Hooray, we have our first Penny restoration deadline! We just reserved our camp spot in June for a week of exploring Yellowstone (on foot and in our yellow friend). We will be putting in a lot of elbow grease over the next few months to get her ready for the 8 hour road trip. We are pretty excited for our first real outing as bus parents! Hope you readers are enjoying our journey...
It has seemed like forever that every time we'd start up Penny, Jason would assure me that when we got the second carburetor rebuilt she'd purr like a kitten. Well, after all that assurance it's finally happened! We were excited to receive our first box of parts for 2014 last week, complete with a carb rebuild kit, sway bar clamps and a new service manual to guide us through the tricky syncing process (plus a myriad of other future processes, I'm sure).
This weekend it was over to the shop we went, of course puppies and box of goodies in tow. The right carburetor had been rebuilt in the fall, so lefty was the one on our agenda. After we unscrewed, detached and got greasy, Penny found herself down one part and we got to work. Jason, Van and I were clearly pretty excited to be back in the shop...
We busted out the new pieces and carefully disassembled the carburetor, Jason all the while being an amazing teacher and schooling me step-by-step.
After it was all apart and the pieces in what looked like organized chaos, we cleaned the metal parts and replaced the ones that needed replacing.
After everything was bathed and replaced, Jason championed the effort to put the puzzle back together correctly while I cheered him on from the sidelines. All the while learning that my virgin auto-shop lungs need a bit of fresh air from time to time to avoid feeling like my head is going to explode. (I'll toughen up if it's the last thing I do!)
We placed that small, unassuming part back in Penny's hindquarters and sure enough...purred like the beautiful kitten she is. Unfortunately, we ran out of time for the sway bar clamp installation and the carb syncing, but that will be first up when we return from vacation next week. It was great to drive her home sans the subtle backfiring that had become her theme song. After diving into our new manual and some successful syncing she might be ready for her first mini winter road trip!
