Pulling engines, a new personal best!

[390Nut]

From pulling onto the parking pad, to having the engine on the stand; (by myself) 2 hours and 17 minutes. You'ld think I had done this before.

[FORDification]

*sheesh*....what were you doing, taking a whole lot of breaks?

Things usually DO go faster when you don't have a helper, since you're less likely to get sidetracked. Ya done good!

[390Nut]

Well, ya know, the beer kept getting warm, so I had to keep stopping to finish it off. Next you know, I'm opening another one, and, well, it's a vicious cycle.

Seriously though, the hardest part was getting the hood off intact by myself. They aren't light (as we all know) and are pretty danged awkward!

Imagine a 7 foot by 5 foot square fruit basket on the head of the "Chiquita Banana" girl, and you'll know how it looked.

Got a lot to do to the engine, and found out why my clutch was messed up. Two of the three arms in the pressure plate are loose. Haven't really looked to see if anything is broken, but somethings not right.

Going to scrub it down, pull the intake and check the cam/lifters (I know two lifters are collapsed) and then pull the oil pan and timing cover. Got a oil gallery plug in the front of the block that needs to be replaced. Then button it back up, put the newly made custom motor mounts on, and drop it back into place.

Kind of odd having days off in the middle of the week, but at least it was a productive day.

[390Nut]

So much for a quick and dirty job.

Tried to pull the allen plug out of the oil galley behind the cam gear, only to have it STRIP on me. Not the threads, but the part where the allen wrench goes in.

Also it appears that ALL of my lifters are stuck now. Last time I was in there (about 1000 miles ago) most of them were still free, and would slowly collapse with pressure, then return to normal. A couple were collapsed, and not returning up the way they should. Now I can't compress any of them. Well, I had planned on replacing them anyways, I guess this is a good enough excuse to do so.

Balancer spacer is stuck on the crankshaft, and no puller to get it off of there. Guess I'll have to rent one when I pick up a set of easy outs tomorrow. (loaned my last set and never got them back).

Both the front and rear seals are leaking on the tranny, I guess after 39 years it's due for an overhaul (maybe this winter, who knows).

And to top it off, the spring tab on the clutch fork is broken, and long gone. Guess I'll be cleaning up and swapping in the extra bellhousing I've got.

Seems it's not going to be quite as quick of a job as I thought.

[Whoaaanelly]

390...
just curious why if the front galley plug is that tight -- why are you needing to replace it? As for the other things... I hate it when things don't go as planned. But having just gone through all of this same stuff I think I had about a couple dozen "while I'm at it" things come up as well. I'm just glad to have gotten it done before the rainy season came... but you're in the rainiest part of the state it looks like! Good luck!

[390Nut]

The cam gallery plug that the machinist put in was sticking out into the distributor hole. I had tried unsuccessfully to turn it in farther when I originally installed the engine, but I was pressed for time when I put the engine in. While I had the old engine out and waiting for the new engine to go in, I got a 3 day vacate notice from my landlord's family (he had just died, and I didn't feel like fighting it at the time, because I really didn't want to be there anymore). The machinists idea of a "fix" was to grind it off inside the engine (which was brand new, and had close to $3500 in parts/machine work)

Ended up cutting the bottom base ring of the distributor, about 1/3rd of the way around, so I could install it and then time the engine. It worked, but if I ever need to replace the distributor, I would have to do the same to the new one. Kind hokey, and needs fixing.

This is just one of the issues that needed repair/replacing, and I am just now getting "a round tuit"

Now I need to figure out why the front half of my engine has deposits and heat bluing on the valves, but the back half doesn't.

[390Nut]

Another update, and it don't look so good.

This is after roughly 3000 miles on a brand new engine.





Lots of crud on the valves, and some pretty bad discoloration on the the stems, mostly on the front half of the engine.