Thread: 53 Is back from the Body Shop

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Originally Posted by 53 Chevy5

Fastenall forgot to order my 1 inch split clamps to hold the rear sway from going side to side.........

Recent conversation with local Fastenal:

Me - Did the shims I ordered on Friday come in?

Them - What shims?

Me - The 5/8" x 1/8" slotted shims?

Them - I guess we forgot to order them.

Been there - Done that.

You guys are a week, maybe 10 days ahead of us.. I haven't even thought of "unwrapping" the coupe. Will have to replace the battery this year I think, I pulled it out to use it in the International for snow plow duty.

Hurry hurry, there's not much weekend left!

I'm so far ahead of schedule, I'm not sure what to do I backed Rita out about 3:00 and took it for a drive. The sway bar stiffened up the suspension quite a bit, the radio is working good, the driveshaft is running smooth, fuel pump is quiet and not sucking air. The only hiccup was it developed a miss on the engine and I unpluged the injectors and plugged them back in and that went away for now. I think it's the dirtiest it's ever been and then the gravel roads are like powder from all the farm machinery. We were going to take it out tonight and go for ice cream but we've both been running non stop all day so the couch sounded better.

Looks like a great place where you live! The biggest downside of living out in the country for me is that I'm a "clean tire/wheel fanatic"

Where we live, our wheels are definitely Dusty most of the time. When we take Rita out we usually hit the local car wash first and do a quick spot-free rinse.

I'm sure it is a dust bowl where you live. Right now I'm really hating that I haven't finished the exhaust on the 72. It dumps straight to the ground before the rear axle. well, it stirs up duet really bad. Makes it real fun backing a trailer into the wind. But, we might actually get some much needed RAIN this week. (It's in bold because it shouldn't be snow for a change.

We broke some untested ground with Rita on Saturday, we took it to Sioux Falls and on the way home we decided to take it on the interstate for the first time. I never could to it before because the driveshaft would vibrate over 65 mph. The SD speed limit is 80 mph and it passed the test with flying colors, even thought it was just a 10 mile stretch it cruised just fine at 80.

Very cool, it feels good to get the bugs worked out.

It is good to get some of these things off the list. Of course with speed comes more air noise, I think I need to install my outer door seals now. I notice a lot of air noise inside the door itself and I'm pretty sure it's going in through the door hinge holes and entering the inside of the door. I have the seals but never got around to putting them on because I never noticed it much before, but it sure seemed kinda noisy then.

I'm just setting here purely amazed that you've had 2 different engines in it and yet to drive it on the freeway at freeway speeds..................

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Originally Posted by 40FordDeluxe

I'm just setting here purely amazed that you've had 2 different engines in it and yet to drive it on the freeway at freeway speeds..................

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Yep, 3,000 miles and no interstate I don't know if that's a good or bad thing. We like to take black tops and hi ways ( unless it's Nebraska or New Mexico )

It was time to add cruise to Rita. I don't know what the deal is but my ankle gets real mad at me if I use the gas pedal longer that an hour at a time. I ordered a Rostra universal kit with an early style turn signal control. It only took about a Saturday morning to install it and It works great! I dread it every time I got to add some wiring under the dash It's pretty busy under there.

Kool. How much have you been driving Rita this summer?

Not as much as last year, only about 1600 so far. Last year we had 3k on before we put it away but we got about a month and a half of good weather left yet so hopefully we get some more on it. I told my wife I would like 20K on it before we head out to Washington state with it in a few years, I want to make sure it's reliable. We are hoping to be in your state this coming Memorial day week. I don't know if we'll be close enough to visit though, we are thinking of staying in the Pensacola area. We'll have a Dodge and not Rita