Sat, Aug 27. Friday afternoon/evening was the kickoff for the 7th annual Metro Cruise. 15 miles of rolling car show along with many business venues parking lots filled with cars for viewing. 1/2 of the Road Rodz club reserved spots at the Rogers Plaza lot while the other 1/2 spent the day at a small show put on by West Michigan Transmission. The 41 and I did the WMT show. Again, check out the Road Rodz blog for pics as well as the official Metro Cruise web site. http://www.28thstreetmetrocruise.com/
Sun, Sep 4. 8 of the Road Rodz members as well as my brother made the one hour drive north of Grand Rapids to 8th annual Canadian Lakes Car show. The show was held at The Castle grounds and we all did quite well. Club members captured 5 top 25 plaques, Best Engine trophy(Steve), Best Foreign car trophy (brother Ray's Anglia) and Norm's sedan was voted Best in Show.
On the way home, while cruising down the expressway at 60 mph, Cathie and I suddenly smelled rubber burning and the engine shut off! I pulled to the shoulder of the road along with the rest of the club members and tried to find what caused the smell. Nothing seemed amiss and when I spun the engine over, it started up again. We managed to drive all the way home with no further rubber smell but the engine did cut out a couple times. Just as we arrived in our neighborhood, the engine coughed again and we smelled the rubber burning momentarily. Each time the engine quit, it came right back without having to use the starter. During the ensuing week, I pulled the generator and regulator off the car and had them both tested. No problems found. I replaced the armature and field wires and called Pertronix to see if there was any possibility the ignition was causing the issue. They said just what I expected - if it was electronics that failed it wouldn't come back. It would stay dead. Here's the wires that were running from the generator to the regulator.
Several other wires that were inside the same plastic cover as the generator wires looked similar when I was digging out these wires. The 41 only has one fuse in the entire car and that's on the light switch. I wasn't feeling real warm and fuzzy about running the car any longer with deteriorating wiring.
I also drained the gas tank and cleaned the carb and filter just to be sure the cutting off issue wasn't related to fuel. I decided to give it one more weekend since 4 shows were scheduled for Sep 9-11 and a local pizza shop was holding their final show on Tues the 13th. Got the car all cleaned and polished and headed out Fri afternoon for the first show 1/2 hour away in Holland. I hadn't gone 2 miles when the engine cut out and I got the momentary rubber smell again! I immediately turned around and headed home. I had intended to replace the ancient wiring on the car during the coming winter so I made a decision to call the car show season complete. The 41 is now in the garage awaiting the extensive list of modifications coming up between now and next spring.
Here's a partial list of things I'll be doing:
- Replace wiring
- Install Chassis Engineering bolt in cross member, rack & pinion steering, disc brakes, and adjustable coil springs and tubular shock absorbers.
- Fabricate new steering column and shaft to maintain stock interior while attaching to R&P steering
- Convert electrical system to 12 volt w/new alternator
- raise rear of car 1/2 - 3/4" by machining 2" drop spacers to correct pinion angle
- install 3:36 rear end
- send radio out for conversion to 12v am/fm w/mp3 input while keeping stock look
- replace rear leaf springs with custom made replacements that will better support the car
I have several other items on my "to do" list and hopefully, I'll be able to get them all done. Stay tuned folks as I plan to chronicle the work with more pics and rambling commentary. We've had a ball showing the car this year and it has attracted some great compliments and exciting conversations from folks who still appreciate old 6 cylinder powered cars. I'm going to work real hard to retain the stock look while improving the suspension, steering and electrical system so we can enjoy the 41 even more next year.
Thanks everyone for reading and following along this year.
