I’ve still got a lot of vacation time saved up, so I’ve decided to take every Friday off work for the rest of the year, and starting December 21, I’m taking the rest of the year off. That’ll be 12 days off in a row–should be nice!
Since I didn’t have much else to do today, I worked on my ’87 Subaru for a few hours. It’s been sitting around for the last 21 months because I haven’t felt like trying to figure out what was wrong with it. All I knew is that it didn’t run well, and I couldn’t get the engine to turn any higher than about 3,000 RPMs. From the way it sounded, I figured it was an air/fuel problem, probably the carburetor. When I started this morning, the first thing I tried was to adjust the carburetor, but since I didn’t really know what I was doing, it didn’t help at all. I replaced the spark pug wires with the ones from my ’88 Subaru, since I know they were working well enough when I blew the engine in that car. I fixed a vacuum line that had a leak, and I also banged on the fuel filter just in case it was clogged, but nothing worked. The last thing I could think of was to adjust the timing. I loosened up the distributor and turned it a little clockwise, and it seemed to help. The car ran a little better and I could get the RPMs up to about 3,800 with the gas pedal mashed to the floor. Then I advanced the timing as far as it would go, and it ran even better. I still can’t get the tachometer to redline, but I actually drove the car around my mom’s back yard for a bit and it seems plenty powerful.
I think the distributor drive gear is off by one tooth, so I’ll have to get the engine set to top dead center, then pull the distributor and replace it with the matchmarks lined up like they should be. After that, I think all I’ll have to do is bleed the brakes and the car will be roadworthy. As much as I’d like to register it and drive it for awhile, I think I’m just going to get the title transferred to my name, then immediately put it up for sale. Otherwise I’d have to pay all the back property taxes on it since it hasn’t been registered for several years. I can probably get about $800 for the car, and I think we’ll use it to pay for a badly needed vacation for the family.