Pulled the carb apart and the ap weight and check ball were stuck so I freed those up. Reassembled carb and when I turned the key on, for a second while the float bowls were filling I had gas coming out my jets. After that split second gas cut out. Couldn't get any more gas through the carb. Looks like it's time to take it apart again to see if I can figure out why
alright, so after taking a week and change break on working on the car to make sure i didnt burn it to the ground i decided to turn some wreches on it and try and figure it out. so started with the basics once again, went and got some new spark plugs. checked spark, its there. checked fuel to the carb, float bowls have fuel, at little high but have fuel. compression is good. decided to take my carb apart for the 30th time and double check everything. now i feel like an idiot saying this but it was something i majorly overlooked. i used rebuilt seats and needles. switched them out, put a few screws in the carb and tried to start it. barely even bumped the starter and it roared to life. felt like a major bone head but i was happy it was that all along. let the car idle for a bit and then took a quick test drive. definitely a noticable improvement with the rebuilt carb and msd coils. so with that out of the way i can get around to other stuff. ended up calling that my victory of the day and called it. next on the list is adjust floats to proper level, still a tad high in the bowls. need to remove air pump yet. already took the belt off but bolts are seized so ive been blasting those with wd40. also stripping carpet out of car, its seen better days. and then off to a muffler shop to get the cat cut out. hopefully ill be able to wrench on it this week and get some of those out of the way
Well went to go work on the car today, decided to take it on a quick spin around the subdivision first. well the rear end felt a lot looser then before. Quickly jacked up the rear end to find this. Guess it's one more thing added to the list
Well had some free time today so I decided to take advantage of it and cross a few things off the list and get some stuff done on the car. Was real nice out and almost too hot for me to be working outside on it but I needed to get this stuff done.
so first on the list was quickly removing that junk cold start assist bottle. Cars never going to be driven in winter and as far as I'm concerned it's garbage. Another piece of junk in the junk pile. Bottle slides off the bracket with a little persuasion, then just two ten mil bolts on the bracket and it's all off. For security measures I put a vacuum cap on the nipple on the carb.
Now that's that's out of the way, time to get to the big stuff. Finally finish all the little carb crap I've been putting off and hopefully be done with opening it up.
first on the list, adjust the carb floats. Looking through site glasses the front one was full and the rear was just about right. Pictures don't quite show it but I tried to get the right angle
thanks too all the practise ive been getting recently it took me about two minutes flat to get the carb opened up. It was pretty obvious right off the bat that my floats were way off.
Now with some patience and finesse adjustment I got them set just right. 16mm from gasket when floating (or at highest point) and 51mm from gasket to fully hung (when bowls low)
Okay. One more thing off the list, time to put it back together. Now one of the last things I need for the carb to be compete is a few cotter pins for the few rods there are. Fast idle, omp, and vac secondaries. Well long story short no one had cotter pins small enough. Went to a hand full of places and couldn't find any. called up a friend who said he can get me some tomorrow. Slick. That's alright if it waits another day.
now how cluttered the engine bay still is with all the emissions/ ratness removed has still been bugging me. Tons of useless wires.
With the sun beating down hard on my neck I decided it was time to remove all those useless wires. Took a quick minute to pull the harness from the engine bay and a good couple hours to pull out all the wires from the harness. Honestly, I think peeling off all that 30+ year old electrical tape was almost the hardest part.
Picture of harness before I started
Picture of everything pulled out and what's left for wires.
And a picture of it all wrapped up. Took me a bit longer then expected but I think it looks pretty slick. Definitely cleans up the engine bay a bit. Not as much as I wanted but a bit.
Also better note that even though I consider everything I take off junk, I still save it all. While stripping the harness I didn't cut a single wire. Took my time and pulled every pin out of everything so I could save it all. I have a nice sized tote already pretty full of useless to me parts that I'll hold onto until its either worth a million dollars or is some sort of ancient relic for my grandchildren to find (long time, I'm dont have grandchildren, children and I'm not even married) but the point is, I'm not throwing anything out.
And that's were today got me. Just a couple things off the list but I still feel pretty accomplished. Hopefully I can get some more free time real soon to keep working on it.
Quick little update. Haven't had time to do much else on the car but that being said I did order some T3 rear lower trialing arms to replace the broken one (and just put a new one on the passenger side) and I also scored a brand new in the box, all hardware included, louvers set. Just picked them up and test fit them on the car, maybe some time next week I can get around to installing those too
I want to know where you got the triangle rear window louvers.
Long story short, theres a local guy who works on nothing but camaros. Used to order in Astra louvers buy the truck load for camaros and vettes and a few other cars. Clearing out his storage the other day stumbled upon this set still in box with instructions and what not. I saw his ad on kijiji, and instantly called him up. I couldn't resist buying them, I know those triangle pieces are pretty hard to come across
04-30-18, 11:28 PM
My first fb
