Cooling:
The overheating issue reared its head once from an incorrect sender isntall. Then again a few months ago. I took the engine down the the longblock, and did everything short of pulling the heads. What scared me most, was Colin and my inability to make the temperatures on the gauge fluctuate. We ran pig-rich and blast-furnace-lean, and hit 430* on the same stretch of road every time. The cooling system appeared fine, as we cooled greatly off throttle and down hill.
For kicks, I installed and removed my #3 spark plugs a few times by hand to watch itseat in the head. With and without the sender ring felt very different. Colin will remember the grooves cut in my Brazillian heads, and I am definitely blaming them for a majority of my troubles. First, the grooves catch the sender wire and push/pull the sender ring out of round with the plug. This messes with the sealing ability of the crush washer. Second, the plug wells are MUCH deeper than the German heads I just bought for my new engine. The crimp in the sender is completely unable to simultaneously fit in the well with the spark plug socket. This causes the sender crimp to hang up on the well and pull the sender into an eliptical shape. Colin saw this on my old sender and sighed a mighty sigh. IF YOU ARE LUCKY you can get the crimp caught in the only groove large enough for it while not letting it pull out of round and catch the plug threads. Every time Colin or I tried to torque the #3 plug down with the sender, we were met with a crunching feel. This was either the plug threads catching the sender and/or the sender ring crimp catching the edge of the well and stretching the copper. There is NO WAY to reliably do this with the engine in- I got lucky once, that's all. My long-term-for-now solution was to hacksaw an old NGK plug into a plug for the hole, and Dremel out a nice channel for the ring sender to ride in. Now it can clear the socket, seal the plug, and not get caught and pulled ont he threads. Installed smooth - ahhhhhhh - much better.
Floored up the Newhall Pass, Sepulvida Pass, and my original 430* grade and the highest temp I saw was 404*. Railroad Avenue floor-sessions top out around 370*, AND I made it to San Diego without seeing the gauge flash. Much better than the 380* second gear residential street cruise temps.
While pulling the cooling system apart, I found a wonderful placebo that made me feel good about tearing into the enginel.
McDonald's BBQ sauce packet. Whatever they make that out of, we should look into it for fireproofing. As I said before, my heads don't have the locating dowel, so I made sure to get the metal gasket on the heads straight. Got my Awesome Powdercoat thermostat isntalled, and warm up is quicker. It's probably needing adjsutment, but I feel better about my relatively short morning commute now.
Engine balance issue:
NOBODY in the LA area would take my money for flywheel balancing. Drove around the city for four hours talking to 23 machine shops and they just didn't want to try it. I gave many middle fingers, several thank-yous, and wound up with a flawless used German case, single port heads, and NOS 69mm crank all for $700. So the day wasn't a total loss, but I did get my pressure plate back on the flywheel at home all frustrated. I took a break, looked at my pressure plate, and went WOAH THERE'S THE PROBLEM.
Colin taught me to focus. Don't let the wrench slip. Think about what forces are at play here. Looking at my pressure plate, I could visualize gravity working against me during installation. The Sachs Brazil pressure plate mounting holes are so big, that by putting six bolts through the plate holes into the flywheel, the pressure plate was allowed to sag downwards. A lot. The pressure plate was then resting against the bottom flange/lip of the flywheel, while the top of the plate was at least 3mm from the flange. I immediately loosened my pressure plate bolts and started over, this time propping the pressure plate up while doing half-turns of each hex bolt until the plate held itself up. I used my micrometer to measure equal spacing around the pressure plate to ensure it was centered. It sure was different than EVERY OTHER TIME I've installed the plate. Took three times as long. So six minutes instead of two.
Absolutely worth it. Spending zero dollars, and a lazy afternoon, I cured a great deal of the vibrations from my bus. I can't double-clutch downshift NEARLY as well, because I can't feel the engine beating through the chassis. I suppose I should get a tach now… I can converse with friends and family at a normal voice level, and my dog even fell asleep on a test ride for the first time in history. There is some happy air in Buddy's garage right now, and a great deal of happy feelings cruising around town listening to all the sounds around me that I couldn't hear before. I don't worry about tinnitus consuming me at age 35 either.
This alone was worth the engine pull and all-nighters.
Ball Joints:
Bus-Boys sent me 70-79 arms, even though I paid for 68-69 with rush shipping. So they're rushing me correct arms. I can't imagine they made much money on this ordeal, since they have to pay return shipping and rush-ship to cover the mistake. Now I just have to get the cajones to install the new arms. It's my only car right now, so I'll wait for the weekend in case it takes me all day.
Also my apartment caught on fire so that's probably going to set me back a bit.
