l26 swap troubleshooting

[PapaSmurf]

For those of you who haven't been following all the drama I've been going through with this project here is a brief explanation. My l28 was shot, the tooth that holds the crank pully in place chewed the hell out of it's slot and the pully was moving around, the rings were bad my highest compression was 90psi and my lowest was 60, my front and rear crank seals were bad, etc. I took her down to portland and the engine seized up on me allowing me to notice these very bad things. So I embarked on my quest to replace the engine as quickly as possible. The best engine I found was an l26, the seller was the worst kind of person. They scratched the 6 in l26 into an 8 and tried to fool me. I bought the engine anyhow as I was desperate. I tore it apart and put my intake manifold on it and all my accessories except the distributor. I even put my round port exhaust manifold on it as I couldn't find a square port to match the e88 head. I adjusted the valves and replaced the timing chain because it was stretched quite badly. Thats about where I am now. I finally got the timing chain and the ignition timing where they need to be.

 

I was thrown off thinking the timing chain was out of place due to a strange knocking noise that persisted until I either put the choke on one of my carbs or richened that carb up with the fast idle. I decided to assume the timing was correct as I had checked and double checked for many many days. After adjusting the carbs to normal and re-wiring my ignition coil and distributor the knocking got better and all I had to do was rev the engine to 3k rpm and it went away entirely.

I took it on a test drive today and verified that the vacuum advance on the distributor is not functioning. It takes time for the timing to catch up, she has lots of power from a stop but accelerating takes time. Worse though I found that the knocking sound seems to be related to my cluth, flywheel, or starter. With the clutch pedal in I feel the knock as a vibration from the pedal and it seems to get worse with the pedal down. Also when I switch the motor off it continues to run making quite a racket until it finally stops.

 

 

I have several ideas:

When I suck/blow through the vacume advance nothing happens, there is no air moving through it. It seems to be seized. It is certainly causing the acceleration lag but what about the other problems?

 

perhaps the starter selonoid is not retreating from the flywheel and is making the noise

 

perhaps (God I hope not) a bolt came off the pressure plate on the clutch and is rattlin around

 

Worse yet maybe my timing is still off which could cause the engine to continue running, say if the cam is retarded. I just don't see it being off because I checked it a million times and it looks perfect..

 

 

Please somebody help me I know I must have more than one problem here but give me some ideas. I gotta get this thing running, it's my only mode of transportation.

[PapaSmurf]

I ordered a new distributor overnight so it should get here in a few days lol then I can test it. I also took off the starter and tested it and the selonoid was working properly but maybe inside the flywheel it's a different story.

[JSM]

I ordered a new distributor overnight so it should get here in a few days lol then I can test it. I also took off the starter and tested it and the selonoid was working properly but maybe inside the flywheel it's a different story.

 

You couldn't have just bought a vacum advance only? If you have it off now remove it from the distributor and then try sucking on it to see if it moves.

 

I know this is a dumb question put you are pulling a vacum on the line you are using for the vacum advance yes?