As promised:

I finally made the trek to Best Buy and snagged a new SD card for my camera. No more blurry drunk-vision camera phone pictures! I also picked up Weird Al's new album. Very good stuff, but a warning to everybody: there's some kind of funky copy protection on the disc that prevents the thing from playing in some CD players. "Some" includes the one in my Buick, unfortunately.

Plus, the copy protection doesn't work very well. Took me fifteen minutes to rip and re-burn it on a disc I CAN play in the car. Sorry Al.

Anyway, here's a nice shot of the engine. Enjoy.

It's in, bitches.

Okay folks, as you can see in this picture, the engine is in the car.

That's the short story. The long story sucks, but I'll tell it anyway.

If you remember, the plan was to use the long Christmas weekend to finish up the engine and put it in the car. Then Saturday morning fate intervened. My grandfather died. He had been fighting lung cancer for about three years, but lung fibrosis was what finally got him. It wasn't unexpected, but it was a sad weekend. I left Saturday afternoon with my sister for Missouri, and was there until after the funeral yesterday.

This morning, I got up bright an early and retrieved my helper from my friend's house. I'm really glad he took Bella at such short notice.

After I got her, I started work on the car. I needed to replace the motor mounts while I had the engine out. It looked easy. Three bolts apiece. Easy?

Not so much. The bolts had nuts behind them. Access to the nuts was through a large hole in the frame that was presently occupied by the lower control arm forward pivot point. The lower control arms had to come out, and before those can come out, you have to pull the spindles and the springs. I hadn't planned on doing the front end quite yet, but I'll be damned if I take all this apart twice.

Sooo, I ripped off the front spindles, got the control arms out, and knocked out all the tie rod ends and the center link. All new parts are ordered, and the lower control arms are at the machine shop getting bead blasted. I'll powdercoat them next week.

After I dropped the arms off at the machine shop, I got the engine on the hoist and started wrestling it in. It took about 35 minutes before it clunked onto the transmission dowels, and another hour of twisting in tight places to get the bellhousing bolts and motor mount through bolts in.

Tomorrow, I have a haircut at 3:30, and I have to pack for my weekend in Maryland. I might be able to get the gas tank reinstalled. If that happens, it may be possible to start it tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath.

It's done...

...the engine, that is.

Oil pan finally showed up, so I bolted it on. Got new fittings for the heater hoses, and screwed the vacuum port onto the #8 intake runner. It's ready to go in the car. Hi-res pics to come, I'm going to buy a memory card for the digial tomorrow. No more crappy camera phone pictures.

Blang blang

Well, this is the SECOND time I've posted this entry. Blogger beta, you're on my shit list tonight. I hate doing things twice.

Anyway, I went over to Evil Dave's tonight. We sandblasted and powdercoated the pulleys and brackets for the engine. Enjoy.

Summit shipped my oil pan today, too. This thing may actually come together this weekend.

Progress? You tell me...

Well, I skipped out on work early today to take advantage of the great weather (60 degrees... in December?) and try to get some painting and cleanup done. I stopped by O'Reilly Auto Parts and picked up my new harmonic balancer installation kit, and put the balancer on. You can also see the shiney chrome valve covers.

Once the balancer was on, I found TDC and painted a nice stripe on the balancer, then spun it around to 16 degrees before top dead center on the compression stroke. Once it's in the car, I can just shove the distributor in, line the rotor up with #1, and it'll be timed.

The second picture is my spark plugs wires. Plugs in on that side of the engine, little heat protective sock on them, and routed. I need to get some kind of dress up kit for the other side of the engine so it looks as neat.

Not pictured, but the water pump is now on, too.

Here's to hoping the oil pan makes it tomorrow.

More non-progress...

I was all set last weekend. Finish up some detail work, and drop the engine in the car. It was going to be sweet.

And then it wasn't. Pep Boys' lies in their computer system. I was supposed to have gotten a 350 4 bolt main block with the dipstick relief on the driver side. Now, I really don't care which side the dipstick goes on, I just needed to know that so I could order the correct oil pan. Based on what Pep Boys' said I was getting, I ordered a shiny chrome oil pan with a relief for a driver side dipstick.

Well, dipstick on this block is on the passenger side. Pan didn't fit. So, whole weekend was shot. I shipped the pan back to Summit on Monday, they should receive it today and ship me back the correct pan.

In the meantime, I finished painting my living room. YAY! That moves a four year long project into the "done" column.

Bumpstick, ahoy!

What you see here is, obviously, my new long block. What you don't see is the stock camshaft sitting on the floor. According to AllData, the camshaft that came in a 1984 Chevrolet C10 truck with the 4 barrel 350 had .260" lift on the intake side and .270" lift on the exhaust side. AllData didn't tell me about the durations, but I'm sure they're crappy.

The camshaft that is now in this engine is a slightly more aggressive grind. Slightly. It's installed, and I degree'd it to within a degree of the intake centerline on the card, which is as close as I could get with my standard non-adjustable timing set.

The Competition Cams Xtreme Energy XE262H -14 is a mid-range cam grind, advertised powerband is 1500-5500 rpm. It has .464" lift on the intake side, and .470" on the exhaust side. Quite a bit more than stock. Duration at 0.050" lift is a respectable 214 degress intake, 224 degree exhaust. It should be nice and lumpy.

This grind is just a tad larger than the grind GM uses in their 290HP crate engine. My heads and block are the same. So, an informed guess is going to put me somewhere around 300hp at the crank, and 350lb-ft of torque. That could swing around quite a bit. I'll revisit this when the car is running and I get a chance to take it to the dyno.

Tomorrow is Tuesday. In the mail, I'm expecting the rest of the parts from Summit. Tomorrow night's entry should contain a picture of the fully assembled engine. Emphasis on "should."

Core charge is taken care of...

Yay. Hooray. I took care of the evil Pep Boys core charge.

Yes, my new engine, predictably, had a core charge. Unpredictably, the rebuilder Pep Boys uses apparently is really picky about their cores. Must be 4 bolt main, must have dipstick on the correct side, must not already be bored more than .030 over... crazy. Of course, the original engine from my car isn't even the correct displacement, so giving THAT back wasn't going to work.

So, pick up the phone and call KY Core Exchange. Very nice fellows. For the patry sum of $225 I got a junk 4 bolt main block. Lot of money, but less than the $285 I was going to have to pay, so chalk up $60 in savings... but I'm not done.

Nope. Rolled $82.50 in coins. Savings up to $142.50.

Was I done then? Hell no. Loaded up a 3800 Series II and the old 2.4L from my 240Z into the back of the truck and took them to the recycler. An additional $30, plus lots of extra space in my garage!

Actual cash outflow for the day: $52.50. I win. This time.

Well folks, here it is. My new remanufactured engine. Made by Probuilt and sold through Pep Boys. It has a GM 14010207 four bolt main block, and GM light-duty 462624 76cc heads. Saturday, I'll be yanking the included reground camshaft and installing a Comp Cams XE262, along with new lifters. The cool part is I get to use my super-duper Summit cam degreeing kit. Yahooo! (Yes, it is sitting on my creeper, thanks to Wang)

It's out, suckers

Well folks, it's out. With the removal of the hood, it was time to yank the motor. It took about two hours for me to get everything unhooked or pulled out of the way, and then the lifting started.

Here, it's on the way out, just after I managed to slide the transmission off.

Further up...

All the way up...

And out!

It's now sitting on my little red radio flyer wagon. Poor wagon. It's held transmissions, the side was buckled by a tree, and now there's a boat-anchor Chevy 305 sitting in it.

Now to start cleaning up the engine bay and ripping out stuff I don't need. Then the new motor goes in.

 

Well, here's the best I can do for a picture right now. Took it with my camera phone, and heavily brightened it. You can sort of see the upper control arm, really see my nifty new grade 8.8 bolts, and little of the new spring.
In addition, my friend Mark stopped by and helped me get the hood off. I'm eating right now, but I'll be back out in a tad to see if I can muscle the engine out. 

Well, more crap...

Cam and lifter replacement didn't go as planned. First off, had to crack open the A/C system so we could remove the system to get it out of the way. $100 worth of refridgerant all over my engine bay, plus PAG oil with flourescent dye. Yuck.

Anyway, got the accessories off, pulled the timing cover, and whoah. Major slack in the timing chain. So much slack, you could pick the chain up off the gears and move it. I'm wondering if the thing has jumped time, and that's why it was such a dog. Neither here nor there, on to getting the lifters out...

...Or not. They're all mushroomed. Stuck in the bores. Engine would have to come out, take the oil pan off, remove the crank, and push them out the bottom. I'm not doing that. I ordered a new engine. 350 Chevrolet, four bolt mains. One year warranty, $900. Should be here later this week. I'm hoping I can pull the 305 out tonight and clean up the engine bay while it's still warm. Supposed to get cold and start raining tomorrow. Ick.

I also grabbed new front tubular steel upper control arms from Gbodyparts.com. Steel greasable bushings, lighter than stock, and will accept aftermarket ball joints with taller studs. If I have enough time tonight after pulling the engine, I'll start taking the front suspension apart. More to come...

More, more more...

Well, no pictures. Sorry. Camera isn't working. SD card died. Apparently they don't work forever.

Anyway, rear suspension replaced. New bushings, new springs, control arms powdercoated gloss black.

Waiting for the RTV on the diff cover to cure in the cold-as-balls garage.

Saturday, new camshaft, lifters, water pump. Yee-haw.

Well... crap

No update in awhile, sorry.

Got the transmission in, been driving with it for almost two months now. Everything's been great, except for a vibration in the back of the car and steadily decreasing gas mileage.

The shudder I attributed to shot rear springs and control arm bushings, so I bought some new ones. Tonight, I removed the control arms and springs, tomorrow I'll have the old bushings pressed out and the arms sandblasted so I can paint them.

However, while I was dicking around, I spun one of the rear wheels. Click click click click... well, shit. Bad side bearings? Pop the diff cover off. The fluid, which I changed when I did the transmission in early September, was gray and sparkly with metal shavings. Bad news. Spun it again. Click click click... coming from the damn spider gears in the differential.

So, car is up in the air for a couple of weeks. I won't be able to get to the junk yard for a new rear end until next Saturday at the earliest. Damn old cars.

No pictures today...

...but I did get some work done. After a layoff of three days due to a minor surgery on my neck, I ventured out tonight.

I replaced all the belts and remounted all the accessories. I found the cause of a rather nasty belt squeal: the lower coolant hose's clamp was rotated around in such a way that the belt was rubbing on it. Whoever put that hose on wasn't thinking too clearly.

All the bellhousing bolts are in and tight. The Torque convertor bolts are on. Couldn't get them with the torque wrench, so Loctite and and a box wrench will have to do. Shifter linkange and speedometer cable are also in.

Soccer tomorrow night, but Saturday, I should have this thing running.

And here are the biggest pains in my ass, the headers. Getting the manifolds out was hard. Getting these bastards in was worse. Those bolts are very hard to get on with a wrench. Damn primaries are in the way.


And here's the outlet. Went from 2" to a 4" oval. This will be mating with a 4" oval inlet catalytic convertor from a Grand National, exiting in a 2.5" circle which I'll have to made with the stock 2.25" exhaust. I'm hoping there's a enough space I can get a reducer and some clamps in.
 

Here's the newer four speed installed, with my snazzy freshly painted crossmember clearly visible.

Thanks to Brent for the hand getting the transmission in. I'm a big pussy. Lifting a 120lb transmission into a car is not something I can do by myself. 

Progress?

Well, here's the old TH350, out of the car and on the ground. This transmission was fucked. Tailshaft was flopping around quite a bit more than it should have been 

 

Well, as you can see, some more work done. Only took me a week of soaking the bolts on the exhaust manifolds before they'd come off easily. Then an hour of twisting them around to get them out of the engine compartment.

Above them, you can see the Edelbrock TES headers. I've had these laying around for years. I also cut the cat off, it was destroyed internally. Matrix had completely broken down. I'm starting to doubt the milage on this vehicle. 

So, I didn't drop a transmission on myself today, which was nice.


Here it is in the air, in my slightly messy garage.


This is a nice shot of the diff cover. Cleaned off, degreased, and painted gloss black. Much like polishing a turd, but oh well. Waiting for the RTV to dry overnight and then we'll fill it up with fresh gear oil.

I had to remove the fan and shroud to get to the crank pulley bolt, so I snapped a picture of the nifty new aluminium radiator. Apparently, Autozone won't even sell you a copper/brass radiator anymore. They're all Chinese aluminium cores with plastic tanks. It gets the job done. We'll see how long it lasts.

And lastly, I cleaned up the 200-4R crossmember. I almost managed to get the pan off the TH350 and drain it, got the kickdown cable undone, and got three of the five bolts holding the crossmember in off. Two more of those, undo the shifter linkage, undo the bellhousing bolts, and I should have the TH350 out. 

More underside stuff this morning. First, you can see the catalytic convertor. It looks a bit rough. The A.I.R. tube going from the A.I.R. pump to the cat was completely rusted away. The car smells funny while it's running, and I'm afraid the cat is bad. The horrible time the car has pulling past 2000 rpm is also a hint. It's coming out with the exhaust manifolds.


Here you can see the transmission pan. It's a THM350, basically the metric version of the hot-rodder favorite Turbo 350 from GM. Unlike the versions the hot rodders use, this mid-80s metric passenger car transmission has mushy shifts, shift points that are way too low, and a 1:1 3rd gear. I'm sure a good transmission guy could pull it and make it into a world beater, but I'm not spending any money on this one.














And here's why. This is a THM200-R4 four speed overdrive out of a 1986 Grand Prix. This transmission was made famous by the Buick Grand National. This example is not quite that fancy. The GN's, Monte Carlo SS's, and Olds 442s had a special valvebody with much better shift points. This one doesn't have that. However, it still has deeper 1st and 2nd gears, as well as a 0.69:1 overdrive fourth. This will get the car up to speed faster, and I'll get better gas milage once I'm up there. Readily available kits will also allow me to get the torque convertor to lock/unlock automatically, allowing me to dispense with my tacky in-car switch.














Everything is soaking in PB Blaster right now. Tomorrow, I drop the drive shaft, drain the transmission and try to pull it without crushing myself. Wish me luck.

So it begins...

So, here's the start of the first major set of "repairs." My goal for this week is to swap the exhaust manifolds for a set of headers I have laying around, as well as swap the stock TH350 three speed with a 200-4R four speed overdrive, and a few other odds and ends while the car is in the air.

Here you can see I've popped the diff cover off. It had never been off. The fluid inside was 22 years old. Nasty.












Here you can see the driver side exhaust manifold. It's been on there 22 years, but only 58.000 miles. Hopefully it'll come off without any of the exhaust bolts breaking.

These two, the first is the passenger side manifold. I think this one's going to be the tough one. second is the driver side manifold again, but through the wheelwell.

So, here it is

So here it is, my 1985 Pontiac Grand Prix. It's an eBay buy. 58,000 miles on the clock. Previous owner bought it from an estate sale. Apparently the old woman parked it seven years ago when she couldn't drive anymore. Sitting stillin Columbus, Ohio, isn't really good for a car. The previous owner was a car guy, and replaced a bunch of crap. The thing has fresh front brakes, all new hard brake lines, new rear brakes and drums, and it had a decent set of 15x7" American Racing wheels.

The rest, however, is a little off. The doors are shot. The steel ends at the chrome strip along the bottom. The suspension bushings are shot, and there's a little rot in a few places I've found, along with plenty of surface rust.

When I got it home and started driving it, it ran like crap. No power at all. I soon found the secondaries on the carb were rusted shut. I pulled it and attempted a rebuild. The top and base were worthless, so I swapped them with another Quadrajet I had laying around. It helped, but wasn't the greatest. I gave in and slapped a 500CFM Edelbrock four barrel onto it to get me by. I also had to rig up a switch to lock the torque convertor, since without a TPS signal from the carb, the computer won't lock it.

Next to come were new shocks. The original dampers were still on the car. It handled like a big fat ass. All waving and bouncing around. New $13 apiece cheapy shocks from O'Reilly's and a rear swaybar from a junked Monte Carlo SS helped a ton.

Chronic overheating was fixed with a new radiator, though I think the water pump is going to need replacement soon. I had the A/C converted to R134a by the Local Roppel's (on Dixie, good guys, go there), and got the non-functional A/C controls fixed by cleaning the vacuum switch in the dash as well as plugging a gigantic vacuum leak under the hood.

Future plans for this thing? I'm going to build a monster. You see, I also have a 1970 Datsun 240Z. I have spent the last three years getting it restored from sitting in a barn. I have determined that for what I've spent to get that Datsun up from 111 horsepower to a stout 175, I can get this Pontiac well over 500. It will also have A/C and a radio, which the Z will probably never have while I own it. I know what parts to get to deal with the suspension, and building a 500hp small block is cake these days. You can do it for $4000 using a junkyard core 350 and a mini-blower.

No, the hard part is going to be doing the rust repair, body work, and paint, all while trying to drive the thing to work each day. Stay tuned for more...

So here I am...

Amazing that somebody who had an email address in 1994 and wrote the first web page for a secondary U.S. Public school in 1995 would not have blog... until now.

So here it is. This thing is to keep track of my newest little project, my 1985 Pontiac Grand Prix.

Why this car? Because I like them. No other reason. Yes, I know they're worthless. Yes, I know they aren't fast. Yes, I know I will never recoupe my investment. I don't care, that's not why I'm doing this. If you get in the comments and address any of the whys, I'll delete them. I don't want to hear it, I already know.