THE STEERING COLUMN

Last Friday, we visited Mike and Marsha Yeakle who are Horseless Carriage Club Members in Bellingham, WA - great people to know.  I knew that he had a shop and a lift so I was anxious to do some work on the car there.  Up to this point, I'd just been doing some minor servicing of the car along the way, but since we have traveled approximately 4,200 miles it was time to do what I am going to call "moderate" servicing.

Mike was very helpful in taking care of some of the things that needed to be done.  I removed the rear wheels to inspect the brake linings and to check the tightness of the nuts on the hub bolts that sandwich the hub and the spokes and the brake drums together.  The wheels had been assembled this past winter and they needed to be re-torqued to 35 pounds.  While I was doing that, Mike removed the front wheels and greased the bearings.  I greased the driveshaft joints.  I replaced the gasoline filter while Mike made up some new sparkplug wires for me, so I would have a spare set. We also removed the distributor cap and found some corrosion on the terminals. This was cleaned up and reassembled.  We checked the oil level in both parts of the trans-axle. 

The car had been running a little rough prior to arrival and I thought that cleaning up the distributor cap and installing new wires had taken care of this issue but the next day I saw that the car was still idling rough and the car was a little hard to start.  I swapped the magneto with a spare.  There was no change.  I took the carburetor apart to check for dirt.  I found it to be clean and reinstalled it.  After a process of elimination I have pretty much decided that the poor performance is most likely caused by sticky valves.  The valves are messy and time consuming to take out so I am trying everything else before I get into that.  I have been squirting oil and WD-40 on the lower end of the valve stems hoping it might work it's way into the valve guides.  I'm using double the amount of Marvel Mystery oil in the gas and just yesterday dumped a can of Sea Foam in the gas tank.  I'll run it for a while and see what happens.  

Two days ago on Victoria Island  we encountered a mountainous area with a really steep hill.  It wasn't a long hill, but there were several short bursts of 18% ascents. Several times I was down into first gear.  While downshifting on a hill from second to first, you have to mesh the gears at just the right moment.  You've got about half a second to get it into first gear before the car comes to a complete stop on the hill.  If you miss it, you pretty much have to back down the hill and try it again. Did that. This time I got a good running start, made the shift successfully and just b-a-r-e-l-y made it to the top.  Stopping on the hill wasn't a big concern for us.  I've got a good hand brake that holds well so we were able to back down safely.

Today we catch the ferry to Juneau, AK.  I'm not going to mess with the valves until we get back.  I don't want to run the risk of taking things apart and have some unexpected delay and miss the ferry.  Maybe if I am lucky all the oil that I am throwing at the valves will take care of this little issue.  I love issues that take care of themselves.   It is great to have somebody back home that I can call for advice and suggestions.  Clay Green and Gil Fitzhugh, the Younger have been doing this. Sometimes there are things that you can do to solve a problem that we may already know about but just didn't think about at the time and these troubleshooting discussions will trigger a possible solution.  Thanks guys, you are much appreciated.

.........AND THAT'S ALL PART OF MOTORING........