Welp.... Took some time off (read being lazy) and didn't really touch the car. Got the driveshaft made and got the car running slightly better. Then my parent came down last weekend from Iowa and Dad helped me get the sedan down to the muffler shop I had made some crude kickouts for the headers so they dumped right behind the front wheels instead of straight out of the headers into the steering box and the fuel filter on the other side. It was loud and obnoxious but it worked. Trouble with obnoxiously loud is it hides other noises like the rocker stand valve cover bolt that at some point on the drive broke the threads off in the head. So here I sit writing this from my late model waiting on a tow truck to take it home. One of the downfalls of being 700+ miles away from our family car trailer. So we will still be heading to OK to the Roc and to visit with Timm and others. But sadly the car will be staying in time out at home. So my list of problems stands as follows: - Massive oil leak from the oil filter adapter. I've tried 2 stamped steel ones now one of which was the factory adapter. And I have a new billet (yuck) one that used an o rind to seal so hopefully that works better - rocker stand bolts will need to tear the motor down and possibly pull the head to get the threads out if the head. Also need to fine a new set of bolts. - the #8 pushrods have fallen into the valley. Best case they dropped down when the stand bolt broke. Worst case other issues like a flattened cam lobe and all that comes with that. - Trans leaks at the shift solenoid caps. - timing needs adjusted better - carb needs adjusted better - kinda ready for this one to be fixed and off to someone else if I'm honest. Sometimes this fun hobby of ours can be a drag. But I'll push through. Just in a pessimistic mood at the moment lol. On a happier note though the tow truck driver just delivered it into my garage so I wouldn't have to fight my steep driveway with a broken car lol. Leaks oil bad.
Man...sounds like my kind of problems. I’m sure you will get it all sorted out. Bummed you won’t have it at the Roc. Try to look me up when you are there. I will be with my son in his pink Edsel.
Last week through the weekend was pretty crazy. Muffler shop stuff I already posted about on Tuesday. Flew to San Angelo to tour 9 stores over 2 days that we are going to be remodeling at work on Wednesday and Thursday. Back home late Thursday then packing the truck and leaving for OK Friday. The finale being one of the coolest car shows I've ever been to. Most shows you go to ,cough, cough, goodguys, cough, you end up passing up 10 or more cars for every 1 truly good car. At The Gathering just about every single car there was absolutley incredible. And the venue was equally cool too. Great weekend helped sooth my let down from the car last week. It also made me day dream about quitting my day job and building hotrod rods for a living with no real hot rod building skills to speak of lol. A guy can dream though right.
Sorry I missed you @guthriesmith I didn't see your reply until tonight with everything going on. I meant to try and find you but then completely spaced everything once I got into the grounds. Saw the Edsel but didn't know it was you. @Tim and I were already talking about making sure our shit is on the road and sorted and coming back with cars next year.
Dude! I’m bummed I didn’t see ya at the Roc, and I missed your sad updates and so Tim told me what happened to your car… glad you still made it up there. Incredible wasn’t it!?! I’ll most likely be at Pistons and Paint too.
Well enough pouting I finally did some investigating last night... and it wasn't good. Cam card says .440 lift and I only had 1 go above .400 the rest were WAY off including #8 with the dropped pushrods and #7 with the crazy high lash I was talking about before (like .300 & .218 bad) I'm defeated make a "woah is me post" on IG. And resigned myself to sit on it until my yearly bonus at work in Feb. But something just seemed weird. Like even on the "good" cylinders the numbers were within a few thou. Which seemed very odd that thebcam would be worn .050 from advertised but almost all lobes worn almost the same amount. That doesn't happen like ever. Then I had a thought. A big mistake in my measurements. I never tightened up the lashsoneverybvalve was consistent. And no matter the lift if it still had a shit load of excess lash that would have to be taken up before moving the valve which is where I was measuring. (I realize this is very common sense to most everyone on here but bear with me I'm kinda fuckin stupid sometimes lol) So I decide to retest after removing the lash from the equation. Then I get a message from a random IG follow I don't actually know in person saying call me saw your post and I have some ideas. And he reminded me that there are multiple factory rocker ratios (again I'm pretty dumb when I don't want to be sometimes lol) anyway in a surprise to nobody but me I have the more common smaller ratio 1.43:1 rockers and the cam card clearly says .440 lift with 1.54:1 rockers. Alright now we're onto something. I recheck the lift and magically everything is pretty consistent still low but consistent. Well more consistent at least. Not great but it no longer looks like I have a flat lobe. So I do a Google search for a valve lift calculator .440 at 1.54 ratio means I have .285 actual lift at the cam lobe. Reverse engineer that and .285 lobe lift and 1.43 rockers gives me .407 lift. Some more googling brings me to Eaton balancing page where he's talking about if the rocker adjusters are run all the way in (mine are) then that can adjust rocker ration to be as low as 1.37 so I do the calculator again and bingo. .285 @ 1.37:1 = .390. Right in the ball park of where mine came in. They're still other variables at play which I think is leading ti me variance. Not even ruling out some wear on the lobes but they aren't flat and that's the important part. So my new plan is to try and get a slightly longer pushrod so my adjusters are in the middle of their threads. Possibly try and find some 1.54 rockers in good shape and I should be back to .410 ish to the actual advertised .440 lift. Then I just need to replace the rocker stand bolt that broke and I'm back in business... I think. I know it won't be perfect but for a street car I think it will he alright in the end.
Won't need to pull thebhead off to get the broken bolt threads out... theybwere sticking up enough. And actually I was able to get it with my fingers. No tools required. I think what happened was I didn't have the rocker stand bolts torqued correctly and they got loose to the point where 1 broke. But there were a number in that head that were loose when I took things apart. Still looking for a set of 1.54 rockers if anyone has an extra usable set laying around. Also haven't ruled out just buying a fancy aftermarket set.
Completely forgot about Pistons and Paint in Town this weekend.. but I did get longer pushrods and 8.258 vs the 8.122 I had. Doesn't seem like much but according to Eaton balancing website when the adjusters are buried like mine were it makes the rocker ratio as low as 1.37 instead of 1.43. Again not much but the difference was enough to put my adjusters back in the middle of their adjustment and the ratio back to normal.... (in theory) Regardless I installed those and reset the lash to .018. Started it and the lifters were pretty noisy. Pulled the valve covers to reset tighter and found one that the adjuster had either backed off of. Not sure what that was about but I reset them all a little tighter .015 instead of .018. Restarted the engine and everything was quiet after that. Going to recheck after I road test and see if it backs off again at which point I'll be shopping for new rockers I guess. Anyway I got my oil leak fixed. Went with an ugly billet oil filter adapter because it seals with an o ring instead of a gasket. While inwas under the car I also found 2 of 4 bolts that hold the 1-2 shift servo cover on were stripped and the cover was about to fall out completely. So I added some helicoils to that which should be better than bolts directly into the aluminum housing. That all fixed I now have a new trans leak that I need to track down. Going to save that for another day. I'm going to road test in the next couple days and try to find the next issue. Wish me luck.
Perseverance is a necessary trait in any car guy. Sounds good! I can’t go to Pistons and Paint so if you make it out I won’t be able to congratulate you in person.
Bummer. Not sure if I'm going yet my wife reminded me yesterday that the kids have a dance performance at a local craft show that day. Call it a solid maybe lol
Awe babe I got stuck in traffic…. Two towns over… in the ford….. at a car show…. Best to just wait it out at this taco stand I suppose
That's it.... I'm officially coming to you for all my marriage and parenting advice/decision making lmfao.
Very cool. As much as y-blocks are cool I'd keep the six and run a 3 speed with electric overdrive. Would be a cool and economical cruiser. I had my 55 ford lowered to 3.5 inches ground clearance.
Mine was my Mom's white '56 convertible. 292, B/W T86 trans w/O.D.... 11 of 'em. Transmissions, not convertibles. Turned pistons around for angular advantage from offset wrist pin. Juggled cam timing, my boss Red reworked distributer. Jetted the teapot carb, Mom gave me the car. This was a Chevy eater. And a transmission eater...
Well it's a little late for that but the 6 was pretty economical lol. And this y block swap has been kicking my ass for what should have been a drop in and go. Nice. Sounds like a fun car.
So put her on the ground and took it around the block. Transmission shifter like shit but it didn't seem consistent at all. It was all over the place didn't want to up shift. Started in high gear and even manual shifting it wasn't going as expected. Brought it home did some googling and realized that the green dot c4 which this is. You start in "2nd" position. I knew it was a green dot but forgot about the shifter placement. Went back out and magically all the wonky shifts seemed to go away when I actually used it right. Lol Still have a few issues to sort out though so even if I go to P&P most likely I will be sans car. Issues: 1. Trans leak - up near where the bell housing bolts on. Hoping it's just a pan leak and not a oil pump leak or something like that. It only seems to leak after you shut the engine off. Engine running it doesn’t seem to leak at all. 2. Hard to start and keep running when cold. Assume this is a tuning issue. Not sure yet if fuel or ignition 3. Wants to die when it comes to a stop. Which is less than convenient at stop signage and in traffic. Also wants to die in sustained slow speed. Again I'm thinking something to do with tuning. 4. Not sure if it's charging. I had to restart it a few times on my test drive and it seemed to be cranking a little slower with each start. (Still started every time and got me home though) 5. The throttle pedal feel is garbage. Not very responsive. Might have to forgo the cobbled factory style linkage and run a cable. yuck. 6. Turn signals stopped working for some reason. Already checked the fuse and it's good... but I have no signals at all. Going to recheck thebvalve lash to make sure that's all still good but I just got back so I'll let it cool down a little.
Of course I did it the easy way without feelers and just fingers but there were exactly zero rockers that felt out of adjustment. And I drove it/ran it longer than the last time when a couple were way out. Suppose I'll go with the noise test on those until I get the bug to actually check them for real.
Let's talk about the transmission leak. It doesn't leak really at all with the engine running. Maybe a drop the whole time I had it idling yesterday. And I kept checking because I knew about the bigger leak. The bigger leak happens after I shut it off and after about 30 min or so there is a decent size puddle. And then over night it was even bigger today. The leak seems to be coming from between the bellhousing and the trans case itself. But there isn't any drips or anything inside the bellhousing which makes me think it's not coming from the oil pump seal itself. If that were the cause wouldn't it leak out through the bell not from behind it? It also didn't leak like this when it was running before all the rocker and lash adjuster stuff a couple weeks ago. I did have to drop the pan and valve body to fix the shift servo bolts though. (Thankfully that previous leak seems to be fixed) ideas?
The Jalopy Journal
