Threadliness is next to Godliness

New die arrived and the threads got cleaned up. This makes a huge difference in one's quality of life.  

 While cleaning the forward stud, I realized someone else had had the same problem as I had with the aft stud spinning under torque. What I thought was a blob of tar or undercoating was someone's slag-weld job.

 

It is especially amusing because the forward stud is actually a bolt and you can reach the head of it pretty easily to hold it. Oh well. The lower A-arm bolted on with its shims, and then the port side suspension is done. A combination of a child, an old front tube bumper, and a couple of tires got me to the ~150 lbs needed on suspension preload, then tightened it all down. Glorious!

I noted previously that the car had become very hard to start and needed a kick in the bum from ether. This was unusual, as the carb rebuild is not very old, and it has started up pretty quickly up until now. I cranked a while and then hopped out and began unscrewing the fuel line to the carb to see if it was getting fuel. As I jiggled the line where the fuel filter is mounted, it made some pretty jingle-bell noises. Since it's not even Halloween yet, I took the filter off and realized it had collapsed somehow and was not doing any sort of filtering at all.