Rolling the fenders

What do you do after you mess up the wheelwell of your car? After the major repairs, I was in no position to give money to a body shop to fix this. I ordered a cheapo fender roller on Amazon and I set about rolling the wheel well lip. Only one side was damaged but I rolled both side so this would not happen again. I start off carefully, trying to preserve the paint but it was really hard to prevent the paint from cracking, even with heat from a heat gun. I had to repaint part of the fenders anyway so I just made it happen. It was painful to see so much flaked off paint but I got over it. The results were pretty good and I go the lip completely rolled under for maximum tire clearance. Next up is primer and paint to fix the mess I created.

Seriously, is this really happening to me right now?

 After all the crazy crap I've been through with this car, I guess I should not be surprised at anything. Literally one day after my car comes back -- I break it. TK and I went for a drive today and it was awesome. As we were pulling in to the side street leading to our house, I hit a bump midway through the right hand turn and...crunch. Oh no, that didn't sound good. We pull in to the garage and I don't even want to look to see what happened. I know it's bad and I just had to walk away.

So here's what happened. The combination of a slightly wider than OEM front tire, lowered ride height and bump in the middle of a turn led to a close encounter between the tire and the wheelwell.

Another bad day...

The eagle has landed

 After 10 long days, the car carrier rolled in to my local grocery store parking lot. Like at FSoB, there was no room for a large truck to get close to my house. The first thing I noticed was the bad ass ride height. With the coilovers, David was able to lower the car to a much more reasonably stance. The factory ride height of a 308 is ridiculous. There is enough room to put your fist between the wheel well lip and the tire. It looks so much better lowered, although I may have problems with speedbumps and driveways.

 

 

The other thing I noticed was the popping out the exhaust. Hmmm...it didn't do this before. Hopefully this is just because it's cold.

A few more shots of the mean stance.

Homeward bound

 Quick note, my car is done and on a truck headed back across the country. Wow, what a long journey so far. There are still a few things that need to be tended to, but I'm out of money and want my ar back.

Bring on that sweet music

 Words not needed here. I'll let the exhaust note speak for itself.

Finally back on track

In addition to the carb issues, David also suspected there was an ignition issue caused by poor EM shielding. He suspected this because of these clues:

-Erratic tach
-Erratic timing light behavior
-Odd markings in the 1-4 distributor cap
-1-4 bank plugs simply don’t look as nice as 5-8 bank

With the newly repaired carbs installed (again), new 1-4 bank distributor cap, and higher quality ignition wires, the problems seem to have gone away. The tach is glass smooth, plug cuts look a lot better and now on to final tuning (again).

As David says, “90% of carburetor issues is ignition." In this case, sounds like it was about 50:50.

Damn those Weber passage plugs!

 This is unbelievable. The 1-2 carb came back from Pierce and  while David was installing it, he took a moment to closely examine the other carbs. Shockingly, the 3-4 is also missing a plug! It's an easy fix and hopefully this fixes all the fouling problems!

Smoking gun found in the carb?

 Pierce had the carburetor for a while now. Everything seemed normal on the flow bench. After a lot of back and forth, they finally did find something.

"In my 41 years of servicing Webers, I've never seen this problem."

Apparently there were 2 missing passage plugs which prevented a vacuum being drawn in the idle circuit. When he "back fed" the idle circuit, the problem became evident.

I remember I was consistently fouling a plug as well so maybe this has been an issue for a long time.

Troubles continue

This sucks. Runnnig troubles continue. David is chasing down a few things. My car is still not running 100% correctly. The #2 plug continues to get fouled and it seems like there may be a internal problem with the 1-2. After extensive troubleshooting I agreed to have David pull the carb and send it to Pierce Manifolds for flow testing. Pierce is the leading expert on Webers in the US. Hopefully, they can figure out what's wrong with that carb?

Trouble in paradise

 I had high hopes my car would be done soon, but there seems to be a problem. During tuning and test drives, my car has developed a misfire. It seems to be fouling the #2 plug for no apparent reason. A compression test shows 150 psi on all cylinders. Plugs, wires and extenders are new. What's happening here???

She's alive!

 After months and months of David's hard work, she's alive! Oh my goodness, listen to that engine growl!

Ready for fire

 We're getting closer and closer to engine start. David has been working on getting everything back together. Hard to believe this is actually my engine bay. Everything cleaned up nicely and it just looks amazing. The blue hose seen in this photo comes from a pressurized oil tank, similar to an Accusump. It will ensure that there is oil pressure to all parts of the engine during those critical moments when the engine is fired for the first time,

Other goodies seem in this shot are the new oil cooler lines (custom made using the original fittings), cleaned and rebuilt carbs, freshly powder coated engine strut with new bushings, powder coated coolant tank, new AC compressor and those awesome QA-1 shocks with red Eibach springs.

R134a converted AC system gets charged up

 Newly converted AC system getting charged up. All the components (compressor, lines, condenser, evaporator, dryer) were replaced. It will be cool to have working AC, although I'm not really holding my breath for how well this will work.

 

Rear brake calipers

The rear brake calipers on the 308 incorporate the parking brake mechanism. My calipers were a bit of a mess so we sent them off to PMB Performance to get rebuilt. These guys do a terrific job and the newly rebuilt and replated calipers look great. As an added bonus, now the parking brake mechanism works! The only other issue is that the racheting mechanism inside the parking brake lever is messed up so the handle does not stay up, but that's a project I'll tackle myself another day.

Engine installation

 Exciting stuff! The engine is back in a clean engine bay. What an awesome sight.

More rear suspension work

 In addition to replacing all the bushings, the driver's side rear bearing needed to be replaced. With the engine out and the CV axles disconnected, it was apparent that the bearing was noisy.

Coated headers are done

The headers came back from the coating shop and they look great. The surface texture is slightly rough -- about the same as 240 grit sandpaper. Hopefully, they will be easy to keep clean. The headers and 2 intermediate pipes are coated.

Closing up the drive side

 Adapter plate, clutch, bell housing and drop gears are installed. We decided to use the flywheel as-is since I had it resurfaced in 2009, but did decide to replace the friction disk and pressure plate.

Engine and transmission mated again

 After many months, engine and transmission are reconnected.

Transmission and final drive buttoned up

 

New motor mounts

 I had always suspected that my motor mounts were worn. By looking at the exhaust pipe clearances, it always seemed like the engine sat just a little too low in the car. These new mounts should fix that,