Update: Engine is in, trans is in place and most everything is back together in terms of fuel, wiring, and coolant hoses.
Have a good list of things to do including replacing u-joints in the half shafts, putting the mufflers back in place etc.
Also bought a new battery this weekend! Was going to hygiene my old one as it was seeping a little bit around the caps etc, when I figured I'd check my receipt pile to see when I purchase it. The battery was still holding out strong, but was not holding the charge while I was not using the car.....for extended periods..... Found the receipt...almost 13 years! Time for a new one!
Well, this turned out to be not such an easy task! Seems that Sears no longer carries the particular battery that I was using, a 34/78 dual post version. Actually, they did have one, but at $240 with reviews complaining of the side post mounts breaking off...nope! Not going there!
Not wanting to drive all over town at $4+ a gallon of gas, I naturally turned to the internet to help me out. Well, unless you have an exact fit, ie year and model that the battery fits, you are basically SOL on most websites now! Gone are the good ol' days of getting cold cranking amp specs, external dimensions etc from the O'Riely and others sites.
Eventually I happened across a link on the Walmart site that let me cruise by battery manufacturer. There I found a Champion branded 78 series that had 800CCA and dimensions that were close to my old battery! BUT, there's always a but....the website said "limited stock" for my closest store...and calls to that store and others were met with inability to check stock, and other such nonsense...long waits, no answers..... eventually I found a store that had one, 10 miles up the road. I had to go past the closest store to get there, so figured I'd stop in and just check real quick like. Wife said she wanted something, so piled her and the battery in the truck and off we went!
The store did have a battery in stock (but not listed on the shelves! A #9 in the Walmart collection of Champion batteries) and I went and grabbed my old one to exchange on the core. Turns out the new battery is almost if not a perfect match in size to my old one! Scary how similar it looked....but then my web searches told me that there is really only one or two battery manufacturers left on this continent....
Stretched out the credit card, left my old battery, and hauled my butt out of that crazy place and back home! I had saved the little plastic "battery adapter" that came with my old one to make it higher....and the new one snapped right in place! I took it off again, cleaned it up with some baking soda and water and wiped it all down to look halfway decent!
Cleaned up the battery tray a bit with the soda and water thing, dried it, sanded and wire brushed a couple of small spots where the old paint had bubbled/lifted, and re-coated it with Eastwood's Battery Tray coating, a sort of rubberized paint to keep the oxidation down caused by battery acid.
While the paint was drying using a drop-light to warm the stuff, I decided to mess with my question of "proper rear shock absorber selection". Having cracked both of my upper shock mounts, the question came up as to if I had enough clearance in two areas, 1) the rubber travel limiters that I put on the shock shaft, and 2) spring bind.
After measuring and marking so I could return the spring to where I started, I removed it.
I mounted the shock back to the frame and used a floor jack to lift the tire up into the frame to the point where the shock travel contacted the travel bumpers. I still have bellhousing clearance at this point, using a level to check for ground clearance. I lift the tire even more to the point where zero ground clearance would be and measured the shock length. One last push on the jack gave me about as much as one could lift a wheel into the wheel arch (tire rubbing!) and was now starting to lift the chassis up. At this point, my bellhousing was about a half inch "below ground" indicating that if my shock compressed this much, I'd be dragging my bellhousing or darned close too it!
After I reassembled my spring on the shock, I measured my clearance between the coils. Depending on how you counted, there were 9 or 10 coil "gaps" to allow for compression. To give myself some room...I chose to use only 9 gaps.... Once I calculated the amount the shock moved to various points, ie zero clearance and minus clearance, the values still came in less than 9 times the coil gaps. Had I used 10 gaps, I would have had even more clearance, so I doubt that coil bind was my problem.
It is very possible that the rubber bumpers could have compressed and caused the frame brackets to crack, but man, you're getting down to the end of the ruler here and playing with less than 1/4" measurements..... I would hope that the rubber bumpers could have compressed under the shock of the bump we hit and tolerated the shock....
What I do know is that under normal circumstances, I have about 4.5" of shock travel from full rest (no load) to full compression..... (6" travel shock!) This was pretty close to what the stock shock had IIRC. I'll measure the shock length when I have the load back on it and go from there but I believe I'm sitting in the upper middle of travel when the chassis is loaded.
Weather has cooled quite a bit, but I think tonight I can work with the garage doors shut and get started on the u-joints and mufflers!
Also need to put a new seal in my clutch slave cylinder! That too is about 13 years old!!!
Ciao!
Steve
