Re: KPack
Posted by kevinpackard On 2021/5/8 22:52:57
Gentlemen,
Celebrate with me a major milestone....the Panama's first drive on on an actual road!
It's been 10 months since I bought the car and in my time owning it, it has never seen pavement. The extent of its "driving" was down the gravel driveway to the neighbor's shop and lift. There were times when I thought that I would never reach this point, so it was a great day to actually be able to drive the car.
Video:
Last night and this morning my brother in law and I worked like crazy to get everything wrapped up. We bled the brakes last night twice and got a nice firm pedal. We adjusted the brakes on all four corners, and my neighbor checked them all and gave us a thumbs up. Also adjusted the parking brake.
Also finally got around to making and installing new vacuum lines from the fuel pump. Two lengths of rubber vacuum hose, and two lengths of 1/4" steel tubing. Pretty simple to do overall.
I washed the car for the first time in many months. It looked much better afterwards. The lack of weather stripping means a good amount of water got on the carpet. Eventually I'll get that dealt with. We had a short debate on whether or not I should put the wheel covers on, because the blue wheels look great against the whitewalls. But I like things to be as original as possible, so I polished up the wheel covers and slammed them on.
After some fiddling with tuning the engine (didn't help much) I took it out on the road for a test, with a chase vehicle in case things went horribly wrong. I'm happy to say that all went relatively well! In fact, I ended up going on several test drives, as did my brother in law. Probably went 15 miles total. Not much, but enough to do a quick shakedown.
A couple of observations.
The good:
1.) Brakes work great. No pulsing, pulling, squealing, etc. Firm pedal.
2.) Transmission works! Direct drive lock up occurs about 35 mph and shifts out of direct drive when coming to a stop. Once or twice it didn't shift down, but for the most part it worked fine.
3.) Drives straight with no major wandering
4.) Fairly smooth over bumps
5.) No overheating. The temp stayed just about the center of the gauge the whole time. Checked temp on various parts of the engine with an infrared thermometer and nothing was high.
The bad:
1.) Engine performance is not good yet. We redid the initial timing, cleaned the points and gapped them correctly. Idle is not perfect, still runs a bit rich, but does seem to smooth out at speed. I'm going to do all new ignition parts and go from there.
2.) Stumble on initial acceleration
3.) lots of rattling in the doors due to no weather strip.
4.) On my last test drive I heard a squeaking or chirping coming from somewhere in the rear. Very minor, but definitely noticeable. It was not there on the first several tests that I could tell. I'm hoping it's not one of my bearings....ugh.
All in all, I'm just happy I was able to drive the car!
-Kevin
Attach file:
New vacuum lines.jpg (133.60 KB)
Sans wheel covers.jpg (94.90 KB)
Brother in law at the wheel.jpg (138.91 KB)
First ride for the kids.jpg (124.90 KB)
Happy to be driving.jpg (109.46 KB)
Celebrate with me a major milestone....the Panama's first drive on on an actual road!
It's been 10 months since I bought the car and in my time owning it, it has never seen pavement. The extent of its "driving" was down the gravel driveway to the neighbor's shop and lift. There were times when I thought that I would never reach this point, so it was a great day to actually be able to drive the car.
Video:
Last night and this morning my brother in law and I worked like crazy to get everything wrapped up. We bled the brakes last night twice and got a nice firm pedal. We adjusted the brakes on all four corners, and my neighbor checked them all and gave us a thumbs up. Also adjusted the parking brake.
Also finally got around to making and installing new vacuum lines from the fuel pump. Two lengths of rubber vacuum hose, and two lengths of 1/4" steel tubing. Pretty simple to do overall.
I washed the car for the first time in many months. It looked much better afterwards. The lack of weather stripping means a good amount of water got on the carpet. Eventually I'll get that dealt with. We had a short debate on whether or not I should put the wheel covers on, because the blue wheels look great against the whitewalls. But I like things to be as original as possible, so I polished up the wheel covers and slammed them on.
After some fiddling with tuning the engine (didn't help much) I took it out on the road for a test, with a chase vehicle in case things went horribly wrong. I'm happy to say that all went relatively well! In fact, I ended up going on several test drives, as did my brother in law. Probably went 15 miles total. Not much, but enough to do a quick shakedown.
A couple of observations.
The good:
1.) Brakes work great. No pulsing, pulling, squealing, etc. Firm pedal.
2.) Transmission works! Direct drive lock up occurs about 35 mph and shifts out of direct drive when coming to a stop. Once or twice it didn't shift down, but for the most part it worked fine.
3.) Drives straight with no major wandering
4.) Fairly smooth over bumps
5.) No overheating. The temp stayed just about the center of the gauge the whole time. Checked temp on various parts of the engine with an infrared thermometer and nothing was high.
The bad:
1.) Engine performance is not good yet. We redid the initial timing, cleaned the points and gapped them correctly. Idle is not perfect, still runs a bit rich, but does seem to smooth out at speed. I'm going to do all new ignition parts and go from there.
2.) Stumble on initial acceleration
3.) lots of rattling in the doors due to no weather strip.
4.) On my last test drive I heard a squeaking or chirping coming from somewhere in the rear. Very minor, but definitely noticeable. It was not there on the first several tests that I could tell. I'm hoping it's not one of my bearings....ugh.
All in all, I'm just happy I was able to drive the car!
-Kevin
Attach file:
New vacuum lines.jpg (133.60 KB)
Sans wheel covers.jpg (94.90 KB)
Brother in law at the wheel.jpg (138.91 KB)
First ride for the kids.jpg (124.90 KB)
Happy to be driving.jpg (109.46 KB)
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