Hi!
I just finished a complete engine rebuild on my 64 1500. After an expensive
two year ordeal with locating hard to find 1500 engine parts, finding the
time, asking questions and bugging my roadster friends & vendors to death
for their time, the roadster runs as good as new. Fast and responsive with
more power than ever. Still leaks oil out the rear main. DARN!! Well, we
gave it our best shot.
I've been having a problem with severe grinding between all gears. Traced it
down to a badly cracked firewall not allowing the clutch master to fully
engage the piston. Richard Prentice came over with his MIG welder and we
fixed it up better than original. The trick is to also weld the peddle
bracket to the bottom of that little ledge that you use to set your tools on
under the hood. This keeps the bracket from flexing the firewall and causing
it to crack. I will post the step by step fix to the TDROC web site for you
1500 owners.
WARNING, This fix will ruin the paint on the "tool shelf". Look at my paint
job and you will understand why this is not a problem for me.
LESSONS LEARNED (the hard way)
I did two very dumb things:
1. Ground through the R-Front brake line while grinding the firewall welds
down. I was in a hurry and was afraid of breaking the line by bending it out
of the way. I finally fixed the line last Thursday night and took her out
for a test drive. Wow! What a difference doing it right (yourself) can make
on an engine rebuild.
2. While sitting at a stop light (during the test drive), I put my hand
under the dash to see if moving the bend in the tachometer cable would stop
it from bouncing at low RPM's. I somehow managed to ground my watch on my
new after-market (non-fused) ammeter wire terminal while the car was
running. The end result was a blown voltage regulator. It also instantly
super-heated my watch band, resulting in a third-degree burn about the size
of a .50 cent piece on my wrist.
To make it worse, and if that wasn't bad enough, after shaking it off and
proceeding through the stop light (on my way home to nurse my wounds), a car
blew through the red light at about 60 MPH and barely missed T-boning me as
I was making a left. I just happened to use the center lane and he was in
the right lane. I about lost it but decided to settle for simply yelling
like a spaz while offering up a pathetic feeble one-finger salute with my
good arm. I then drive home very shaken from the entire ordeal. This is NOT
what I planned. I don't know what I planned but this is definitely not it!
:-(
I'm going to the specialist tomorrow to see if I need graphs.
I'm getting too old for this SH--! With two small children and a wife who need
me... I'm now thinking about selling the car and taking up golf. Somebody stop
me!!!
Charlie
1964 SPL310 (1500)
Flower Mound, Texas
http://members.home.net/cehubbard/tdroc/
Flower Mound, Texas
http://members.home.net/cehubbard/tdroc/
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