Let me apologize right off the bat for my absence around here the last couple of months. I am still here, but I have gotten side tracked, repeatedly. As a word of warning, this is going to delve far off the normal for this website into one of my other lifelong passions, working on cars.
My wife and I had finally decided where we were going to relocate (Idaho) and we started making preparations. Knowing that my old beater 1970 Ford F250 with either 185,000 or 285,000 miles on it (only a 5 digit odometer), which to this point in the 10 years I have owned it has only served as a farm truck that makes Home Depot and dump runs, was going to be making multiple trips back and forth the our new home some 550+ miles away, through the Nevada desert, with hours of no cell service, I figured I needed to make it more reliable and road worthy.
I had done the top end of the old 360 V8 when I bought it, but I left the stock 2 barrel manifold and carburetor on it. I had the transmission rebuilt by a local shop at the same time, so I figured my drive train was pretty solid. I replaced the stock radiator with a brand new aluminum 4-core so my cooling system was in better shape than it came with from the factory. I have also replaced nearly every part in the brake system, and rebuilt the front suspension including all new tie rods, etc. I installed new u-joints in the 2-piece driveshaft and I even had it balanced. The truck at this point is already pretty solid, or so I thought. The thing I had been putting off was the steering gear box because it is expensive, and a pain in the butt to do solo.
I purchased a rebuilt steering gear box and swapped it out. It ended up being less difficult than I expected, although I did need to enlist the help of my father because it is way too heavy to hold in place and get the mounting bolts installed by yourself. Once that was done, I took it out to test it and viola! My 1920s-ish four inches of steering free play was gone and the truck was much easier to keep on the road.
Bad Luck Strikes
I returned home from my test drive, parked and as I walked away, I heard a bad noise. I could hear coolant boiling. I opened the hood and found the noise was coming from inside the engine, and the radiator was nearly empty. I checked the oil and it was fine, and the truck has not leaked a drop of coolant since I replaced the radiator several years ago, so that only left it one place that it could have gone, through the engine and out the exhaust. Since it appeared I now had a bad head gasket or intake gasket, and considering the truck burns oil almost on the level of a 2-stroke engine, it looked to be time to pull the engine and rebuild it.
I pulled the engine, disassembled it and loaded the block and crankshaft into the wife’s minivan and headed off to the local machine shop I used to do the heads 10 years ago when I did the top end. Upon arriving there, I was shocked to find that they had closed the machine shop portion of the business and sold all the related machinery because they were unable to hire a qualified machinist after their last one retired. They even offered to pay for the new employee to go to school to get trained to be a machinist, but they still could not get any suitable applicants. This shocked me, but it also reinforced why I firmly believe in the goals of Mike Rowe’s push to get Americans back into the trades instead of trying to send everyone to college.
I found another machine shop, not nearly as close, but one that has a good reputation and took my parts to them. The block needed to be cleaned and inspected before I could order parts. A couple days later, I got a call letting me know the specs I needed for me to get the parts (pistons, rings, bearings) ordered. Considering the age and mileage, the engine only needed to be bored out .020” over stock, and the crank only needed to go .010” under which surprised both the machinist and me.
Parts got ordered and since I was going through the whole engine, and knowing that this truck is eventually going to turn into a toy, I decided to make a few upgrades while I was at it. I picked up an Edelbrock Performer RPM intake manifold, an Edelbrock 600cfm 4 barrel carb, a mild-ish performance camshaft and some other small things. There were a couple hiccups along the way with parts delivery, and worse, the whole COVID-19 thing exploded shutting lots of things down, so more delays, but that gave me time to clean up my engine compartment as well as take my time painting the engine parts.
Bad Luck Strikes, Again
While I was waiting on the machine shop, I decided to install a new pan gasket on the transmission because it had been leaking for a couple years. I drained it and pulled the pan, and what I found in the bottom made my heart drop. The pan on the transmission, which only had 8,000 miles on it since I had it rebuilt, was filled with aluminum shavings. I am glad I found this out in my driveway instead of the middle of the Nevada desert with no cell service, but I really did not want to be rebuilding a transmission too.
I visited the shop that rebuilt it, and not surprisingly they told me they would not warranty their work from 10 years ago, no matter how little mileage had been put on it. They did however offer to “cut me a break” on the cost of rebuilding it again. Like I’m going to have the shop that built me a transmission that ate itself up in 8,000 miles build me another one? Smoke crack much?
I grew up in the garage working on cars and motorcycles with my dad. I fixed my first non-running engine when I was in the 6th grade. I rebuilt my first motorcycle in the 7th grade. I completely reassembled a theft recovery VW Bug at the age of 16, including the engine, and drove it for a year before selling it. I worked at a hot rod shop (Super Shops) for a year when I took a break from college back in the early 1990’s. I have rebuilt manual transmissions before, and I recently replaced the center differential in my Subaru Legacy’s 6-speed manual transmission. I understand engines and manual transmissions. But automatic transmissions have always been a giant box of magic to me, which is why I have always had them done by a shop.
I called around and found several shops that refused to even touch it, and the absolute cheapest quote I got, for a transmission that was already out of the vehicle making their job that much easier, was $1800. I looked up the rebuild kit for the C6 that I had and the kit with heavy duty parts was about $200.
Hmmm, $1800 vs $200. I guess I am going to learn magic…
I bought a book and watched a couple YouTube videos, spent another $100 on a couple specialized transmission tools, and after a few days of work, I had myself a rebuilt transmission.
Once all the engine parts finally arrived, and I got everything back from the machine shop, I set about assembling the engine. It had been a while since I had wrenched on a good old American V8, and I forgot how much I enjoyed it. I got the engine fully assembled, bolted it and the transmission together and with the help of my father and oldest son, got in all back into the truck.
On my personal Facebook page, I had been chronicling the process and a couple of friends asked me to live stream the initial start up of the new engine. I reluctantly agreed, and things did not go perfect. First, I forgot that I had the fuel tank shut off, then my timing was off quite a bit causing lots of pretty fireballs to shoot back out of the carburetor. Once I finally figured out which way the timing was off and corrected that, it fired right up. I broke the new camshaft in and then was able to set the idle speed and set the ignition timing. It was running great and sounded good too.
I took it out for a test drive and found the transmission I had just rebuilt was shifting all funky, and when I parked the truck back in the garage, I discovered the engine was leaking oil like crazy, and sadly it looked like it might have been coming from the rear main seal. I decided to fix one issue at a time so I concentrated on the transmission first. I realized I had forgot to tighten the intermediate band and once I properly tightened that, the transmission began to shift correctly. It still needed some minor tweaking, but it was good enough for now.
Next I decided to tackle the engine oil leak. I decided the first thing I would try was to replace the pan gasket, which on this truck I can do with the engine in place. It just requires a little juggling, and removing and reinstalling the the oil pump, but I got that done and was very pleasantly surprised to find the engine was no longer leaking at all. Now that the tranny was shifting and the oil was staying inside the engine, I took it out for a couple extended test drives. The first was to the gas station to fill it up. The second was to my parents house to drop off some farm fresh chicken butt-nuggets (eggs).
Bad Luck Yet Again? Am I Cursed?
It drove great and everything was going awesome, until I left my parent’s house and headed home. I got about three blocks away and the engine stumbled hard, and then died. I coasted to the side of the road where I managed to get it restarted, but it would barely run. I limped it back to my parents house where I parked it and started to try and figure out what was going on. Once I got out and stuck my head under the hood, I could hear very bad noises coming from the passenger side cylinder head area. At this point, I closed the hood and walked away lest I start beating it with a hammer.
I have been watching a lot of Roadkill and Roadkill Garage on Motortrend On-demand lately, and I was starting to feel like I was living an episode myself. The only things I was lacking were the camera crew and the paycheck.
After sufficient cooling off time passed I went back to my parents house and popped off the passenger side valve cover. What I found was a very bent pushrod on the intake valve of the number one cylinder and a valve that was stuck open. If you know anything about engines, this is not something you ever want to find. I got the truck towed home and yanked the engine back out.
I tore the intake and heads off and was SUPER thankful to find that while the valve did in fact make contact with the brand new piston, it did not do any damage to it or the connecting rod below it. I checked the camshaft lobe for the affected valve and it also appeared to be uninjured. The head on the other hand was not unscathed. The valve guide was damaged and since I have already had these crappy small truck heads worked over twice, I was not going to spend any more money on them as they appear to be cursed.
I ordered a set of brand new Edelbrock Performer aluminum heads for the engine, which should work out well as they will be a much better match for the intake manifold. I also ordered new stainless adjustable full-roller rockers and all the related small parts and gaskets I would need.
Now I am just waiting for those parts to arrive so I can get this thing put back together, hopefully for the last time. While I have been having lots of fun working on this truck, it has been soaking up a TON of time, which has kept me from doing anything gun related. I promise that once the truck is done, and I get caught up on all the related projects the lack of a working truck has caused, I will be back here writing more gun related content.
