Project Greta: The first thousand…

I’m a thousand miles into my adventures with Greta and I’m loving it! Greta’s become my daily driver at this point and I haven’t driven anything else the last couple of weeks. I drive her to work, to lunch, on any errands I need to run. She’s the go to ride!

The only issues that have come up are that I believe the heater core is now clogged 🙁 If I don’t turn on the fan I will get enough heat “leak” to make the car comfortable though… it just doesn’t get cold enough here for this to be a huge problem.

It also stalled on me once (and started blaring the horn at the same time!). I jumped out of the car, popped the hood and yanked the horn wire. That shut it up. Then got back in the car and it started right up… I’m assuming it’s electrical. I’m pretty sure the motor/trans will be reliable as a hammer. The only weak spot would have to be the 40 year old wiring… I need to spend some time pulling switches and cleaning contacts. I also want to try running an additional ground wire from the block to the body to see if that makes a difference. Another electrical quirk is that the dash lights don’t work. But if I jiggle the headlight switch I can get them to work. It’s all on the list now…

I’ve also done some miles in the rain. Ross (previous owner) said that the car stranded him in the rain a few times. So far, the only problem I’ve had in the rain is that there is a leak and it drips water on my left foot if it’s raining hard enough. But if the car is stationary, even in REALLY hard rain, it does not seem to leak. No evidence of water in the footwells after a hard rain overnight. Even still I eventually should replace all the weather seals on the car.

Really want to get some bucket seats in there. The bench is not comfortable and since I’m logging a lot of miles it’s becoming and issue. And swapping the front drum brakes to disc is going to happen in the very near future.

So that’s the 1000 mile update. Here are a couple of fun pics. First is Greta in the garages at Sonoma Raceway. Went to watch Matt run his 914-6 and at the of the day was able to pull Greta in while we were loading up the Porsche. The next pic was the result of me dropping off some packages at UPS for my wife. I realized Greta is UPS BROWN. Perfect… seems like a good way to earn some race car money on the side. I’ll have to see if they’re hiring 🙂