Well,
This was supposed to be the final post! Got the car running tonight, but not yet drivable!
Worked on finishing up the final bits on my list....
Cleaned up the muffler outlet areas in the body and installed some heat barrier..."just in case".
Picked up the mufflers from the welder earlier at lunch. Came out very nice!
Fitted up the mufflers to the headers, tightened up all the bolts. Figured out earlier in the week that I shorted myself 6 of the little reinforcements for the muffler straps so ordered them from Wilkinson earlier in the day. Should be here by Thurs or Friday, but don't need them for now...
They look really good!!! Sorry, no pic's it was dark!
Son helped me put on the RH valve cover, spark plug wires, and fill the cooling system with water. Put some gas in the tank a little in the fuel bowls, a couple more quarts of oil in the pan and took the car down off of the 4" wood blocks it had been sitting on! Wow, back on the ground!
Fired up right away, but a fuel leak at the rear bowl inlet (my custom made transfer tube) had me scrambling to tighten that a few times....it wouldn't seal...but eventually convinced it that it wanted to seal!
Was running retarded, so tweeked the distributor a hair clockwise and she then idled up and smoothed right out! Warmed up nicely as one would expect with a new engine!!!
Ran it for a few minutes and then shut her down....only to find a water leak out the front of the water pump!!!??? HUH!
Found an extra mounting hole (probably for the alternator adjusting bracket when installed in a front engine config.....) that was open into the main water outlet! Now this the same water pump I was using before, so this is a mystery!!!! I know I didn't plug this hole previously! Or at least I don't believe I did!!!
As it cooled down, I dug around for a short 5/16"-18 bolt, lock washer and flat washer, and some Form-a-gasket and tightened it into the hole. Refilled the system with water, bled it again...and fired it up! Made a lot of difference as now the temp stabilized right away at the t-stat value..... fans on, no air into radiator ie external fan.
Here is a shot of the plugged hole. It is the center recessed bolt head in the center of the pic!
Ran the engine for about 10 minutes or so more, up to temp and then some, still haven't set timing, but keeping the rev's fairly low yet...rev's nicely very crisp throttle response with the Holley pretty much out of the box! Have not messed with idle mixture screws yet either!
Shut it down to clean up for the night...so I can get into work early....ugh! Checked under the car and found a tragedy!
The gulf coast has nothing on me!!! Texas tea...30W flavor!
Something is amiss out rear of the engine. Either I totally pulled a boner mistake and forgot the rear main seal (single piece get's installed last....) when it was on the engine stand, or my one piece silicon oil pan seal got bunched up somewhere...or there is something amiss with the crank oil seal surface.....
Enough for tonite, took pic's, tossed kitty litter on the evidence, and closed down the garage.
The saga continues.... But it's gotta be something simple....!
Ciao!
Steve
PS: I hadta look! Checked the gasket set box where I had tossed all of my extra gaskets from intake manifold fitting etc, and didn't find the rear seal. So at least I put that in.... Perhaps not the proper direction, but I believe I was cautioned about that, and I double checked the shop manual too.... damn! That would have been too easy! Ok, not that easy to fix...but easy to figure out! Crap!
Attachments
Images (4)
