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Old 04-01-2016   #104
bramagedained
 
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Join Date: May 2010
Location: KY/MN/Afghanistan
Drives: EVO IX SSL
Posts: 413
Re: My "new" car/project.

I've had an engine apart before exactly one time, when I was 18 and in High school. Mostly, it was a family friend that did the work while I sort of tried to learn what was going on.

I have it written down somewhere, but, the iron heads that were on it were a 70cc chamber with small valves.

The Cam was a copy of one of the early performance cams that came from GM.

It was topped with an Edelbrock Streetmaster intake that I guess they only sold in the late 70's.

With help from Weggy, it wasn't that bad to pull out and only took maybe an hour since I pretty much had everything already disconnected.



The Datsun has a surprising amount of room for the engine/trans. It's just too bad that the steering shaft is in a weird spot. It basically ensures that no long tube headers will fit, short of a custom set. There was once a specific set make by Hooker that is NLA.


Soaked with degreaser:

I ended up with a Comp XE284H, Victor Jr, and Promaxx heads.

The castings for the heads look nice.







Pile of Comp stuff with a bottle brush hone and new rings.




After running the bottle brush hone through it. There was no carbon ring at the top of the bores and there was still a very faint crosshatch from whenever this thing was apart before.

It was already .040 over.

After running the hone through:



The bearings looked ok, so I just put it back together with the same ones in it. Once I had it back together it sat at ~35psi of oil pressure at warm idle@900-1000rpm with 30wt break in oil.

I guess the Streetmaster was the first single plane designed by Edelbrock, so I took a picture of it next to the Vic Jr.



I copper spray'd steel shim gaskets for the heads when I put it back together. I didn't actually CC the pistons(flat tops w/valve reliefs) at TDC(.026 in the hole) or the chambers, but, by math it should be just 10.2:1. When I plugged in the cam, to a calculator it gave me just under 7.8:1 for DCR.



It ended up not being worth the wait time/cost of the tool, but, I did actually buy a pushrod length checker. It's like a regular pushrod, but, you can adjust it's length. You color the valve stem tips with sharpie and put on the rocker arm/lifter/pushrod and turn it over by hand, you want the witness mark to be in the middle 1/3 of the valve stem.




A 3500 stall converter went between the motor and trans when I put it back together.

It actually slid right back into place so easily that I had it bolted up alone before my Dad got home to help me.



Now, everything was fine and dandy and I was going to fire it up the next morning, which was a Sunday. Until I found this in the HEI. Noticed when I went to swap the 4/7 plug wires since the comp cam changes the firing order.






I put about 5000 miles on the car last summer, including driving it back to MN from VA. I never noticed an issue or any misfires.

I just bought the summit HEI rebuild kit.

It was so loud in the garage, my phone didn't like it. I threw the cast ram-horns back on, with some cheap ass glass packs shoved onto where I sawzall'd the old exhaust off. I figured it might help not piss off the neighbors too bad, since I live in a cul-de-sac.

It fired right up and per comp and the internet I kept it at 2000-2500 rpm for about 30 minutes to wear the lifters into the cam. I did get a pre-luber and used that first, before then throwing the HEI in and starting it.

The video is after that was finished with.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK_PCRBU2RE&hd=1

There were no rogue noises from the motor at all, which left me quite pleased with myself. I still need to figure out what to do about headers. The cast manifolds will not be staying.

I know I should have changed the oil right away, but, I didn't think that through to have oil or a new filter on hand. I intend to cut the filter that was on there apart to inspect it.

I don't have the fuel cell installed yet so I just ran some hose into a fuel jug.

Lastly for this round of stuff, I got the shifter mounted. It had some B&M thing in it before, that had no neutral lockout or gear indicator.

I had bought the cheap ratchet from Amazon and got shipped the Stealth, which they told me to just keep.



The console is honestly pretty fugly. I'm thinking about buying a small sheet of carbon fiber to use as a trim panel to cover up the hole to make it look better. But, that has nothing to do with the function of the car so it can wait. I still need to take the cover back off of it to hookup the neutral safety and reverse light switches.

The next project is probably mounting the fuel cell.
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