Technical What are you working on?

My son started disassembling my th400 and his working partner stripped the head on one of the 12 point 3/8's bolts that are hollow down the middle .... ugh
So far he drilled it out to 1/4 inch and tried an ez-out but no luck

 

maybe 9 mm? It's a 12 point 3/8" hex head.

 

I'd weld a washer then a nut to it.

 

I'll suggest trying the metric socket, this is what they are supposed to look like

 

That's what I suggested but I guess one of the students melted a case or something, so heat near it is a last resort.

 

heh...it IS a 3/8" bolt! it's just a really weird 3/8" bolt

 

It's the thicker case with straight cut gear too, hopefully the instructor as a secret or two to save it

 

Managed to file fit the rings this afternoon , one of my least favorite jobs next to spiro locks...

 

I've decided that all the engines I build get normal sized rings, no filing. And pressed pins.

 

Yeah I'm getting there too but I cant help checking ring gaps before assembly.. These had .014 on the 2nd ring and .017 on the top. I opened em to .020 top and and .022 2nd

 

Oh, I check them....

 

I put a throttle cable bracket on my truck, and put transmission fluid in it, does that count? I plumbed air lines through the shop too... I'm a hard working mother

 

Burnouts yet?

 

No burnouts yet. Don't jinx me, damn thing might not fall out of a tree lol..

 

I'm well down the I can't help double checking rabbit hole myself. Ignorance truly is bliss and after having someone start my engine build that I was told is very good, I was happy. I discovered he talked very good but the work wasn't. Back to doing more myself and having a friend help. Ok, more like my friend helping a lot and me doing some myself. Engine has not even been fired yet. But now we're rechecking everything as we go forward. Lifter bores were too tight for .841 solid rollers and hadn't been honed properly. Out comes the rotating assembly to fix that. Found trash crushed into the rod bearings. Everything comes apart. Rings were good at .025 but since I might add a little more power(OT spray, or old school boost)down the road, we went ahead and opened the ring gap up to .028. We rechecked rod torque and found out the ARP 2000 bolts had either been over torqued and stretched or were a bad batch as the rods would not tighten and come out round. New bolts ordered, installed and everything is round and torques correctly agian, so on with the build. Put number one in and went to install the cam to get it degreed and found the no. 1 cam bearing scratched. New King bearings on the way and will be here tomorrow. Then, it's back on with the build. While I wait for the bearings, I might pull the old school crower stack injection setup out and clean it up in case we go stealth efi. But that will take me down the go faster rabbit hole for sure.

 

We can certainly be prisoners in our own minds... When you've done it long enough and it looks and feels right , it probably is. Fire it and drive it like you stole it

 

This is the #4 hole on a forklift I was given for free cuz it was “junk” and heading to the local scrap yard. Head gasket blew, guy kept running it till it overheated and dumped coolant into the crankcase till oil was running out the rear main seal area. Then he let it sit for 3 years before he gave it to me. Got it apart, cleaned up everything as good as it was going to get and then slapped it back together. Runs pretty good, no blue death smoke out the exhaust, and now I don’t have to trick the wife into helping me pick up heavy crap anymore! I love fixing stuff that others want to throw away for cheap. I have less than $200 in a awesome piece of shop equipment that will last for many years. Bonus was it was actually fun to work on something I had never worked on before! Now I might be able to work on something else in my shop!

 

My son's instructor tried heat this morning but it still didn't budge so my son spent most of the day drilling and taping the top with a punch trying to unscrew it, then repeating.
But he finally got it, I told him to take it outside and throw it as far as he could lol
I'm definitely doing red clutches but deciding on the Kolene steels or not, instructor thinks I don't need them but I'm the guy that likes to do things once and think it'd be good to put them in. Tomorrow he'll get prices of both, I checked quick online and it doesn't seem like a big difference but I don't know what kind of prices and markups the school supplier gives.



I didn't get much done today myself, ran the wiring harness to the back and separated left/right/center wires under the 41 truck bed.
Even though I keep the garage heat at 50 that concrete was freezing my backside off, spent way to long laying under trying to figure out how I ran the lower license plate bolts. For the life of me I don't know how I got to the back side of them lol
Since I couldn't shake the cold I decided to call it a day and come in to heat my joints, my arthritic joints that is.

 

I put some green frictions in Plan II last time, as I recall, and it's still going...

good luck

 

Getting ready to swap chassis tomorrow...

 

Is that a 4wd? Lmao!

 

Damn Lowriders

 

I painted my dash

 

My ‘63 Pontiac had an intermittent stalling and unsteady idle this past summer. Drove me nuts tracking down the issue. Swapped over to a known good carburetor, checked for vacuum leaks, tuned until I ran out of things to try. Had a couple local guys, who are a lot sharper than me, come over and take a stab at it- no luck.
I mentioned on another car site that the previous owner had installed a Pertronix ignition in place of the points ignition. A few commented maybe THAT’S the problem. So pulled the distributor last night and shipped it off to my distributor rebuilder. Figured he could give it the once over and recurve it as well as go back to breaker points. We’ll see how it goes.

 

I think I have a similar ignition problem with my 56. It ran good for years with the exact same carburetor and ignition (points) setup until I honestly ran the points too long… Anyway, I have now changed points and condensers twice and can’t seem to make it run like it should even with new plugs. Quality of newer points and condensers seem to be crap which has made me question whether to pull the Pertronix out of another y-block distributor I have and try it. Thankfully, I had a guy give me a bunch of old ignition parts recently, so I will probably see if there are any correct points in there before swapping it over. I would much rather just continue to run points if I can find decent ones.

 

My distributor rebuilder mentioned not to use old condensers. He said points don’t mind sitting around for years, as long as they don’t corrode, but condensers can deteriorate. I too asked him where to go for quality parts these days. I used to just get a good set from NAPA and all was good. These days it seems like a crap shoot.
I have an OT ‘71 that I run points and condenser in. It’s fairly high rev’ing so I run a 32 oz. set of points in it, to reduce bounce. I was shocked at the price when I replaced them last year, but they seem like a quality set, and the car runs great. Local place just looked at me weird when asking for them, so just ordered from Summit myself.

 

Have you checked the dist shaft for runout? This is one reason pertronix units get installed as they can tolerate more runout than points, if you can feel any side to side movements in the shaft it’s probably too much and is opening the points earlier or randomly. Just been through this myself, major difference after the bushing was replaced. My own experience with used points and condensers has been pretty good, I certainly agree the new parts are pretty crappy so whenever I’m at a junkyard I comb the place for sets, usually the newest old stuff is in commercial vehicles, go figure

 

Yep, I had that problem years ago so have learned to check that. This is a rebuilt distributor and tight as far as I know. But, I will now check it again so I can say I am not lying.