[Rachelsdad]

Originally Posted by Jack Gifford

I've used Porto-walls back in the day. I don't recall wide-white ones ever being available. Mine were all about 1" whitewalls with about 1" black between the rim and the whitewall, to mimic whitewalls of the sixties.

Jack, I did a quick search around the net, and it appears that both 2" and even 3" Portowalls are available here and there (eBay, Amazon, etc.). Who knew?

Originally Posted by Parkman51

So, for today's two questions...
1. According to the manuals, you're only supposed to apply weatherstripping sealant to the bottom third of the doors. Assuming this is correct, why would it be so? Wouldn't it be better to have the whole thing sealed?
2. Other than the above, what are some other bits of physical/appearance maintenance I can perform while the rest of the car is napping?

Okay, so... It is fine to put adhesive all the way up and around. You don't want to over-do it, of course, as then you'll have some messy cleanup, but you want the seal to be tight against the door. As for why the manual says that, my only thought is that the bottom 1/3 was considered the bare minimum for the weatherstrip to seal, leaving the clips and screws (if any) to hold it in place. Ignore that, however; your thinking is correct.

As for other things to do, you could get under the front and check for play in the various steering components and grease things up. Be sure to clean the zerk fittings well first, so you don't push dirt into the joints with the grease. You want to put in enough grease to make the boot puff up (assuming there are grease boots at all on these cars), but not so much that it's blowing out all over the place. I use a pneumatic grease gun except for my silicone grease which I use for polyurethane bushings (irrelevant for this discussion). That said, a decent hand-operated gun should do fine. Get the right sized tubes for the gun, of course (or vice-versa). Good use of your downtime. Edit: Looking at the ship manual now, I see that my prior mention of zerk fittings and such seems to have been off-base, as I can't even find points to grease. (Guys, a little help here?) It does seem like (and ISTR) wear may occur in the kingpin bushings, so the wheel-wobble would help identify that. Again, I'm somewhat out of my depth WRT kingpin suspensions, so I'll need to defer to those who know.

Back to Pertronix for a moment: I may have been thinking of a different thread. Honestly, at least for pedagogical purposes, I'd stick with points and condenser for now. You can always upgrade the ignition at a later date, and learning - and applying - the theory of how these things work is valuable in and of itself.