easter and the camaro

Laura and I went up to her parents’ house for the weekend. We left around 9am on Saturday and drove up to Apple Valley. I started trying to fix her Dad’s computer and then changed clothes to help clean up the back yard. We moved a pallet of bricks.

After that, the rest of the yard work was done and it was time to have some fun. We removed the car cover from her dad’s 1968 Camaro RS Convertible. It was the first time I had seen it without the car cover. We popped the hood, threw in a new battery and routed the fuel line into a 2 liter bottle. The engine turned over and poured gas into the 2 liter. It didn’t look bad enough to drop the tank, so we added a couple gallons of fresh gas and hooked up the fuel line to the carb. Engine turner over, sputtered, then fired. It wouldn’t idle, but it was purring pretty good with a little gas.

Then the carb started to flood the engine. The floats were sticking open. We killed the motor and pulled the carb. We disassembled it and cleaned it up with some carb cleaner. We put it back on and tried again. After some tinkering and tightening, we got it to start up and not flood. Then it was onto the brakes. They were extremely soft. We bled them but they were still soft….but it didn’t stop us from going to get some gas.

Going to the gas station was kinda fun since it wouldn’t idle on its own, so you kinda have to give it some gas and drop it in gear and hold on. We coasted into the gas station and filled it up. Luckily, the tank was pretty empty so there wasn’t much bad gas left.

We left the gas station and it started to sound and run better. By the time we made it back to the house, it was idling on its own.

We tried to bleed the brakes again. Still soft. We drove it some more…this time her dad stopped and let me drive back. When we got back to the house, he let me take laura for a drive.

We sourced a rebuilt master cylinder and replaced that….bench bled the master, re-bled the whole system. Still soft.

The major things left are fixing the brakes, and adjusting the carb a bit….it stumbles a little off the line and doesn’t like to hold a constant speed. I was greasy and forgot to take pictures….so you’ll have to wait for next weekend.