November 9-10, 2002
The engine was now ready to go back in the pickup. We
could have simply attached the chains of the engine hoist to the lifting
brackets on the engine but we really didn't want to scratch up the newly
painted brackets. Also, the brackets are very close to the valve
covers and we were afraid we might damage them. I mentioned to
Dave that I had seen a picture of a plate that attached to the carburetor
bolt holes in the intake manifold and was then used to hoist the
engine. Dave is always up for a challenge, so he said he thought he
could make one.
To make the lifting plate we
first located the holes that would attach the 1/4" thick steel plate to the
intake manifold, using the carburetor gasket for a template. We then drilled the
holes using Dave's drill press. Next, we drilled holes in a second
piece of 1/4" thick steel
plate. These holes would be used to attach two short sections of
chains. Dave then welded this second steel plate vertically in the
center of the base plate. After everything cooled off, we
attached the plate to the intake manifold with four grade 8 bolts.
We were now ready to attached the engine hoist and begin installing the
engine.
Overall, the lifting plate worked
great. Because the plate is attached at only one point on the
engine, it is easy to tilt the
engine when lowering it into the engine bay. It did tend to swing
around a little, so you have to be sure to always have a hand on the
engine during the installation. I don't know if this system would
work as well if you were installing the transmission and engine as one
unit, but with just the engine it worked great and we didn't scuff up or
damage any of the paint or engine parts.
Don't get
the impression that everything was a piece of cake. It took a lot of
grunting, cursing, and head scratching for Dave and I to get the engine
back in a bolted up. The first problem we encountered was getting
the bolts installed in the engine mounts. I had bought new engine
mounts because the old ones literally fell apart when we took them
off. The new mounts didn't come with new bolts, but the old bolts
were in good shape, so we figured we would just re-use
them.
Installing the engine mount bolts
is done mostly by feel, because you can't really see what you're doing.
After about 30 minutes of grunting and cursing, we concluded that our
"feel" wasn't up to the task. No matter what we tried, we
couldn't get the bolts started. After a little head-scratching
I asked Dave if he thought maybe the new
engine mounts used different sized bolts than the old mounts. He said he
didn't think so, but anything was worth a shot at this point. So, we
lifted the engine enough to see the holes in the engine mounts.
Now that we could see the holes, it was clear that the old bolts were to
large for the new mounts. Luckily, Dave had some spare grade 8 bolts
of the correct size. Within about ten minutes, we had the engine in
a bolted down.
With the engine bolted in place, we could
now re-attach the transmission to the engine. I thought this would
be a big job, but everything went smooth and we had the transmission
re-attached in just a few minutes. Re-installing all of the other
parts to the engine didn't go quite as fast or smooth, but in a few hours
we had everything installed. The hardest part was figuring out which
bolts went to what. I knew I would regret not bagging and tagging the
bolts that went to all the engine parts (air conditioning compressor,
alternator, power
steering pump, etc.). But Dave said, "Oh, it'll be obvious when
we go to put them back on". Not!! After a little
trial and error, we soon had everything back on but it would have saved a
lot of time if we had labeled all the bolts as we removed them. I
also replaced all of the rubber hoses, clamps, grommets, etc. It was
a good thing I took pictures of the engine before we removed all of the
hoses because this engine has vacuum hose out the wazoo and figuring out
how they all went would have been a real nightmare. The last thing
we installed was the carburetor and the fuel line. We were now ready
to crank her up and see what happened.
The last thing we
needed to do before cranking the engine was prime the carburetor.
You might be tempted to just pour gasoline in the throat of the
carburetor. But that tends to just flood the intake and pistons with
fuel. What's needed is to fill the gas bowl and then let the
fuel pump and carburetor handle the job of getting gas to the spark
plugs. To prime the carburetor we poured about 1/4 cup of gas down
the vent tube, using a small funnel.
Before
cranking, I installed the air cleaner. The last thing I needed
was a backfire setting the engine ablaze. I pumped the accelerator 3
times and waited about 10 seconds for the fuel to distribute. Then I
turned the key and voila -- NOTHING!! I don't mean it didn't
crank. I mean it didn't do anything -- no click, no grind, no
nothing. My first thought was that we had forgotten to connect the
battery. But the battery was connected and we had lights, horn, and gauges.
We just didn't have any juice going to the starter.
Time
for a little detective work. Maybe we didn't hooked up the wires to
the coil and starter correctly. We had hooked them up from memory,
so that was a good place to start. We thought about using Dave's 68
pickup as a guide, but he had installed an HEI distributor and that
hooked up differently than my points distributer. Then Dave thought of his old tractor. It
was basically the same hookup. Sure enough, the wires on the tractor
were hooked up just the opposite from the way we had them on Maych.
We were just about to switch them around and then Dave remembered that the
tractor used a positive ground system, rather than the negative ground
system that Maych used. Whew! Good thing we caught that little
mistake in time.
Okay, it was now time to hit the
books. We dragged out the Shop Manual and went over the wiring
diagrams. From what we could tell it appeared we had everything
hooked up just like it showed. So, what's the problem.
Grasping for straws, I decided to look under the dash to see if by chance
we could have pulled out a wire from the ignition switch we we were
putting in the carpet. Nope, everything seemed to be all right.
Just as I was about to climb out of the cab I discovered the
problem. I called to Dave, who was still looking under the hood for
the problem. I said, "Dave I found the problem, but I'm kind of
ashamed to admit it". He gave me a look and then he saw the
smile on my face and he also knew what the problem was. We didn't
have the freaking thing in Park!!
I shifted into park,
turned the key and this time the engine roared to life! I stayed in
the cab to keep the engine speed up around 1,500 rpms. We had
attached a tachometer and placed it near the windshield so I could keep
and eye on the rpms. Because the camshaft and lifters are primarily
oiled by splash form the crankshaft, any rpm below 1,500 could result in
insufficient oiling. Also, at
low rpms the engine will not rotate fast enough to force the lifters to
rotate on the camshaft and properly seat. Once the engine got to
about normal operating temperature Dave set the idle to maintain 1,500
rpms and we we ran the engine at that speed for about 20 minutes.
I kept a close eye on the oil pressure during this time.
After
this initial break-in period, we reduced the rpms to normal idle. We
then set the timing and adjusted the idle mixture according to the Shop
Manual specifications. We stopped and restarted the engine several
times and everything seemed to be working great. All that's left to
do is replace the hood and drive him home -- Yippee! !
I've
still got a couple of finishing touches I want to do when I get him
home. I'll chronicle that in the next (and likely final) episode
of Maych's progress.
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