Doing a little routine maintenance -- surprise!

I had a few things on the to-do list that I've been putting off for a while. The axle seals in the back need to be replaced, the Dells haven't been monkeyed with in a couple years, the valves need a mileage-based adjustment and the valve-cover gaskets are leaking a tad. There's a shift-coupler sloppiness I need to correct and a couple other odds and ends ... I've been lazy and haven't made the time for that stuff.
Come on, it's DRIVING weather!
So, early last week, I mentioned to Teresa that maybe I'd take the car to Peek to get the seals done. She gently reminded me that one of the reasons we got a house with a garage was to save a little money on stuff I thought I could do myself. She's right, of course, and there's oil dripping onto the epoxied floor. Maybe I should get off my lazy butt and actually open the tool box.
So I did. I started with the easy stuff.
Remove rear body section. Check.
Remove the valve covers. Check.
Tune carbs and check seals. Check.
I opened everything I could get to without a floor jack, and started to clean and tighten by the book. I was going to leave the axles for last, and drive over to old Fort Meade's auto hobby shop and do that last bit with a lift.
I didn't get that far. I was merrily cruising along with the valve adjustment, both intake and exhaust, and I was on the number four cylinder. Everything was more-or-less perfect, unchanged on the exhaust with a few tweeks needed on the intake valves to dial them all in at .006, and I was on the second-to-last one.
She was perfectly set, but the jam-nut turned easily. Too easily. It came off in my hand, bringing with it the back half of the adjustment screw. It was sheared just inside the first thread of the jam-nut.
Peek has another one. I'm good.
Glad I checked, I guess, instead of just putting a new gasket on, but I've never seen that happen before. I have no idea how long it's been broken; it didn't appear to hurt anything, and the gap was perfect. Wierd.
I'll finish up the other stuff later this week.

That's what clean livin' will get you!!! I hope all your nutz are that tight.... I was doin the same on my Hoopity after it started dying at idle, filter seemed ok, only 2 weeks old. So I took out the idle jet and it had more rust "hair" coming out of it than my ears!I took off the top of the carb and the bottom of the bowl had an 1/8" of particles in there. Something must have broke loose in the tank.

Cory did the adjusting screw come out the other side easily?
Man I love the access to everything you have!

Greg, it didn't take all that much convincing.
The remaining piece of the adjustment screw backed out very smoothly, once I got a tool onto the broken thread. It wasn't fouled at all, just sheared cleanly.
It really is nice to be able to do all this stuff without being under the car. Kinda kills resale, though. I wouldn't suggest hacking your car apart. ;)

I wouldn't call anything on your car hacked! I think anyone buying something like your rig would fully apreciate the access to the running gear. I believe the original 550's had a hatch back like that too didn't they?

They did. I saw my first Spyder after I put the knife to this thing. Crying shame.
Spyders are mid-mounted, too. That makes them really well-balanced, if the couple I've ridden in (Vintage made both of them) are any indication -- but the engine in a 550 isn't all that easy to get to while it's hanging in the car. The gearbox hangs out the back.

That's right I just checked, for some reason I thought yours was a mid-engine too! I don't know why, it's right in the photo on this thread! Just when I see a rear deck fold back I think mid-engine...duh. Still from what I've read on your Speedy it handles like a rail. My 914's a challenge to work on and I wish it had a open rear hatch.
After this terrible news of Mr.Bill I'm thinking of a tube chassis and serious roll-bars. I pretty much sold all my street bikes because of friends dying on them and its true, a Speedy is pretty much like riding a bike with glass all around, yours however is pretty safe not being pan-based. It sounds like there is no way to make a pan-based vehicle really safe with roll-bars. I don't intend to go fast in Speedy but look what happened to Bill or anyone hit in a Speedy by some Gramma in a 1972 Buick Electra.

Awwww Hell Corey.......With a 550, you just raise the clam shell, step in, take a seat on a cross member, and work away......."How do he Know?" ;-)

Well Cory, the motor isn't hanging off the back like yours, but it is easy to get to, except for the fan belt. And the distributor, that's one of the reasons I got rid of that. Carbs and valve covers are easy, and I can remove and install the engine myself no problem. I do like pulling the hinge pins and removing the whole rear clamshell, then access is wide open. Cory has it pretty good, he can get to everything too easily. It is not fair, really, especially when you Speedy guys have to get to the carbs!

Hey Cory: are you done yet? Remember to resync those carbs after you get your valves set. My order is mechanical, electrical, then fuel. So adjust valves, plugs/cap/rotor/wires/timing, then finally carbs. Carbs always last, everything else affects them, and can sometimes give the appearance that it the fueling is off.

Me, I am going out to the garage with a cup of coffee. Time to clean the car, remove all the stowed stuff, and install the rollbar. 1/8 mile old school(hand-drop:no tree) style drags today at my local airport. It is a charity benefit, only street cars and street tires allowed. I have to wear a helmet, and I hate helmets!

"I'll probably ask Peek to press my ball joints while it's there. They were done with an air-hammer last time."

That sounds seriously painful, but some people like that sort of thing.

What started out as a simple fix has become a giant pain in the ass. I adjusted the valves to where they should be, and only one really needed to be adjusted. I replaced the broken adjustment screw, then set everything to .006, based on the TDC marked on my flywheel.
Apparently, that's not what was done last time, because the car wasn't set to .006 at TDC. It was set by someone else last year, and I don't see anything -- any marks anywhere, let alone a maintenance log -- to tell me what they were set at. I should have called the shop before I started messing with it, since the log is probably in a file there.
I tried .006, then .002, and finally .000, just to see what would happen. Because I'm a hairless ape, I broke something.
At .006, I got a nice sounding engine until it was warm. Then I got a rythmic hammering. I closed it up more tightly, still able to spin the chromoly pushrods freely, and tried again. It sounded like it should for about a minute, then something broke.
The banging from the last setting never came back, but this time, within 15 seconds, I heard a click, then a tapping. I have a feeling it's a rocker arm -- not the end of the world, but it still medically downs the car. I haven't opened the valve covers up again to look; that was laaaate last night. Apparently, close-ratio rockers, oval-port Bus heads, steel pushrods and my lifters need a specialist.
Sooooo, I will be towing the car to somebody smarter than me. She'll be off to Peek Performance on Wednesday morning, courtesy of my friend Reggie and his trailer.
What's kicking my butt here is that I've done this before, and it worked. In fact, it worked for several thousand miles. I don't know what could have been changed last year (while I was away) that would make my old settings -- right out of Muir -- no longer appropriate for the car. That doesn't make sense, because all but two (the intake valves on number one and number three) were set at .006 when I took the covers off last week -- including the broken one on number four!
Whatever the difference is, I have now completely dorked up my valves to the point where I need a specialist. While the car's in the shop, I'm going to get the seals redone in the axle tubes and have them look at everything from the gear lever back to clean up the slop. Maybe they can put that EMPI short-shift jobber in there while they're at it.
I'll probably ask Peek to press my ball joints while it's there. They were done with an air-hammer last time. Might as well get it all done at once.
The only remaining symptoms I don't have an explanation for are the crank pulley didn't pull smoothly as I ratcheted it counter-clockwise, and I heard what sounded like whistling through the carbs as I rotated the pulley; kind of a light whistle, like drawing air through your teeth. I don't remember that happening before, nor do I remember the pulley being difficult to rotate at points. It's almost like the crank was unevenly balanced. Wierd.
Luckily, all this was in the garage, in neutral, and not for very long at all before shutting her down. Hopefully it's minor and I'm paranoid.
I'm running the white flag up the pole. I don't know as much as I thought I did, and I don't want to mess it up any more than I already have.

Danny -- check the rules and find out if you need arm restraints. They don't cost much, and they'll keep your arms from coming above the door tops in a rollover. Since your car is a convertible, they may require them.
Regarding the belt -- apparently, the guys who remove the alternator/fan, doghouse and belt do that for the extra horsepower. I thought it was to preserve the belt, but it's not. You should be okay, as long as your fan can keep the engine cool and you're not concerned about losing a few horsepower.

Good luck!

That was funny, Lane. Ba-dum-pum!

We have noticed the car seems to get a little shiver to it above 90, so we're going to have to eliminate the ball-joint assemblies as the reason sooner or later. What the heck; it's going to be at Peek anyhow; might as well have that looked at and done.
I might be the only guy here who's actually had the left front tire depart the car while driving; that's an experience I'd like to avoid having twice.
I believe that was one of my first posts on this site. Something amusing about that still exists in the "Knowledge" section. Remember this, from January of 2003 -- when the Hoopty was my only car?

"Everyone loves on-ramp acceleration, right? Be careful if youre driving a CMC replica. I hit about sixty-five (no, really, I did) for the first time after buying my car, and the front end came apart. If you havent looked into the ball joints on your car, let me just tell you, you should.
"I experienced three things at the same time. The front end rose as I accelerated, probably because there wasnt any weight under the bonnet. The tires stayed on the ground, and the upper control arms wigged out. I lost steering, I lost stability and the hood opened - all at the same time.
"My first inclination was to slow down, so I did. When the car hit about fifty, the body attempted to settle onto the ball-and-socket joints again, but the upper ball joint on the left side was misaligned and the car came down on the tire instead.
"I trailered it to my local VW shop, where my mechanic set about replacing both uppers and lowers, and it set me back about a hundred bucks out the door. Its a pretty good idea, I think, to go with new parts if youre a builder or to have the old joints stress-tested if you've purchased a used kit."

Cory, the chromoly pushrods should be set at loose zero.

Aluminum pushrods get set to .004 intake and .006 exhaust.

I assume you know that you have to set it to TDC for each cylinder individually when you adjust that one.

Mike, I started at .006 as the benchmark, since that's what Teresa told me the shop she took it to had set them all at last year. Since all but a couple were still there, I figured that's where they ought to be. The car had been running brilliantly until I started monkeying around with it.
Ultimately, setting everything to zero and making sure the valves were at their furthest travel, all the while watching the distributor to make sure I was on the correct cylinder ... simply didn't work.
I'm at a loss to explain it. No worries, though. I've got transportation arranged and I'm going to accept that I can't fix what I tried to. We live and learn. I do hope I can stare over the shoulder of the guy, though, to see what broke. I think it's somewhere in the rocker arm assembly on the number four cylinder. Sure sounds that way. Hopefully, he can tell me why.

In the pic of the rocker assembly I see at least one failing retainer.. You also haven't upgraded the rocker studs, nuts or added solid spacers? These are the most basic (cheap) upgrades that can help save an engine, or a pain in the ass when something breaks.

Thanks, Jake! I'll put 'em on the shopping list.
When I got this engine, I was told it was sent from the factory -- zero miles -- to Wichita. It was supposedly going to be used in a Cessna or a Mooney aircraft program, but was too heavy for the power it provided.
For all I actually know, that could be a bullshit story, but it seems to fit what I was handed.
I was told the engine sat for decades as a 2.0E, with all the airplane stuff still hanging on it. When I got it, it had been hung in a 912 drag car for one pass, and a rocker arm had broken. The pressurized fuel injection stuff came with the engine, but had been replaced with carburetors, and the old heads that had been on it were still attached to the FI system.
These heads (pictured) were gone over by Jimmy and the guys at Peek (separately), most lately to fly-cut them for the 104.5mm pistons and cylinders in 2007. Prior, they were cut to accomodate the 103s. I never used any of the aircraft pieces, and they're long gone now. These heads were assembled by Jimmy Sartwell, at about the time you and I first spoke (Jake).
The only indication that it wasn't used in a car back in the day is the addition of the dipstick tube, as far as I know. There wasn't a dipstick tube or dipstick when I bought the engine.
I have a pretty good idea that Jimmy robbed Peter to pay Paul, and that these pieces probably all came together from different sources as other people upgraded their own engines. It helped different guys keep costs down, and Jimmy was able to have a ready supply of spares. It's not how I would run a business, but it's what used to happen.
So, I'm left with this. It worked very well for a very long time, and now it's time to get it fixed. I'll be sure to get the things you mentioned upgraded while the heads are apart.
Thanks for the tip!

Cory,
There is no dishonor in putting the car in another's hands when you get stumped. I've done, will do it again. Sometimes it's something stupid that I did (live and learn) sometimes it's the one in a million break that NEVER happens (but always finds a way to happen to me). Either way, I get my car back, learn from it, and share what I've learned. Sort of a pay-it-forward for car nuts.

By the way, the story about the front wheel on Das Hoopty? Funny stuff my friend! Nose up, hood flies open, wheel off - did you soil yourself? I think you did and that's the REAL reason you got rid of the original seats!

angela

Thanks, Angela!

You know, on that original test flight, I came down from the nose-up attitude with a surprising degree of calm. I suppose I was a little more shocked that the car actually came apart than aware the I could have gotten dead. Guess a PPI wouldn't have helped, since I had bought the car two years before and been slowly driving it into the ground.
Sixty-five miles per ... Yikes, huh? That was flying, back then.
I must have run out of apostrophes, too. Not a whole lot of them in that post.

Cory,
A guud man is defined by his humility
,,,,,,,,,wether familiar (family) or his own,,you my friend are a guud man.
(apostrophes my own).

Good news and bad news.
The valve train is fine. That's the good news. The bad news is the brake drums in the back are screwy; the last time the wheels came off the car, they were put back on loose.
Peek will be fixing that and replacing my seals, but the fact that I've been driving with them loose means the splines on the drums are roached and will need replacement. They're drilling some new ones out to my Wide-5 pattern.
The splines on the axles are in good shape.
The guts of the drums are iffy from all the gear oil; they'll be replacing anything that needs replacement and refurbing other bits.
They're also addressing the sloppy shifter problem that Teresa encountered. I should be out the door for less than $500, and they were able to diagnose the problems easily -- not likely to be other complications.
Thought I'd pass that on.

Amazing. They found something you weren't even aware of. So what are your valve lash numbers then?

And you getting the stout valve train stuff Jake suggested? With a mill like yours I think everyone figured it was already in there.

On a personal note, 'cause I'm a noob & just getting ready to crack off the rear drums on Bridget: what's "loose" in this context?

Your wheels are held on like mine with a giant castle nut torqued to xx,000 lbs, yes? So xx=??

Hah, I wish I had "loose" axle nuts. Mine might as well have been welded on. I started by soaking them with PB Blaster for a week, heat cycling them, and even going all the way up to me hanging on an 8 foot breaker bar (1600 ft-lbs) they didn't budge. But I did bend the lug bolts I was using to lock the drum. Even after slicing them on one side with the dremel and cracking them with a chisel, it still took 600 ft-lbs to break them loose. But since I was doing a disc swap anyway I didn't care that I had to ruin the drums doing it.

Ed, my car is not a shining example of how to do something right. It's an example of what can be done with a very old replica on a very old pan; when the car's at the end of its second life and you want to breathe new life into it, there really aren't any stops to pull. They're all out already. Cut and weld. Make new. Get rid of the pan.
The direct answer on the axles is I had done something as a stop-gap measure on the axle seals; I made some aluminum shims out of some aircraft aluminum when the castlated nuts didn't line up. The torque specification is something like 250 ft.-lbs on that nut, and the pin should drop right through at that spec.
My axles, tubes, backing plates and so on -- including the seals -- aren't stock. They're a collection of parts that shouldn't work together, but do because of modifications.
Those shimsactually replaced pieces I never knew existed; Peek spotted that right off, and wanted to have a look. As he put the car on the lift, Sean said he wiggled the wheel on the back, right side, and it moved in a way it shouldn't have. He also saw the axle tube spit a little gear oil.
Sean's on that, and he's getting the parts I should have had when I put my home-made spacer in there. I don't know what the part's called. TC (TeamEvil) does, because he's told me in the past I needed one. I completely forgot that until I heard the part name again today. Mind like a sieve sometimes.
I'm lucky they're knowledgeable at the old air-cooled shop, I guess.
As for the heads themselves, I trusted a guy named Sartwell to do them right, and he did what I asked him to. I didn't know to upgrade them; I do now.
The pieces which will make the car whole again for now are stock Bus pieces, and the ones Jake recommended I get will be researched, bought and will go on the car when they're located for both sides of the engine. I don't want to do that piecemeal, and I might not be the guy to do it.
As so often happens with these cars, this repair was kind of event-driven, and I don't want to wait the time required to get the upgrades done, while the clock is ticking toward the Pumpkin Run.
After the weekend of the 9th, it's fair game. It'll get done before she's put up for the winter.
Since you're local, we ought to get together.
Send a personal e-mail to hooptypilot AT gmail.com -- I'll give you my number that way.

Daaaang, Dude!
I'm guessing you were a bit lax on adding gear oil once in a while? :)

Oh, man, Justin. This is my nightmare. I'm not doing any upgrades, just putting on the new shoes someone (Wobby, I think?) gave me at Carlisle and some new wheel cylinders and rubber hoses 'cause, well, 'cause I don't know how long it's been since anyone did anything to this car, and 'cause the brakes have been alternately fading and locking up one wheel since I been driving her.

So wish me luck that maybe a 4-foot cheater bar and a couple human's worth of weight will back these puppies off.

If not, I'mma just do the hose for now, bleed them out and see if she stops any better than she did before. Fronts are all done and that's where the trouble seemed to be anyway. Pumpkin run's a 'comin'.

Cory--thanks.

When you go messing with those HIGH TORQUE axel nuts, use a dab of "NEVER SIEZE" compound ( nickle based ). Use it sparingly, as it is quite messy.....You will never have to use SAILOR LANGUAGE trying to remove them again.....Should be available at most local hardware stores.

Dudes, 250 foot pounds, then tighten until the next slot lines up for the cotter pin, from the Bentley manual........

Cory, a good dose of parts cleaner should save everything on the backing plates except the brake shoes, toss them. But then again, a new hardware kit is like 10 bucks or so, and wheel cylinders are cheap also.

Thanks. Got the never seize when I did the mufflers. I'll dab some on there when I pull those rear hubs.

Actually did the front brakes and just the rear hoses for now (couldn't get the cheater bar this weekend). Two bleeds and the pedal is still only about half way. Car stops straight now though, doesn't lock up the drivers' front wheel, so that's progress.

Hoping I don't need a master cylinder. Gonna try the adjuster nut back of the brake pedal. Anyone knows better chime in.

Epilogue: rear axle bits and parts replaced. New drum on one side and several new internals on both. New backing plates also for both sides.
Engine was okay after adjustment to .003 for everything. Pushrods are aluminum. Heads reverted to stock at some point last year.
Right front corner is next target. Left front corner got new bearings last year, so RF is due. Does anyone know about urethane sleeves for the beam? What's that about?
I have heard that a sleeve tightens up the suspension, but is sometimes used on narrowed cars.
Any info would be helpful. Also, I need to take some leaves out up there to soften things up. Who's done that? Anybody?

Cory, you need to talk to Gordon on that one. He KNOWS!

cory if you adjusted the exhaust valves to 003 thou you will burn them, they must have at least 5 if you have aluminum push rods. bill

"I need to take some leaves out up there to soften things up. Who's done that?"

I just did that on the adjustable front beam going into the Fiat. Everyone that I spoke with recommended removing a single leaf from the top. By doing this, the suspension is still "supported" by the tension/torsion on the stock lower leaf pack, but the response is softer over-all. If a leaf is removed from the bottom, the suspension is now hanging from the top ball joint and subject to stress. Removing two leaves, one from the top and bottom, makes for a much softer ride, but puts extra strain on the shocks for the return. Going to a stiffer shock will hinder the action of the torsion bar set-up. The bars need to be left to do their job, the jocks are only meant to dampen/fine tune the action and make it more to your driving style/ride quality preference, NOT make up for shortfalls in that action.

Sway bars are another thing altogether. With such a short wheelbase car, the rear wants to naturally follow the front, so ordinarily only a front bar is needed. BUT the engine is in the rear on a Speedster and the center of gravity is pretty close to the bottom of your seat. NOW you need bars front AND rear to keep the tail from wagging the dog, but you also want the car to stick and the rear to stay where it is (lift the throttle in a tight turn on with a VW and it gets very scary very quickly.) This is where the recommendation for removing a single leaf comes into play. Fine tune the set-up with a good shock choice and bushings and hopefully a sticky, stable, streetable ride results.

So, all in all, remove a single upper leaf, use 2.5 inch dropped spindles and an adjustable beam, but ONLY adjust the beam for tension and ride quality not height, let the spindles take care of that.

Oh, and absolutely NO gas or KYB shocks up front, use the ones from the mid-sixties Mopars. Too stiff of a shock and you'll break adhesion if you hit a bump or dip in a tight high speed turn (like a highway entrance or exit) and just skitter away into the guard rail.

I did this with my set-up already, hope that it's correct or I'm either dead or wicked mad.

Luck,

T

The red urethane inserts or really sort of a dune buggy thing. More bad than good for a straight-up street car. LOVE the look, but . . .

Bill, thanks. Sean did the valves without consultation; I'll ask him why he did that. We do intend to make a longer-length set of them shortly, along with Jake's recommendations above.

TC, that's a lot of good info there. Thank you. I'll probably do exactly as you suggest when the car's done driving for the year -- and now that I have a garage, it'll be in a month or so. I appreciate the suggestions!

Here were the pictures from yesterday. In the first one, look at the splines inside the hub of the drum. This was caused by the loose connection of the brake to the axle tube; the backing plate was the wrong type, and that was the genesis for my aluminum spacers.
That part does still exist in nature, and now two of them are on my car.
The second shot is the box of parts, which includes some of my lug nuts. I thought that was odd, but they're not the right dish, and so they weren't sitting right against the wheel. I'm glad they noticed, but I'm pretty sure I bought all of them from Peek, at the same time, on the same day. Maybe someone was in a hurry that day.
Third picture is the new target. The urethane bushings Sean mentioned are supposed to replace everything inside the orange part of the assembly; everything inside the beam gets pulled out, and this cone-shaped piece goes in and is hammered until it won't go in further. The suspension pieces fit inside of them, and they act in place of ring-shaped bearings.
Apparently, this is done in cases like mine, where the beam has been narrowed, and were the inner races aren't quite where they're supposed to be. The picture is from behind the right, front corner of the car.

I did drive the car home in the rain. What are the odds that we'd have a freakishly bad bit of weather on the heels of a near-record drought -- on the one day I needed to move that car home from the shop?

Knowing YOU, I would have bet the odds were pretty good for some type of inclement weather!

Well, I missed most of this fun. A single reading through leaves me wondering what happened w/ the valve noise, and "I must have broken something." business w/ the valve adjustments? I understand you had a broke adjuster, and that got replaced. I don't know what it was that you were sensing that seemed broke when you turned the engine by hand to set the valves. And what was making the noise from the valve train when you fired up your new settings? Some parts of the story seem to have been skipped over. And while there, why not put in chomalloy p-rods? Aren't they better? Would they not work in your Type 4? So, in summary, what was done at Peek's that might have been special or clever to set the valves right? Curious minds need to know.

Sorry about the rain. Things now good enough to go for PR III??

Kelly, if you back the screws out all the way, the rocker arms allow the pushrods to fall to the edge of the cups. The noise I heard was my adjustment (looked like .000 to my untrained eye) popping back into the cups and then chattering their hineys off.
I got educated on how to do that correctly. I'm smarter now.

And we're a "go" for PR III.