72 TA : New Project

[mockingbird812]

Beautimus Mac!!!!!!!! Congrats!

[njsteve]

Back to the body adjustments.

I spent the evening heating and molding the fender flares and front spoiler with the heat gun. It actually worked very well. My original repairs from over the winter were very close to the actual body lines without ever having touched the car during the repair process. I lucked out on that one!

Though the flares and front spoiler use a rubberized welting to mask the seam where they meet the body panels, there were still large gaps in some areas.

The front spoiler was the worst. Before I started there was a 3/4" gap between the spoiler and the valance. This was due in part to the factory misalignment when they glued the rear support section to the front spoiler section. I used the heat gun and softened the rear portion and moved it forward, which then reduced the gap to 3/8 inch. After that, it was heat the edge, push with a wooden paint stirrer and then hold til the plastic cooled, then repeat along the entire edge of the part.

Here is the spoiler after I fixed the rear support and started on the driver's side, reducing the gap. You can still see that the gap is larger on the left side of the photo.



Here is the heat gun in action:



And the patented wooden paint stirrer tool holding the hot plastic til it cools:



Here is the finished front spoiler:

[njsteve]

Here's the left and right front flares. It took a bit of massaging to get them to flow properly into the spoiler. The factory transition leaves a lot to be desired, aestheticly.

[njsteve]

And the rear flares. Suprisingly, the majority of the screw holes in the flares actually lined up with the existing screw holes in the fenders and quarters. I only had to move and refill a couple, just so the flares wouldn't be under stress when they were bolted up.

[njsteve]

And the finished flares installed for final fitting:

[firstgenaddict]

Nice Steve... your detail really shows the amount of trial fitting is neccesary to get the perfect look... most guys get in a hurry at this point and end up disappointed in the final result.

[njsteve]

Spent the afternoon tuning. I changed the plugs from the black soot-covered Autolites, to a set of NGKs. I set the dwell to 30 degrees and the timing to factory spec of 10 degrees BTDC with the vacuum advance disconnected and plugged

I had a nice pleasant time setting the idle mixture the old-fashioned way with a vacuum gauge and the low rpm range tach on the Sun machine.

I pulled and plugged the vacuum lines, unscrewed the mixture screws out 2-1/2 turns (that was actually the existing setting on the carb) and set the idle to 850 rpm. I checked the vacuum reading - it was about 17 inches. After turning in the screws a half turn at a time trying to get the highest vacuum reading (and readjusting the idle speed back to 850 after each sequence) I finally got to 21 inches of vacuum before the lean stumble would appear. That ended up being about 1-1/4 turns out on each. It really made a difference in the eye-burning atmosphere in the garage. She starts right up at the first turn of the key now.