IML: Progress of a sort

["Donn Reese" <DReese@xxxxxxxx>]

In fits and starts the Imperial is getting more roadworthy, but good grief is it putting up a fight!  Maybe it's just tired and WANTS to go sit in a pasture forever.  I've certainly been ready to oblige a couple times recently.

The heater fan was making a loud scraping noise and the heater control valve had been bypassed so I decided to pull the heater and at least fix the fan.  I was surprised how easy the heater unit was to remove, just three screws.  Turns out the plastic housing on the outside face of the squirrel cage had deformed inwards pressing against the squirrel cage itself.  I used my heat gun to heat up the plastic then pushed the face out, reforming from a concave to a convex (btw, it's pretty crappy plastic).  But it's much quieter now and I didn't have to cut a hole in the housing.

With that fixed I removed the heater control valve and (assuming it was just froze up with corrosion) proceeded to lubricate it and get the valve working again.  I reinstalled it and hooked up the heater hoses and fired up the car.  That's when I found out why it had been bypassed, it leaks.  Soooo, I bypassed it again and will have to scout around for a new one.

I discovered the cause of the slow turn signals at idle that I reported here recently.....bad flasher.  I put a new one in and now it works regardless of idle.  Seems strange to me though.

Amongst all of this, last week the speedometer started making a horrendous noise and the needle would jump around.  The OIC archive came in handy, found the same symptoms there....who would have guessed you have to lubricate the speedo head periodically.  Definitely a new one on me.  Especially surprising considering they don't make it easy to get any of the instruments out to do any kind of maintenance.

I made another little test run down the highway and back and everything seems to be fine for now.  Let's hope it stays that way as we're now getting frost at night and working outside is getting chilly.

Donn Reese
1960 Custom 4dr hdtp


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