VCCA Home Forums GENERAL DISCUSSION What did you do with your vehicle today? Many Thanks to Another VCCA Member

Many thanks to Denny (Dens41) last week for finally solving the vacuum assist shifting issues on my '41!

My original vacuum assist is so rusted/corroded it won't even move. Tried a new one from Dens but couldn't get it to work right. He lives just about 15 miles north of me so I took it up a couple weeks ago and it refused to adjust correctly - would work great on the bench, but would work only in one direction or the other once on the car. Spent four hours on it before we finally gave up.

He found another canister and I took the car up again last week. In less than an hour we had it installed and she shifts like she's supposed to now - no longer almost almost throw out my shoulder while trying to shift into reverse or second.

So thanks, Dens!

Now, on to back flushing the engine again and rooting out any rust and gunk because even after installing a new radiator, the heat wants to creep up at stop signs and peg out at 212 once I shut the engine off. Grrr...

B J it is normal the the temp to go up when you shut the engine off as the coolant is no longer circulating.

Yep, kind of figured that. But what I don't like to see is the temp climbing past 180 when I slow down to 35 or stop at a stop sign. It wasn't doing that before, which is one of the reasons I swapped out the radiator for a new one. Other reason being I could never look into it without seeing gunk floating in the water.

No, I'm thinking I may still have some rust and gunk in the block that may have broken loose and is causing coolant circulation issues. If it's nice and non-raining this weekend, I'm going to back flush the block again (and even the new radiator, just in case) to try to clear up the problem.

I just hope I don't have to resort to the procedure in Mike Buller's previous posts of popping out the freeze plugs, pulling the head, and doing a thorough, pain in the a.s cleaning.

Have you checked the timing? Try advancing it a few degrees and see if that helps. If it pings back it off to where it stops.

The timing seems good but I'll give that a shot if flushing the block again doesn't do the trick. The car sat for over 12 years before I found it last year. I did flush the block and radiator shortly after I got the engine started, but I may not have done a thorough enough job.