At the risk of looking like a silly bugger....
....I was running round the block to the garage to put some air in the
tires. The engine was idling fast and rich because of the auto choke, which
always irritates me. So i tap the accelerator to the floor to reset the
choke, like someone mentioned a couple of weeks back. I felt very pleased
with myself as the revs fell below 1500. And then felt very stupid when the
engine died on me. Bugger. I guess i must have flooded the engine when i
tried to restart it, because i got to sit by the side of the road for five
minutes whilst i waited for the petrol to evaporate a bit or whatever the
hell it does when you wiat for five minutes after flooding the engine.
Anyway, humphrey started up quite happily, and i warmed up the engine for a
couple more minutes before i set off. No more problems. I guess the moral of
the story is that humphrey knows when he's warmed up and doesn't need the
choke anymore.
However, i have had fun this weekend sprucing humprhrey up an making him
feel loved. The boot lamp was broken when i bought the car, so i finally got
round to fixing that. And cleaning up the battery whilst i was at it (the
terminals were pretty corroded and no-one had been near it for years). Oh,
and Mike discovered last night that putting a six pack of beer behind the
passenger seat, and then sliding it backwards a little too fast is a bad
idea. Somehow he managed to slice a can right open (you'd've thought that
between a docotr and an engineer we might have some common sense). It's
probably good luck thouhg, like launching a ship! So I wound up taking the
seat out this morning and pulling the carpets out and cleaning them. I've
had to muck around with the seats before, and the lack of foresight in the
placement of the bolts is amazing: if you slide the seat right back there's
about 1/8" short of enough clearence to get a socket on the bolt! GRRRR!
Routine maintenance went well, but i need to invest in some jack-stands or
some ramps so that i can get under the car to lube the break cable, and
check the transmission and differential oil levels. Anyway, I thought i'd
pump the tires up to the "continuous high-speed driving" pressures of 27PSI
front, 30PSI rear, seeing as i plan to do around 300 miles on the freeway
this weekend. We'll see if that makes humphrey a little less thirsty! Still
i think i need to bite the bullet and have the carb overhauled sometime
soon.... when i have the money.....
have a great weekend
cheers
Joe
_________________
Dr. Joseph Garner
Department of Animal Science,
University of California,
One Shields Avenue,
Davis,
CA 95616
USA
tel: + 530 754 5291
fax: + 530 752 0175
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