65 Barracuda daily driver

[mopowers]

After I filled the rear with 80W-90 gear oil mixed with a can of Motorcraft XL-3 friction modifier I took the car up to Scholl Canyon where I know the only parking lot around that is usually empty enough to do some figure 8s. Absolutely no noise from the differential! There is some whining from one of the bearings I think. When I replaced them a couple of years ago I could only find one Timken bearing on short notice and the other one was some cheapo brand. I'll have to investigate, but for now it's not a big concern.
The neutral safety switch is still leaking, so I ordered a NORS one on ebay for 65 bucks. I bought a newer, 3-prong one for 8 bucks just for the gasket, but apparently they don't work with the early 904s.

Anyways, when I testfitted the "new" deck lid I noticed that it wasn't closing all the way, which the current one also did, but I thought it was because it was all bent up. I ordered new "marshmallow soft" Y-profile weatherstripping from Detroit Muscle Technologies, because what was on there was the wrong style.

After I removed the old weatherstripping some paint had come off with the glue and some paint had been scraped off by loading stuff in the trunk.

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I hadn't really thought about that and thought glueing it down was gonna take an hour max. If I didn't paint it now it would have been tricky and messy in the future. So yeah, scraping, sanding, priming and painting took all afternoon.

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I let it dry for 24 hours. I used the 3M Super Black Weatherstrip adhesive. Steele Rubber has some instructions on their website. They said to spread a thin layer on both surfaces with a popsicle stick and let it get tacky and then add some more on one side and press it down. It got tacky so quickly that spreading it wasn't really working. So I just spread it right out of the tube and I think it worked well. The clothespins weren't really necessary - just added insurance.

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Once it's pressed down you can't adjust anymore, so it's not perfect, but good enough.

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The lid (latch) still needs some more adjustment, but it's already way better than before. The latch could probably also use some lubrication. And on the hinge side it's also sticking up a bit. Here you can also see why want to replace the lid...

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Excellent progress! Did you apply the 3m adhesive on both sides (trunk gutter and seal), or just one of the surfaces?

 

[65barracudaLA]

Excellent progress! Did you apply the 3m adhesive on both sides (trunk gutter and seal), or just one of the surfaces?

Both - then wait until tacky and then add a bit more to one of the surfaces. Here's a link to the instructions I found: How to Glue Weatherstrip the Right Way

 

[65barracudaLA]

Over the weekend my band was playing the Lightning In A Bottle Festival and it was once again a great road test for the Barracuda. 100+ miles each way, which is the longest trip with the new engine yet. Made it through the infamous Grapevine without overheating. Car got a bit warm idling in line to get into the festival, but it wasn't that bad. I added some Water Wetter to the coolant before I left. On the bottle it said that if you run just water without coolant it would run cooler? And even cooler with Water Wetter and water. Never knew that. I might just run water until winter then?! Other than that it used a bit of oil, which is interesting because it doesn't smoke at all. I'll keep an eye on that.

The car ran comfortably 70mph and got a bit shaky around 80, which is not bad considering that I haven't gotten it aligned since swapping from the slant to the small block.

Just got back yesterday, but tomorrow we're going camping at the beach and I plan on sleeping in the car. Tested it and this air mattress fits almost perfectly in there. It's a little high, so there's not much room for ankles, but it works. I could consider taking off the chrome bar and pull it further to the front.

 

[mygasser]

i wouldn't use just water. coolant/antifreeze has corrosion inhibitors. if you've ever seen an internally furred up ally intake etc you'll know plain water's not good.
neil.

 

[65barracudaLA]

Barracuda beach camping in the books! Pretty much no issues. I've been watching the gas mileage over these last few trips. I got up to 15.2 mpg (highway), but at some point I retarded the timing a bit because of pinging under load and the gas mileage went down again. I'm gonna have to check timing chain, maybe consider a colder plug (currently Champion 405) and richer jets?! I'm also planning on getting that FBO limiter plate and springs for the distributor.

 

[JDMopar]

That's bound to have been fun! How was sleeping in the car? I've wondered if it would be hard to do on a road trip. I'm 6' and 225, so I'd probably get tired of it pretty quick at my age...lol.

 

[65barracudaLA]

That's bound to have been fun! How was sleeping in the car? I've wondered if it would be hard to do on a road trip. I'm 6' and 225, so I'd probably get tired of it pretty quick at my age...lol.

It was super fun, but sleeping on the air mattress wasn't optimal. It's too high, so there's little room for your feet/ ankles and getting in and out is not that easy. I either want to find a thinner air mattress or make a mattress out of dense foam.

Too bad you can't buy these anymore:

$47.75 in 1965 sounds pretty steep though. Just looked it up and that'd be 470ish bucks in today's money!!

 

[mygasser]

what about one of those memory foam mattress 'topper' things. they say they're good to use direct on the floor so should be ideal.
neil.

 

[65barracudaLA]

what about one of those memory foam mattress 'topper' things. they say they're good to use direct on the floor so should be ideal.
neil.

I was thinking about using something like that. The only issue is that there's a drop in the floor right where your hip is. I might make a plywood base so it's all level. (very old photo)

 

[65barracudaLA]

So it looks like my timing chain is bad. Below is the only photo I took when I had the engine "apart". Back I didn't notice significant slack, so I just left it like it was. Anyways, there was some fluctuation on the timing light and when adjusting the idle mixture with a vacuum gauge. So today I popped off the distributor cap and turned the crank back and forth and watched the rotor. There's 10+ degrees of slack before the rotor moves. So I guess it's time for a new one.
One thing I noticed in the photo is that that little oil drip tab appears to be missing - even though hard to tell from this angle. Some folks here on FABO seem to think that they're not necessary, but it might have actually extended the life of this chain. Too bad I didn't replace the timing chain when I had the oil pan off replacing the oil pump. I've been looking at the Cloyes C3028 double roller timing set - any thoughts on that one?

I also still had a pretty bad ATF leak which seemed to come from the neutral safety switch. I had already replaced that weird washer gasket. I almost feel like an O-ring would work better.

I took the switch out and the were some remnants of the the old washer. By the way that new washer was pretty much destroyed when it came out.

After cleaning the hole as good as possible (with the exhaust in place it's not easy to reach) I got rid of it.

The new old switch was almost 70 bucks, but totally worth it if it actually stopped the leak.

 

[JDMopar]

The Cloyes chain set is pretty good. I've had excellent luck from Edelbrock chains for years. Rock Auto has a hardware package with the drip tab in it, along with some other usable stuff.
More Information for ENGINETECH HK108

 

[65barracudaLA]

The Cloyes chain set is pretty good. I've had excellent luck from Edelbrock chains for years. Rock Auto has a hardware package with the drip tab in it, along with some other usable stuff.
More Information for ENGINETECH HK108

I certainly don't want to have do again, so I should probably just get the Edelbrock chain. Thanks for the tip for the Enginetech hardware kit. Obviously it's not great that the timing chain is bad, but it sounds like it might have been the culprit for the engine idling kinda rough and pinging etc, so I'm glad I checked. After replacing the timing chain in the old slant 6 it made the engine run so much better (in the same car)!

Photos from the archives. Cleaning it up and giving the engine a coat of paint probably also helped. Sometimes I miss tha engine... It's for sale again on FB Marketplace for 1,500 bucks... I sold it to the guy for like 300 bucks including the super 6 intake...

 

[JDMopar]

You might be able to find that hardware kit elsewhere for about the same price, but it's like $15 on Rock Auto. If you search for it on Rock Auto, pick a 1970 model Mopar with a 318. The kit doesn't show up if you pick a 340 motor.

 

[65barracudaLA]

Your link took me right to the hardware kit, I bought it and apparently it was the last one they had! Cheaper than anywhere else including tax and shipping. Also ordered the Edelbrock chain and the gaskets, so I hope I'll get to it next weekend.

 

[JDMopar]

Those kits must be in short or sporadic supply. Half the time you look for one, they're out of stock. You'll have to drill your own drip hole in the bolt for the dripolator action....lol.

 

[65barracudaLA]

Over the weekend I drained and removed the radiator and hoses, removed the fan, water pump, fuel pump, pulleys, harmonic balancer, timing cover and the chain itself.

The old chain had not as much play as I thought or as the distributor rotor indicated.

I wanted to make sure those plugs were in there:

I don't have a drill press so I attempted to drill the bolt with my regular drill. The regular drill bit did nothing, so I got a cobalt one that worked really well.

Here it is installed with the drip tab:

There was a little oil leak coming from the fuel pump, because the threads were pretty stripped. So I put some helicoils in there.

I still have to put the new chain on and put it all back together.

 

[65barracudaLA]

So the timing chain is in. I ruined the timing cover gasket because coolant kept pouring out of the one of the driver side bolt holes in the block. It appeared to have stopped. I tired to jack the front up, but that didn't help. I tried to get the block drain plug out, but I couldn't. It's hard to reach between K-frame, motor mounts, steering box, etc. I got a wrench on it, ut no way to turn it. Are the driver side and passenger side connected? So if I drain the passenger side, will it drain all the coolant out? Anyways, I was able to get enough coolant out with a hand pump through the upper water jacket to make it stop. No store had just the timing cover, so I had to get another full set with the water pump gasket etc. The little cork end gaskets also didn't work that well, because they wouldn't stay in place when bolting down the timing cover, so I just used black RTV instead. Anyways, it's back together.

While I was laying under the car I noticed that the driver side exhaust stud is still leaking coolant. It's got a heli coil in it and I've tried to fix that 3 or more times now. It also appears that I have some valve issues, because the timing fluctuates a bit and I can't get adjust the idle to get more than 14 inches of vacuum, which also fluctuates a bit.

So, since the coolant is already out below the heads, I was thinking it would be a good time to swap in these 675 head that I recently got from a FABO member. They were rebuilt by a shop about 5,000 miles ago with stock springs etc. Currently I have 163 smog heads on there and I'm pretty sure they're junk. Any thoughts?

While everything was apart I also tried to install the BPE bracket I got at Spring Fling, but it looks like that's not going to work with my pulleys and my compressor. I also have a CVF racing A/C bracket, but that one doesn't work without their alternator bracket. I will have to make my own bracket I think.

 

[mygasser]

the easiest way to drain coolant below your water pump holes in the block is with a bit of tissue. twist it into a straight length, poke one end into the coolant in the block and 'bend' it down in and out of the hole. you will see coolant 'wicking' down the tissue and then dripping from the end of it. the level will drop below the bottom of the hole.
neil.
ps the idea came from being shown as a child a shrimp/prawn hooked over the edge of a glass of water. with the tail in the water the shrimp/prawn appears to be dribbling down the outside of the glass.

 

[JDMopar]

I agree with you about swapping the heads. Now is as good a time as any to do it since you already have them. If you don't have some exhaust studs laying around, it might be a good idea to get some and install them a few days before you do the head swap. Having them out on the bench where you can get to them, you can chase the threads in the heads to get them good and clean, then seal them really good and let them be sitting up for a few days while you remove the old heads and stuff. I used Teflon tape AND Permatex thread sealer on mine. They didn't leak when we ran it on the dyno, so I think they're good. Clean the combustion chambers on the heads good, with brake cleaner, screw some spark plugs in them and then get them level both ways on the bench, turned upside down with the combustion chambers facing up. Then you can pour some cheap rubbing alcohol into the chambers and leave it sit to see if any leaks past the valves. Good way to check them and see if you need to get a valve job done. I doubt they will if they were done 5K miles ago.