Continuing in our saga of acquiring a Bricklin...
Got another look at my soon-to-be baby, along with a nice three-hour
test drive the other night. #2417, I believe, is about to become mine.
Originally orange, now painted in red lacquer, it's a good example of a
custom Bricklin. There are some problems on the surface that I need
answering, though.
(1) The A/C fan blows and blows, yet little comes out of any vent. I
understand this to be a problem with these cars. Is this easily fixable?
(2) How easy is it to fix the gauges? The altimeter and tachometer are
both slumbering at this point in time, and the gas gauge jumps and
twitches more than a dope fiend stuck in an ant bed. Getting the thing
to hold still long enough to provide an accurate reading is like
expecting a three-year-old to sit perfectly still through a Shakespeare
reading.
(3) Does anyone have any advance tips for radio installation? I have
done custom installs on six vehicles, one of which was a 19-speaker,
five-month install on a Ford Taurus SHO that, given the choice, I'd
rather face a firing squad than do over again. The doors don't seem to
have enough room to hold speaker pods, and the stock locations behind
the driver's and passenger's heads are not acoustically desireable. I'm
thinking kickpanel pods in the floorboards, although that would require
the relocation of the dimmer switch.
(4) Anyone here ever consider a two-battery setup? I had one in the
Taurus SHO, separated by an isolator. The result was a 960 CCA battery
under the hood and a 1200 CCA battery running the stereo, and I didn't
have a dead battery in four years. These cars don't seem to hold a gold
medal in Ease Of Starting, and I'd like to render all aid possible.
(5) The doors of this particular car seem to want to imitate Dustin
Hoffman's character in "Rain Man." They have been converted to air,
complete with the secondary air shock to reduce stress. It was a good
conversion, although there is now a leak somewhere in the system. The
current owner had manually filled the air tank in the rear prior to my
test drive, and the first three or four times I operated the doors,
everything went fine. The fifth time--I was trying to shut the driver's
door--something went higgledy-piggledy. I pushed the "down" button, only
to hear air escaping quickly behind my head, while the door stayed up.
When I finally got the door down, I realized I'd bled the entire
contents of the air tank completely out. Also, this car has an air leak
somewhere.
(5b) If I'm filling the rear air tank manually, what psi do I fill it
to?
(6) Anyone make a decent car cover for this thing? From experience with
my Dad's Corvette, I can tell you that 99% of the car covers in this
world do exactly nil of what they promise on the box. "Water-proof"
means that after a rain, you'll have "proof" that "water" is now all
over your paint. I don't intend to store this thing in the elements, but
there will be times when it will be parked outside in drizzly or rainy
weather, and I'd like to find a car cover that, at the bare minimum, is
not a synonym for the word "sieve". Any sugggestions?
Chomping at the bit in Alabama,
Jess
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