Summer work

I keep doing this and that to get things done...

I borrowed an air compressor and impact wrench and got the damper bolt off of the block.  THAT was fun... the coworker that loaned me the impact wrench is giving me an old air compressor that needs a new regulator, can't wait to get my own impact, etc.  Then I took off the timing chain cover, chain was very loose.  Turns out the cam sprocket was a 'silent' model with plastic teeth, many/most of which were chipped off which is where all those piece of plastic came from that I've found throughout the oiling system.  Lovely.  Took that stuff off, took out the cam, took off the flywheel, cleaned up the cam hardware, bagged and tagged it.

I got a die grinder a while ago and finally broke it out yesterday.  I cut off a piece of the driver's quarter panel to practice with my stick welder... very fun cutting.  Ground the bondo and paint off of a good section of the metal, clamped it down and got to practicing.  I had checked out 'Welding for Dummies' from the library and the one item in there that was the key was the instruction of starting a stick weld by striking the metal like you're striking a match.  What I found works better is... and this is probably kind of obscure... to strike it like you're doing a turkey call.  I watched some hunting show years ago where a guy was all done up in camo, talking in hushed tones to the camera, etc... a super tense situation... the turkey across the field... he said he'd try to pull it in closer and then  you hear this 'creeeeeek, creeeeeek!' croaking noise from him scratching some kind of stylus on a pad of some sort.  Apparently that's a turkey call.  Anyway, that kind of action is what worked for me, scratch at where I want to spot weld and after a few scratches and sparks, eventually an arc will form and hold to drop the spot weld.  It's messy as hell, but appears to be structurally sound.  I want to go buy sheet metal now!!!!  I welded a nail to the metal.

Before I rebuild the engine, I need the car structurally sound to put the motor back in... which means the torsion cross-member mount and the front frame rail  on the driver's side.  The torsion mount will only set me back about $150 so I'm going to order it in September to get that started.  I had worried about cutting out and rewelding the torsion bar mounts as per the instructions online, but when I was looking at it last night, the piece I have to replace just has the bar going through it, not mounted to it. so that's cool.  It'll just be a matter of cleaning up and cutting away all of the rusted stuff so I can 'cleanly' weld the repair piece in there.  Then the same process for the frame rail (but that's $300).

I've also been cleaning up the timing cover so I can paint it.  I want to deburr all of the casting stuff off of it, though, so I'll get a set of stones for that.  I wish I had a better tool than my regular drill to connect that stuff to.

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. 

tranny out!

I haven't updated in a while, I've been holding back until I can post pictures, but I did get the transmission out.  Going to need a new transmission crossmember (rusted through)... and bolts while I'm at it, they're pretty rusty.  But it's out... got it hosed off for now.  Turns out the shift linkage DOES 'just' lift off of the transmission.  Problem was that it was caked and surrounded with crap so I couldn't really just lift it off, but I was eventually successful.  I'll get the dip stick tube off, tighten the pan bolts, clean it up a bit more and put it into storage on a lower shelf somewhere hopefully in the next couple of days.

So now I can roll the car out of the garage again (since the transmission isn't resting on wooden blocks anymore) and clean up the floor, clean out the car more, etc.  I'd like to get the brakes working and get my bench/table set up so I can practice welding.

Painted manifold

There it is.  :-)

pretty exhaust manifolds...

I degreased and cleaned up the exhaust manifolds and painted them with silver header paint.  They look pretty awesome... all shiny and clean, like new parts!  I can't post the pictures because the camera cable is messed up, but it'll happen one of these days.  Makes me really want to clean off and paint more stuff like the heads, oil pan, etc... but I'm going to be taking the heads to get hot-tanked and everything, so I'll hold off on the paint there.

Engine inspection

So... I commented already that the lifters are concave and need to be replaced along with the camshaft.  Not a big deal except that I was planning to go with the 340 stock cam which has a higher lift than the 318.  I'm assuming (a bad thing, I know) for planning purposes that I could make that swap on a stock 318 motor with no issues, specifically regarding valve clearance with the pistons.  I could check that clearance pretty easily with putty on a piston, bolt the heads and everything back on and use a feeler to measure what thickness of putty is 'unpenetrated' by the valves through an engine cycle... which I will do before I order a new camshaft.

Where the wrinkle comes in is with the pistons.

First of all, the cylinder bores are totally smooth which means they should really be honed by a machine shop after I have the block inspected.  If that honing puts them out of tolerance for stock pistons, I'll need to replace the pistons regardless of anything else.  Another reason I may want to replace the pistons is to increase the compression ratio of the motor (stock is 8.5:1... which is kind of low).  So if I 'have to' replace the pistons due to clearance after honing, why not just get the higher-compression pistons anyway?  Well, because those higher-compression pistons poke up higher into the combustion chamber where the valves are moving...  so if I have a camshaft that pushes those valves into the chamber farther (which increases airflow), the risk of hitting the pistons goes up.  Although, the pistons I was looking at have notches cut into them to accomodate the valves, however those are likely cut for stock valve lift.

So... the future is uncertain.

The safest path is to just keep the stock pistons/compression ratio.  Even if I need new pistons, I can keep them at stock and not risk the valve clearance issue with the new camshaft (I assume).  Actually, the safest path is to just use stock replacement parts, but even though my family insisted that the car had 'plenty of power', MOPAR documenatation says that engine made about 185hp which... doesn't seem like 'plenty' to me.  The camshaft change and bumping up the compression ratio would theoretically be cheap/free ways to get more power out of the motor if I'm already replacing the camshaft and pistons and I'd hate to have to go back into the bottom end of the engine at some point in the future in order to make those changes.

So... bottom line is that the cylinders need to be honed to give them the cross-hatch needed for proper ring operation... I'm going to have the block cleaned/hot-tanked and inspected beforehand so I'll know if it's cracked anywhere or if anything is out of tolerance that needs to be addressed.  I'll also have them put in new cam bearings at that time.  It's also possible that the decks might need to be milled to be flat which would increase the compression ratio even with the stock pistons, but I'll still need to check clearance beforehand to see if the stock pistons with the new cam would still clear if some of the decks are milled down, so I need to make that check of the valve/piston clearance check before I tear it all apart and have the block cleaned and inspected.

Meanwhile, I still have to pull the transmission, clean up the cylinder heads (and transmission), etc.  No rest for the wicked.

heads pulled

Hey, I'm down to the short block!  Some brackets and stuff to get off yet, motor mounts, transmission brace, oil dipstick, etc, but pretty near there.  I have to rent/borrow a puller for the damper too but I may be ready to let it rest for a while, once I get the oil pan all drained.

Took the intake manifold to a car wash to pressure-clean it... much better.  I'll do this with the heads, too.

First pulled cylinder head.  Those are some dirty combustion chambers.  Can't wait to see what the intake valves look like on the other side.

Closeup of combustion chamber deposits.  I may just get new valves.

Much lighter on the stand... I should weigh the intake and heads.  It's fun to turn the crank and see the pistons go.

My shelf of parts gets more loaded.

Checked the lifters, they're worn concave so it's looking like the cam/lifter upgrade/update is required rather than optional.  340cam, here we come!  :-)  I can't figure out how to take the pulley off of the water pump... there are no screw heads or anything that I can see through the holes on the outside of the pulley.  I know it has to come off... because there are bolts in there that won't even come out all of the way with the pulley in the way.

I'll probably leave it as it is for a while... probably.  We'll see.  There are still brackets and stuff to take off, but nothing big for now, until I get a damper puller and take off the front cover... then the timing chain and whatnot... I should get the transmission out first, but it's so easy and tempting to take things off of the motor.  Also need to play with the welder and work on the body, for that matter.  The engine is a serious distraction...