Busy day for the Swede... anyone else?

Swede958

Founding Member
Dec 17, 2001
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Austin, TX
Alrighty- today was fairly productive I would say. It was supposed to rain here in austin but hasn't yet (go Austin meteorologists!).

I got about 2 hours of sleep last night because of the gf... and not the good reason for 2 hours of sleep either. But I went to sleep at about 0930 and got up at 1130 and called a friend over. We managed to get just about everything done on my daily driver that I was in a wreck in. New headlights, hood, bumper and all. Bumper was a PITA cause the shock absorbing plastic parts did not want to come out. Dodge Ram 1/2 ton works great as a puller on these :)

Then I went to that friend's house to help pull a stump.. well, not a stump, more like a small tree. THis thing was like 4' tall and about 18" around. We ended up breaking a heavy duty tow strap and using a 1.5 ton come-along to help pull it out. The final push was made again by his later model dodge Ram 1/2 ton (these things make great pullers). But of course... something had to happen. As it was while we were trying to dig around roots to free it up... you guessed it... WATER MAIN!!!! I shoved the tip of the shovel into the 1.25" main line to his house. Long story short I can now add PVC plumming to my list of skills (P.S. if anyone is looking for small pieces of radiator line when using hard hoses-for adapters- Home Depot has premade ones in 1.5" for like 3$)

At the end of the day class, we learned that when you dig... The nice city maintenance people have a "call before you dig" sign for a reason, PVC is pretty simple to work with, but doing it in a pit full of soft mud negates all simplicity.

Anyone else have an eventful day today?

The Swede
 
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Im beat. Spent all day taking down a big burm in my back yard with an ancient tiller out in the 90 degree heat , then tilled some flat area, thought about tilling up one of my neighbors yards just to relive my destructive youth, declined that , washed my 3 dogs, cleaned the kitchen , went to Wally World (Wal-Mart) , came home and rebuilt a fe motor... Okay, didnt rebuild the motor , but I did all the rest of that stuff. Fortunately didnt kill a water main with the tiller ! :D
 
Spent a good chunk of yesterday and today working with No Kitten on Dammit the Bronco. Been having an absolutely terrible time getting it tuned; timing jumping all over the place. Finally, in desperation, I suggested we may be dealing with a bad timing set. Pulled apart a motor that may well have never been pulled apart before (even when it was jerked out of a junkyard queen and tossed in Dammit by its P.O.). Didn't find the cam gear shedding pieces of its nylon out coating like I expected to see; but found almost enough slop in the chain to slip it up one tooth on the gear with my greasey fingers. :nonono:

New timing set out of the box won't fit on the motor??? :scratch: Chain's waaaaayyy too short. What the h____ kind of a 302 is this? Went back to A-Zone to check a set for a 351W (I dunno, maybe the cam bore is farther from the crank bore? :shrug: ) - nope, same part number. After about 10 minutes of the Zonie telling us they're all the same part number; I finally told the guy to pull out another set so we can play "match it up". Guess what - right gears, wrong chain! I was starting to have me suspicions when I found some other dude's Yuma cellphone number written in pen on the inside of the box. BTW, if anybody with a friend named Bruno in Yuma, AZ bought and returned a "wrong" timing set; they just tossed it on back the shelf - morons!

New timing set on and off the motor about 4 times while we tried to get the alignment marks - aligned. Finally, my oldest brother (down visiting from Apache Junction) clued me in on setting the cam mark straight down; then rolling the crank two (well almost two) full revolutions to get everybody together again. That's why he's my SB Ford guru - over the years, he's had more Stangs, Cougars and Torinos than Oboe and HM put together. :nice:

Stilll not all together, but it will be soon.


Oh, yeah. By our best guess, the chain had jumped enough to be 3-4 teeh off-time! :eek: I think NK's gonna find he has a somewhat different truck when it's back together.





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