g9m3c

Yea, cross your fingers for me.

Someone (Daeron) tipped me off to a possible installation problem with these? The engine is newly rebuilt, I'm just replacing 3 bent intake valves, so I'll only be putting 3 new seals in. Is there anything special about the installation of these? He said he thought it might have been for a performance application only or something. Any help? -Grant

Haha, ok. I'll do a search on it. I think you're the only one still following my build.

Well, I got lucky with getting parts for this thing. I figured I'd have to order most of them online. Turns out, we had the timing cover set in stock at work. $8 After calling literally every parts store in Tuscaloosa, I finally found an old "mom and pop" parts store that had a head gasket set in stock! They said it had been there at least 10-15 years. I told them it'd probably be longer than that before they sold another one. It was imported from Japan as well. It's a lazorlite brand. $46 The valves are ordered and will be in Winfield tomorrow afternoon. They were $10 each. I'm going home (Winfield) tomorrow after class, and hope to get this thing back together by Thursday or Friday at the latest.

Thanks man!

Nah, I'm not worried about the pistons. I'm gonna clean up the burrs so no pieces come loose or anything, and run it. If something happens to it, like you said......no worries.

Good news: no busted pistons. Slightly bad news: multiple valve to piston contact points. Here's the pics. Here's the bad one on cylinder 3, and another on cylinder 2 Cylinder 5 and 6 Well that's no good. Ordering parts today, and I might be able to come home again next week to put it back together..............CORRECTLY; unlike the DA's that did it the first time.

Well there's the problem. Yep, that's a bent #3 intake valve. Someone didn't know what the heck they were doing when they put this thing together, apparently. I just hope it didn't bust the piston. I looked down in there with an inspection light, and if the valve didn't bust the piston, then it left a heck of a dent in it. Haha, I'll find out tomorrow when I take the top end off I guess. Should be a greeeaaaaat Thanksgiving.

Haha, yep, NGK's are firing fine. My center gauges in the dash don't work for some reason, so I gotta check into that.

Haha, yes they are. I'm gonna check everything out in the morning again, although we've already checked everything ignition related. It's trying to spit back through the rear carb, so I'm thinking there's a valve issue on one or more of the back three cylinders. It also doesn't sound like it's hitting on all 6, which would further help explain that.

Success! Haha, well sorta. It definitely runs better with the new boat anchors. Now that it will actually run for a little while, I've figured out that it has a valetrain adjustment/timing problem. The valve cover comes off first thing in the morning. Here's a quick vid: http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c381/g9m3c/?action=view&current=MOV00004.flv

They're finished! Yep, I assembled these in my house.

After thorough online research, I'd have to agree with ya there.

Alright, I ran into a couple of problems rebuilding these, but I got the rear carb assembled a few minutes ago. Much thanks to geezer for helping me with my float pin problem and giving me some info on tuning. I'm going to tear the front carb apart tonight and hopefully get it cleaned up and assembled tomorrow. The moment of truth will be Tuesday, or wednesday at the latest. Here's pics of the rear carb. I didn't worry too much about "prettying" these up, as once again, this engine won't be in the car for long. I would have painted the plates, linkages, etc, and wire brushed the body otherwise. Function > form.

Pliers couldn't get a good grip on it. A guy over on classiczcars helped me out with the suggestion of using a roll pin. It worked awesome.

Alright, here's a little pictorial to help out. This is looking down through where the plug screwed out. The other end of the float pin is under the body of the carb here. No way to push it out the hole in the other side of the body.

Anyone have some input? I need to get these things apart.

Does anyone know how to remove the float pivot pin in flat tops? There's a plug that screws out the side of the carb, and the end of the pivot pin is under there. However, there's no way to push it out from the other side.

Alright, I ordered the carb rebuild kits yesterday, and got them in this morning. I'll probably start tearing into the carbs this afternoon. Here are the kits. I also repainted the forward dash panel because it was looking pretty rough with surface rust.

I do wish I had a set of round tops, but like I said before, this motor will probably only be in the car for another 6 months or so. I have an LT1 sitting in my garage. I'm putting the bare minimum amount of cash into this thing to get it running fairly well for a few months. The car has 62,000 miles on it with the flat tops, surely it can do another couple thousand.

Well here's how I left it tonight. I'm taking the carbs back to my house in Tuscaloosa and hope to get them rebuilt before Thanksgiving. Then I'll bring them back to Winfield (where the car's at), and hopefully get it going. I'll be sure to take pics during that process.

Well, I thought I'd update my build thread. We haven't been able to get it to run right, so I'm going to rebuild the carbs. Maybe I'll have a good update in about a week or two.

Well, after messing with it again today, I've decided to just rebuild the carbs. We got them taken off today, and I'm going to pain stakingly rebuild them to perfection so I'll know they're right. I'm also taking the smog pump off while I'm at it. Where the other end of the smog pump hoses connect to the engine, do I just need to cap those off?

Yep, that's the first thing we did.