mad dash to tucson to put Aggie back on the road

blackagatha · Post by **blackagatha** » January 13, 2009, 11:46 pm

so I had to abandon poor Aggie in the garage with the top end of the engine missing to go back to school.

I started out with nothing more in mind than an intake swap from the CORK that is my Weiand single plane to a Brand New Performer RPM.

I then decided that I should put in some fresh valve springs to prevent the intakes from getting bent Again.... WELL, ain't that CUTE............ They're already bent (the air chuck on the spark plug hole to keep the valves in place while spring off BLASTS thru the intake port). That may explain why I was doing a bit of backfiring.

SO I pulled the heads and took em to the shop to get some fresh stainless valves (one piece rather than welded valves to stems) put in and a rub over by a guy who knows what he's doin.

On the way home I picked up a MSD 6AL with a rev limit chip to keep me from stomping her to death again. Probably get a 5400 chip for it.

Monday night after new year's........ My roommate called. Says

"hey I'm back in Prescott, when will you be back?????"
-what are you doing back so soon?-
"Uh school starts on thee 7th...."
-DUH What????-
"yeah when did you think it started?"
-the 13th!!!!-
"no dumbass"
-Ah crap I gotta leave poor Aggie in the garage and ride the airport shuttle to Prescott!!!!!!!!!!-

So I rode the shuttle to Prescott, and have been driving the Geo Metro that MR FRED so kindly gave me.....

Well, that is, I WAS driving it until Monday morning.......... The night before it was driving "fine" (albeit on 2 cylinders, but that was a given).... I didnt rag on it or nothing....

Monday morning it wont start. I crank it until the battery is dead as a stump. Starting fluid and all that does jack.

charge battery and try again. What did I really expect? I expected it to not work.

Today I got a compression tester..... I got 65, 10, and 0. WTF?!?!?! that's pretty bad.

SO I guess I'm gonna be hitching a ride to and from school til Thursday, at which time I'm calling the airport shuttle again for a return trip to get my skinny white ass to Tucson for a wrench-a-thon. Hopefully wont be a big deal.
I wish I had another Timing cover in hand though. Last summer I got STUPID and installed a homemade (leaky) oil pan that didnt quite line up with 2 bolt holes in the timing cover... And because it was already covered in glue and all but installed I got stupid and instead of ovalling out the holes in the pan, NO.......... I ran 2 big ugly Lag Screws in and mangled the correct threads.... That will Most likely work again, or it might not..... I sure hope it does. cause I dont got a good one in hand. And I didnt think ahead to foresee this day, I dunno why I didnt go find a good replacement the day/week/month I wrecked it and stash it until I could replace it....
I guess I can hit up a junk yard...... Maybe I better. Hopefully I have time. If I find an FE, hopefully it's not "Fully Dressed" with all the accessories like my dad's is.

At least I made my ugly leaky oil pan a little less ugly and fixed the leaks. I also got an electric oil pressure guage, to get rid of that leaky plastic pressure tube that fouls up my oil filter adapter.

Get home thursday night.
Get heads back Friday morning, unless dad can pick them up thursday
Timing cover? maybe I could convince my cousin to source me one.... Little sucker is too busy these days though.... yep. he is too busy. looks like I'll have to source one on friday

put everything back together.

Fire the beast up..... Hopefully it will be a remarkable difference.....

*MSD to smooth out the low end, and keep it from flying apart
*Performer RPM to complement my headers- which didnt seem to have much effect, presumably due to the cork up top
*Not Bent intake valves
*fresh valve springs
*Oil pan hopefully wont leak any more
*oil sender wont be greasy

maybe the draft of oil spraying all over the back of the truck will go away.... It's gross. especially awful because it soaks into the flat black intead of wiping off like it would from normal paint.

one of these days I'll have to drop the tranny pan (and lose $75 worth -12 qts- of juice.........that sucks- and the pan I made with a skid plate and a drain plug was a total failure-I just screwed up the "cooling tubes" that were soldered in and made it leak like a sieve.) to figure out why the 3-2 kickdown isnt working since I rebuilt the thing last summer. It works great otherwise, I just have to manually drop it down with the shifter.... But it sucks, it should work off the throttle.

hmm, oh yes. I am a dummy. yeah I'll admit it. I took my left valve cover (yeah the pretty mercury pentroofs) and tried to fix 2 little pinholes where an existing brazed fix wasnt perfect.

Well, I apparently cant braze for shit.

I ended up splattering brass ALL OVER the end of the thing, and opened up a nightmare of thin spots breaking thru..... I should have just smudged some JB weld on it in the first place and been done with it. After I ground down the crappo the first time, I should have caught my stupidity and smudged some JB on the imperfections I left (They WERENT EVEN HOLES) but I am an anal retentive prick and tried to fix that with the torch. (Point of no return/disaster.....) At this point it may be salvagable yet, but it aint as nice as it was.... no where near.

If I can in fact fix the thing, I think I'm just gonna leave the things bare metal.... I like the look, it's bitchin. Even with the brass frankenstein scar, I think it will look okay. Mostly I guess I'm going this way because I have been having LOUSY luck with engine paint. That Duplicolor stuff cracks off immediately, and Krylon engine paint had awful chemical resistance. There was stains all over them from oil? antifreeze? definitely wasnt brake fluid, I know that much.

I think I may be happy once I get it back together, especially if I can fix the V.C. For a while. Till I get the insane hankering to tear into it again.... Lets hope I can put that off until I have a good job and a good reliable car to count on and Aggie can become a plaything.

sorry if I bore you..... I am bored. and kinda hungry. I should find something to chew on and go to bed.

blackagatha · Post by **blackagatha** » January 13, 2009, 11:49 pm

holy cow I wrote too much 1165 words to be exact.... I wanted to know. it looked like too much so I plugged it into Word. Jeez. I was WAY too bored.

DCarr · Post by **DCarr** » January 14, 2009, 12:13 am

What else is there to do in Prescot?

Statesblue is just up the road in Chino Valley-maybe he knows where a front cover might be.Here's hoping for success this weekend.Later----David.

Ford4jack · Post by **Ford4jack** » January 14, 2009, 12:22 am

Sounds like you've been taking classes at the school of hard knocks BA
Cool thing is lesson's learned there really stick with ya.

statesblue · Post by **statesblue** » January 14, 2009, 8:42 am

So where does blackagatha go to school??????

PFM-64f100 · Post by **PFM-64f100** » January 14, 2009, 9:01 am

That whole story sounds strangly familer. Where have I heard that before oh yea I done stuff like that - Live and learn lesson are always the hardest.

The best laid out plans are bound to have problems I guess thats why I tend to over estimate time frames...

Hope you get it up and runing...

Slick Fan · Post by **Slick Fan** » January 14, 2009, 12:00 pm

I didn't read all that...I skipped a bunch.

Hope ya get 'er fixed up soon, at least you've got other wheels in the meantime.

Bill W · Post by **Bill W** » January 14, 2009, 1:00 pm

Hey BA, if you dont find a cover before you get to Tucson just call me up, I have one for a 352.... if that is what you need? i didn't catch which motor you have, and if you need a hand with anything just holler.

Bill Wilson--- (520)-869-5815

blackagatha · Post by **blackagatha** » January 15, 2009, 1:42 am

yessir Mr Bill I would be more than happy to accept your timing cover. I got a 390- yes, same as 352. I promise not to blatantly ruin it like I did mine. I'll call you sometime tomorrow. Hopefully you dont live somewhere awful out of the way.

Blackagatha goes to school at Embry Riddle. Agatha is a crewl mistress...

she treats me better than Fred's poor old metro did though. I'm gonna have to rebuild or swap the motor. It's dead.

Hope ya get 'er fixed up soon, at least you've got other wheels in the meantime.

uh no, not really. I've been hitching a ride to school with my roommate, and back with whomever I can convince. It's NOT convenient to get back and forth to school without personal wheels- It's 6 miles. Tomorrow I have to hitch with him and get there before 9.... for a NOON class. blah.

haha I NOTORIOUSLY get stuff done THE LAST MINUTE.... and hit the freeway with an untested setup.

This past summer, my C6 tranny was laying upside down on the workbench the day before I had to drive back to prescott. Had one short trip downtown under its belt before I had to hoof it.

Headers/engine mount change was done in about 3 or 4 days, exhaust shop last possible day, and final issues till the hour I had to leave.

this time it's gonna be the intake and oil pan again. hopefully it wont leak this time around. I gotta remember the silicone on the end bearing parting gaps. I think I missed those last time. It was drooling like hell from those 4 spots. And the intake leaked oil down the back because I knocked the silicone bead out when I was splatting it down.

blackagatha · Post by **blackagatha** » January 23, 2009, 3:20 pm

So, I spent 4 days in a mad rush to get Aggie back together.... well, maybe not MAD rush, It might have only taken 2 or 3 then....

Working like 10-12 hour days all weekend, I managed to get it put together by monday night, tried to start it, and found that I had hooked up my MSD 6AL brain box with the wrong trigger wires.... I was getting no spark Atall!

Got it hooked up correctly, and tried again, It started right off, but had this awful hammering sound coming out of the bottom of the engine. Well, I realized that it was my oil pan.... I never realized how close the clearance was between the crank and the pan.... Apparently when I did a bunch more welding and grinding on the thing, it warped a bit more, and the belly of the high section found interference with the crank.

SO, in my infinite hokeyness, no time to spare, and no desire to pulll out the pan again (BIG job), I welded a 3/8 bolt to the bottom of the culprit, and welded a tab with a 7/8 hole in it to the crossmember, and greased a big washer so it can wiggle.... and tightened the sucker down. No more hammering....

Anyway, when I finally got the nail hole in my tire fixed in the walmart parkinglot at midnight monday, and my blown vacuum advance replaced tuesday morning, I was finally set to make the dash back to school.

I missed a flight activity that I had forgotten about, and my first class, but it was ok. My flight instructor Is a gear head and she let me off because she knows what it's like.

Anyway, turns out the intake and ignition mods make an incredible difference.

I dont know how much the ignition does, but I'm sure it cant hurt.

I experienced an amazing increase in horsepower, presumably from the intake, it's a vast improvement over the CORK I had.

much less hesitation/stumbling on take-off, presumably from the MSD ignition, (around 1200 band-the innate defect in carter/edelbrock carbs)

I may have fouled up my numbers, but I think I got roughly 13 MPG coming back up here, which is unheard of. Best I EVER got coming up was 9 or 10.... I'm guessing that's mostly from the MSD

and I'm sure the fixed valves and functioning vac advance helps too.

all in all, I'm happy/stoked.

My dad started to fix my fouled up valve cover and made it halfway presentable. We swapped the covers side for side so the ugly spot is on the back. He floated a bunch of lead on it to fill in a big warp on the top and made it look 1000% better than it did. Right now I got them bare metal, and it looks bitchin! Just gotta keep the rust off! Got to keep em hosed with WD40... Probably invest in a can of GIBBS.....

OH YEAH.... turns out the damage to the valves was NOT caused by another over-rev incident..... We have no idea what caused it. The engine guy says 2 of the valve seats had flat spots on them where the 3-angle-grind had gone away.... one bad exhaust valve, 6 bad guides, wtf mate. No explanation.

At least I'm not guilty. That makes my character feel better. My dad is happy to hear it, he was all pissed off thinking I was ragging the piss out of poor Aggie, and feeling that I was liable to ruin somebody else's car that I was to borrow.

In a way though, I wish it were a rev incident.... At least I would know what happened, and with the MSD and rev limiter, it wouldn't happen again. But as it is, it's liable to all go to hell again for some unknown reason within another year.

Bill W · Post by **Bill W** » January 23, 2009, 4:03 pm

I was wondering if you made it back with your truck, Glad it worked out.

jakdad · Post by **jakdad** » January 23, 2009, 5:11 pm

Sounds like a freakin horror story..........................