Monday, April 23, 2012

A Whirlwind Weekend

The weekend kind of all blurs together. I know that finishing Ringo’s engine reassembly took place on Friday night and Saturday afternoon, and I know that the gyrations required to get the engine safely off the stand and onto the floor jack occurred Saturday night, and I know that attaching the transaxle to the engine and reinstalling the lump into the car happened yesterday afternoon, and I know that after a couple attempts to adjust the right side valves I’ve still got a clatter, but I don’t remember many of the steps it took to complete those tasks.

Other than the exhaust system (which I’ll go into more detail later), there really weren’t any issues as I bolted everything back together and made the necessary adjustments, nor did the moving of the heavy assemblies result in any excitement, but sadly the valve lashing is a much greater pain than it should. The manual’s method is very straightforward once you determine where #1 top dead center (TDC) is (there are two options and you have to watch lifter movement to find which is #1 TDC or #2 TDC). Anyway, I got past that and did the LM engine spec of 1 turn of the rocker arm nut after all the clearance has been taken up, however, I must have forgotten #5 exhaust. When I turned on the engine it fired up fairly quickly, but valvetrain clattering was definitely coming from the right bank. I raised just that corner of the car, pulled off the valve cover and discovered the aforementioned rocker was loose. I decided to be thorough and readjusted the lash of all the valves on that side. In the middle of the task, the lovely Loriann made a visit to the oil slick I call the garage and I may have missed one of the valves (she can be so distracting) because the valve clattering wasn’t any better after I put everything back tougher and re-fired the engine. At that point, it was time to quit for the day.

Regarding the exhaust system; I’d bought a GUP exhaust pipe from the Corvair Ranch and it bolted into place but had a slight mismatch to the exhaust manifold ends. I was able to pound it into position and tightened down the mounting nuts. The GUP muffler I’d planned on using slid over the end of the pipe, but the orientation of the tailpipe wouldn’t allow the muffler body to clear the valve cover. Irrrr. I ended up pounding off the tailpipe so I could get some silencing to run the engine until a replacement is procured.

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