Yesterdays’ adventure was fun.
While on a seemingly unimportant trip down to David to collect the remainder of our things, for some reason I decided to punch it, and hold it to the floor like I used to. I’m sure I don’t have to explain why.
The good news is that she rides smooth, without vibrations, all the way up until, well I don’t know, the needle was buried. I noticed the spring rates in the front end are now quite different. Having sat all these years on the springs (which saved my shock struts from rusting and ruining the seals), they’ve aged and softened at different rates. What was once marginal is now notable, and so noted and taken into consideration it is.
The bad news is that, what looked like an innocent puff of exhaust out the back, turned out to be oil. Not good. Cass noticed this when we got to Romero in town, and she pointed at a puddle under the car. I didn’t think much of it until I took a little look myself and saw a drip from my own car land in the puddle. 
We had just got there, and it was 10 cm across. Great!!! That’s a leak, not a drip.
What had happened was the pressure sensor, for an idiot light, had blown a leak, and once I finally got myself to a location where I could get a view of it, it was coming out in a pretty good stream. Ok, I have a spare for that, and it’s a whole lot better than a rear seal. Huh?
So, the challenge began to find a socket (26mm) for it before I squirted all my oil onto the ground, marking my trail of adventure all about David. Walking was out of the question.
I found the socket easy enough, but shade to do the job was a different story. I found that about 10 blocks away, in a quieter part of town. Shade, in conditions like this, is a must.
The oil sensor is underneath the distributor, so it had to come out, which is a bit more of a pain than I cared for, but had to be done. Both rotor position and timing had to be noted so I could replace things correctly, so I pulled the cap, and made a mark on the firewall in line with the rotor position.
… and with a felt pen mark on a wrench, I measured the distance between the transmission filler tube and the vacuum canister for my timing.
For anyone interested, that is what humidity, and being forced to park it for a year in tall grass will do to an Edelbrock carb. It use to look like this –> 
Then I began loosening things. With everything hot, I could just loosen things a few turns before having to cool my fingers off.
The distributor came out ok, the gasket was still intact, so I laid it aside to cool.
With free access to the sending unit, it came out easily, which is when I noticed it wasn’t the same type as my spare. Crap! The threads were the same, so I could at least plug the hole, but I would now have a dash light all the time, and no warning should something go wrong. This was still better than a hole in the system, so I put it in to get on with things.
As far a jobs go, this was an easy one. Can’t you see how terribly pleased I am about it? 
The new one went in tickety boo, the distributor dropped into place on the first try, and she fired up on a bump of the key. No leak. Hurrah!
Then it was a choice between rolling around town some more looking for the proper part (which I probably should have done), or going back up the hill into the cool. I knew we’d be back in David again at some point, and as along as I checked the oil often enough, I’d be ok,
The silver lining is there. It always is, and there really was no place better to discover this problem than while in David:
- where I knew where everything was,
- it was partially overcast, and
- I had everything I needed with me to get it done,
which made it simply “funny” that the part which was supposed to warn me of a problem WAS the problem.
In any case, I’ve since been back to David, and while they didn’t have it there, Panama City did, and it will be here on Wednesday. Everyone here orders hens’ teeth from RockAuto.com. I swear they have a satellite warehouse in Panama City, and if I knew where it was, I’d be looking for it when we get there for a few other nick-knacks. You can bet I’ll be asking.