Removing water from inside the car

Having just had the windshield and the seal replaced last week by Shayne Green, I wanted to start with as "fresh" of a car as possible.

Years of a leaky windshield has lead to water making it's way into the car. Usually, when it would rain, the inside of the car would get wet. If you were driving along, you would start feeling drips on your feet!

Well as you can imagine this would cause the car to fog up quite quickly on colder days. Armed with only a 2 speed heater fan (this car has no rear window defogger), it became quite difficult to drive when it would be cold. The front window would stay mostly clear once the car had warmed up. Forget about the rear window, there was nothing I could do to keep it fog-less.

I never bothered trying to suck the water out of the car since I knew it would just end up back in the car next time it rained. Now with a new windshield, I won't have that problem anymore! I decided that this was the time to remove the water inside the car.

There are many suggested ways of doing this. They range from simple (such as vacuuming up any water that might be in the carpets) to extreme (pulling the entire interior of the car out). I settled somewhere in between.

With the aid of a dehumidifier that usually takes space in my parent's basement, I was able to get almost all the water out of the car!



Here's the car in the backyard with the dehumidifier sitting in the front drivers seat.

I let the car sit that way for a couple of days while my distributor was being rebuilt, emptying the water basket every day when I would wake up. I didn't measure how much water I dumped out, but I'd guess it was probably about a quarter of a quart. Granted that's not a ton of water, but it's a lot considering this much water was pulled out of the air inside my car.

Here's a picture of the window about 5 minutes after I turned the dehumidifier on.



By the time I pulled that machine out of the car it was totally dry inside! So dry in fact, that the windows haven't held any condensation at all since! I went outside last night at about 2am or so (after the car had been sitting for an extended period of time) and all the windows were completely clear.


Today I got my first test of the windshield seal. It was raining quite hard in Portland, and I took the car for a spin. On the road for over an hour in some pretty nasty rain, and not a single drip inside the car!

I've still got a bit of an ignition issue to sort out, but right now I'm quite pleased with the progress I've made on this car thus far!

My new distributor staring in "The Adventure of the flying timing light!"

For a while now I've been fighting with an erratic idle, which eventually progressed into surging while I would be driving along. It got to the point where the car was just about undriveable.

At first I thought the carbs were worn out, but after a conversation with the Paul (the previous owner) I ruled them out. Paul had the carbs rebuilt not too long before I bought the car.

So I spent time tweaking and adjusting the carbs, thinking they just were out of adjustment. No change.

Next thought was that the Valves weren't set right.

I had my car over at Shayne Green's place this past weekend (for a new windshield, another blog entry will come on that). Shayne was kind enough to adjust the valves on my car for me, but noted that they were already adjusted with-in spec. He took the car for a spin and instantly knew the Distributor was on it's way out.

Shayne knew of a good distributor rebuild company based here in Portland, so off I went to get my distributor rebuilt.

Today the "new" distributor was ready to go. Installation was pretty simple.



There it is. Nice and clean! (I'll explain the blue engine block later.)

So when installing a new distributor it's a good time for setting the engine timing. It would make sense, after all.

Here's the mis-adventure of the night!

I went to set the timing at about 1:30 am. Pretty late, I know. So I didn't want to do it on my street corner, for fear of waking up the neighbors. I drove the car over to an empty parking lot not too far from the house where I could make lots of noise with out bothering anyone.

I get the timing light all hooked up with the engine off, everything is ready to go.



So right after I took this picture I went and started the car.

Suddenly I hear "WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP!" and the timing light goes flying through the air!

I never made sure the timing light cords were clear of the engine fan, and sure enough they wrapped around the fan, ripping the cord right out of the timing light and sending it sky bound.

So I didn't get the timing set with a light, and I ended up killing the timing light. The worst part about the situation is that the timing light I killed wasn't even mine! So now I owe my friend a new timing light.

Live and learn!

Hello, I must be going!

Welcome to my new blog.

As many of my friends may or may not know, I've been driving Volvos for as long as I've been behind the wheel. Just over a year ago I bought what has become my favorite car, a 1966 122s.

This blog will discuss the work being done on the car. Already there have been many upgrades, and pictures to go along with them!

My 122 is far from perfect, but thanks to the care of the previous owner, I started with a very nice canvas on which to paint!

I hope you will enjoy reading about my (mis)adventures with my car.