New Member from PA, with latest money pit, '78 Dodge Jamboree

[Xbird]

Hello everyone, glad to be aboard this very cool and valuable wagon!

About me, long time varied background dealing with mechanical and vehicular maintenance and repair. Love to fabricate, a pile of tools, some things/areas are no brainers and some are head scratchers for my skill set.

Picked up a '78 Jamboree in solid running condition last year to primarily use for hauling my little race rig/dual axle trailer for weekend races and taking the annual family camping weekend up in Knoebel's. Getting too old and ornery to tent it and trying to sleep on a mountainside in the back of my much abused pickup truck bed at the races had worn out as well.

The 'ol girl I picked had been treated fairly well, repainted at some point. Generator and oven I don't think were ever used, refrigerator is in kinda rough shape. Original orange shag carpet, swivel seating/upholstery also in surprisingly good condition for its age. Carpet is due for replacement, that'll be a wood floor of some sort some day.

Original or second owner was a TV repair shop owner, so a lot of old, kind of sketchy additional wiring was the first order of business to eliminate. Second item was to dump in a correctly wired speaker system for the cd player that came with it. 70's era gotta have 70's tunes, No? LOL

Was told brakes had been redone, lines and fittings all looked good and initially worked well. Likewise engine was supposedly rebuilt and an edelbrock carb put on it. That item I can tell needs replaced, definitely too small of a carb, time to monkey with an AFB some time soon, am an old hand with Q-jets and Holleys.

Brakes turn out to need a master rebuild. Really had no experience with a hydroboost system before and sort of thought that the excessively hard pedal was normal---drove a lot of manual brake antiquities in my time. After 3 runs thru the PA coal mountains, the error of my thinking reared its ugly had as I ran out of brakes coming out of the mountains and had to pull off a pucker factor move and put the  disco machine and trailer around the traffic lines and thru the first red light after an interesting ride down rt 901. Finally got her curbed, amid brake stink n smoke, cooled her down, added fluid to an empty front reservoir and limped her home.  W% Inspection revealed no fluid at the rears--at all, combo valve locked out and 1 front caliper with fluid (driver's). Bled and flushed it all, got brakes back and found seepage at the master/combo junction, so another job on the list. TY to Dave's link and this site for the manual dl

Also dealt with a simple airbag leak by cutting the hose end square, put that leak to bed and ended the wallowing cornering ... a little  .