After repeatedly bashing my head into the wall of my own failures, I decided to contact Jim, the guy who rebuilt my 1500S engine and ask for help. I was seriously stumped as to where to go or what to do next. I knew the 'fix' was going to be something simple that I'd overlooked in my haste to get the car put back together under a constricted timeline. Between my dissatisfaction with my certification progress and the constant wall of 'issues', it wasn't in the cards for this car to do anything but continue collecting dust for the rest of the year.
Fortunately, part of that changed today when Jim arrived...we did a 'once over' and I explained everything that led up to this point. Every part that's been changed, every adjustment, every obstacle.
Remember that part about how I knew it would be something simple? When I pulled the distributor and replaced it with an adjusted NOS ZV/JCU 4R3 distributor, I apparently didn't seat the drive lug into the shaft on the engine.
Rookie mistake #1. Yes, there are more.
So now, the car would fire but not start...review of the chokes showed that they needed adjustment. The weather is cold enough that the carbs need them now. So they were adjusted. Again.
Rookie mistake #2. I'll continue.
Car starts but the carbs are out of adjustment so it is kind of pissed off until it warms up a little. It's going to need some additional adjustment to get them just right. I may 'hire' Jim to come back and do that since I know jack shit about carburetor adjustment and will probably find a way to set myself on fire while attempting to do it.
While we were discussing the distributor issue, I mentioned the brakes...he takes a look and can't find any leaks anywhere. Pedal test and his assessment is that the plunger rod is too tight-preventing the master cylinder from allowing enough fluid in to sustain pressure. In the interest of not wasting his time, I tell him that I'll adjust it later (I did) and let him know how it turns out. The brakes will need to be bled again but they should be good after that...in theory. This will have to wait for another day because I don't have time to do it tonight. But-I am motivated to try it and see if I can get a proper pedal out of it.
I tested out the 12 volt light bulbs once I got things cleaned up a bit and it turns out that everything functions exactly as I hoped it would and I retained all of the functions as they were on the 6 volt set up, while using one less wire in the process.
I still need to address the tachometer issue and figure out why the speedometer won't sit right in the dash (I think the tangs are too short) but that's a simple fix for a later day.
As a wrap up to the night, I installed the rear seat from the 65S (Icarus) since it was in substantially better condition than the one that was in the car (the seat bottom was sticky and whatever it was refused to be removed by any means).
I spent far more than I'd hoped and it took a lot longer than it should have because I tried to fit the fix into an impossible time line...lesson learned.
I didn't get to drive the car because it's not quite right and the brakes are still not up to the task of stopping the car...I'm hoping that I can do that at least once before it snows.
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