Overdrive, oil cooler, busted starter - oh my!

Post date: Feb 20, 2017 2:46:50 AM

My thinking seemed simple at the time. "The oil pan is dented and leaks, I want to get the car painted and don't want to pull the engine after it's painted. And I hate pulling an engine without the transmission. I know! Go ahead and put on a new oil pan, plus do the 200-4r swap! Simple!"

Yeah.

Highlights:

200-4r from Extreme Automatics, Stage 2, is in and works well. The swap from a TH350 was nearly as easy as advertised. TV adjustment was spot on in the first try.

Only have about 25 miles on it, taking it easy, so no conclusions yet.

Torque converter from R&R does stall at 3500 like advertised. It's pretty loose but moves around at light throttle just fine. Will have to see how it all works out.

Pulled the driver fender and touched up the firewall paint that got stained by the degreaser. That went just fine. Turns out the fender brace was about to fall off of the firewall mount.

Shaun figured out how to get the left side turn signal to mount OK in the bumper. The mount is horribly mangled, but it lines up OK now.

Figured out the door squeaks were coming from the detent lever's pivot point. A shot of lube fixed that.

Oil cooler installed and remote filter mounted to passenger wheel well. Oil temps stay around 140 generally.

Lokar locking dipstick mounted easily and Shaun figured out that can just bolt it to the driver side valve cover. Easy!

The Dayco lower rad hose fits a bit better than the Gates.

Lowlights:

The diesel adapter uses a different mounting gasket than the gas. Who knew?! I cannot find a part number for it, but it is in certain complete rebuild kits. I made one myself, and then........................

Discovered the outlets slam straight into the headers. No iffs ands or buts about it. Won't work.

So, NEW PLAN, get the Moroso adapter, hang off the normal filter mount, go to a thermostat and remote filter mount hanging on the passenger wheel well. Easy. More hose, more parts, and now it has a FORD filter. Ugh. Filter mount came from Hamburger's and is a super nice part.

The Moroso remote adapter is.... OK.... but there were several low clearance areas that I opened up a bit. And that was a quality part. I shudder to think what the cheap ones are like.

Starter is apparently intermittently failing. Left me stranded at a gas station - when I left my cell phone at home - but only 1/2 mile away. Walk home, get tools, go back, it fires up on second try using the remote trigger. Get it home, and plays dead again. Solenoid sinks 8A, just doesn't turn. Gear isn't locked up. All connections and ground points still good. Sigh.

After everything was installed after replacing the oil pan and getting the transmission, and mostly buttoned up, I spun up the oil pump to check for leaks. Amazingly, I noticed that there wasn't a stream hitting the pump drive from the rear galley plug. There is a method to remove it from the dizzy hole, but I broke a wrench trying to do that. Well, out comes the engine and transmission again! Get it all apart, pull the plug, and there's a pea sized glob of silicone on the back of the plug. WTF?! There's absolutely no reason for that to get into the pressure system, and easily could have destroyed the engine. Double sigh.

Spun the pump again after replacing the plug (brass this time), and got a strange hollow rattle/tap noise. Fine. Pull the pan. Pickup is spaced correctly. I think the pump housing is a little oversized and hitting the pan. Maybe. I don't know. It makes pressure. Just run it.

First time installing the pan I tried to use Moroso "can't rip" gaskets. Shrink wrap cardboard packaging, of course. Guess what happens as I pull them away from the packaging? Rips apart. Thankfully I bought 3 Felpro oil pan gasket sets. Ended up using all of them due to so much R&R.

Fancy tranny crossmember from the frame kit can't be used with a 200-4r with a deep pan. Had to drill holes in the middle of the bracket - instead of using the ledge that hangs off the side - to get it to line up. Putting it in "frontwards" means it doesn't sit on the mount ears. Putting it in "backwards" hits the deep pan. Triple sigh.

One of the new motor mounts was ever-so-slightly made incorrectly. It was about 1/8" too short, meaning couldn't actually get both engine bolts in. Thankfully I still had the prior set. The driver's side self-clearances against the headers and gets heat baked pretty quick. It has a tough life. The bad motor mount was from Korea. Old ones were from India. One new one was actually Made In USA! Wonder how long it had been on the shelf....

Destroyed the A/C liquid line moving around the remote oil filter. Dumped PAG all over the place, smoked us out of the garage for a while. Eventually got that replaced and A/C recharged. Still doesn't cool as well as it should, but it's OK for now.

Summit PS pump was making noise (surprise) so got a pump from PSC. It's advertised as "79 and earlier" and is very strange. It uses a press fit pulley, and a flare outlet, but all the attachment points were metric! I rethreaded the two important front ones to 3/8". Hard to do the back ones without making a major mess, so I left them. Destroyed the Summit pump housing trying to install the PSC pump - just could not get the thing to install. I had the PSC flooded remote reservoir can on the shelf, and it dropped right in. Flushed the system with their recommended Swepco stuff, remounted the Woodward can, aaaaand........ cavitated like a mo-fo. Like SCREAMED. OK, fine, this remote can thing just isn't going to happen. I get it now. So pull it all apart and try to install the pump in a spare standard can I had on the shelf. Won't install. I used to have 6 pump rebuild kits and never used most of the parts. Did I keep them? No. So I go to O'Reilly to buy a $15 box of stuff to get a single o-ring. The standard o-ring is slightly smaller than the one PSC ships. Pump installed just fine. So PSC uses oversized o-rings - and oversized housings. Fantastic. Anyway, works find now.

Bought a fancy Lokar throttle cable bracket, advertised for Holley but has dual pattern bolt holes. What could go wrong? Well, the holes for the Lokar cables were way out to the side, requiring new holes to be drilled and the now useless appendage to be cut off. So a lot of money for something that got heavily modified.

Lokar throttle cable inner cable frayed too much to be reused. That's fine, they're not expensive. Oh wait. I did find that hitting the cable with a butane torch for a few seconds hardens it, and it frays less after being cut. Key word is "Less".

Got the deep 200-4r pan from PML and used a 700-R4 filter. Had to add a packard terminal cover to the 4th gear switch (just so happened to have the right one!!) and grind down the filter standoffs so the pan would actually mount. But, no apparent leaks.

Torque converter has a very nice billet mounting ring / anti-balloon plate. That interferes with the Olds flexplate counterweight. Just ever so slightly. Spaced it out with 2 hardened washers. Seems to be OK.

Tranny inspection cover mounting holes are actually 1/4"-20 even though it's a metric case. I couldn't tell because the threads were all boogered. Shaun ran a cleaner through them.

I didn't get the lines for the oil adapter lined up perfectly right, so the third time installing them I ended up destroying the threads on one of the hose fittings and the adapter fitting. Of course it's a 90 degree hose fitting, which is crazy expensive. The next time I figure out how to realign the fittings after they're assembled.

Had to drill holes in the core support for all the cooler lines. Found decent fitting grommets at the hardware store. In the end it looks like a decent install.

Wired in lockup but doesn't appear to work. Haven't debugged that much yet.

The press fit PS pulley is slightly smaller than the keyway pulley, requiring a 7440 belt instead of a 7540. Thankfully O'Reilly stocks that one.

The lower rad hose inner spring - that I made - had gotten sucked into the water pump. No apparent damage. Took more care to make sure the rad side of the spring was firmly wedged in place.

The crank pulley bolts had all worked loose, and the mounting surface was really warped. Thankfully I bought a spare set that was already prepped and painted, and lock-tite'd the bolts this time.

The oil pump drive shaft got knackered by the 5/16" drive I use on the drill. Had to get a replacement. Turns out the OPP "special" shaft is just the standard Morosso shaft.

Added a 90 street fitting to the overflow recovery tank so the hose doesn't have to loop around and through the A/C belt. Turns out the manufacturer used a normal 1/8" NPT nipple for the hose, but threaded the can with 1/8" **BSP**. What the heck? The nipple goes in OK, but nothing else 1/8" does. I just so happen to have a 1/8" BSP to 1/8" NPT adapter for a pressure tester. So can -> adapter -> 90 -> barb. It'll seal.

So..... it's a project.

Errata:

Drill a "Hydroboost" hole in the brake pedal. hah!

Seriously, what does it take to get a PS pump to stop whining?

LED rear lights? Rear relays?

Slight clicking from passenger side when rolling ???

Finish whatever lead work and sanding I'm going to do

Paint!