Liv’s 1968 Coupe 289 Auto

The Owner of this car (Liv) noticed the engine was shaking pretty badly at idle making it a less than enjoyable experience. It was brought into us to look at along with the few little leaks it had as well for us to fix.

The car’s bodywork and paint are in excellent condition. Under the car it’s the same story with the chassis and the floor pans looking very solid. So in that respect it’s a great sound base to build from if we ever needed to.

The engine a 289ci has had a replacement air intake manifold and replacement carb which had the incorrect spacer on it. We replaced that and checked the jetting which needed only a tiny adjustment. The radiator has an electric fan fitted to the radiator and seems to work well and didn’t boil over after we had run it for around 45 mins. We gave the engine a good health check by checking all the compressions that were still very good, the oil pressure was now improved a little due to the new oil pan. The spark plugs were very worn and replaced so we could check the air fuel mixtures properly with a good combustion. The timing was also adjusted as that was out a little at idle.

The interior is pretty much stock how it was and again in great condition.

The wheels have obviously been changed to some nice chrome and the car is still running the standard drums brakes all round.

The issues we encountered was the oil pan drain plug was leaking due to the thread being worn which we replaced. The fuel pump was leaking along with the fuel filter again both replaced. We re-routed a new fuel line so it was not just flopping around by the distributer at the front of the engine. The auto gearbox had a couple of leaks in the usual places that were replaced. The rear diff has a tiny little leak which we will look at another day when we have a little more time on her. We suspect that idle issues could be around the cam being non stock but we would need to have a strip down of the engine to investigate. But, as the car is now so much better than it was and runs fine when it warms up we are happy to release the car as it is.