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thehackmechanic

Solex
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Everything posted by thehackmechanic

  1. Thanks everyone. The distributor I'm using is a 0 231 115 081, which according to my archaeology here on the FAQ, is from a '70-'71ish 2002. I'll play around with it more in the garage. I've taken some measurements, but nothing as accurate as Tom's graphs. The idea of hooking up one of those long-unused dashpots on the firewall to cut the vacuum in and out to see how it actually drives is irresistible. I thought it was driving season, but then a storm moved in so they salted everything again. Fortunately it was all rain, and more rain is predicted, so hopefully the roads will be clear again soon. Thanks again.
  2. Yeah, yeah, it's been asked dozens of times before, but bear with me. The actual question is at the end. Background: I'm trying to get "Hampton," my 49,000-mile survivor 2002, to start and run as well as possible. The car came to me basically stock except for a Weber 32/36. It had the original vacuum retard distributor, and the EGR valve, vacuum dashpots, and control circuitry on the firewall were all still present, though not all of them were connected. I eventually removed the EGR valve, as I was concerned that it was a source of vacuum leaks. I assumed that the thing to do was replace the vacuum retard dizzy with an earlier vacuum advance unit, so I found one, made sure the mechanical advance and vacuum advance both worked, and installed it. I thought that the question was then "Which port do I hook the vacuum advance diaphragm to," but the more I read, the more I think that there's not really an answer. The short-but-seems-wrong answer seems to be "you want ported vacuum, not manifold vacuum, so you want the port on the Weber above the throttle plate." The longer-but-unhelpful answer gets subsumed into the question of "How do I connect the Weber to a smog-compliant system," which isn't what I'm asking. I always thought that you DON'T want extra vacuum advance when you mash the throttle, as that'll cause knocking, but you DO want it at idle and at even throttle. Neither the port on the Weber nor the port just below it on the base of the intake manifold have those exact characteristics. Measured with a vacuum gauge, the port on the Weber ("ported vacuum") is zero at idle and increases linearly with throttle opening. It jumps upward when I snap open the throttle. This seems to be the last thing I'd want to connect the vacuum diaphragm to. Manifold vacuum seems a better choice, as it's about the same at idle as it is at even throttle, drops to almost zero when I snap open the throttle, and rises only when I release it. But—and here's the real question, and forgive me for sounding like Perry Mason: Isn't it true that only pre-'72 2002s with the single-barrel Solex ever had the vacuum advance diaphragm directly connected to a port on the carb? Isn't it true that by the time two-barrel Solexes were on the cars, so were EGR and vacuum dashpots, and there was never a direct vacuum line between the carb and the advance diaphragm? And thus, isn't it true that trying to connect a Weber 32/36 this way only moves the whole question further into "neither the carb nor the dizzy are really meant to be connected like this," and that if you do, it's likely to result in an advance profile with characteristics that are more complicated than the simple "just set the total advance" many of us have gotten used to? I spoke with my brother-from-another-mother Paul Wegweiser about this last at some length night, and he basically agreed and said that he only uses the vacuum advance diaphragm if there's not enough advance at idle, but I'd love to crowd-source a larger set of opinions. I've had tiis and Bertha with the dual Weber 40s, both of which have straight mechanical advance distributors, for long enough that I realized that it's been decades since I directly fiddled with a 32/36 and vacuum advance. Thanks. --Rob
  3. Thanks, folks, for the kind words on my book. Regarding an alternate location the compressor, people more forward-thinking than me have mentioned the possibility of using an electric compressor out of a Tesla that can be mounted anywhere, but I haven't looked into it. Of course, then you'd need a honking alternator to be able to support the electrical load. --Rob
  4. Center console, faceplate, and related brackets along with the evaporator assembly are worth money if someone wants to retrofit the best-looking of the three dealer-installed a/c packages into a car with no a/c, but the numbers being thrown around above seem very optimistic to me, especially since that plastic a/c faceplate has had the radio opening cut way bigger than stock. The compressor, condenser, fan, hoses, and drier canister have no value as anyone doing a retrofit would replace those with new components.
  5. As others have said, the car's actual condition is more important than a salvage title, but it's best if the reason for the salvage title is known. Unfortunately it sounds like your relative doesn't know what it was in the car's history that might have "caused some old records to be sync'd." It's best to tell the truth in these matters. Do you have a photocopy of the previous clean title? If the story is that your great-aunt inherited the car from her husband when he passed, it didn't have a salvage title when it was in his name but for some reason when it was transferred to her name the title showed up as "rebuilt" and no one knows why and she has no knowledge of any accidents, then say that in any ad for the car.
  6. From the warped mind of Eric King who did the layout and designed the covers of my last five books.
  7. <<I had a few conversations with the owner/seller, via e-mail, and when I questioned him about the snorkel and if the car had sustained front-end damage, he insisted that the car was completely original and was never in an accident.>> The tii shown is wearing E30 bottlecap wheels, so the owner automatically loses all credibility regarding what was original. BWAhahahaha! But seriously folks... as someone said earlier, until an original owner produces a 50-year-old photograph of his or her just-delivered tii with a snorkel nose, it's BS. Even if, just for the sake of argument, one or two or ten tiis rolled off the carrier and got "nosed" when being delivered to the dealer and were repaired at the dealer bodyshop with snorkel noses, for each one of these purely hypothetical cars, there are now a hundred owners insisting that THEIR car is one of the rare "factory snorkel tiis."
  8. Someone else plugged my book, so I don't feel bad about, uh, plugging my book :^) https://www.amazon.com/Just-Needs-Recharge-Mechanic-Conditioning/dp/0998950718
  9. Nice to know that, when I die, I will be known for this. :^)
  10. "the starter made one clicking sound and all went dead. The car will not turn over. In order to "reset" the ignition to get the auxiliary power back, I have to disconnect the neg battery cable completely and reinstall." This is the classic symptom of a bad ground connection at the negative battery terminal. Clean both battery terminals and cable clamps, and check the ground connection on BOTH of the braided ground straps coming from the negative cable. One should go go the chassis of the car, the other to the block near the starter. It's common for one of them to be corroded through, resulting in intermittent ground that can have erratic effects on hard starting. Insights on being well-grounded - Hagerty Media WWW.HAGERTY.COM Electrical problem with your car? The old advice to “check the ground” isn’t the slam-dunk that many people think it is. --Rob
  11. @wojo, if you're just looking for the housing, here's a Behr unit for parts on eBay. BMW E10 E21 2002tii 2002 320i Others Behr Evaporator O==00==O WWW.EBAY.COM Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for BMW E10 E21 2002tii 2002 320i Others Behr Evaporator O==00==O at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
  12. I went down the rabbit hole and spent an hour searching online, and didn't find anything remotely like it—that is, an evaporator-only box with the blower fan hanging off the right side. I did see climate control boxes that have the fan hanging off the right side.
  13. IMHO, Bob Poggi at ICE is making a big mistake by not making it easy to click-and-buy the a la carte evaporator assemblies and instead trying to sell whole systems. There are hundreds of ads for generic under-dash evaporator assemblies available on eBay. When you look at them, they categorize into the same dozen or so Chinese-made units. I saw a post here a while back where someone installed one that was, IIRC, bright yellow, and said it worked fine. 23-ish years ago when I retrofitted a/c into my E9, the generic units were not unlike the Behr or the Clardy in that they required a faceplate, and without them they looked industrial. Most of the ones now are wholly-contained units with the adjustable vents and controls right on the front. It all depends how sensitive you are to maintaining the look of the interior and how much you want to avoid interfering with the glovebox, which puts a narrow requirement on the unit, which the Clardy and ICE's clone circumvents by having that big fan jut out into the passenger-side footwell. But at some point, as a project, I'd love to try one of these generics and see how well it works.
  14. As I say over and over, the things that tend to cause a vintage car to die are: --Ignition issues (mainly points and condenser) --Fuel delivery issues (fuel pump and leaky hoses) --Cooling system issues (radiator, water pump, thermostat, hoses) --Charging system issues (alternator, regulator, and wiring) --Belts (fan belt and the bushings that keep the alternator aligned and the belt tensioned) --Clutch hydraulics (master and slave) --Ball joints (unlikely to fail on an 02, but if they do, you lose control of the car). Enjoy!
  15. The Ranco switch is the temperature control thermostat that senses evaporator temperature and turns the compressor on and off. It's a universal switch. It happens to be used in the Clardy a/c system, but it is not specific to it. The expansion valve is of the old-school style used in the Behr and Frigiking systems, but not in the Clardy system; it uses the modern block-style expansion valve. The vents go to none of the original three systems. They look to me like they're to something like a Vintage Air climate control box, where the vents have to be relocated somewhere else. --Rob
  16. I'm helping a friend transfer the a/c from his old 2002 onto the one he just bought prior to the trip to The Vintage in oh crap like five weeks. The new car used to have a/c, which makes certain things easier. The old car had a Clardy system with a Sanden compressor and a "Hobiedave" bracket. I was about to mount them when I saw that the new car has a "claw-style" bracket already on it. You can find "claw-style" Sanden adapters on eBay that bolt to the big York bracket (https://www.ebay.com/itm/263125140545), but I've never seen a standalone one that bolts directly to the block before. It has a certain form-follows-function appeal to it, but the about-the-right-size belt I threw on comes very close to rubbing against the lower water pump bolt, though it's a meaty "ridge-top" belt; a narrower one might clear just fine. Anyone ever seen this bracket?
  17. 1. You can hold the master cylinder bolts with a Vise Grip or a socket on a small breaker bar. That's usually enough to keep them in place while threading on the nut as well as while tightening. The Vise Grip or breaker bar will spin and come to a stop somewhere. 2. Yes, insert the metal pipe into the master cylinder first, then either lower the master down from the top or thread the metal pipe up from the bottom. 3. Not sure about the extra o-ring. I don't recall one. 4. No, you don't need to feel that you need to rebuild the pedal box, but if the accelerator linkage is binding where the bendy rod goes through the box, now is the time to replace those two nylon bushings and clean the rust off the rod where it goes through them. --Rob
  18. Hey, Harry, I ALSO need a vacuum advance dizzy. I would've sworn I had one but the clutter in my garage appears to have eaten it. You can message me here or reach me at thehackmechanic@aol.com. Thanks. --Rob Siegel
  19. I suppose that, in theory, since the coolant-in-the-oil problem is so pronounced, you could pull the studs, put washers on them, and torque them down just to be certain that this solves the problem before you go to the work of pulling the head and replacing the gasket again, but @TobyB's explanation is so perfect that it's not worth it.
  20. Very odd problem. My experience is that cracked heads tend to present as white sweet-smelling exhaust smoke, whereas blown headgaskets tend to present as milkshakes in the coolant (yeah obviously it depends where they're blown). I'd be very surprised if your installing the head bolts dry had anything to do with it. To be clear, you say that there's clear water (or antifreeze) in the radiator, but you have "constant milkshakes" in the oil? Jimk's idea of the water pump gasket being dislodged is a good one, but that wouldn't explain the exhaust gas in the coolant. Are you SURE "the dipstick ALWAYS showed no oil?" I've certainly made the mistake of not being able to see clean oil on the stick. And how does that jive with having "constant milkshakes?" I must be misunderstanding something. If it was my car, I'd do both a compression and a leakdown test as stephers recommends before I did anything else. But even if both of those don't show any compression loss, it's certainly possible that corrosion on the head between the coolant and oil passages is causing the mixing. Again, if it was my car, I'd want to assure myself that the head is perfect (and that Jimk's water pump gasket theory isn't the cause) before pulling the engine to deal with the block. --Rob Compression problems? Here’s a tool you shouldn’t be without - Hagerty Media WWW.HAGERTY.COM Working on a 1965 Corvair Monza, Rob Siegel shows how to use a leakdown tester.
  21. @Crash513, I've never installed one of the Vintage Air mini boxes, but my understanding is that you need to remove the heater box, block off the big rectangular hole, then cut a new circular hole for the coolant in and out for the heater core and the refrigerant in and out for the evaporator core. I also believe that you have to cut into the glovebox.
  22. Another thing to keep in mind with climate control boxes (heater core and a/c evaporator in one unit) like the D-Tech (which I believe uses the Vintage Air mini system) is that not only does it eliminate fresh air, it renders the heat and ventilation sliders to the left and right of the steering column inoperative. If you search here on the FAQ, you'll find that most of the folks who have installed those boxes use the former slider locations as the home for the new rotary control knobs for the climate control box. I'm by no means a purist in terms of maintaining a stock appearance everywhere in the car, but this DOES certainly change the look of the interior of a 2002. On the other hand, the folks who have installed these climate control boxes seem very happy with their performance.
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