A couple of years ago I was helping my buddy trouble shoot a water temp gauge problem on his '66 GT Mustang. ( same guy whose truck I almost burned up!) I thought it was the sending unit so I had him shut it off and I proceeded to remove the sending unit. Guess what? Those suckers come off of there like a bullet after you hit the last thread when the engine is at operating temp! The sending unit missed my face but the spray of hot coolant did not. Luckily, most of the force hit my glasses and didn't burn me. If I wasn't wearing glasses it would have been bad. I felt like a dumb ass since I should ahve known better than to open up that cooling system under pressure. I would never have removed the rad cap under those circumstances but I wasn't thinking. Brian
I was helping a friend work on his car, a 69 Cutlass. I think we had just finished doing a tranny swap at that point. He jumps in and tells me to start it. Of course, the car had no shifter at that point, and he was SURE that he put the tranny in park. Uh...nope! I went to turn it over, and it stopped a couple inches short of tearing up a new black paint job on the workbench. Of course, months later, same friend same car. I wander in to the garage to see what he has been up to. As I look around, I notice something different. Oh, a new garage door? Hmmmm.... Yeah, you guessed it. Same thing happened, except for it was in reverse this time, and went right through the door! D'OH!ou:
Re: old saying Nate, interesting you should say that. I am now a Maintenance supervisor at Tyson Foods. When I ask an applicant id he ever has parts left over after a machine rebuild and he says no, I don't hire the guy. If he can't tell the truth in the interview, then I don't want him working on my equipment. Million dollar microwaves are nothing to try an excuse on. :TU:
I forgot about my wiring harness adventure last summer...removed the front clip because I wanted to detail some stuff under the hood. So I'm getting it back together, and I haven't run the car for a while, so I start it. No problem. My Dad dropped by the shop and said that we may as well run it through the safety inspection (wasn't on the road until the end of the month, and the sticker was up) so we check stuff out,...the rear lights all work...he says, "hit the horn", and I do...the horn relay clicks, and the hazard lights start to flash....what...the...hell....it was like Greg Brady's car, remember when he wired it? So I check everything. I have torn all this stuff apart before so no big deal...but I checked the dimmer switch, the horn relay, the instrument panel wiring, the fuse box...still doesn't work right...headlights turn on the left directional....getting mad and worried... Remove the wiring harness completely, check every wire individually for resistance...everything is good (which is nice, it's the original harness)...check the front wring harness, remove THAT and check resistance, everything's OK...replace the fusible links, it's still nutty. and then as I was sitiing on a tire, racking my brains, I'm thinking, "Gee, the core support turned out really nice, looks powder coated again, looks new gain"....then I had the strangest notion...stooped down, picked up a chunk of wire on the floor, look a utility knife and scraped paint away from a section of freshly painted core support, attacked the wire to the bare metal of the core support, and then to the frame at a bumper bracket... And suddenly, everything worked. Then it hit me...no fenders...core support isolated by rubber mounts...that's where the front wiring harness grounds, to the core support...what a dumbass
What does the water pressure gauge read??? Hi Chris, Keep your Dad out of the shop and maybe you won't waste time when he suggests something unnecessary. I tend to listen to others advice, and it can often ruin my train of thought. Keep those stories coming, just don't go out of your way to create new ones! I have a good one I took a lot of heat for back in the 80's. In one of my early adventures with my first car {brown 1973 Stage 1} I pulled a wrenching/modification mistake second to none. From the advice of several Buick folks at the time, I was ok to put GM steel shim head gaskets {designed to fit earlier 455's} under my Stage 1 heads to up the compression a bit. While I was at it I changed the radiator to a giant 4-row Modine unit to keep it all running cool. After weeks of work I ask my brother to turn on the garden hose to fill up the radiator. A few minutes later, I am thinking this thing should be full by now. I peak into the radiator and there is still only a little water at the bottom and I stick the hose back in to wait it out. Another few minutes go by and my brother Chris says, "Man, that sure is a big radiator." I look around under the hood to make sure there is nothing leaking, but I was thinking, if this thing was leaking wouldn't I hear the water hitting the ground? Always assuming my little brother can't do anything as well as me, I start to think he has not opened the spigot far enough. After shoving him aside, I begin turning the valve to verify it is open all the way. Of course he already knows it is, and wonders out into the driveway to peak under the hood. That is when he spots the first sign of trouble and gestures me over. As I approach the front of the Gran Sport, Chris points to the abnormality. Water is shooting downward from between the brightly painted red dipstick tube and the dipstick. He says with both humor and sadness in his voice, "Brian, I don't think it's supposed to do that." He was correct. That four row was big, but clearly we had a problem. After shutting off the hose and unscrewing the oil pan drain plug, I got a really good science lesson. Water is heavier than oil, and the Buick 455, when filled with H2O sounds much like an upright water cooler as it empties out. Needless to say Chris told everyone about my mistake. All of my Buick friends teased me for years afterwards. "Hey Brian, What's your water pressure gauge reading?" What are friends for, right? ou:
Ouch, Brian! Having somebody drop by the shop is usually more helpful than harmful. If it wasn't for my Dad dropping by, I would not have been able to stay focused on several major projects. Two sets of eyes are better than one. Since he has in the past been both a professional locksmith and small engine repairman, Dad usually has a least as good a grip on what's going on as I do. Dad's no dummy, and the car is one way to strengthen my relationship with him- it was never really that good- and let's face it, I'd torch the car before I screwed things up with my Dad. But there is the story of the non-functioning electric windows, the replacing of the switch, the wasted afternoon, and the window lock button that Dad stars in...:laugh:
Brian, I missed a part of the story? the water gone in the oiol pan? How? I readit 3 times but i surely miss something..(I'm not a english speaking man )
i would imagine it has something to do with the head gasket not sealing the proper holes and the water crossed over from the water jacket to the oil return holes.....
RWARRIOR, You keep excusing yourself as being a frenchman and not an english speaking man. You type in English better than I type words in French!:Brow: Yes the gaskets are different so the water did indeed go in the oil pan. Oui,Oui :grin: Patuzzled: ps.whats your name anyways,so we know who we are talking to. :Comp:
Water passages Hi guys, Sorry if I overlooked something there. At the time it was not realized by many people, myself included, that '72 and up 455's had different water passages than earlier 400-430-455 engines did. It is fairly well known now and I think at one point Richard even had pictures in the GSXTRA of which holes need plugged if you start mixing and matching parts. Chris, no offense to the old man. I was only joking with that one. Now, how about the story he stars in?
I used a craftsman ratcheting box end wrench to remove header bolts once. You know, the kind that aren't reversible unless you take the wrench off the bolt and flip it the other way around. Well, I should have been using the kind where you can flip the switch to make it reverse. I got a few bolts out before tragedy struck. One of the bolts didn't quite make it all the way out before the wrench pressed against the header tube. Bear in mind the wrench is not reversible, so I can't excactly put the bolt back in and take the wrench off. So, the only solution was to keep backing the bolt out. With each turn of the wrench I screamed in agony as I cut a deep groove into the nice new Jet Hot coating:ball: . Luckily, I was able to remove the bolt. Then I spent some time polishing the blemish out of the header. There is hardly any evidence of my mistake now. But I was steaming mad at the time:af: .
As far as I am concerned, we have a WINNER!!! JakeG, your story about getting your finger caught just left me on the floor!
