I'm not sure whether to classify what we're doing next as Project Angus or Project 350. It's kind of both, and it's really exciting, because there is a distinct nonzero chance that the next time we get together--which could be as soon as Thursday--we'll get the engine I built last summer running.

Technically the vehicle won't be running, even though the engine is in it, because we've only finished as much of the electrical system as we need to run the engine, and although there is a transmission casing attached behind the engine for balance and mounting purposes, there's, uh... nothing inside it. We're just going to be firing the engine to see if it works. And because it'll be fun.

Mind you, readjusting all 16 valves after we make sure we have oil pressure will be... less fun. But these are the things you have to do when you've had an engine down to a bare block...

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Massive coolness! Looking forward to more!

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The
Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-
Covered Balls!"

Glad your father is fully recovered (by implication).

--dbrandon

>Glad your father is fully recovered (by implication).

He is, although even when he was sick it doesn't seem to have slowed him down much.

Normal person with (non-long) COVID: retires to bed for two weeks of misery, like sick people did in Victorian times; has to take things slow for another few weeks while systems come back online.

My 73-year-old dad with COVID: cleaned up the garage, organized everything in the parts loft. put the mower deck on his big tractor to hog out some of the brush in the back 40, went and picked up (non-contact) 440 pounds of salt for his water softener...

Also, tiny project update: due to various scheduling things, today didn't work and tomorrow is out, so it looks like we'll be back at it on Saturday.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Normal person with (non-long) COVID: retires to bed for two weeks of
>misery, like sick people did in Victorian times; has to take things
>slow for another few weeks while systems come back online.

To be fair, when I got it, I basically just had about two days of feeling like I had the worst flu ever and then another day or so of general crankiness. Milder cases are certainly possible, although you can't count on it. Glad his was on the milder side.

--dbrandon

>Mind you, readjusting all 16 valves after we make sure we have oil
>pressure will be... less fun

One of the car restorers I've watched on YT put it (maybe not exact quote but still) "If you're not having fun, then you're doing it wrong"

I, too, follow Low-Buck Garage. Funny content.

The first order of business today was to charge the cooling system. To that end, we went to the store and picked up a few gallons of premixed antifreeze, put a funnel in one of the ports on the intake manifold, and started filling it from the engine side first.

Coolant goes in...

... and comes right back out again.

Upon closer examination, we weren't able to determine exactly where our recycled water pump was leaking from. Most likely the plate on the back, which may have gotten slightly bent when we took it off to inspect the insides of the impeller back when we cleaned it up and got it ready to re-use.

Regardless, it's leaking, and rather than tear it down again and try to figure out exactly why, Dad decided we should just go into town and pick up a new one.

These things are surprisingly hard to find nowadays. When I was a kid, you could find parts for small-block Chevy engines absolutely anywhere, but today we couldn't find one at any of the parts stores in the nearest town; we had to go to the Big City (... well, OK, Bangor) and get one there.

This was just a test fit to make sure the new one was the right type (there are two different sizes of small-block Chevy water pump, because of course there are). Before we reconvene, Dad will take it off and paint it red like the other one.

Two trips to two stores in different directions ate most of the day, unfortunately, so we didn't get as far as we wanted... but like I've said before, this is how it goes with these old machines. Stuff happens... you figure it out and try again. Probably in a couple-three days, we'll be back at it.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

New water pump painted up and installed...

... we filled up the block with coolant again.

Good news: this pump doesn't leak!

Bad news: as I was leaning over the radiator to observe the block filling, just before we would have started filling it in turn, I happened to glance down and...

... are those acorns?

Yes, yes they are. And when we drained the lower part of the radiator (which filled up through the lower hose from the water pump, since liquids do that sort of thing), all manner of unspeakable filth came out with the antifreeze that had been in the bottom tank. We filtered it back into one of the empty jugs, but I won't subject you to a photo of what was left behind in the funnel. Suffice to say it was nasty. We ended up deciding to throw that coolant out, even after we filtered it. What the hell, it's only eight bucks a gallon.

And actually, I say bad news, and it is, but on the other hand, it's a bit of luck I happened to look down that hole before we dumped coolant into it. If that crap got flushed up into the pump, or worse the block, that would be a nightmare. And if we hadn't noticed before trying to run the thing... ye gods.

So here's what happened: years and years ago, while the truck was parked in Dad's storage shed, he stole the engine out of it to put in another pickup. When he did so, he left the radiator behind, without any hoses or anything connected to it. The holes in the top and bottom tanks that the hoses connect to are a good two inches in diameter, making it a simple matter for the local wildlife to move in and convert both tanks into critter condos. (And since they were in the top one, that most likely means the actual cooling tubes in between them are full of this crap too.)

In theory, it would be possible for a radiator shop to salvage it. They'd have to melt all the solder holding the bits together, steam-clean the tanks and tubes, and solder the whole thing back together. It would take hours and cost hundreds of dollars. If it were original equipment, and we were doing that kind of restoration, that would probably be worth it... but it's not (we put that one in when I was in high school) and we're not, soooo we're ordering a new one.

So that'll take a few days. In the meantime, let's move on to other prep work. Remember way back when we took an old distributor apart and made a thing to run the oil pump with? Let's chuck a drill on that puppy and see what happens!

What happens is... we've got oil pressure!

That's pretty good oil pressure, too, considering that it's a fairly small hand drill and the engine itself isn't turning over.

(Oh, yeah, this also demonstrates that the electrics we've installed thus far work, and we were able to hook up a battery and turn on the ignition without starting a fire! No lights as yet, though. The ones for the instruments are hooked up, but the headlight switch isn't, and the interior lights run through there too.)

It's hard to see in that photo, but the valves got nice and oily after we ran the drill for a while, and we were able to verify visually that oil was coming out of all the passages it should've been coming out of in the cylinder heads. So that's nice!

Today we also installed the proper distributor, but I didn't get a photo of that. It may or may not be on the right set of gear teeth--that's hard to tell without the engine running--but it's a simple enough matter to correct once we're in a position to do a test run and see how it goes.

With that installed, once we have the spark plug wires finished, we'll be waiting for the new radiator--and once that's installed and the system is charged (third time's the charm, right?), we should be ready to test!

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>... are those acorns?

This reminds me of the time I had to have my car castrated. Driving along one day, the engine starts racing uncontrollably. I managed to throw it into neutral and pull aside and get the car towed to my local garage.

After about 20 minutes, the grizzled old mechanic who ran the garage calls me in to look at something. I'm thinking "oh great, I ruined the motor somehow, and I'm getting called on the carpet."

Instead, he tells me, "I had to castrate your car. I got rid of the nuts," he says, showing me a bowl of acorns. A squirrel had stashed the acorns in the car, and one had rattled loose and wedged the throttle open.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

New radiator came today!

Once it was secured in place, the hoses reconnected, and the fan reinstalled, it was time to add coolant... once again.

And lo, there were no leaks this time (... once we closed the drain valve), and naturally this radiator's not full of acorn shells and rodent shit. Progress!

With the cooling system at last squared away, it was time to start assembling the spark plug wires. These usually come all ready to go, but the set we have came with two different sets of connectors for the distributor end, one for a conventional points distributor and one for the HEI type, like we have. Some assembly required. Naturally we didn't have a tool for crimping 8mm ignition wires, so we had to take a field trip to get one.

As as result, we only had time to finish four of the eight wires before we had to call it a day...

... but it's looking like next session, we will at last have everything in place we need to put in some fuel and try test-firing the engine. That's most likely happening on Sunday.

Also, as an aside: inside the back cover of the book that was our main reference for the engine rebuild, which I had occasion to consult today to double-check the order in which the plug wires are meant to be put on the distributor, there's a list of other books that were available from the publisher at the time. Most of them are written by various subject-matter experts, as you might expect, but...

... it looks like if you want to rebuild a big-block Ford engine, there's only one person who can help you.

--G.
I looked it up. The actual author of that book is a man named, I kid you not, Steve Christ.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>I looked it up. The actual author of that book is a man named, I kid you not, >Steve Christ.

Well, Jesus was a carpenter, so I guess manual trades ran in the family?

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

And hotrodding your 2.0-liter OHC Ford apparently requires magic?
Makes sense, I suppose...

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The
Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-
Covered Balls!"

>And hotrodding your 2.0-liter OHC Ford apparently requires magic?
>Makes sense, I suppose...

So does rebuilding a small-block Chevy V8 (that book is also by David Vizard). :)

--G.
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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Seems about right. But, in this case, we'll the 2-liter OHC Ford engine is the one in the (in)famous Pinto, and, well...hotrodding something like that would HAVE to utilize magic, honestly.

I mean, sure, you could probably do work on it to make it a bit more fun, as it were, but I don't know that I'd call that "hotrodding"..

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The
Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-
Covered Balls!"

>Seems about right. But, in this case, we'll the 2-liter OHC Ford
>engine is the one in the (in)famous Pinto, and, well...hotrodding
>something like that would HAVE to utilize magic, honestly.
>
>I mean, sure, you could probably do work on it to make it a bit more
>fun, as it were, but I don't know that I'd call that "hotrodding"..

One of my favorite cartubers had a short series where he and some friends:
Flew across the country to buy a sorta running hotrodded pinto, then
Drive it from Arizona to Maryland (home). Hilarity, including cleaning out the radiator at a spray carwash in the middle of the night, ensues.

--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

>... it looks like if you want to rebuild a big-block Ford engine,
>there's only one person who can help you.

So Jesus really did build my hotrod. /s

We finished wiring up the spark plugs.

(Ignore that red Nintendo Zapper-looking thing, it's just a timing light. For the uninitiated, that's a strobe light that works with the frequency of the spark on #1 cylinder and some markings on the harmonic balancer, plus a fixed pointer on the block, to help adjust the distributor so the spark timing is correct.)

With that task done, there was only one thing left to do: go buy some ethanol-free gasoline, pour it into the tank, and see if the engine will start (with the help of a little premixed lawnmower gas to prime the carb, a trick I learned from Vice Grip Garage).

And so...

... it's alive!

(That "huh?" is my father, who heard me do the Frankenstein thing but couldn't make it out and thought I was talking to him. :)

After a little bit of initial sputtering, mostly due to not enough lawnmower gas, it fired right up. More surprisingly, it ran just fine right from the get-go. The timing was virtually perfect out of the box, the idle settled right down, and it came smoothly up to temperature.

Oil pressure's good, the alternator we weren't sure about is charging very well (average performance is around 13.5 volts, we're getting more than 15 there), and the temperature... well, that's one small hitch. That temperature gauge works, but it appears to be reading about 60 °F low. The engine thermostat, which is set to open at 160 °F in the engine, opened when the gauge showed 100, and the electric fan, set to activate at 180 °F in the radiator, came on at roughly an indicated 120. There appears to be no way to calibrate the gauge manually, so it'll probably have to be sent in for warranty service.

Still, that's a minor hitch. It was pretty easy to deduce how far off it is, and all indications are that the cooling system is working exactly as required. The idle is smooth (and settled down to about 750 RPM hot, from the cold 1000 showing in the video), throttle response was normal... it's just... working.

To me, the lack of having to futz around with the timing is the best part. It took quite a while to get the Impala's engine, fitted with a brand-new points-type distributor, running right, but the HEI distributor on this engine was a whole different story.

Very pleased with the day's developments, we shut down and retired to our chairs to plan the next move, and that's when we noticed...

... the leak.

It's not a big leak, but it's coolant coming from someplace coolant shouldn't becoming from. At first we suspected that one of the freeze plugs near the rear of the engine block wasn't fully sealed, which would be a hassle to fix, but not too challenging. Closer inspection, though, indicated a much more troubling scenario: the cylinder head gasket. However, there doesn't seem to be any coolant in the crankcase oil, which is very good news; it means if there is a head gasket leak, it's only leaking out, which is not as much of a catastrophe. Still a massive pain in the ass to fix, though.

As we took another look, another possibility suggested itself. All the bolts that hold the heads to the block extend into the water jacket. It's possible we didn't get enough thread sealant on the one on that back corner. It, too, will be a hassle to get at--we'll have to pull the exhaust header on that side--but removing the entire head to replace the gasket is a much bigger job. So, next time we convene, we'll probably try resealing that bolt first and see what happens.

So not an unalloyed success, but still. It runs! It even runs well! I built something that works! Mostly.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

It's alive!

And on the bright side, as annoying as a leak is, at least you had the wherewithal to notice it now instead of later.

Huzzah the engine! Well, aside from the leak. I don't personally know about head gasket replacements; my calibration on that matter is my dad had a BMW that leaked twice, and his fix for the 2nd leak was "selling it for the price of 'get it off my lawn' rather than fixing it again".

So here's hoping for the least-annoying fix to be the right one!

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

So today, we pulled that suspect bolt. This was more complicated than it sounds, because we had to drain the cooling system (again) and disconnect the exhaust header on that side to do it, but by and by we got it out... and there was no sign that there had ever been thread sealer on it. I guess when we were putting that head on, we just... missed that one?

Whatever the case, we slathered it with sealer and put it back, reassembled everything else around it, rolled the truck back so the exhaust pipes were outside the building, and brought it up to temp... no leak detected. To make sure, because we'd originally noticed the leak after testing, we moved it forward to another patch of floor after we shut it down, then watched while it cooled down... nothing.

I don't want to jinx it, but it looks like we found the culprit and fixed it.

In other news, here's something funny. Remember that old transmission that we thought was the Powerglide that originally came out of this truck way back when?

After the leak test, we got to looking at the Powerglide repair manual Dad bought a while back, and the transmission itself, and... nothing was making sense. We weren't finding anything on the outside where the book said it was supposed to be. Confused, we consulted the actual GM repair manual for the truck, which has a long chapter on the various available transmissions. The Powerglide was one, but again, we weren't finding much correspondence. Dad dug out a couple of more general repair manuals from when he was in high school--again, nothing.

Now, this wasn't completely implausible. GM made the Powerglide for a lot of years and modified the outer castings often over that time. Still, the fact that we were basically finding no correspondence was very, very weird. Finally, we took a closer look until we found what looked like a casting number, and I ran it through a web search.

Me, looking at my phone: "Uh... what shape is the bottom pan?"

Dad, looking at the transmission: "Square."

Me: "... Does it have one corner cut off?"

Dad: "Yes."

Me: "That is a Turbo Hydra-Matic 350."

Dad: "What?!"

So... yeah! It seems like we have a slightly more sophisticated transmission than we thought (three forward gears as opposed to the two-speed Powerglide). The discovery does raise certain questions, though, namely:

1) Where did it come from? and

2) Where the hell did the Powerglide go?!

Secondary punch line: I bought an overhaul manual for TH350s a few years ago, just on the speculation that we might find one someplace for one of the projects, since they're such a popular and common automatic transmission. I just wasn't expecting that "somewhere" to be "in the garage". :)

So yeah! The THM350 is a bit anachronistic for a '66--they were introduced in 1969--but, I mean, the block of this engine came out of a 1972 pickup anyway. We're not shooting for authenticity here, and when it comes to '60s–'70s automatics, three speeds are better than two. I just hope it works...

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

"A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one."

Hydra-Matic, you say?

Had a little bit of an... adventure today. Our transmission parts did not arrive, so instead we shuffled some temperature sensors around. After calling tech support for our weirdly low-reading Auto Meter gauge, we were advised that they don't like sharing the sensor wire with a second gauge for Reasons, so we disconnected the stock one, and then Dad decided to swap the positions of the gauge sensor and the one that runs the fan, also for Reasons. To do that we had to drain the coolant down to the point where it wouldn't pour out of the hole in the cylinder head where one of them has to live.

That was a convoluted pain, but we don't need to get into that. Suffice it to say that by the time we were done, there was a big patch of Speedy-Dry on the floor under the lift and Dad had to change his shirt. But eventually we got everything put back together, rolled the truck back to the big door again, and started it up for another run up to temperature. We weren't able to put back all the coolant we had taken out while it was cold, but that was normal. These things never fully settle until the pump has run for a bit.

Immediately, weird things started happening. The Auto Meter gauge, which before read about 60 °F low, now didn't seem to work at all, and the fan came on immediately, long before the engine can possibly have come up to temperature. The radiator thermostat hadn't even opened, which is supposed to happen 20 degrees before the fan comes on. Thinking this might be because of the low coolant level we had to start with, Dad opened the radiator cap to add the rest.

That should have been relatively uneventful. Radiator caps of this era have a big warning on them saying DO NOT OPEN WHEN HOT, but the radiator wasn't hot, and just opening it when the engine's running isn't in itself a problem. So you can imagine our surprise when the cap popped aggressively off as soon as it was unlocked, unleashing a geyser of coolant that went all over everything within about a 10-foot radius, including Dad.

Fortunately, it wasn't hot. If it had been, the day would have wrapped up with a 911 call and a long layoff for medical treatment. As it was, a hasty mouth rinse was called for, and I spent a minute searching the web to see if we needed to call Poison Control. (We decided not; glycol coolant is very toxic, but not "just enough to taste it got in there" toxic.)

In the interest of not making a long story even longer, we got the rest of the coolant on board after collecting our wits, after which the gauge and the fan started working normally again. Then we got out the pressure washer and cleaned up the floor before pushing the truck back up to the lift area.

And when I mean the coolant went everywhere, I mean it. Check out the view of the truck's roof I got when I went upstairs to the bathroom...

That came out of that red-and-white cap on top of the radiator, way out front. Near as we can figure it, there must have been an air pocket in the system that pressurized the radiator even though it wasn't hot, and it blew out the pint or two of coolant that was in the top tank when Dad opened the cap. So, uh, now we know! Do not open when hot; maybe do not open when NOT hot when other stuff is going on.

The transmission parts are supposed to come tomorrow, so we're scheduled for Friday at the moment. I'll probably increment the session number then, since we'll be on to a different set of tasks.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

LAST EDITED ON Sep-05-25 AT 09:16 PM (EDT)
 
Not much to report today. We got the tail end of the transmission back together with new seals and the correct speedometer gears, took some measurements to make sure the transmission jack we want to get will actually be tall enough to work at the lift's lowest setting, and then broke the old speedometer cable trying to test it--which pretty well confirms that it needed to be replaced in the first place.

So, more parts, more tools, the usual! Next batch of stuff should arrive... eh... middle of next week? We'll see how it goes. New session number won't happen until we get into actually installing the transmission.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>So, more parts, more tools, the usual! Next batch of stuff should
>arrive... eh... middle of next week? We'll see how it goes. New
>session number won't happen until we get into actually installing the
>transmission.

The summation of every car revival show I've ever seen. I won't say restoration because usually the guys who go into a project with the end goal of restoring something come along with (most of) what they need, while the revival guys just open the hood and keep their local auto parts shop on speed-dial.

Out of curiosity, how do you even clean up and dispose of a leak like that in a home shop? Given the toxicity, this ain't the kind of thing you can just direct a hose towards pointed outside.

LAST EDITED ON Sep-06-25 AT 00:31 AM (EDT)
 
>Out of curiosity, how do you even clean up and dispose of a leak like
>that in a home shop? Given the toxicity, this ain't the kind of thing
>you can just direct a hose towards pointed outside.

No indeed, and you'll note that the wet part of the floor doesn't reach the door for that exact reason. We power-washed it down the drain in the center of the floor, which goes to the same tank as the sewage from the bathroom. That tank holds something like a thousand gallons, so not only will the pint or two of coolant that escaped be thoroughly diluted, by the time the tank is full the ethylene glycol will have biodegraded. (It's not a septic system that lets out into a leach field, just a holding tank.)

The smaller spill by the lift, we soaked up with Speedy-Dry, which is basically cat litter. That went into the trash can when it had done its work, and again, by the time the contents of that can end up in a landfill, the ethylene glycol will have long since disintegrated. Its one saving grace is that it doesn't last very long outside a sealed environment, like a plastic jug or a cooling system.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

At one point, attending a college history course, I had a professor share as a point of interesting local history that the 'discovery' of the useful properties of ethylene glycol followed somebody observing that the river receiving the wake products of one of our very own resident chemical plants had stopped freezing as normal, and rather than just going 'Huh, that's funny', had looked into what waste Union Carbide was dumping from that site.

So that's Charleston, WV's involvement in Automotive History.

-----
Iä! Iä! Moe fthagn!

It's always Union Carbide somehow...

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Some days, you wrangle the entire driveline into the vehicle, get everything bolted down, go to lubricate the drive shaft...

... and realize that after extravagant difficulty in fitting them, you put BOTH OF the universal joints in backward, so that the grease fittings are inaccessible.

It's often forgotten that the original form of Murphy's law was, "If there are two ways to do something and one of them will result in disaster, someone will do it that way."

So, I guess we'll be taking all that apart again... later.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I believe Richard Hammond made the same mistake when building a car with his daughter, so you are in good company.