[BlueStreak91]

I had a good scare Saturday. I took our Chevelle to Cars N Coffee Saturday. Had a great time. On the way home, in traffic, I moved to the left lane to make a pass and hit the throttle pretty hard. The throttle did not return to idle. Both feet on the brake very hard, and in a matter of two seconds, both rear tires are laying down black marks at ~35mph. Bumped it to neutral and pulled the key back a notch to shut it down. I had to put the car in a very narrow median. With cars whizzing by next to me, I popped the hood to discover a broken throttle return spring. I was in a really bad spot relative to traffic, but I had no tools. I took the spring and stretched it with my hands, deforming the now straight end to add some length. The wire was too strong to make a hook with my hands. I took out my pocket knife and put the broken straight end in the frame of the knife, and used the frame to form a hook. I was quickly back on the road, but that was way too much excitement for me and the cars around me.


So how old was that spring? And why was there only one? We put that Edelbrock carb on there in ~1993. When we last rebuilt that motor, in ~1996, one of the two springs broke during reassembly. Forgot about it and never replaced it. The spring that broke Saturday was the "survivor" from the '96 rebuild, which was actually installed during the '86 rebuild. So that spring was at least 38 years old.



Lesson learned.