2020 POTD Thread Archive

[GoceKU]

You are at the fun part, you'll see once you start tuning it it will get under your skin and you won't stop till you learn and do it right. Best advice i can give you now is to start by setting the ignition first, then mess with the carburetor.

 

[tjb]

Very nice.

I did pretty much the same thing with a '55 but pretty much designed to cruise. 350/700R4/AC/power everything.

Started with this:


Five or six years later, ended up with this:


Love them old Chevy's.

Regards,
Terry

 

[silverhawk]

It's a back-and-forth when dealing with timing. I got the timing "close" enough to fire (4 degrees after top dead center) doing a manual adjustment without it running. Then, I started into getting the carburetor set enough to "run" (missed the pressure regulator and sprayed fuel all over the garage when the pressure overwhelmed the floats). As the issues come up, I have to fix them. The timing was re-set to 8 degrees before top dead center. I will adjust it another 4 degrees eventually, but I think I need to remove my intake manifold and make some adjustments inside. With the idle mixture screws seated (meaning "no fuel"), the engine runs better. The floats are adjusted properly, so it likely means I have a blown power valve and have to take the carburetor apart again.

The carburetor adjustments don't bother me - that electrical on the wiring harness frustrated me to no end. In fact, it was so bad I pushed everything aside for a year or two until I could tackle it again. Now that I'm past that, I feel like I'm making progress again. I think I got this project running again with the Niva being a huge prompt. Thanks for posting all of those experiences.

 

[GoceKU]

If you want to get the wiring done right and enjoy doing it, my advice is buy yourself a good quality wire terminal crimping tool, pack of terminals some wire, i've changed every terminal on the little niva, the wires on my car ware eaten by mice but usually the wires are ok, is the terminals that fail, start at one end, checking cleaning replacing, by the time you come to the dashboard you'll know most of the wires what they do and it will be easy to figure out the rest, one thing i replace entirely, is the fuse block, i had to reuse one because of the budget and availability but, in the US you have universal fuse boxes very available. I'll attache pictures of terminal crimping tool that i use, they are AMP make, the cheap china crimping tools are garbage. I hope you this helps, i apologise if i'm intrusive that is not my intention, some time my translation isn't very good, or i use wrong words, because english is not my native language.

 

[tjb]

If you want to get the wiring done right and enjoy doing it, my advice is buy yourself a good quality wire terminal crimping tool, pack of terminals some wire, i've changed every terminal on the little niva, the wires on my car ware eaten by mice but usually the wires are ok, is the terminals that fail, start at one end, checking cleaning replacing, by the time you come to the dashboard you'll know most of the wires what they do and it will be easy to figure out the rest, one thing i replace entirely, is the fuse block, i had to reuse one because of the budget and availability but, in the US you have universal fuse boxes very available. I'll attache pictures of terminal crimping tool that i use, they are AMP make, the cheap china crimping tools are garbage. I hope you this helps, i apologise if i'm intrusive that is not my intention, some time my translation isn't very good, or i use wrong words, because english is not my native language.
View attachment 336045
View attachment 336044

That's good advice. Wiring was actually my favorite thing to do on re-builds. I've completely rewired on every one I've done.

 

[tjb]

Near horror story on why it's important to re-wire:

The son of a friend of mine is a building contractor and had a nasty fall several years ago before I met him. As a result, his legs are somewhat deformed; he walks with a terrible limp, but he can still work. He has a '70's vintage Jeep 3/4 ton pickup truck that his grandfather bought new, and he intends to give it to his son when he's old enough to drive - four generations on one truck. It had a Buick 350 V-8 and a 3-on-the-tree transmission - both original and, over time, it got to the point that he couldn't depress the clutch to shift gears anymore. He welded a 3 or 4" plate to extend the clutch pedal to his left. That worked for a few years, but then he couldn't even do that. I did a conversion for him, replacing the straight drive with a 700R4 automatic and floor shifter. (Try doing that sometime on an old school four wheel drive vehicle!) I added a Lokar electric kick-down to it and had to go searching around for a way to wire it. In doing that, I discovered he had NO - as in ZERO - fuses in that truck! One of the wires under the dash (don't remember which, but I think it was the headlight wiring) was almost completely melted. The shielding was completely gone on one side. He was a few vibrations away from that wire making contact and burning up the entire truck. I rewired the necessary stuff for him, and gave him some coaching on rewiring the entire truck. New harness and wires throughout.

If we had not done that transmission job and added electric kick-down, he would have never known it. He was lucky.

Regards

 

[GoceKU]

I've done worse, as a young guy on 100$ cars, headlight fuse burn out, i put some thin wire across it, few miles is burns again, dark at night on a dirt road, i'll reach behind the fuse box, pull the wires going to that fuse, and slide the terminals one into another, bypassing the fusebox, it never blow again. That said i've had few electrical fires in cars and lorries, old cars because of lack of insulation are easier to put out, take for instance the little niva, there is not a lot that can burn. Cars pass the 80's have cotton and plastic and a wiring fire behind the dashboard 90% chance it will burn down to crisps. Most terrifying fire i've had was few years ago in a BMW on the highway, at speed it bursts in flames, vacuum on the brakes fail it took long time to get it stopped, and the electric locks would not let us out, thankfully the windows still worked and we got out, almost suffocated on that one.

 

[tjb]

I've done worse, as a young guy on 100$ cars, headlight fuse burn out, i put some thin wire across it, few miles is burns again, dark at night on a dirt road, i'll reach behind the fuse box, pull the wires going to that fuse, and slide the terminals one into another, bypassing the fusebox, it never blow again. That said i've had few electrical fires in cars and lorries, old cars because of lack of insulation are easier to put out, take for instance the little niva, there is not a lot that can burn. Cars pass the 80's have cotton and plastic and a wiring fire behind the dashboard 90% chance it will burn down to crisps. Most terrifying fire i've had was few years ago in a BMW on the highway, at speed it bursts in flames, vacuum on the brakes fail it took long time to get it stopped, and the electric locks would not let us out, thankfully the windows still worked and we got out, almost suffocated on that one.

Whoa! Fortunately, you are knowledgeable enough to know what to do with wiring. That Jeep would have burned up before they even figured out where to start looking.

Gotta be careful.

Regards

 

[Tim9]

It's a back-and-forth when dealing with timing. I got the timing "close" enough to fire (4 degrees after top dead center) doing a manual adjustment without it running. Then, I started into getting the carburetor set enough to "run" (missed the pressure regulator and sprayed fuel all over the garage when the pressure overwhelmed the floats). As the issues come up, I have to fix them. The timing was re-set to 8 degrees before top dead center. I will adjust it another 4 degrees eventually, but I think I need to remove my intake manifold and make some adjustments inside. With the idle mixture screws seated (meaning "no fuel"), the engine runs better. The floats are adjusted properly, so it likely means I have a blown power valve and have to take the carburetor apart again.

The carburetor adjustments don't bother me - that electrical on the wiring harness frustrated me to no end. In fact, it was so bad I pushed everything aside for a year or two until I could tackle it again. Now that I'm past that, I feel like I'm making progress again. I think I got this project running again with the Niva being a huge prompt. Thanks for posting all of those experiences.

I would always have one person turn the key and I’d then manually turn the distributor ... and while other person cranks and tethers the gas pedal. You’ll be able to hear the popping.= turned too much...harder cranking = too far advanced.... and when about right it’ll crank faster and be at the point where it’s starting to fire just right. Ussually the pedal is held all the way down but when it fires up they then need to back off and tether to the right place to keep it running.

 

[erikmannie]

I am converting a 110 year old bed into a bench. The tubing is very thin & corroded so I make sleeves to reinforce the inside of the tube. This makes the welding a lot easier.

These interior sleeves are mitered to 90 degrees using a boring bar on a benchtop mill.

The OD of the tubing is 1.900” so no hole saw is available.