Showing posts with label straight 6. Show all posts
Showing posts with label straight 6. Show all posts

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Mule throws a shoe

Heading out to Martensville last Monday, to help Hambone with his wiring, the Antiquated Mule threw a shoe. Engine shook (more) noisy and unbalanced. One cylinder not firing I think. Plugs had spark, wires were good... Time for the guru. Headed over to the Great Daryl P's for a proper diagnosis. Pulled a burnt rotor from the dist. and replaced it with one D had from V8 super stock. Nope. Still no cylinder #1. Compression test showed 0. Damn. Finger in the hole revealed sucking but no blow. Hmm. Pulled the valve cover to discover an intake valve had thrown a nut. Loose as a...well you know her. Tightened a new nut in place and Bobs yer uncle. Runs smother than I ever remember. What'll I do with all that extra power? Thanks Daryl!

Saturday, July 11, 2009

From Mule to Ass (is that better or just different?)


Bolt on body work. Antiquated Mule Contributor Du Keeps came up with this method of rat body work to get his El Camino to pass inspection in BC years ago. A little aluminum flashing and voila. Beautifully ratty body work. See previous posts for pic of the rusty ride.


Did a little angle grinding and painting to most areas on the body while I was at it, but it was still frickin' cold out and the paint was running a bit. Plan to do more Bondo work this summer.

The Mirror you see above is from a yamaha XS650, '74 vintage. I drilled a hole a third of the way up the hood and mounted it.

Pesky Vacuum Choke that needed replacing. Hot and cold the Chev ran fine, but the 10 minutes it took to warm up it ran like shit. Had to rev the sucker so high teh otherwise excellent gas mileage ;) was crap. Unfortunately in Saskatoon, everything is 10 minutes away which meant it always ran like crap. Took longer to locate the part than it did to replace it for sure. Finally got it ordered from Sargent's Auto Electric Ltd. Shipped from Edmonton it cost me $3.86. After setting the choke (bending shit) and setting the timing (pushing and pulling the distributor) she runs like a top. Could use a carb kit (one came with the car in the trunk).


The exhaust needed replacing front to back. Aside from waking the neighbors, which was normally reserved for motorcycle season, I was getting dizzy at long red lights. Didn't do anything fancy, just pieced together the cheapest straights and curves I could get and had the local muffler shop fab it into place. Kinda wish I'd gone for something that made the straight 6 make it's sludge growl a little more, but I'd promised the wife this wouldn't be another money pit and time sucker. See above for broken promises.