more stuff

I haven't gotten around to updating in a while, I keep wanting to have pictures to go along with the posts and the cable connector on the camera's all screwed up, so it's kind of a pain to get pictures off of the SDcard... but, it's been too long.  

Last time I posted, I'd gotten the transmission out.  Since then I took the transmission to the car wash, hosed it off to get a lot of the crud, then I started brushing it off some more, scraping in the nooks and crannies, removed the last pieces of the transmission cooler lines, it looks much better.  I don't know about painting the transmission, I don't want to totally have it broken down unless I have to.  I'd love to just take it to a transmission shop to be inspected to make sure it doesn't have anything broken in it, don't know what that would cost.  Anyway, it's not a big ugly pile of greasy dirt and metal on the garage floor anymore.  

Here's a close-up of the rusted-out transmission cross-member.  Another part to the list (eBay, here I come..)

After I got the transmission out, I rolled the car out of the garage to do some clean-up... I cleaned the garage stall (that was long overdue), hosed out the inside of the car to get a lot of that lingering dust taken care of and I started scrubbing out the engine compartment.  It's quite a bit cleaner, but I need to take a lot of components out yet at some point like the brake lines, etc.  

On the engine side of things, I cleaned up the intake manifold some more and might paint it one of these days. I also took all of the lifters out, rotated the engine (I really need a new stand), took off the oil pump and dipstick.  I tried to remove the vibration damper, but I can't get that bolt to move at ALL, even with my breaker bar.  That doesn't bode well.  I need to get that thing off.  

I have peeked into the timing cover to look at the timing chain and poked at it... it is totally loose in there like it's only attached to one pulley or something... DEFINITELY 'out of spec' loose, so that'll be a replacement item for sure now.  

Looking at the rods on the underside, I see that a lot of them are stamped, but stamped wrong.  Like the rod on the Number 1 piston is labeled '5'... I don't know if the engine was ever rebuilt in the past, I didn't think that it was, but that's kind of a warning sign, isn't it?  

Still hoping the cylinders aren't worn too much so I can just hone and re-ring, re-use the pistons.  I'm leaning towards decking the block a bit to raise compression on the engine, assuming it isn't a cost-prohibitive machining option.  

Interesting note... I don't remember if I mentioned earlier but there were little black plastic chips under the valve cover on the heads.  Not good, right?  They were in the oil pan, too... and as I was cleaning up the oil pickup, they started raining out of the screen filter dealio on it.  I'll take a picture and post it, but it's pretty bad, oil flow must have been pretty well-compromised considering the volume of plastic chips coming out of the oil pickup.  

What I NEED to do next really is fix the brakes, I think.  The calipers pistons are rusted in place, I think... I could work on restoring/rebuilding them or... just get replacements from O'Reilley for $25 a piece... hmmm... that's a real tough decision.  Probably first I should just get the parking brake working, though.  I'm not sure if I have to replace everything with it, last time I tried to get at it on the rear wheel I couldn't even get the drum off of the axle.  

I've been thinking about paint, too... I think I might want to go with cobalt blue instead of the stock color... which means the engine compartment won't match (unless I pay to have that done in cobalt too) so I'm thinking of doing the engine compartment in black, with silver accents and the Chrysler blue engine.