My dad (Rudi) is the mechanic. He can get anything working. We wanted to get the car out to Moose Jaw (420 miles west of Winnipeg)where he lives so that his friend Dave Tilley could start the body work. We don't own a trailer, so we thought, "It runs. Why not drive it?"
My dad came down on July 6. We worked for two days to get the Imperial ready to drive. It was running when we bought it, but it was running very poorly. The first thing we did was bleed the brakes. Once we did that they seemed to work fine. The engine was running on about six pistons, but a new set of Champions cured that problem. We then tried to take the car for a spin down our lane, but a horrible grinding noise coming from beneath the car cut that trip short. The steady bearing on the drive shaft had come unbonded from its mounting bracket. We removed the driveshaft, drilled some holes in the bracket, and ran screws through the rubber. This seemed to hold good so we put it all back together.
The two main problems we had were in the area of fuel and electrical. In the fuel department we had a leaking gas tank and a fuel pump that sprayed gasoline straight up into the air. We fixed the tank ourselves, but the fuel pump remained a problem. If you are restoring or own a 1957 Imperial, you know that 392 parts aren't available at the Automotive section of your local Wal-Mart. We found one place in Winnipeg that could help us in this area. The place is called Automotive Accessories Corporation (AAC). It is in the worst part of Winnipeg and there were mice running across the floor as we waited there. The people there are amazing. They did not have a new pump for us, but they rebuilt the old one in a matter of a few hours, for $50! That is less than $35 US!
So we had our fuel problems fixed. Now we needed to get our generator repaired. That was done without too much trouble, but when we hooked it up it still didn't work. We came to the realization that the last person who had worked on the car had hooked it up wrong; probably causing the burn out of the first generator. Once we figured that out and fixed a few light bulbs, we were ready to roll. Only a minor hassel with the DMV and we were legally ready to roll.
