My little sister now officially owns a 1977 TR7. Her name is on the bill
of sale and the tag reciept and everything. Now she only needs to learn
to drive it well enough to go to the state patrol office and get her
driver's license. In the meantime I've been driving it to find out what
interesting things are going to go wronge with it in its first two weeks
under new ownership.
#1. It overheats. I changed the thermostat from a 88C to a 82C and that
fixed the problem for driving around town and stuff but coming back to
school yesterday (an hour at about 70mph) gave the needle an excuse to
climb back up. I haven't gotten a chance to poke around the engine yet
but I think the fan clutch is going out as occasionally at speed the
machine makes this horrible screeching noise that I hope is the fan clutch
or something else external and not the crank chewing itself to shreds.
#2. The starter is rather flakey. 90% of the time it starts fine. 10%
of the time you turn the key and the relay in the glovebox engages but
nothing happens at the starter. I hooked up a test light while the car
was in this state of mind and we are getting power to the solenoid. This
made me think maybe it was jamming or something and sure'nuff rocking the
car in gear got it to start but I don't understand why. The solenoid
doesn't make any noise when it is like this. Could it be that jammed?
#3. The turn signal stalk is not thoroughly attached. It pivots around
in it's switch making it hard to hit the horn and causing the light dimmer
to occasionally pause between bright and dim thus turning off the headlights.
Oh well, thats everything. For now. :)
-thomas
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