'89 Stepside "Way Cool Jr."

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Erik the Awful

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Got the cylinder head. For once there weren't any L05s or L31s laying on the ground, only a couple LM7s and a 5.4. I wasn't really feeling the need to save $20 by laying on my back and removing the pan with the engine still in place, so I'll pony up and order decent main cap bolts from Summit. By the time I got the head I was wore out, so I didn't try for a remote filter block.

I did see two C5 Corvettes in the yard. One was wrecked in the rear and mostly picked clean, the other looked like it had a straight chassis, but it was almost completely gutted. What does it say when they end up at Pull-A-Part? Now's time to score a clean one in the used market, they've bottomed out in value.

Long blocks are $100 this weekend, so there were a handful of people removing whole engines, and a lot of the GMT400s were engineless. I'm seeing less GMT400s and more GMT800s, so we might be on the decline now. I also noticed recently that Summit's supply of clean $700 4-bolt blocks dried up. Get wrenching on your trucks and clean them up. In about five years they'll be worth a lot more.

Edit: I went ahead and beat up on the bank account at Summit. $20 Summit brand main cap bolts, and rear shackles to drop the tailgate a bit. The real pain was the new BMR rear suspension arms for the Mustang. Now to go clean a cylinder head...
 
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Erik the Awful

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I just got back from the machinist, and his work was exemplary. He pulled out the bore gauge right there and we checked the numbers. Sealed Power screwed the pooch. When the machinist bored the block, he'd asked for a piston to measure before he bored. He regularly uses Sealed Power and is familiar with their product. When he measured the piston, it came up to exactly 4.030", when normally they measure 4.027". He's seen piston sizes increasing lately, so he didn't think anything of it, other than to machine my bore to 4.033. The rings are also Sealed Power, and should match the pistons, but the rings are made to match pistons that measure 4.027". If you put them in a 4.030" bore, they should be in spec. If you put them in a 4.033" bore, they should have too much end gap. I plugged the formula for circumference (C=2 x Pi x r) into a spreadsheet and played around with bore sizes. A ring with a .016" gap in a 4.030" bore will have a .035" gap in a 4.033" bore. All my rings are between .023" and .032" gap, so if I'd put them in a true 4.030" bore without checking them - .004" to .013", it could have been ugly. That said, why is their piston .003" oversized? Why don't the rings match?

We concluded that it would be okay to run them with the .023" to .032" gap.
 

HoneyBadger

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Could be right about that! My uncle has a Marauder and a Tbird super coupe and a couple of trucks, and he's never had good luck with the Ford dealership in Albuquerque. And this is a guy that if I said anything about my Burb, his answer is "your first problem is, it's a Chevrolet ". This F150 we got from my boss's family, and I think he thought it was a wee bit more reliable than it's turned out to be. It's sat on the family ranch, and probably not had much in the way of maintenance.

Hot off the presses- ford loses civil fraud case on appeal, filed by consumer who bought a new F-350:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.freep.com/amp/3626782001
Consumer alleged ford knowingly installed defective motors in trucks.
id stay away from 04-14 f-150s with the 3valve too unless u can redesign the cam phasers or oil galleys. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.freep.com/amp/3626782001
 

Erik the Awful

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I jumped back on WCJr today. I checked the timing, 12* at idle, 30* at 3000 rpm. I'm not sure what the timing is with the engine loaded, but there's no vacuum advance, so I can't imaging it's any different loaded. I pulled the cap off and checked the rotor. There's a normal amount of play, so I don't suspect the timing gear's chewed up. The cap and rotor still look new. I pulled a couple plugs and they're black, which is a clue, but to a great many possible problems.

It dawned on me that the catalytic converters could have melted down and clogged, so I dropped the exhaust today. It appears the cats are already blown out. The passenger side has the honeycomb in place, but I could see straight through it with no problem. The driver side has an S-curve, so after visually inspecting the front of the honeycomb I put my $30 borescope in it and found the rear of the honeycomb intact. With the borescope I could see light coming through the front side of the cat. The cat has rattling chunks inside of it, but I couldn't get them out. I can see straight through the X-pipe and mufflers, so they're okay. I fired up the engine with open headers; thankfully my neighbors don't mind and weren't home. When I power stalled it the engine still bogged and choked.

The one thing I did notice is that my welded-in O2 bung shields almost all of the oxygen sensor from exhaust flow. I've already re-installed the exhaust, but I think I'm going to drop the driver side again and grind down the backside of the O2 bung.

I also started reassembly of the low-buck motor. The pistons and rods are back together. I double-checked all the block plugs. The new Summit main cap bolts are torqued. The heads are assembled. I grabbed two old oil pumps and threw them in the solvent tank along with a rear main seal holder. I'll use whichever pump checks out better. Everything is painted except the block itself, and I'll do that after I put everything on it.
 

Erik the Awful

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It's been a few weeks and not much has happened on the truck. We had a weirdly unseasonable ice storm last Monday that broke branches off most every tree and knocked power off for about half a million people, but it didn't make the national news because of all the other crapstorms going on. My parents moved in with us for a week until their power was restored, and eleven days later my mother-in-law is still without power. I have a brush pile ten feet wide, thirty feet long, and six feet high that I'll be chipping up in about a month.

The yard was muddy, and during the cleanup I got my mower and yard trailer stuck. I backed WCJr up to pull the mower out, and WCJr got stuck. Stupid open diff. A limited-slip is on my wish list. It's been sitting there for over a week now, and if I get ahead on stuff today, I'll jack it up and slide some bricks under the rear wheels.

The day the storm started, my son came over and we got the Crown Vic running. He's been driving it to and from work since. P71 Crown Vics are the best cheap V8 car out there right now. You can buy driving cars all day long for a grand.

Then my wife's Chrysler 300 started running funny and the check engine light came on. I plugged in my BAFX and got "P0016 - Crank/Cam Correlation". I drove it home, ordered a timing belt kit for it, and told my wife not to drive it. I got the parts in Wednesday, so after work I started on it. It was the simplest V6 timing belt replacement I've ever done. The only problem was getting the belt and cams lined up correctly. It took me seven tries, and I also had to buy an extra-dinky three-jaw puller. It turns out the timing belt itself was still in good condition. The tensioner shelled out! I feel pretty lucky that it didn't jump time enough to kiss pistons.

I've had new rear suspension arms for the Mustang on hand for about a month now, so yesterday I started installing them. I got both lower arms in place and the adjustable panhard bar in. This afternoon I'll have the fun of replacing the upper link.

Once all that's done I can drop WCJr's driver side exhaust again and grind down the O2 sensor bung. I think I'll check fuel pressure next. It's a new pump and filter, but I didn't buy the priciest pump on RockAuto.

I bought a set of these valve covers for the cheap rebuild on the original motor. They weren't cheap, not really any kind of authentic vintage, but I think they'll look great. https://www.speedwaymotors.com/Tech...Cover-Wire-Loom-Set-for-SBC-Plain,421510.html
 

Erik the Awful

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It dawned on my the ignition module is the same module that was on the distributor when I bought it at Pull-A-Part. The symptoms were exactly what a bad ignition module causes. I placed an order on Summit - it was $3 more than RockAuto, but I also needed a carb spacer and angled adapters for the vintage intake on the old motor, and RA's shipping was going to be more than $3.

I got the new Delphi module yesterday and went to install it. Pretty simple, the plug wires are long enough I don't have to completely remove the cap. I moved the air cleaner for access, grabbed the itty bitty socket for the cap, started unbolting the module, and one of the bolts got stiff. I reversed and started screwing the bolt back in. It got stiffer. I started backing it out again and it snapped. Crap. Now the distributor has to come out. I took the hold-down off, pulled the distributor, stuffed a sock in the hole, and took the distributor to the bench. I got vise grips on the bottom of the bolt to pull it out the bottom. It broke off again. Crap! I got out my drill and started drilling the bolt out. The bit wouldn't stay centered, and pretty quickly it was into the baseplate and through. Well, hell. The hole was half in the bolt and half in the baseplate, with just a bit of bolt left sticking out the bottom. I put needle nose pliers on it and it was loose. It came out easy. The threads left were in good shape, and a bolt threaded in seemed reasonably snug.

The module was a factory GM module. When it came off there was a minimal amount of thermal paste under it, and it was heavily contaminated with moisture. I put the included thermal paste on the Delphi module and installed it. I'd noted where the rotor was on the housing when I pulled the distributor, so I just aimed to stab it back in the same place. The distributor went straight down onto the oil pump shaft, so I'm pretty sure I got it on the same distributor tooth. I reinstalled everything and the truck fired up immediately. It drove around the block with no issues. FIXED! I still need to put the timing light on it, but I'm pretty happy.

I need to install the center console with wiring so the seats have power, then I can take it to the glass shop. Every time I drive it more of the tint peels off the back window and swirls around the cab, and it's only a matter of time before I get pulled over for all the cracks in the windshield.
 

Erik the Awful

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A couple weeks ago my dad mentioned he couldn't find a nutcracker that would stand up to black walnuts. Well, that sounds like a challenge. I have a spare jack I pulled out of an Escalade at Pull-A-Part, and it has the wrong end to use with my jack tools. That sure is some nice acme thread...

I started cutting it apart and immediately ran out of cutting wheels. It's been a few days since I've driven the truck, so I drove it to the hardware store and back. The engine stumbles on tip-in, but once it catches, it runs hard. Part throttle cruising is a pain. So long as I'm on the throttle it's fine, but if I lift going downhill and tip in again on the uphill, it stumbles. I think the Sniper's still learning. The round-trip to the hardware store is just enough to warm the engine up, and I don't yet trust the truck for longer drives.

I cut the jack apart, grabbed some spare sockets out of my junk pile, and some square tubing I had on hand.
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Here's the nutcracker, mocked up.

EDIT: Well, crap. It looks like linking to Google Photos isn't working. Can anybody see the pics?
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