No rear main seal leakage, no knock on start up. I haven't yet switched to 20w-50 yet, its got fresh 0w-40 right now so I doubt the 50 will do much, but will be switching over after I drop the oil pan. I did get an original/correct early '70 clear top coolant overflow and windshield washer reservoir in the mail today. For whatever reason they were missing, but its all good now, just need to get the correct bolts for it and those will be mounted.
20w-50 can be OK, but you need to make sure your oil pressure isn't too high! Especially at startup when cold.
You think it's thrust bearings then? I pulled the engine today so I can inspect fully what's going on. Not chancing it with a numbers matching engine. Haven't gotten it on a stand yet as the other 455 is hogging it right now getting ready to drop into the GS in the interim. This interim 455 is from my convertible, its a low mileage '76 engine with ported '73 heads, TA112 cam, port matched Edelbrock intake, and headers. With a new 3" x pipe exhaust, It'll run good enough for the time being, its a very healthy engine. I'm throwing in a new higher capacity clutch kit while it's apart and will take note of all the other things I want to replace later when the original engine is ready to go back in. I figure I'll restore the stock manifolds and keep them on the shelf while I run the headers on the car. I can't stand how tame and weak it sounds with the manifolds and 2.5" exhaust it has now. Compared to my wagon, its a joke!
Andy, when you decelerate the crank shaft, if the bearings are worn moves to a more relaxed position. The position would closer to the oil feed holes reducing the clearance between the crankshaft and the bearing. The gap between the crank and the bearing becomes smaller, the oil flow remains the same thus the pressure in creases. It cost me several thousand to learn that lesson. Cheers.
Well, this engine likely isn't going back in without at least all new bearings. Hopefully today I can get to check clearances to see where everything is at. Your theory makes sense though, we'll see if it's bearings or something easier (fingers crossed) like a cracked oil pickup tube. With the age and originality of this car, its most likely just tired all around and needing the freshen up. When I pulled the oil pan off, I spied a stock timing chain so that's coming out for sure along with new front and rear main seals and so on. I had the carb rebuilt and setup for a TA212 cam already looking forward to this tear down so likely that's going to happen as well as dual groove cam bearings. I don't want this baby getting beat by modern mini vans!
Still working on getting to this engine. Been busy prepping the other engine to go in, got sold the wrong water pump at O'Reilly, then three of the smaller water pump bolts snapped. Was able to get two out, then drilled out the other but need an extractor to get it out fully. Also had to drill and tap it for the Z bar ball stud and got the flywheel resurfaced, however I ordered a TA PERFORMANCE aluminum flywheel at 14 lbs compared to 40 lbs for the stocker.
have you looked into the pros and cons of a lighter flywheel on a street driven car? Your definitely going to take to rev it up more to get it going from a stop. Especially with a heavy car. You lose a lot of the momentum.
I have installed even lighter flywheels on street driven cars with tons less torque and the results were always favorable so long as it was mated with a good clutch. I really don't think it's going to be half as dramatic of a difference as it was on my other cars. Even if I did have to slip the clutch slightly more, the weight savings, gas mileage, rev-ability, and ease of shifting at high rpm benefits are worth the trade off to me!
Spent the day cleaning the trans and finally finding the VIN on it, confirming it is the original numbers matching transmission. The dirty spot you see is how the WHOLE trans looked, but it cleaned up nice. I have the shift rods soaking in degreaser overnight so I don't scrub off the yellow zinc coating that's still on them. I got a shifter rebuild kit and new bushings for all the linkages. Should shift even smoother than it did now! Tomorrow I hope to clean and paint the engine bay. It's a shock to me every time I work on it how good the condition of everything on this car is. Just a little dirty but well cared for!
Here's some pics of the old engine with chrome valve covers coming out and the temp engine getting ready to go in. In the others, the old vs new flywheel and the dirty engine bay waiting to be spruced up.
Shifter done! Lots of scrubbing and scraping followed by soak in ATF and finally a spray down with white lithium. What kind of lube is supposed to be used?
I use a thick red wheel bearing grease when I re-assemble a shifter. Did you rebuild it or just clean it?
It didn't need a rebuild, but I did get a shift linkage rebuild kit and new bushings. I did a legit cleaning on that thing though... The difference in operation is night and day. I think thick axle type grease is only going to get gross again quickly. I think a moly graphite dry spray would probably work best at keeping it all lubed without attracting dust and dirt. Wish I could stay working but we are about to be in a tornado warning.
The shifter is supposed to have a dust shield across the bottom to keep the grease in and the grime out. the rectangular slots on the bottom of the housing retains the shield
Yeah it has the dust shield, I just had it off for servicing. If you'd have seen the amount of crud in there...rocks and dirt mixed with grease, it was gross. We'll see how it does with the white lithium...I've read they're supposed to be lubed with motor oil on some other sites. Something more liquid than grease should be easier to keep clean.
Spent today cleaning up a greasy engine bay followed by sanding down someone's poor attempt at respraying the engine bay. The paint was cracked and had tons of fissures in it everywhere on top of being faded to hell. Stripped it down to bare metal and used Eastwood's version of POR15 on everything including the frame and core support. Luckily you can top coat it so will do so with semi gloss black since it doesn't hold up well to UV rays. Already looks 10x better in there and haven't even painted yet. Need to remove a few things from the firewall tomorrow so I can get a good respray on everything. Hope to be done with all painting tomorrow so the engine can go in whenever.
So took everything off to get the cowl painted up with Rust Encapsulator. The seal around the windshield is still intact all the way around so it shouldn't leak if it gets rained on, God forbid. There was a bit of primer overspray down in the cowl so it really needed some treatment and paint up in there to keep her rust free and looking better. Applied the paint this morning, just waiting for it to dry before finalizing with top coat. Everything is masked off, applied some new seam sealer in a few spots where it was cracking or gone. Should be engine ready today!
