Dat L24

Hoooooooly moly it's been a long time since I've updated this thread...

Well, I ended up buying that base and installing it like mentioned earlier in the thread, and it did virtually nothing. So, shucks there.

Then I purchased a carburetor rebuild kit for the California emission package, 3-BBL Keihin carburetor (a real pain to find), and I removed the carburetor completely this time unlike when I replaced the base plate....

 

WHAT. A. NIGHTMARE.

 

Seriously, that was a pain in the %^&.

 

But I promptly shoved that puppy in a cardboard box, and then the car sat on my driveway for another 4 months.

After that, I fished out the carb from the box and started to replace as many o-rings, seals, and diagrams as I could. A few I was leery about a few of them, so I skipped them, and the few that weren't in my rebuild kit I cleaned up, and patched with a linen/epoxy back patch. This would end up to bite me in the rear, but we'll talk about that later....

 

Cue the remount of the carb, and replacing as many vacuum lines as I could, some new gas after draining the tank yet again, aaaaaaand......

 

Nothing. Same issue. Runs for 30 seconds, then stalls out because of fuel starvation, and then won't start for 10-15 minutes.

 

It was at this point I seriously considered the possibility of trailering this car to my local outdoor range and shoving it with 40 pounds of tannerite, and giving it a proper send off into that great garage in the sky, but alas, I had no money for that much tannerite.

 

So, I went back and double checked my work, and it was then, under the rear drivers side of the car checking the fuel lines, I noticed it.

That tiiiiiiiiny little bend. The one I must have put in the old rubber fuel line when I replaced the fuel filter.

 

That little kink in the line when further investigated wasn't a little kink, it was a HUGE one. And when attempting to run the vehicle, it had created a vacuum in the gas tank, which took 10-15 minutes to dissipate.

 

After jumping around and calling every car friend I had to explain my elation, I attempted to just take off the fuel filter and unkink the line.

 

NOPE.

 

What ended up happening was that the line was so old and brittle that I cracked it when I kinked it, and the kink was far enough up the side of the gas tank that it predicated the dropping of the gas tank to replace the fuel line. So that happened. And that took a few months for my lazy self to do (plus, it was winter, but I'm in California so that's really not an excuse....).

 

So I got that replaced, I put it all back together, and fired her up: SUCCESS! She idled fine and set herself down to a nice, calm warm up. I blipped the throttle to have her drop down from the warm up idle, aaaaaaand she died.

 

This time though, all I had to do was pump the gas once and crank her, and she fired up. Aaaaand stalled again. But firing her back up and holding the idle with the throttle kept her nice and happy, with no discernible issues.

 

It was near this moment I realized I didn't replace the accelerator pump diaphragm, and I felt very much like an idiot. I didn't have one in my kit, but I should have done something.

 

So armed with the nightmare fuel of memories that was the carb removal, I decided this needed a more redneck fix. So, introducing...

 

DAT L24'S PATENT PENDING THROTTLE-CABLE-TIGHTNER!©  It may LOOK like a 12mm wrench, but it's a highly sophisticated tool that you can use to tighten the pull on the throttle cable!

 

After taking off the air cleaner housing and adjusting the throttle cable, I'd put the housing back on, attach the vacuum lines, and then start her up. Repeat this cycle about 500 times, or as needed.

 

I eventually got her to idle at a near-stock line, but I can't be sure since the car doesn't have a tach. Regardless, she's running now, and only slightly sketchy at night with all the lights on and A/C blasting; I just don't think she has enough juice.

 

So she's running! And yet still sitting on my driveway, unregistered since she needs a CV boot replaced, and I missed my smog inspection by two weeks and now I've got a year's worth of back fees.... oh how it goes. But yay!