[Spridgets] On the road again!

[Marc]

There's a certain '73 midget terrorizing the SUV's around here again!

I fired the car up again yesterday, figured I would just let the damn 
thing run until whatever was causing the smoke from the trans bell 
housing either failed spectacularly or stopped, or whatever. At least if 
I was gonna have to take it apart again, I wanted it to be obvious where 
the issue was.

No smoke at idle, but as soon as the car was moved a little bit, smoke 
from the bell housing appeared, albeit way less then previously. Since 
the clutch seems to work perfectly, I drove the car up & down the street 
and driveway, slipping the clutch reasonably aggressively.

Checking again, no smoke. Seems to have stopped whatever it was. Perhaps 
the spectacular failure is still imminent... 

I checked the slave pushrod length and it was within 1/16" (short), so 
buttoned it up & took it out for a little drive, and it seemed to be 
working great. Once it got warmed up, it started rattling something 
fierce. I thought something had broken until I realized that it was the 
worst ignition pinking I have ever heard! Engine has a newly rebuilt 
dist (from Matt @ advanced dist). I guess the timing mark on the bottom 
pulley is meaningless at this point, guess the rubber has shifted or 
something...  hate having that mark on the bottom anyway... I wound up 
just retarding and retarding until the pinking stopped. Only problem is 
it was just gutless at that point. I could not find a happy medium. 
Finally I disconnected the vacuum advance, and advanced the dist a few 
degrees and it runs pretty good on just the mechanical advance.

I had the dist connected to intake manifold vacuum originally, which 
turned out to be way too much. Then I made a restrictor to go inline 
with the hose, but apparently even that must still be too much vacuum. 
Perhaps I'll make a new one if I can find my set of wire sized drill bits...

Anyway, flogged the car pretty good for about two & 1/2 hours all told, 
it runs great!


-- 

Marc