First Night Without Air

For the first time in a VERY long time, I removed a rear wheel from a Corvair without the aid of compressed air and an impact wrench. I certainly miss that feeling of NASCAR pit-crew-ness, but the wheel came off without issue regardless. This event was in the course of readjusting the rocker arm nuts on Ringo’s left side – the side that’s been doing the clackety-clackety. The first step in the process of cold valve adjustment is to rotate the engine until the timing mark is on zero and the rotor is pointed at the #1 spark plug lead on the distributor cap. After doing that, I jacked up the right rear as high as I could safely get it, place a jackstand underneath the lower control arm, and removed the driver’s side rocker cover. The manual says to tighten the rocker arm nuts of the #4 exhaust and #6 intake valves until you just get rid of any play in the pushrod. Once you’re there, add another 1-1/4 turns on the nut and you’re good-to-go. I did all that and then rotated the crankshaft 180 degrees and did the same adjustment to the rest of that side’s rocker arm nuts. I did, I believe find the offending loose lifter when I wiggled #2 exhaust and it was loose when it should have been slightly snug. All did not, however, go as smoothly as that little description would lead one to believe. When I went to tighten the #2 exhaust nut, I found it took far more torque than the previous nuts I’d turned. I decided to replaced the stud and nut with a GUP I’d found in a box of engine parts. These studs, by the way, also double as head nuts, and the rocker nut was on so tightly, I ended up spinning the stud/nut right out off the end of the engine stud. The replacement stud/nut was installed to the requisite 27-33 ft-lbs, and the rocker nut went on as smoothly as its neighbors. The last nut I went to adjust ended up also being too tight, so it was replaced with GUPs as well. With the valve cover back on and the wheel in place, Ringo was lowered to the ground and I called it a night.