At long last my 66 trophy blue, 327/300, 4spd, KO's, side exhaust, a/c car is here. It is everything that I hope for and more. All of the major stuff has been done to the car in the last three years (Paint, front end rebuild, engine out of the car detail), it basically looks, and is new.

Now the saga begins.

It arrived on Friday, with the whole neighborhood looking on. We took a lap aroung the circle in front of the house and parked it, and the crowd parted.
Then we took a short ride and got some air in a tire. The car had been sputtering a little bit. It cut off, got it restarted, made the top of a hill, and it quit. Then I coasted into a gas station and filled up. Then the battery was dead and it wouldn't start. Got towed home by my old friend mechanic who worked at a dealer in the 60's, and who will work on the car in the future.
Saturday AM, I got a new battery(thought I knew something about changing a battery until now), but it still wouldn't start. Mechanic came by in the PM, changed a few plugs, adjusted the points, and discovered that the static shield was grounding out the elcetrical system, and we got it humming.

Now I'm ready. I took it out for a spin, came home and steam was pouring out of the engine bay. I panick because I thaught it was smoke at first. Seems that the top radiator hose was to close to the pulley belt, and it was sliced like a knife had cut it, and a small leak had developed. You've got to understand, under the hood of this car is clean enough to perform surgery on. In fact the car is so clean, it obviously hasn't been driven much.

I get the feeling that it was not the right hose though. Does anyone know what the proper one is? This one is close, but it looks like it ought to have another small bend in it to give a little more clearance.

Also, although there is no play in the steering wheel at rest, there seems to be a lot of wheel travel at speed. Is this normal? Guess I'm to use to rack and pinion, and just have to get use to the old way again.

Don't get me wrong, it even looks great behind the tow truck, or just sitting in the garage, but this is going to be a driver.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Frac :) GB

 

sorry guys, I just realized that in all of my excitement, I posted in the wrong forum. Is there a way to move this to the C2 forum without starting over?

Frac :lol: Gb

 

Frac

Some :cool: of us can fix any year. Expect that was the alt. belt. There is a little shield for the top rad. hose that attaches to the alt. bracket.

There is a lash adj. on the st. box that will take out excessive play assuming everything is fine.

 

First off, congrats on your new toy. Regardless of forum, I am I am sure others love to hear about new toys and projects.

The easist way to get it over to the C2 forum would be to just select teh text with the mouse and copy it (ctrl-c keyboard shortcut) and then create a new topic in the C2 forum and press ctrl-v to paste the text in. No need to re-type it.

Enjoy that 66 (and if you havn't heard David *****' song "Riding with Private Malone", you will want to). Check the glove box?

 

Great car, I started off with a 67 coupe when I was 18. There's not a lot of difference between the engines and the problems you're ahving are common ones to any SB chevy,vette or not, so don't feel you're lost here.
Sounds like the car has been sitting for a while before you got it. I would have your vette friend give it a good going over- if the brakes sat for a while then bleed them and get fresh fluid in there, check the voltage at the battery with the engine running,tighten the hose clamps if they have the screw type clamps on them,when you check the basics then take it out for a short run to really see how it's running and take it from there.
Good luck, I hope to have another mid year someday myself :yesnod:
Gary

 

Thank you all, this forum continues to amaze me.

Frac :) GB