The single biggest mistake I've ever made in the engine bay all started by making an
assumption that a Pontiac V8 is a Pontiac V8, since it's all based off the same block?
Back in the late '70s, while I was working in a 1 1/2 man garage, the shop owner
had a very good long time customer who owned a super clean '60s era full-size Poncho.
(Catalina?) Other than the tired 389ci-2bbl V8, the car was a clean 12-15(?) year old
survivor with decent curb appeal.
The owner enjoyed driving the car, but the engine was a chugger, running like a V7
on a good day, and a V6 on a bad day. We showed the customer the parade of sparks
on the Sun 1115, and showed how deactivating the 2 bad cylinders didn't make any
difference in the way it ran. But taking out any of the good cylinders would really
make the engine rock & roll on the motor mounts.
My boss worked up what it would cost to pull the heads & have them renewed. But
the engine was also burning oil, so putting fresh heads on a tired short block seemed
a surefire way to turn a good customer into a former customer. So he also worked up
an estimate to pull the motor, send it to the machine shop, and give the customer a
refreshed version of his original motor.
As you might have already guessed, the cost was wayyyy outside the customer's threshold
of pain. Meanwhile, in my home garage I happened to have a low-mileage '73 Pontiac 400ci-2bbl
V8 where the family car had been totaled in the right rear, and yet the engine still ran quietly
when I pulled it shortly after the incident.
Back then no orphan engine was safe from my ministrations, so I pulled it apart, and everything was
in good enough shape that I was able to ball hone, re-ring, fresh bearings, clean the heads & lap
the valves, reuse the original oil pump, original cam, lifters, new timing chain, fresh gaskets, etc.)
In other words, a low mileage V8 with a budget refresh applied, and the engine was waiting
for a new home.
So I told my boss about this near twin 400ci Poncho motor in my garage, and told him what I
was hoping to get for it (I can't remember the exact $$$) for this refreshed yet essentially stock
motor. I do remember that my boss was receptive to the idea, for he trusted my work, but it
would also allow him to replace the bad motor for about the same money as just having the original
cylinder heads alone refreshed. (ie: The machine shop he trusted didn't give their work away...but I did. :0)
****
The next time the customer came in for some work , my boss offered up this low-mileage refreshed
400 for a much more attractive price than redoing his tired 389. And since this wasn't a numbers-matching
Ram Air IV or anything like that, the customer enthusiastically authorized the swap.
I was confident that the 400 would deliver on the promise. And it was easy on the eyes, thanks to
a careful paint job after the build. So at the start of the day, the old engine came out, and the new
engine took it's place by the end of the same day. Wasn't rushing, but worked with a steady focus as
if I was being paid to do the job. Which I was. And I was hoping to hear it fire triumphantly by the
end of the same day. You know, like any proud teenager who wanted to show his boss what a great
wrench turner was working for him. :0)
So after all the fluids were checked & rechecked, the moment of truth arrives. My boss asks me if it's going
to start right up, and without hesitation I replied, "Absolutely." (As only a confident teenager can say it.)
So I turned the key, and instead of the expected wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha sound (where
you hear the starter speeding up and slowing down as it's audibly working through the compression
roller coaster) ...all I heard was a steady wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee? WTF? My boss (who
was a very cool dude, and I consider him one of my mentors) gives me a quizzical look, and this was
one of those few times in my life where I could feel my cheeks burning from embarrassment. Imagine
working through an entire shift so confidently, and yet ending up in this Hero to Zero moment?
Disclaimer: I was no Poncho expert then, and still not an expert 4+ decades later. But with my Git-r-Done
blinders on, I never stopped to compare the flexplates between the 2 engines? So imagine when I removed
the inspection cover and discovered that the new flexplate was maybe 3/4"-1" or so away from the starter?
Seems that the original engine's flexplate was a slightly larger diameter than the newer 400 one?
My boss just shook his head. (Probably laughing on the inside, but zero traces of that on his mug.)
Time to close up shop, so I got to sleep on my inattention to detail. The next morning I was at the
shop waiting for my boss to show up. No words were said, but I got the transmission slid back far
enough to swap out the flexplates & get it all put back together with the focus that only comes when
you have goofed something and life doesn't get any better until you ungoof it.
With the original flexplate installed, it now looked like the starter would engage more than just air when
the key was turned. Now, after gorging on so much humble pie, I just wanted the engine to start right
off and show my boss that I wasn't a complete idiot.
It started on the 1st try on maybe the 5th wha. (I had poured gas into the fuel bowl of the Rochester
2-Jet so that we didn't have to wait for the fuel pump to prime & all that. I had also set the static timing
of the points distributor with an ohmeter to ~10° BTDC -- remember, my original goal was to impress the
boss with it starting immediately. :0) At any rate, I was literally weak with relief when it fired. The engine
was as smooth and quiet as any base-engine Pontiac 400 ever was.
The engine looked perfect on the Sun 1115, for after dialing in the idle mixture screws, ignition timing, and
idle speed, each deactivated cylinder dropped the idle speed the same rpm. All 8 were hitting the same &
sharing the load equally. (Here's a recent retro article on the 1115, see attached for a pic.
Curbsideclassic 1115)
I took the vehicle for a test drive and did the classic ring seating routine. Full throttle from 30-60mph in 3rd, coast back
to 30, accelerate to 60, and repeat maybe 10-12 times? With a final check of everything under the hood (including the fluids)
the car owner was called & asked to pick up his car. I remember his face when I opened the hood and he saw
that fresh 400, looking like a sparkly fresh yet identical version of the chuggy 389 that he drove in a couple of days earlier.
And when we fired it up, it was like his old friend had just gone through a heart transplant -- no more V7 chugging, but
that smooth V8 burble.
****
After all this, every time we saw that customer he had the biggest grin on his face. He didn't want the sun, moon, and stars.
Just wanted his favorite ride to run like it used to back when he originally bought it. Oh yeah, almost forgot. We never told
him about the whole flexplate subroutine. And we had set expectations that it might take 3 days to do the swap, so from the
customer's perspective, we brought it in a day early.
Back then the Eagle flew every Friday. On that Friday, my boss paid me for the whole time I was there for the week. Plus
the money for the engine I supplied. But I gave him back the ~5 hours I had spent ungoofing the flexplate. Told him I didn't
want him to pay me for the time spent undoing such an obvious mistake.
He then asked me, "Did you learn anything from what happened?" I told him (truthfully) that I would never make that
mistake again. He then gave me back the money I had just given him, and he proceeded to tell me a similar story about
something he did way back when
he was a teenager. And that sometimes we learn more from our mistakes than our
successes. And he also told me that the engine was just as good as I had told him it would be.
And that was that. Since then, I'm pretty careful to measure twice, swap once. For assuming all is identical, measuring zero
times, and swapping twice is the long way to pushing a mongrel project like this over the finish line.
Trust me on this. ;0)
