Engine

I thought I would adjust the ticking valves since I had the valve cover off for a repaint but the adjuster was as tight as it could get. I notice the lifters weren't staying pumped up like they should so I decided that I would be rebuilding the engine instead. This is how I ended up spending $5000 on repainting a valve cover. I know I could have stepped up to the 200 six or even a V8 but I wanted to stay with the matching date codes to go along with the car. All indications are showing that I'm the first one to open up the engine other than the valve cover and someone replaced the water pump and starter in the past. Most of the ink stamp part number is still visible on the generator and paint daubs were still on the motor mounts.

The timing chain was about ready to fall off the timing gears, a large amount of engine sludge was built up on everything that wasn't moving. The machine shop had to cook the block 3 times to get oil passage's clean. The crank was turned 10/10 and cylinders bore .060. The head was shaved .015 and block decked .035 to restore compression with the thick replacement head gasket. New camshaft and lifter and new timing set. A new rocker arm shaft, NOS rocker arms replaced the loose rockers. A new oil pan replaced the rust pitted bent pan. The block, head and pan was paint with Bill Hirsch black engine enamel, valve cover and air cleaner was painted with Dupli-Color DE-1605 Red-Orange. I notice the distributor had so much tarnish build up that the vacuum diaphragm couldn't advance the timing. After a good cleaning and new drive gear and new vacuum diaphragm it is good as new. When draining the transmission for removal I notice ATF was used in the manual transmission.

New exhaust system from waldronexhaust.com was ordered to replace the exhaust shop pipe that was touching the transmission cross member, driveshaft and spring shackle. NOS exhaust hangers were found on the internet.

While collecting engine parts for the rebuild I couldn't help myself and started buying period correct reproduction eye candy parts such as sparkplug wires, fuel pump filter canister, radiator/heater hoses and boat load of other parts to replace the perfectly working older parts. I did upgrade to stainless steel fuel and vacuum lines

Since I'm going this far, I went ahead and stripped the engine bay of the wiring harness, steering box, master cylinder, brake lines and everything else for a good cleaning and sprayed the engine bay with Rustoleum 7777 satin black. Although nothing was physically wrong with the wiring harness under the hood I elected to replace it instead of cleaning the numerous coats of paint from the harness. The old regulator cover was replaced with a period correct reproduction cover.

Clutch and shifter linkage was bead blasted and painted and a homemade clutch return bracket was made.

After I got a couple hundred miles on the motor I replaced the old Atlas coil with a reproduction Yellow Top coil. The ignition points were replaced with Pertronix part 1266 and period correct brown starter solenoid