Page last updated: Tuesday, May 25, 1999
Always, Always, Tighten Your Lug Nuts!
The pressure to complete this car on time for the trip to Lansing was immense. My part time job took up several nights a week and most weekends. Trying to find time between both jobs in order to paint, reassemble, and get the car running correctly was a job in itself.
After getting the new tires, I apparently was in such a hurry to get the doors on that I just put on the wheels and snugged but never tightened the lug nuts. We put the wheels on late one night and then rolled the car out of the garage around midnight on a Sunday night and my wife and son helped me get those big long heavy GM doors on.
After getting the body back together, I was still having trouble with the engine. Just to make sure , I checked the compression (120 lbs) and realized it was was to low and that the valves were simply not closing all the way. I solved the problem at the last minute, by putting some .050 washers under the rocker pivots. This temporarily solved the problem. After I returned from the trip to Lansing, I've been "adjusting" the preload by grinding each washer down to the correct thickness to give a clearnance that's quiet and functional.
I'm finally on my way to Lansing:
The fact that the lugnuts were not tightend became readily apparent when on Tennessee 96 between Murphysburro and Franklin Tennessee the car fishtailed suddenly without warning and and I found myself stuck on the side of the road. To make a long story short, the single remaining lug nut had about three threads holding it on. After four hours I was back on the road again.
But there was one other problem. Every now and then there would be these huge backfires out of the exhaust. In an effort to troubleshoot the ignition and backfiring problems through the carburetor I put in an HEI ignition that I got from a junkyard. Something was wrong with the advance on it, and it also kept cutting out, so at 5 A.M. Tuesday morning at the Holiday Inn in Brooks Kentucky, I found myself replacing the distributor with the good old fashioned original points distributor that I had rebuilt and brought with me just incase. I made good friends with several of the folks from the Florida Carivan, and they still kid me about stopping at the various rest stops along the way and me pulling pieces of chrome or whatever out of the trunk to bolt on along the way.
Once I finally hooked up with the Florida Carivan, I relaxed quite a bit as I was no longer a lone eagle. I have to admitt that when the car was backfiring, and then when it was on the back of a tow truck after the "lug nut episode" I was seriously thinking about turning around. I'm glad I pressed on though. I met hundreds of really great people between the carivan, the Centennial, and all the people that have contacted me through this web page. I want to thank you all. You've really made it worth it, and it's always a nice feeling to get mail from someone that has landed on my page.