So a little update on the car since Paul's test ride last September. A few weeks after Paul's test drive I went to drive the car to work in the morning and the clutch pedal went all the way to the floor & didn't want to come back up... looked underneath & there was a big puddle of fluid... ended up that the clutch slave & master went so those had to be replaced. I didn't have time to do the work, nor did I feel like crawling around under the car to get at it so I took it to a local indie guy for that work.
The car ran great for most of the fall until right before I was putting it away in storage, I was getting a stumble at WOT along with a lot of black smoke pouring out the exhaust indicating a rich condition. Under partial throttle it ran fine and would even give a little bit of boost. Some research indicated that it was most likely the fuel pressure regulator that needed to be replaced, but I decided that would be a spring time project & just drove the car as it was. I put the car away in storage in late October, didn't really do much to it, I aired the tires to their max pressure and put in fuel stabilizer. When I got to the storage facility I disconnected the battery & hooked up a solar battery charger that I placed on the hood of the car, over top of the car cover.
I pulled the car out of storage in mid April (as soon as I could), when I arrived I did a quick once over of the car, the tires were all still full of air (about 50psi), the battery was reading just over 12 volts, there was about a tablespoon worth of oil under the car, but I still double checked to make sure that there was oil in the engine. Once I got the battery hooked back up I fired up the car, it belched out a good cloud of smoke, but otherwise was idling normally on a cold start. I pulled it out of the barn slowly & let it idle outside for a few mins while I brought the air pressure down on the tires back to 36psi. Drove the car back home somewhat gingerly for the first 10kms, once it felt warmed up & I was confident everything was functioning properly I pushed it a bit harder to see how it was doing. The rich condition showed up quickly again, so I didn't push it too hard. Once I got the car home I changed the fuel pressure regulator (I bought one over the winter on sale at Autopartsway.ca) which took all of 30mins. Fired the car back up, inspected for fuel leaks... there were none thankfully and then I took the car for a ride. Rich problem was gone and the car pulled like a freight train on the highway under full boost! Later that week I changed out the oil and filter and it was ready for the summer.
All summer the car has been running great, only issue has been the AC, one of which was a finiky AC control switch & the other the R12 coolant. The AC control switch I replaced myself and I thought it was going to be a simple plug and play deal, but I had to de-solder 7 pins off the control board in order to remove the old switch & then solder in the new one. And of course my soldering iron didn't heat up enough to melt the old solder, so I had to run out & buy a new one. Good news is that when I put everything back together the new switch worked correctly. Took the car to a friend of a friend & he did the R12 to 134A conversion for me, he inspected for leaks and couldn't find any, but I'll have to bring it back in a few weeks for another check. The car blows very cold air now, almost better than my 2014 Wrangler does.
Decided to stretch it's legs this past weekend & went down to Toronto & back with it and it ran flawlessly there and back. Like Paul said in his article it does make a good long distance cruiser. Even with the heat wave we have going the car didn't overheat at all in Toronto stop & go traffic, the AC was blowing cold air, it was as comfortable as driving in a modern car. Gas mileage on the way down & some bursts around the big smoke came in at 9L/100Kms, not great, but not bad for a 29yr old sports car. On the way back we took hwy 7, so my return mileage should be better seeing as I went thru about half a tank only and that was with some feverish passing on 7 where dropping into 3rd gear was necessary... and fun
Overall I'm impressed and happy with the car, I've put on about 3000 miles since Paul's test drive and continue to drive the car about every second day on average.
