318 timing chain.....and why the engine should come out.

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I’ll do what dart nut says as well with some extra. I will remove the heads and lap the valves

Check the cylinders and replace the bearings with some cheap ones that will be better than the ones that are in it now.
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Throw the oil pump and timing chain in there

Add some seals on the valves and call it a day.
Clean it....

Paint it

Run it until it’s done.
All this from a simple timing chain job.
But.....it’s a worn out old engine. If anything I’m saving it by doing this.

It’s a lot of work but for my purposes. If this thing even has 20k left on it. I’ll never have to mess with it again.

It did t come at a good time and needs the trans refreshed as well.
I also had to fix the cross member. If you look at the picture in my avatar. The engine is sitting crooked. Someone pulled an engine out of the k frame in the yard where I bought it with a torch. I didn’t see it and the engine went in crooked. Had to weld metal in there the other day to fix it. It should sit level now but it cost to get a welder out there and get that right. It was double lower than it should have been on one side.....but not as noticeable as you would think
 
This is exactly how rotisserie restorations start....

Oh, and in before timing chain tensioner argument.
 
glhx said:
I’ll do what dart nut says as well with some extra. I will remove the heads and lap the valves
Check the cylinders and replace the bearings with some cheap ones that will be better than the ones that are in it now.
.
Throw the oil pump and timing chain in there

Add some seals on the valves and call it a day.
Clean it....

Paint it

Run it until it’s done.
All this from a simple timing chain job.
But.....it’s a worn out old engine. If anything I’m saving it by doing this.

It’s a lot of work but for my purposes. If this thing even has 20k left on it. I’ll never have to mess with it again.

It did t come at a good time and needs the trans refreshed as well.
I also had to fix the cross member. If you look at the picture in my avatar. The engine is sitting crooked. Someone pulled an engine out of the k frame in the yard where I bought it with a torch. I didn’t see it and the engine went in crooked. Had to weld metal in there the other day to fix it. It should sit level now but it cost to get a welder out there and get that right. It was double lower than it should have been on one side.....but not as noticeable as you would think
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Speaking of avatars. Dual 2 barrels?
 
Yeah.....I ran bbds back to back.
When I built it. It worked pretty good....just pretty good. I was never completely happy with it. It was hard to tune and that was part of the running rich was getting it to tune well.

The are 285 cfm per carb and the back one is not really friendly to tuning. They are both progressive carburetors.

The front one is a later high top bbd and shares edelbrock jets. If I ever put it back on. I will jet it how it’s supposed to be and do it with a wide band. I’ve looked into running it again.

It had a fuel leak on the inlet so I took it off and ran a Holley 600.
That carb was way out of wack and had several adjustments that were just wrong. It was jetted down 2 from stock...the pump cam was undersized and the vacuum secondary was open about 1/16”.
Took a while to sort through all of that and a learning curve.

Follow that with a worn points distributor with a worn rubbing block and you have basically a car with problems in a few directions. I got the distributor problem fixed.....then went to the carb and got that all sorted out.

Finally total timed it and was not happy with how much the balancer was moving. ......I put a piston stop in to check it and decided to run a double roller and it has gone downhill from there.

Cracked torque converter and bushing as you saw in the other post.
I won’t go too far with all of this. The car is very very solid as it was a California car underneath but needs a new roof due to vinyl top....stupid idea......

some lower quarters....a paint job and a completely new interior. It needs a lot of work and it will still be a slant 6 car that originally came with literally zero options. It was as basic as it gets. It was meant to be a parts car for a circle track racer and they said they were going to strip it and eventually crush it. I bought it for $500 and put it back on the road. It needs about $6000 for me to restore it and will be done over time.
A while back....a buddy of mine had a 76 charger he was gonna crush....so he gave me this engine as it didn’t have one sitting in it for about 6 months. I was looking for a small block anyway and had already converted it over with that used cross member........

So we threw the engine in there untouched to kind of mock it up and get all the right hardware.....like the correct kickdown rod and just to make sure it all went smooth. ....make sure everything fit and ran right.....stuff like the speedometer and shift linkage as it was converted to console car. Things like that. That’s why it literally looks like hell. It was sanded in the surface rust areas and spray painted to protect the metal over the years....this worked

I started a family and let it sit in the shop for ten years like that...
The engine was never really meant to stay in there in its worn condition. It was going to get running and everything working....all the bugs worked out. Then take the car all the way down restore a complete and operational car.....so that little repair work would be needed to be done after the fact.
None of that went right and the divorce took a toll financially I lost the shop and the house.........so now I’m just getting it back to a running and driving car as cheap as I can to make it reliable

The other stuff will just take more time.
 
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Question on the piston rings.

I pulled the engine completely apart today. Will post pictures of how it looks.

But the piston rings are all over the place. I did mark where they all were.

When I build an engine.l.lthey are staggered and in different sides of the circle.

The ones that came out of this engine.....so had openings right next to eachother .

My question is....do Piston rings move in the bore?..And do they need to go back in exactly the way they came out?
 
glhx said:
Question on the piston rings.

I pulled the engine completely apart today. Will post pictures of how it looks.

But the piston rings are all over the place. I did mark where they all were.

When I build an engine.l.lthey are staggered and in different sides of the circle.

The ones that came out of this engine.....so had openings right next to eachother .

My question is....do Piston rings move in the bore?..And do they need to go back in exactly the way they came out?
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Rings rotate as the engine runs. Why people stagger them I don't know. I do it myself but they don't stay put.
 
Yes the rings rotate, Not that big a deal. I read an article years ago about ring positioning and ring gaps that the author had tried. Even to the point of stupid wide gaps. Really had little affect on blow by.
 
Damn.....
All this time I thought they stayed put. So how does that work?

I’ve been taught that the up and down of the pistons cause and egg shape.......and that when you put new rings In the worn out bores, you get a lot of blowby , because the new rings are round and the bore is oval.

I thought the rings were the ones that form fitted to this egg shape and created it. .....and to do that they had to stay in one place. I see now this is wrong but don’t understand it.

If they turn in circles....why would the bores create an egg shape and the ring stay circular......and if that’s the case....do new rings really create blowby?

So they don’t have to go back in the exact way they came out? And I can clock them any way I want ? They definitely had no pattern coming out...

Also.....just for learning experience. Will putting these old rings back in cause any problems. Like......I take them out.....put them back in and disrupted a pattern or spring tension. Now they won’t seal?
I guess I can just give it a shot and see how it goes.
 
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The bores get egg shaped because the force of the pistons/rings is low on the front and back and high on one side of the bore, due the combustion pressure and conrod angle forcing them down along one side of the bore on the power stroke. That worn side is the major thrust side of the bore... exhaust side on even cylinder and intake side on odd cylinders. Yes, you can get blowby with worn cylinders for the reason you state. Yor can also get blowby from old rings and pistons due to the rings and ring grooves being worn; the rings are not held tightly perpendicular to the bores and 'flop'/twist up and down. That takes tension out of the rings and wears the ring faces round, and they then don't seal well.

The rings rotate simply because there is nothing to stop them from doing so and there is not need to prevent them from rotating. The recommendation to 'clock' them is something done for decades.... to prevent the gaps from lining up at start-up, I suppose, which could cause a little extra oil consumption.

Just put them back in if you are just running this to have moving power. Good to check for a broken ring if that was suspected, but I am not sure what you are focusing on anymore LOL
 
Years ago I had a 69 teener that slipped the chain on starting once and when it didn't fire, I hit the key again and it backfired. 1 Bent exhaust valve many bent push rods and no teeth on half of the cam sprocket.
I was young then, but I dropped the pan. Changed the pump and pickup, new gears and chain, reconditioned heads and valve train, never touched the botton end, added 4 Bbl and headers and ran another 50k before pulling it for a 340. Never smoked.
 
I was looking at the casting marks on the oil drains in the block that go into the crank case.

With a stock system. Is it worth it to remove these.
 
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Piston skirt wear -

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Top of the piston.... Looks like oil-

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Piston skirt wear-

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Clocking of the ring grooves -
 
If you are talking about the casting flash in the oval holes above the camshaft, I always deburr those. That's a lot of casting flash left on most of them and removing it would assure it would not break loose and fall on the camshaft.
 
RustyRatRod said:
Are those cave man markings on that piston? lol Seriously, the skirt wear is ok........generally you don't want to see the oil grooves on the skirts worn through, but for what you're doin, let um ride!
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Yeah.....by the time I was at this point it was hot outside and I didn’t know about the clocking. Wasn’t gonna come and post and then go back and mess with it. So I just hit it hard with a scratch awl and marked them to go back in.
Normally I wouldn’t do this and mark all the stuff with a series of dots punched into the side of the rod. For this engine....didn’t matter.
 
glhx said:
Yeah.....by the time I was at this point it was hot outside and I didn’t know about the clocking. Wasn’t gonna come and post and then go back and mess with it. So I just hit it hard with a scratch awl and marked them to go back in.
Normally I wouldn’t do this and mark all the stuff with a series of dots punched into the side of the rod. For this engine....didn’t matter.
Click to expand...

Better to be safe than sorry! It's called bein smart!
 
Yeah, it needs cam bearings. And I don't like how the metal from the cam bore looks "peeled up" around that one bearing. I think I would dress that with a dremel.
 
....but as for the holes being "offset" as you say......not lined up 100%, that's not critical. I "usually" like them dead on, but that'll fly just fine. It did.....obviously. lol
 
I’ll throw some bearings in it....clean it up.....and run it. It had good compression and the cam doesn’t have flat lobes.

Some cheap aluminum engine tech bearings and a clean engine with new oil....double roller and a high volume pump...should give it a little more life for little cash output. I have around $220 in it including paint and washing.

I’m also going to port the heads some. Just clean them up, take the ridge out of the bowl, and smooth out the guide area. I wonder how much difference that will make with a stock cam

The engine is definitely better than it was but I do realize it’s pretty beat up but I’ll get a lot of life out of it in years. If it wasn’t smoking
And the compression was good.....should be fine.

I will say that infilled an exhaust port with water and it all came right back out. I have a valve not sealing. I’ll have to take care of that and give it a good lapping.

Other than that.....
Timing chain wear, Possibly stem seals and gas in the oil did this.
Most of it I would guess came from that chain.

Now onto the transmission rebuild....

Any opinions on the wear and how long it might last like this with the present situation let me know.
 
Good call.....I’ll hit that cam area and smooth out all the oil returns....any casting like that will go. There was quite a bit in the water holes as well.

If I’m gonna go through the trouble to cut the cast marks down I’ll get all of them

I’ll also get the ones in the crank as well.
 
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