GOT THE NEW MOTOR FIRED UP, HELL YEAH!!
So saturday night we pulled the truck out of the shop in preperation for the initial firing and break-in. Since I didn't have the front clip on by this point (nor any of the accessories on the motor), we had to rig every thing up as if we were starting it on an engine stand. Clamped the solinoid to the front coil bucket, ran all the grounds and cab power wire, connected everything to the battery (which was connected to a charger since theres not alt. yet), and lastly had a wire running directly from the battery to the HEI dizzy. The plumbing was similarly rigged, had a garden hose adapter that goes on the water pump intake, and a hose setup that discharges from the t-stat housing.
So by this time its about 9pm, everything seems to be ready to go, water and oiling systems primed, carb primed etc, go to fire it up and it wont start. Backfiring, blue flames out the headers, etc. After fiddling with several things for a while we discover that we have the timing 180* off, lol. One of the most common mistakes when starting a new engine and we completely overlooked it, oh well.
Get that fixed, and the thing fires right off. Ran it for about 30seconds and realized theres a huge spark show coming from inside the bellhousing!! Shut the motor down (which is bad durring break-in), and come to find out that the auto tranny dust shield that I used has a small hump in it thats contacting the flywheel, some short work and its fixed, start it up and its running again.
Runs about 3min more and the damn water hose blows off the pump due to the very high water pressure we have at the shop. Shut everything down real fast, get it fixed in about 30sec and its off running again. By this time were hopping that we don't have to shut it down again or the cam will be junk. Everything ran good for the rest of the 20min break in, now its time to hear this bad boy idle...
Idle it down to about 400rpms (which is about where I want it on the trail) and damn this thing thumps. Its got a tiny bit of a lope but nothing too extreme, should be ideal for crawling. Throttle responce is awsome too, I can't wait to wheel this motor!
After all is done we notice the paint hadn't been burnt of the #5 and 6 header tubes...haha, the damn thing was only running on 6 cylinders...no wonder it sounded like it had a little miss. Not sure what caused it, more than likely they were bad plugs or wires.
We have to get that little ignition problem fixed, add an adjustable vacuum advance and manual advance kit to the dizzy, find the Q-jet we want to run and she'll be ready to go.
Now on to some pics:
Motor after break-in, (don't laugh at my air cleaner, its temporary)
Radiator support and inner fenders on:
Clutch linkage setup:
The clutch linkage isn't quite how I want it, but I think it will work for now. The fact that this truck was never available with a 351w and the fact that I had to use a hyd. clutch bellhousing and fork with manual linkages were all things that were working against me. Some grinding here and there, lengthend out the adjustment rod, and drilled the clutch fork for the rod and everything seems to be working ok. Only problem I forsee is that the clutch fork is a good bit shorter than the stock one, causing the release ratio to be pretty quick. I might have to fix this later.
Next weekend will finish the front clip, do a rear disc setup on the 9", maybe start fabbing my front bumper. I need to go through the front axle and install a lock-right in it, but I think I'll wait till its drivable and just do that in the parking lot of my apt. here in b'burg.
I have a 350mb video file of the engine start-up break in, idleing etc, but I can't figure out how to edit it down to about 2-3min where it'd be postable, anyone know?