Mechanical Mayhem!

[chepsk8]

my 5.0 in COBRASK8 tried very hard to kill itself this weekend!

First off, I have had chronic cooling issues, loosing coolant, then running hot, no leaks anywhere. Finally pulled off the intake manifold and was rewarded by finding the brown foam on the underside of the intake! further investigation found the broken intake gasket by the front water port, so a new set was installed and fired up COBRASK8.

Let it warm up, all seemed fine, so I took it out for a ride, hammered it a few times, and lost oil pressure! Limped home idling (1 mile), dropped the pan, and discovered the oil pump had seized, snapping the oil pump drive shaft! (It spriralled up like a barber pole!) Bought a new pump, high volume, and installed it, buttoned up the bottom end, and went to re-start. :damnit:

Now, it won't start, only sputters! Pulled everything apart, checked mechanical timing, TDC, compression, the works, still only sputters, it's definitely a timing issue. As I am cranking it, I notice the trigger light on the ignition box only flashing sporadically, so I check the distributor, and VIOLA, the rotor had shifted, and the trigger optics were dirty! Cleaned the optics, checked & re-installed the rotor, and Varooom! It finally starts!

Let it warm up, and it overheats again! I'm going nuts! No cooling pan! I find the ground lead on the fan is off! Re-attach, the fans buzzes to life, and the car cools right off. Top off the water, let it run for 1/2 hour, right on the thermosat. Out for a ride, plenty of oil pressure, runs cool, no bad noises, Yeesh!

Drove it home, washed it, put it in the garage, covered in, and had a beer!

I don't want to suffer through THAT again!

Any else have adventures like this?

 

[krash kendall]

You should get rid of that beater and get a Saturn or something.

No?


How about a Kia?


Just kidding, I sometimes actually enjoy weekends like that!

 

[chepsk8]

I was considering trading it for a Trabant or old Yugo, Maybe a FIAT!!!!

 

[krash kendall]

Ha, ha! I don't think half the folks here have heard of a Trabant!

When I was in high school my friend's girlfriend was driving him home one night in his '67 cougar when she wiped it out sideways on a median. The year he was restoring it he had to drive a Vauxhall Viva!

 

[bnickel]

for the last couple of weeks my best friend and i have been working on his 84 dodge pick up. last weekend we pulled the dead 360 out of the truck and the 318 that was in his 73 charger. we re-sealed the 318, changed the timing cover, timing chain, oil pump, distributor and intake manifold. the 318 went in the truck but we had some problems.

it was me, him and his 16 year old son doing all this, well in the process of installing the 318, we all managed to screw something up. his son managed to snap off a header bolt, luckily it was just overstretched and didn't bottom out in the head so we were able to extract it with a pair of needle nose. i managed to somehow pull the threads out of the intake when i was installing the carb, i had purposely decided to install the carb so my friends son didn't overtighten the carb bolts and do exactly what i did. in my defense though, we think he had already managed to screw up the threads when he put the carb plate on to install the engine, he used oversized nuts on the studs as a spacer and we're pretty sure he overtightened them and started the thread pulling problem. i barely had any torque on the nut at all, probably 3-4 ft lbs. my friend forgot a timing cover bolt and when we started the truck up it was instant coolant leak, luckily for us those were all easy fixes.

now we are having other problems either with the timing or the carb or both. when we first fired it up and set the carb and the timing it ran like a top, now it misses at idle, but runs smooth on the top end. the engine is only pulling about 10 inches of vacuum at best and we aren't real sure why, it does have a slight cam but it's nowhere near that radical to be only be pulling 10 inches of vacuum. we suspect the vacuum problem may be carb related somehow, but not real sure. also we used the old distributor out of the 360 since it's an electronic ignition, where as the old dizzy from the 318 was points. i'm starting to suspect the distributor has worn bushings and is causing the erratic idle. anyway we still have probably another entire weekend of tuning to get it running right.

 

[WORTH]

Ya buddy I know how you feel, I took the ragtop out this weekend and it was filthy so I had to wash it and vacuum the interior , But it's all Good Now

 

[snowball]

Ha, ha! I don't think half the folks here have heard of a Trabant!

A really old Trabant joke.

How do you double the value of a Trabant??

Answer: Fill it up with petrol.

 

[2nd Mustang]

Not cars, but still Murphy's Law candidate:

Bathroom exhaust fan making weird noises, try to clean it out, but still grinding. Go to Lowes to buy new fan (cheapest one) came home to find out that I have to cut out the ceiling to drop the old exhaust fan housing. Make an absolute mess with dry wall dust everywhere, then bam, the bathroom light fixture decides to start blinking. Change bulb, no good, tap on the light housing and the light stays on, then blinks again, so it's off to Lowes again tomorrow to buy new light fixture, drywall, Romex wires and wire nuts. I should've just disconnected the fan and bought a new can of Lysol spray.

 

[rbohm]

A really old Trabant joke.

How do you double the value of a Trabant??

Answer: Fill it up with petrol.

yugo joke;

do you know why a yugo comes with a rear window defroster?

so the owner can keep his hands warm while he is pushing the car.

 

[zm830101]

a buddy of mine and myself were rebuilding his 3.4 liter v6 f-body about a month ago
pulled the motor, rebulit it after the machine work, slapped it back in the car got everything together and tried to start it. nothing but backfire through the throttle body. as soon as i heard it i knew that a had reversed the timing marks on the timing chain and it was 180 degrees out.
it was just a pain in the ass to go through all the trouble of pulling the radiator, all the accesories and everything else to get the timing right. a two minute job that takes 4 hours worth of work to correct. and this was after i told myself when putting it together on the stand, "don't reverse the timing marks or it's gonna be a bitch"

thats what makes working on cars fun though, as long as you can figure out what you screwed up