Humboldt, Iowa
August 11, 2006
We met Jon Reed and Don Christensen from the Humboldt club for breakfast before heading to Jon's shop for a rewire job. You will recall we were having a backfiring problem due to an intermittent short or open circuit.
I should have foreseen the need to replace the wire harness on a car that has been stored many years. In this case the wiring was the original old cloth covered wire that Henry installed. It had been bandaged over the years to the point that there was no way to save it.
A trip to NAPA and $16.00 bought enough wire and terminals to make the homemade harnesses that retail for $10.00. Oh well, next time I will be more prepared.
I brought a spare distributor ready to drop in but the original distributor was seized in place. I thought about packing a Rainmaker Ron distributor puller but thinking is not the same as doing.
Jon Reed and Don Christensen
Naturally, the car has a heater manifold, which makes working on the distributor in place lots of fun. Luckily Jon had an extra wireless lower plate and a repop switch to complete the job.
I bought the tooling to make the wireless lower plates from Jack Thomas 2 years ago and have a bin full of them. You would have thought I would pack one along.
Don was watching as I buttoned up the rewire and timed the car using Marco's method. Don was fascinated by that timing method and asked if I would retime his car and show him how to do it the Marco way. It turned out that Don's car was timed too fast and ran much better when we finished.
I put 3 rings of packing in the water pump and then had to dig one out when I could not get the nut started.
It was way past noon when we left Humboldt and headed for Pocahontas, Iowa.
August 11, 2006
