Markeb01 Build Thread

[markeb01]

Wow! Good eye!! I hadn't even noticed that information when I took the picture!!!

[1Bad62Pro/Street]

Originally Posted by markeb01

Wow! Good eye!! I hadn't even noticed that information when I took the picture!!!

Gotta have a lil' fun with ya.
Can't wait till you fire ya motor up and break her in.

[Bomp]

Can't wait for the gear drive install. I watched the videos but cant pick up on the wine from the GD. My speakers are shot.


Great work on the motor.

[markeb01]

One downside of being retired and working alone whenever I feel like it, is needing some extra muscle and all the guys I know are at work! So here’s another reason I’ll never get rid of the engine hoist. I pulled the hood off with it today. Not a very stylish process, but it was easy to accomplish by myself.

First thing up I removed the chain and hook that came with the boom. I looped some spare chain over the top and bolted it to the boom. The ends were inserted in the hood opening and attached to the upper latch bolts. The paint was protected with chunks of water pipe insulation I’d never gotten around to using.



The hood was fully opened and the bolts removed. Surprisingly it sat in place and did not slide back:



Once the bolts were removed, it was lifted straight up. Eventually it became obvious with only one person to wiggle it over the hinges it was easier to remove the spring from the passenger side hinge. I removed it the same way I installed them, using a ratchet strap hooked to the bench leg.

Then it was a simple matter of wheeling the hood over and parking it:







I guess it’s time to get to work:

[Ta2Don]

Love the ingenuity!!!
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[McMurphy]

The more tools I get, the more I like working with them... This is a perfect example of something I would do, well ..... if I could think of it !!

Rock on Mark, you are certainly keeping us interested

[rusty76]

Finally finished reading this bad boy and man am I impressed. Thanks for sharing with us!

[gimmy 64]

i am kind of in the same boat as you Mark. the one friend that wants to help is 72 years old and not in the best health. my other nieghbor is 50 and asks more questions than a 4 yearold. so i end up doing alot of things myself. i endened up puting in my 200-4r tranny all by myself. but my friend had a motorcycle jack that worked great as a transmission jack. you use what you've got

[markeb01]

Thanks for taking the time to check in and comment guys.

Well I seem to be committed at this point. Everything that could be removed from above has been taken off, including the motor mount to engine block bolts. Everything is off the front of the engine including the balancer. The only items still attached are the exhaust manifolds. When I slide under to do the rest of the disassembly, I want to determine if they can just be detached from the heads and left connected to the head pipes. It would make putting the exhaust system back together a lot less work.





If my back can tolerate crawling around on the concrete tomorrow I should be able to have the engine out in one day. I'm impressed with how much pain I can endure, and recover from when I'm having fun. There isn’t that much left to accomplish. Drain the engine and transmission, pull the driveshaft and transmission connections, place a jack under the trans and remove the crossmember. Rather than removing the Hurst linkage from the trans, I hoping I can get away with just removing the shifter handle. With the trans crossmember out of the way, I should be able to tilt the engine far enough to pull the engine/trans out in one piece, at least that’s the plan. I’m also going to try and leave the radiator and electric fan in place, but there may not be clearance.

I also need to determine where and how low I can attach the engine tilter to provide maximum clearance with attainable lift.

[likaroc13]

Wow, you're a man on a mission for sure! Looks like pretty smooth sailing thus far, so I hope it keeps going that way for ya.
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[da_bears_da1]

Good luck with the engine pull. Hope you have the clearance you need! Looking forward to seeing how it goes.

[rusty76]

Good luck with the engine pull.

[markeb01]

Today was another 11 hour marathon work fest. My wife got off work at 7 am and still pitched in another 4 hours helping me get the engine out. I am so fortunate to have her for a partner.

In reviewing the day’s achievements, here are some of the highlights. First priority, there were no injuries, and nothing was damaged. Yippee!

Before attaching the engine tilter I coated the threaded rod, rollers, bottom rails, and end washers with general purpose white grease. It made a world of difference in ease of use.

I had previously removed the intake manifold so I could mount the tilter as low as possible (in order to provide maximum lifting clearance). I centered the device on the chains, and then stretched them nearly straight to the sides and bolted them to the upper outboard holes on all 4 corners of the heads. It worked perfectly and changing balance was easy.

I did not want to remove the radiator because the battery box, electric fan, and overflow tank are all part of the installation. With everything forward of the timing cover removed from the engine, clearing the radiator was no problem at all. I was able to leave the shift mechanism attached to the transmission, and I left the transmission crossmember in place. The exhaust manifolds had to come off during the extraction. The right manifold prevented the engine from turning to go out over the battery box, and the left manifold hung up the clutch slave cylinder. Having that learning experience in the bag they’ll be left off until the new engine is back in place.



The engine was out just about time for lunch, so it was left hanging while we took a break:





The engine compartment could really use a week of clean up and prep, but will likely get a couple of hours at best. I’m more interested in getting it back in service than detailing.



It was somewhat frustrating that it took almost two hours to get to this point after pulling the gear drive from the other engine:



I had to check and set the clearances per the original Pete Jackson specifications, and then discovered the center hole in the Comp Cams locking plate was too small for the thrust button. Eventually I got it opened up with a Dremel grindstone. With all the clearances in spec the cam was torqued up and the cover installed. The engine was turned upside down again and the oil pan, oil filter adapter, and starter were installed and torqued to spec. The motor mounts were attached loosely, so it might be a little easier to get the tower bolts started.



And then I spent another hour with Goo Gone and a Bondo spreader scraping the rest of that damn self destruct paper sticker off the oil pan! What an annoying waste of time.



And here’s where things left off tonight.



Every part that will be reused has been removed from the engine. If all goes well tomorrow, everything from the flywheel back will be hanging on the new engine by the end of the day. But first everything in the garage needs to be cleaned and reset to start over. I ran out of tools and places to set things down several hours before I quit for the day. Once everything is that much of a mess I have a hard time figuring out what I’m doing.

Another decision I’ve made is the under manifold spark plug wires are going away. I love they way the looked, but absolutely hated trying to do anything with the distributor or the plugs. With the current setup I couldn’t even remove the distributor cap without first pulling all the wires off it. It may not look as nice but I’m going back to over the valve cover plug wires. I like being able to pull the cap and wires as one unit and take the whole thing off the engine when the need arises.

[clemdaddy]

nice mark... you're running in a marathon and close to the finish. keep'er going buddy.
i'm a fan of the (over the valve cover) wires too.

[CRGRS 66]

Great progress Mark!

[pdxhall]

The engine's looking great, Mark. I bet you can't wait to hear that thing roar to life.

[Bomp]

Glad to hear everything went smoothly for the most part. No injuries.
Like the tripod set up.
Just in time for summer to cruise.

[Jmorales3181]

Nice progress Mark! I like the hood removal tool! More and more reasons why it's nice to have a cherry picker handy. Can't wait for the first driving video!
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[Ta2Don]

Lookin' Good Mark, as always, such meticulous attention to detail and awesome documentation!!!

[piratexpress1369a]

nice work as always

[MisterC]

As many others have already stated, Great work and Amazing detail. I truly appreciate you taking the time to chronicle all of this for us, especially after such a long day of work. Thank you!

[markeb01]

Monday night I ordered the new plug wires and looms from Summit. They will arrive tomorrow. The dipstick & tube arrived today. Turns out the first one I bought was for the driver side. So far that appears to be the only goof I’ve made so far on this project, setting me back about $10.

Yesterday was a comparatively short day, only about 6 hours. After reorganizing the garage and rehanging the tools, my squeeze cleaned up the intake manifold, valve covers, bellhousing, and transmission while I installed more parts on the new engine. The intake manifold came out looking like new, and I decided with a little care in hanging the engine I could get away with installing it while on the stand:



To clear the new chrome oil fill tube I attached the chain in two places and spaced both away from the head with a couple of small sockets:



With the engine now in the truck I can state that it worked fine and the oil fill tube suffered no injuries. I also slapped on the starter, motor mounts, and oil filter, although that was empty and temporary.

The flywheel looked nearly new, but the friction surface on the pressure plate looked somewhat wavy (no scoring or burn marks). I assumed the clutch plate may have had different friction materials on each side. I pulled the centrifugal weights off the diaphragm fingers easily, and noticed the tips of the spring fingers also looked somewhat unevenly worn. Since I never liked the clutch in the first place, it was tossed and a new replacement set was acquired from Napa:

The flywheel was mounted and torqued, and per GM instructions all the paint was scraped or wire wheeled off the mating surfaces of the block where the bellhousing bolts on. We knocked off about 2 pm so we’d have time to go pick up the new clutch. It was installed this morning:

My wife had to go in early tonight, so we were on the job by 8 am so she could get to bed by noon. The clutch and bellhousing were quickly installed:





I immediately realized I forgot about the black dust shield that covers the bottom front of the bellhousing:



So the starter and oil filter had to be pulled back off so the shield could be added. I was extremely careful aligning the clutch, even checking it with two different plastic alignment tools. Personally I’ve never had very good luck with those plastic things compared to a spare input shaft, and this was no exception. We struggled for 45 minutes trying to get the tranny to pop in that last half inch, and it was having no part of it. So I finally resorted to my old trick of stepping on the clutch to release the disc, allowing the pilot shaft to self align. The only problem being I’m a little short of clutch linkage at the moment, so I fell back on my old friend the ratchet strap. I wasn’t sure it was strong enough, but I connected one hook to the fork and the other to the shifter, gave it about two pulls on the ratchet and the trans just popped into place!



The engine/trans went in with almost no effort, although I did disconnect the shifter head and let it hang loose on the linkage rods. Here’s what it looked like at noon:



And it still looked exactly the same at 6 pm, because that’s how long it took me to install the two tower to motor mount bolts! It spent 4 hours trying to get either bolt started, before removing both mounts to see if something was wrong with them. They looked terrible, with rubber flash all over, the problem bolt hole was not chamfered like on the old mounts, and rubber flash was intruding into the bolt hole on one of the mounts. I was disappointed because they are the first parts I can ever remember buying from Napa of such poor quality. The previous pair had no markings, while the new pair were identified as having been produced in Korea. The mounts on the old engine also came from Napa, and at 8 years old still looked better than the new ones.

So after chamfering the hole, retapping the threads, and scraping off all the flash, the left mount bolt started right in. The right side consumed another hour and went no where. I finally gave up and reinstalled the old motor mount, which had no trouble taking the bolt!

What a waste of time. I absolutely hate the design of these mounts, but until someone markets the tubular version for a 60-62 frame, I guess I’m stuck with them. Due to the time lost on the motor mount bolts nothing else was accomplished today. Tomorrow should be a much easier day since all the heavy lifting is completed.

I need to replace the rear u-joint. One of the rear caps got hung up by the u bolt, which pulled the cap off scattering a few of the needle bearings. Fortunately I have a couple of new u-joints in the boxes so hopefully it will be a free fix. These are the only parts left to go back on the truck:



Since there is so little, I may take a bit of time and clean up/repaint some of the stuff like the pulleys and water pump. No matter, we’re in the home stretch.

And here’s what’s left of the old engine:



Since I don’t really like inviting strangers to my house for something so bulky and difficult to load, it will probably just take a ride to the recyclers for about 10 cents a pound.

[markeb01]

Another couple of interesting observations. My old engine had holes in the front and real rails for the rubber intake manifold end seals, that long ago had probes that fit in the holes to hold the end seal from slipping. The new block is smooth with no holes, since almost nobody uses either the cork or rubber end seals any longer.

A minor disappointment for me was discovering that the two vertical bolts on the front of the block in front of the fuel pump, are no longer drilled through and tapped. I've always used the upper hole when changing fuel pumps to hold the pump push rod in the up position with a temporary longer than stock bolt. In attempting the same short cut on the new engine, it became obvious the hole is neither drilled all the way through or tapped all the way through. Not a big deal, I just used some white grease to hold the push rod up while the pump was installed. I was just disappointed to realize they deleted that feature as it was a nice convenience.

[66-PMD-GMC]

Too bad we don't live close Mark... I would buy it for my brothers truck.. He wants a sbc..

[coulter]

great progress man!! a fresh motor is always a good feeling!!!!