Unbelievably, the scrap pile passed inspection!
. The guy that did the inspection said it looks in damn good shape for it's age.
Now the bad news. They did the wheel alignment, and it drives MUCH straighter, but it can't turn left. To get through a left hand turn, I have to go halfway through the turn, back up (while turning right), and go through the turn again.
For a right hand turn, however, I can make a hair pin turn. The truck did not have this problem before I tore into the steering. I'm guessing that the Pitman arm isn't installed on center.
Now more kinda bad news. When I went to go pick it up from the inspection station, is started RIGHT up. It ran a little sluggish and still had no real power. Then, I had to go uphill and there was one of Brandons Kids (an illegal immigrant driving less than half the speed limit) in front of me, so I FLOORED it. The engine fell flat on it's face and stalled out. I got it restarted, but barely made it up the hill. It nearly stalled out twice more on the way home and has near zero power. Then, I got a backfire at WOT.
This, my GMT400 listeners, is the advantage of building an engine yourself as opposed to buying one out of the box. I now have a couple working theories as to why this is happening, instead of sitting there staring at the engine like a deer in headlights, wondering what the problem could be.
1. One of the cylinders isn't getting spark for whatever reason (because to backfire like that, it HAS to have fuel).
2. Something messed up in the valve train again (better EFFING not have!)
3. The reviews on Summit Racing, for the new distributor I bought, said REPLACE the ignition control module that the distributor comes with, with an AC Delco or Screaming Demon ICM. The one it comes with just causes problems.
4. The oil pressure sending unit may be causing problems other than erratic oil pressure readings.
The only part that sucks about this now is that the Wife's Buick is the current resident in the garage. It's not leaving there until she drives it out under it's own power. That means any work I do on the RCSB will be outside. That's not such a bad thing sometimes. More room, occasional sunshine, less chance of thrown tools hitting something, etc...
But it now has a sticker! Two, actually! So, the
most difficult part is over.
It's probably something simple causing the engine to not run right. Stay tuned.