Settling down the build

Post date: Oct 15, 2012 1:03:49 AM

Another very busy weekend! Shaun and I pulled the engine again last week. Primary task was to re-degree the cam and likely retard it to try to help the detonation, replace the balancer oil seal, and, oh yeah, see how much stuff I broke.

Turns out the whole "who needs a dipstick, just stick a rag in there" plan wasn't a good one. The thing was spitting oil out the side and sucking in who-knows-what. Not one of my finest moments.

Friday I dropped the pan and removed the intake. The permatex on the oil pan gasket worked really, really well, but it was still just too messy to work with, so I switch to the high tack spray. I spot checked a few rods and the bearings looked pretty good:

A few marks through the coatng, but no copper showing. That's really good for me!

Degreeing the cam did not go well. Alum heads + cheap mag mount = frustration. It flexed at max lift, and my measurements came out a whole 7deg less duration than the cam card. I still retarded it, and it appeared to land with an ICL of ~110deg. The card is 106deg = 4 advanced.

The Flatout intake gasket had just spray high tack and silicone. It compressed really well and pulled off really easily, but looks like it might've delaminated in a few areas and leaked oil. I had to open up the cuts a little because they were smaller than the head's ports. Maybe that did it in? Also on the runs I had noted #1, #7 and #8 spark plugs had heavy carbon build up while all the rest looked nearly new. I assumed just those were running really rich at idle due to poor fuel distribution due to wonky carb. After looking at the gasket, it might've been a bit of oil pulling in. Certainly nothing like before I had the intake milled, and the ports in the head didn't look very oily. But that's the guess now. Switched to Cometic intake gaskets. Also have a plain set of (I think) SCE's. Might be Mr Gaskets. Standard stuff, at least.

The reinstall went pretty smooth. Shaun had the stellar observation that cutting part of the tube off the Lokar dipstick makes installation *much* easier. And since I have my special Stick Guide (tm)(pat pend), the tube isn't important. After wrangling with the headers, I found that it was pretty easy to install the dipstick after the header is mounted.

In other news, Shaun replaced all the major seals on the tranny, and it's no longer leaking! I also got a new yoke as the old was had a deep wear ring in it. And I learned that installing u-joints isn't as easy as one would hope. I might've messed them up as they were somewhat stiff after installation.

A new carb core came in and I cleaned it up and tossed it in. Need to start all over on calibration as it acts completely different than the other three. But I seem to be a lot closer everywhere except idle. Idle is crazy lean (16:1 or leaner) and won't fatten up. Once I'm certain there are no other air leaks and nothing else can be done, I'll start modifying the idle tubes more. Currently at 0.037". I experimented with tapping the collars for primary blade screws so they're easier to remove (and maybe without destroying them!) but that had mixed success.

When I fired it up there was a *terrible* racket. I let it run for a few minutes trying to figure it out, immediately thinking I must've forgotten to torque a rod cap or something. I just messed up the adjustment of one rocker - it was several turns loose. It got banged around, but there was no damage to the pushrod or rocker! These fancy Comp pushrods are good stuff.

There seemed to be some air leaks along the top of the intake. I haven't checked plugs for oil yet.

Still have some pinging when lugging it. Less pronounced, but still there. I have the vacuum advance back to 4 turns, haven't gone all the way out to see if that takes care of it. It's mostly around 2200 RPM, so I might need to use a smaller advance bushing, lower the initial and use heavier springs. So many variables...

This week's humorous problems:

The water temp sensor adapter snapped in half:

The solution!:

The tranny caught the shifter cable on the way in and ripped it apart:

For now I'm just shifting by grabbing the column and twisting. Good thing this one still has the backdrive!

After some heavy reading, I bought one of the Shiftworks conversion kits (a pre-buy, since I plan on going to a 200r4 eventually!) with their cable, and also bought a genuine GM cable. I have no idea if the GM one will actually work, as I never could find a good reference for Cutlass cable part numbers. It's the Chevelle cable, so hopefully it's close enough. In any case, I hope it'll just be my backup cable.

The new Accel coil and dizzy came a couple weeks ago. It's a very nice unit. Only bushings - no bearings - for the shaft, and a true magnetic pickup - not hall effect. The module is interesting. Looks like one tiny 8 or 10 pin surface mount chip for the controller and a very large FET that has a large heatsink that has thermal paste to the housing. Looks like a solid design. The module can also be bypassed so it's just a mag trigger for a CD box. Wonder if that would impact the pinging.... It's a tough balance getting the loads of initial timing the engine wants to idle and still not detonate.