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Paul - good tips, thanks. I'll start going through it all and see what I find.


Unrelated, but am I an idiot to want to try the headliner on my own? Or should I just take it to an upholstery shop and let them do it right?

-Kevin

I doubt you’re an idiot but you are definitely brave! I did it once back in the ‘60s on my 1940 110 and was never happy with the results. However, these days there are far better and higher quality kits available which likely have clearer instructions so I would say, go for it!

I replaced the headliner in a 76 dodge dart when I was in highschool. My mom sewed it together from picture canvas. It looked fine. I also removed and re-installed the headliner in my clipper. It came out pretty good, but there is a wrinkle or two in the rear corners, but that doesnt bother me. If the headliner from SMS or wherever you get it is really big bucks, then I might pay to have a pro do it perfectly, but it is not really that difficult. Go for it!

In Hemmings today there's this article about installing headliners. Might help?hemmings.com/stories/article/headliner-i ... edium=email&utm_campaign=2021-01-20

Thanks for the encouragement guys. I did see that article Mal, it was helpful. My concern is that brushing the adhesive on might show through the headliner. Not sure I want to mess around with an adhesive gun. Really no reason for me to buy one when I will use it a single time. I have a call into an upholstery place to see what it might cost, but I'm still leaning towards doing it myself.


Spent a couple hours over the past few evenings tinkering with a few things. First, I made up some quick kick panels and covered them with the blue indoor/outdoor carpet. It doesn't match at all, but it'll be temporary. Eventually I'll find carpet that matches and use that.

Also glued the matting on the air cleaner cover because it was loose. Ross had mentioned in another thread that a loose mat had caused issues with a car he worked on.

Pulled off the throttle linkage to see if I could figure out why it's not returning to normal idle. The linkage was filthy (along with every other surface in the engine bay). So naturally I threw it all in the sandblaster and cleaned it up to bare metal. Wiped it all down with acetone, then shot with primer, then a silver enamel.

I reinstalled the linkage and it all seems smooth (lubed the pivots as well). It all seemed to move smoothly and seemed to go back to a normal position. I noticed however that the firewall mount linkage is loose. The rivets holding the pivot arm up are loose and worn. See this video:

Loose Throttle Linkage

Should I just drill out the rivets and put some bolts in there?

The car fired right up. On the manual choke set up it would take several tries. Now it starts after about a second of cranking. Throttle still seems to get stuck a bit and won't return back to full idle every time. I suspect the carpet might be putting pressure on the pedal arm. Or it might be related to the loose firewall mount mentioned above. I don't think the spring has the right angle with that piece being loose.

Strangely the car tried to die several times when accelerating. It didn't do that at all the other night. But it happened several times tonight. I pulled the air cleaner off and watched the action of the accelerator pump down the throat (the choke opened completely like it was supposed to...happy to see that). It nearly died several times, and even backfired in my face. That was fun.

Took a video, though it seemed to be running better when I took it. Still some definite hesitation though.

Accelerator pump lag

Still need to readjust timing, idle speed, and use a vacuum gauge to set idle mixture. Also noticed the gasket on the carb was a bit wet between the air horn and the body. It's a new gasket, and all screws are tight...not sure what to make of that. Did not note any fuel leaking anywhere.

-Kevin

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  Kick panel.jpg (126.96 KB)


  Air filter matting detached.jpg (140.03 KB)


  Dirty throttle linkage removed.jpg (129.31 KB)


  Throttle linkage sandblasted.jpg (123.54 KB)


  Throttle linkage painted and reinstalled.jpg (158.40 KB)

On the headliner, those from SMS are quite reasonable (or at least the one for my 1956 Clipper was) and matches perfectly so a good combination is getting one of theirs, then having an upholstery shop install it. It would likely come out the same or cheaper but will be a better match than having the shop also make it.

Don't suppose there could be a slight miss in the rear cylinder where the spark plug cable passes over the choke cable. Would not think it would jump through the spark plug cable insulation, but just a thought.
John

Watching you work on your car is giving me flashbacks to working on mine!

Perhaps I missed it, but why are you running a manual choke?

On my Clipper, I also have an issue with the throttle linkage not fully returning. I put a small helper spring on the end where it attaches to the carb, and the other end on the side of the fuel filter. Not elegant, but it does the job to make sure it fully returns. I was going to figure that out one day, it's been like 8 years now. :)

Good Morning Kevin...Just a question...How old is your condenser? When they get near the end of their life, they do strange things like your engine has started doing...Ernie in Arizona

Don - I have a headliner coming from SMS. They are the only ones that had the right material. Cost was pretty similar to other places (Kanter, Newstalgia) at ~$300. Still waiting to hear back from the upholstery place to see what the cost is on them installing. That will probably determine if I do it myself.

John - That's a definite possibility. I hadn't even considered that. I need to clean up the rat's nest of excess wire length on all the spark plug wires, then get a couple of wire keepers to make it tidy. Right now they all cross each other and that's probably not great.

Kev - The car came to me with a manual choke installed, and I just went through the process of rebuilding my second carb in order to ditch the manual choke. I had to install a new heat riser tube, but now I have a fully-functioning (at least it appears so) automatic choke. The manual choke cable is still there because I wasn't sure how well the automatic would work. So far it seems like it is, so I'll pull that cable off soon and pack it away with the old carb in case someone else wants to convert to manual choke.

An additional spring might not be a bad idea. I might need to try that out. I still need to figure out what to do about the loose rivets though....I really think that's making it worse.

Ernie - I have no idea how old the condenser is. Decades probably. What kind of weird things would I notice? I assumed the hesitation I'm seeing right now is fuel delivery problems (accelerator pump), but that's just a guess.

-Kevin