Eh, don't get all excited and think that title means we just got back from a stage rally in our fully reworked Scorpion. It's really more an expression of relief that we actually managed to get back to work and accomplished a task or two. Note just how excited Derrick looks ->
The first item on the agenda was to finish up the brake work we were hacking our way through. Luckily we managed to accomplish this without too much trouble. I think the biggest SNAFU was attempting to get the handbrake cable reattached on the passenger side rear caliper. I had foolishly taken it off and re-compressing the spring on that sucker was like pushing on a rusty, angry rope. Awesome.
Anyhow, the Black 1976 now has new rotors, pads and soft lines to go with the new master cylinder. Here's a shot of one corner. Nothing astounding, but sweet nonetheless:
So with the brakes physically installed, the next step was to bleed the system. Sweet baby Jesus did we try to bleed. We bled, and bled, bled some more. Then took a break and came back to resume with the letting of blood... well, bleeding at least. Finally we managed to get what appeared to be a reasonable pump's worth of fluid (sans bubbles) per pressurizing pedal pumpage.
Oh, I just remembered. Far less dramatic was the bleeding of the clutch. That was pretty straightforward.
Our next task was electrical. Holy crap was that annoying and time-consuming. I shan't go into the gory details. The long and short of it is that we've got some voltage loss on the passenger side turn signal indicator. We get solid voltage on the driver side, and we get solid voltage on both sides when we use the hazards... However, we tried a spare steering column (one of the perks of having 6 cars lying around) and the problem remained. Thus the issue is somewhere in the car part of the wiring vs. the column switch or column wiring. Also, do to some... unique wiring modifications by the previous owner, we're spending a lot of time trying to figure out what's actually connected to what versus proper debugging.
Anyhow, the weekend culminated in us moving the Black '76 up and down the garage a few times using, get this, it's own power. Yes. It engaged 1st gear, had usable clutch uptake/actuation, a stable idle and throttle response, and some manner of brakes when we got to the end of the garage. It then did it all in reverse. Quite gratifying... though it did highlight that we need to do yet more brake bleeding.
We've got a video of the "driving", but I've not got it off Ange's phone yet. I'll try to figure out how to post that sucker soon. I'll leave you with this shot of our flock:
