Hack Weld Solder Sculpt: May 2016

Looks good! Carb just for show, installing fuel injection later

When test fitting the oil pan last week, I noticed one bolt not really threading in well. Why? Well the threads in the block mating surface were trashed. There was also a bolt fragment jammed down in there. And when the machinist went over the block in December, he must've overlooked this one. Now I have normally sent this sort of thing back to the machinist, but this thing is so far down the road, it'd be a real pisser to send out at this point. And I'm doing this to figure stuff out, so why not figure out how to repair the threads? So this week, I got a 17/64" drill bit, a 1/4-20 helicoil kit, and got down to business. After marveling at the magic of the machinist, I managed to borrow a tiny bit. I drilled out the opening, re-tapped it, and inserted the new threads. And it looked great! Glad I gave it a go, now broken threads, busted bolts, and other minor repairs are within my reach. It really didn't take much time. I in fact spent way more time hemming, hawing, and hand-wringing than I did doing the job.

So, new drama aside, I finally installed the newly painted oil pan. After rechecking the valve lash, I closed up the heads with some new valve covers that had just arrived from Summit, installed the intake manifold, and finished it off witthe thermostat/waterneck. Coming: I still need to install pulleys, alternator, coil, distributor, wires, plugs, and headers.

Thread Repair

Masked Off the area to keep metal shavings out of nice new engine.

Drill out the old bolt hole

Tap the hole with the tap in the 1/4-20 helicoil kit

Screw in new threads and knock off the tang

Toast to a job well done!

More pics

one-piece oil pan gasket! snazzy.

Oil pan is on

Prepping for intake install - super black RTV FTW

New waterneck, check out the thermostat! NOS from my Cutlass

View from under the car

The front seal issue

Wrong seal, left. Right seal, right

After installing the front main seal, it bugged me that WWTD Tim had indicated that I may have installed it backwards. I installed it, in fact, in the only direction it could be installed. I generally refer to this arrangement as being "Chuck-proof". But Tim's comment bugged me enough to re-check it. And then I realized the deal- there are two different timing covers for this engine. The first type gets a flared seal, which installs from the front. The second type gets a cylindrical seal, which installs from the rear. What had I done? Well, I had a flared seal and the second cover type. Wrong seal, mang. I found the correct one, bought it, pounded out the wrong one, and got it right. I reinstalled the timing cover once again, all good.

Painting, sanding, repainting

Stone cold

Oil pan looking creamy-dreamy, 2nd try

I got a real sweet metallic blue (early Pontiac-style) high-temp ceramic engine enamel from Eastwood. It's time to make the thing prett-ay! After masking off some things, I applied a couple coats to the block. Looks icy and badass! Not all the painting went perfectly- I had to re-sand and re-paint the oil pan since on the first go-around I had a guy stop by to purchase a van I was selling just as I had added the stabilizer to the paint, which starts the paint-curing clock. By the time I finished up with dude, the paint started to set up a little. I decided to give it a whirl, but the finish wasn't right. On the second try I understood a little better how the paint would behave. No one came by to delay the application, so it went much better. Also decided to paint the pulleys. No big, tried some rattle-can header paint I had. For whatever reason it just flaked off the next day. I redid them with some engine enamel and that seems to work.

Stripped threads

Garage exploration requires a lab coat!

After finishing the oil pan and getting a kickass one-piece gasket, I went to test fit everything and found a problem. I found stripped threads on one mounting hole while chasing bolts into each. I tried to repair the threads with a 1/4-20 thread tap, but it was just lunched up. Instead of hauling the whole thing to the machinist, I decided to repair it myself with a helicoil kit. Still haven't executed yet (need to pick up a 17/64" drill bit, have the rest), but I'll report back later however that thing ends up.

Reassembling the rocker arms and setting valve lash

Leaving the bottom end repairs behind for another day, I flipped the motor to get some stuff done on top. I needed to get the intake manifold installed anyway, but hadn't adjusted the valve lash yet, so of course I looked up some videos on YouTube on tightening valve lash on a pushrod engine. What a dizzying ride! I got about a dozen differing accounts on how to do it "right". Jiggle the pushrod- no! Twizzle it while you tighten to zero lash. Zero lash is when is stops turning- no! Zero lash is when it stops jiggling! Turn it a quarter turn after, no! Turn it a full turn, no! Turn it a half turn. What I did find useful was a couple of offhanded comments. One guy described how much play an uncompressed lifter should have when all is tightened properly (3/16"). One guy said something like 'oh yeah, if you're installing roller rockers, check to make sure the hole in the wrist is right-side up.' Wait what? Didn't know you could install them upside down, and sure enough when I checked, and the reason I couldn't properly tighten the polylocks on half of them was that half of them were on upside-down. Wow. Easy enough to fix now. Would have been a disaster if I had not noticed.

Other exciting things that occured in the past 3 weeks

mmm! Rust-free e21 coupe, in my new garage space

I ordered a GoEFI 4 throttle-body fuel injection setup from FiTech. No carburetors, this'll be pretty slick.
I rented a new 1000 sq. ft. workspace. Why? The guys in the IAC were done with it. I need more space to store and work on things. Works out good. Moving the '59 Chevy there soon.
I bought a 1980 BMW e21 track car project! More on this later.