Hey you guys,

I haven't been around an online computer very much the past few months. I have had a nightmare with my 73 coupe, Mareo Speedwagon VI. About everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. I guess that's the price to pay for neglect, hee hee.

The car was running and driving great when I parked it in 1999. It had an about stock H72 80 HP A14 motor with the dogleg 5-speed. It has headers with 2 1/2 exhaust, 185/60 14 rears on 1975 240Z aluminum wheels, 185/60 13 fronts on reversed spoke chrome steel wheels but needs aluminum. All of the suspension has been renewed except the front swing arm and roll bar bushings. The interior is OK and the body has no rust holes in it but some rust spots around the chrome.

When I started it up in, I guess, February, it ran fine but the gas tank had some rust. I took it to a shop and the guy kept it for three weeks and plugged up all of the internal lines. I had a fit unplugging the lines. The thing to use for that is large plastic weed eater line. It bends with the contours of the metal tubing going into the tank, it's affordable and you get plenty of it when you but a spool, but persevere, it will finally unplug any obstruction if you keep hitting the plastic line going into the tubing. After a three week major hassle getting fuel to my new Holly/Weber about useless carb and I get driving again but for some reason, it just didn't run very well. Remember, all of this time, this is my only means of transportation. Don't get me wrong, I have had a ball all of this time with this. I am just getting started with these misadventures and I am only 50 miles out of Good Old Knocksville, it's only been going on a month so far and there are a couple of months left before we get up to now.

I did find an air breather that would fit down over the carb and still let the hood close. Woopee. It vibrated apart and I lost most of it, the top most, nut, bolt, chrome lid, filter, all lost to the road. The base was still attached to the troublesome carb though. The idle set screw vibrated out and got itself lost also. Luckily, I had a spare carb. A pin going from the choke rod to the heated coil broke off and made the choke useless, but luckily, I had a spare carb. The accelerator pump started leaking but luckily nothing burned and I had a spare carb but the engine vibrated and just in general didn't have that extra that was normally there. It wasn't up to stock, it started detonating and slowed down and burned a head gasket. It ran so sweet after I changed the gasket.

While the head was off, I checked out the head a bit. I turned it up-side-down and poured WD40 into the combustion chambers. I let it set for five hours and there was no noticable drop in levels so the three angle valve job that I put on that head in 1994 is still holding real well. I should have changed the valve guide seals while it was off but El Stupido Grande, me, didn't do that and it still shoots a puff of smoke when I start it.

When I got it running again, it ran as smooth as possible. I started to Good Old Knocksville 50 miles away a couple of mornings later with it running sweet. When I got about 30 miles, it started overheating some but not boiling and the engine was running erratic again. I thought the carb was screwing up again so I slowed it down and I shouldn't have. I was running with only a bit of throttle and bring the speed down caused the torque range to change and I had to use more throttle on the uphills. It started coughing and quit. It wasn't overheating very much but I let it cool down and started it again. It ran sort of OK but there was smoke coming out the exhaust. I stopped a couple of times and checked it aou and i had either blown a head gasket again but much worse or I had burned a piston. I drove it on in to Good Old knocksville to my friends, Steve Holt, that has a pretty well equipped VW beetle garage called The Holtswagen Shop. He let me take the motor out in his driveway and use his shop to comfirm a burned piston.

Another friend has had a wrecked 1978 B210 for many years with the motor promised to me so I got another 80-HP H72 A14 motor for a very reasonable price. I had cleaned everything spotlessly inside and out before I took the motor back to the WV shop. I put it on a stand and sprayed it down with carb cleaner and painted the block, oil pan, valve cover, aluminum front timing cover in Chrysler engine red. I used Ford engine blue to paint the brackets and pulleys and let it all set in the sun for two days to cure a bit.

I honed the cylinders to de-glaze the ring surfaces for the cast steel rings. I prefer cast steel rings over chrome rings on rebuilds because I have seen too many times that chrome rings do not seat as well on used cylinder walls. The cast steel rings will seal properly more often. The next time I use that block, I will bore it and use new pistons anyway. All of the ring gaps were .015.

The main bearings plastiguaged out at .0015 and I used some rod bearing halves out of the old motor with the burned piston along with the bearings in the motor already until all rods plastiguaged to .001. So for so good. The timing chain looked good as did the cam. The speedometer on the B210 said 106,000 miles and there was a factory Nissan oil filter on the motor so the wear on the motor was minimal. I got a set of gaskets and put it all together and put it back in the car. This all took about ten days.

It didn't run very well after I got it back in. It overheated and coughed and sputtered a lot. I got numerous high speed jets for the carb to make it run all the way from lean to rich so much that it run worse in both directions. I used some of the jets from the 1200 carbs. They have the same threads but the outside diameter of the rim is a tight fit but they will fit the Holley/Weber downdraft. I re-drilled two of the H/W jets later on to come up with the proper jet sizes but that was later, there was something still major wrong going on.

I had used the water pump from the motor that I took out of the 1200 so the pulley would work properly. The pump started making a very loud bearing noise but it wasn't leaking through the seal. I got a new water pump and installed it. The radiator got a leak around the bottom hose flange so i went to my uncle's yard again and found a very good 3-core radiator out of a 1987 Dodge Aries. I bearly fit but it did fit. It is touching in two places that I will have to deal with very shortly for sure but it is running so cool that the stock TEMP guage doesn't run up to the cold mark and the mechanical guage keeps at about 125 degrees. It doesn't get the heater warm.

I had always had a bit of wiring problems so I took the harnesses apart and spent four days redoing it. It had a couple of burned connectors on the fuse panel and other shorts, opens and maladies that I had to sort out before I started trusting the wiring harness again. I nad no other problems with the electrical harness system since.

All of my stuff is stuffed from top to bottom into a 10' X 20' storage unit but I found an old 1200 points distributor one day while looking for something else. I put it on the motor and it ran as smooth as ever. The next day, I found a distributor at my uncle's yard but it has a bad vacuum advance on it. The one that I had just taken out had a bad vacuum modulator on it also and I still need a new vacuum advance modulator but otherwise, the new distributor works fine. Does anyone know where I can get a new vacuum advance modulator?

Almost all of my troubles have been caused by a working, but working very badly, electronic distributor. It had a good looking spark and the timing light worked perfectly so I didn't give the ignition very much thought. I actually thought that there was something going on with the carb instead of the ignition. Going through the carb jets was an almost useless chore but it taught me a lot about the carb and how it all ties together but I can't find mid range jets for it that are badly needed. I think I am going to have to soldier them up and re-drill them that way until I get the sizes that I need. I want a different carb. I want a new carb like from the L16-L20 motors. I love those carbs for a downdraft carb.

I spent two weeks driving around with the car driving so smooth but the tranny was singing its long gone song. I had a 1982 5-speed that I put in. Luckily again, I had a 1200 4-speed driveshaft that fit the tranny. The clutch was different from the dogleg trans so I used an old disk that wasn't worn very much but along with the wear on the pressure plate, it slipped at little. Atfer about a week, it broke into pieces and stopped me in my tracks. I had to tow it back to my friend's VW shop and pull the tranny again. I put the flywheel in the shop and had it trued and bought a new pressure plate and clutch disk. I need to have the driveshaft shortened by about an inch or so because I moved the engine and trans backwards about an inch. The front splines on the shaft are sitting precariously close inside the trans tailshaft but it hasn't leaked any trans oil.

My nephew came to Good Old Knocksville from DC for a week and talked me into coming here to DC with him. I left Mareo Speedwagon VI in Good Old Knocksville, 500 miles away for a few weeks. I have to be back in a couple of weeks any to go to another Goose Creek Symphony show in Allegre, KY on the 29th. I will bring MS VI here when I return in July. I have missed all of their shows this year including the show at Kerrville, TX that I was planning to attend. All of my plans have been put on hold and/or changed because of the travails that Mareo Speedwagon VI has gone through during the past few months.

I will be staying here for a while though. My nephew races high speed 250cc twin cylinder Rotax Enduro Karts that do over 165 MPH. I will keep informed as to how the progress goes on them.
Mareo

so your coupe's been giveing you shit has it well you will probaly find a vacume advance is ether your local NISSAN dealer or wreakers