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Update on the truck! and its not good. Around july of 2018, Davez motor took a dump. The number one piston was melted and had deposited a lot of liquid metal on the head and the compression on the other cylinders were at like 60psi. Amazingly the thing still ran! It didn't have as much power as it used to but it could get up to highway speed with a bit of a struggle. Out came davez motor. I don't know what exactly went wrong after 22,000 miles on this motor. Maybe I didn't have the weber tuned right, maybe my ignition timing was bad, I don't know. Being the erragent and know it all teen that I am, Im just gonna say dave didn't do it right. However, now that I know a lot more about this motor, I'm gonna make sure that everything is exactly the way it needs to be once I get this thing running again. Upon closer inspection of davez motor though, i found that the head was really, ummm...... not so great. It was clear there were multiple sections in the head that had been welded, the valve seats were cut into way to far, and there were a ton of cracks. The block was also trashed from the motor melting and it was already bored 60 over so I needed a whole new motor.
Melted piston welded to the head cracks everywhere
This time I was gonna build the motor myself and make sure its done exactly how it should be. I found a virgin 82 motor from a junkyard for 150 bucks. When I say virgin I mean virgin. Still had the oem timing set, pistons, rings, and head gasket. The motor did sit out side uncovered for god knows how long though so it needed to be pulled apart and there was an ever so slight ridge at the top of the cylinders. I had the motor bored 20 over and used one of Todd at engnbldr's rebuild kits. The crank and rods were still mint so just gave them a quick polish and put it all back together. Had the head rebuilt by my local shop and threw in some of todds over size valves and 270 cam to help her breathe just a bit better. When all was said done I ended up spending 650 for parts and machining. Not too bad in California anyway
Now it was time to resurrect this truck. AGAIN........
Got the motor in with a new Luk clutch from Napa, new pilot bearing, and new throw out bearing. Put water in the radiator and....... The timing cover leaked like a siv. So off comes the head and the oil pan. New felpro silicone impregnated timing cover gaskets instead of the cheap paper gasket from the rebuild kit and it didn't leak anymore. OK....phew.....time for take two. Started it up and it ran great. Not a single leak from anywhere! I drove it around for the weekend breaking it in and all was well. I pulled the valve cover just to check up on things. The valves had tightened up just a tad as expected so I got those back to where they needed to be and wanted to make sure my cam timing was good. This is when I learned that when you mill the head, block, or both. it physically shortens the motor and changes the cam timing about 1 degree for every 10 thousandths taken off. I noticed my cam timing was off by about 1 degree which makes sense since the head and block were both milled to about 15 thousandths between the two. Most people say you don't really need to worry about it until its like 2 degrees off but i wasn't gonna risk anything. I bought an lc engineering adjustable cam gear and started to put it on. About half way through getting the new gear on I got a phone call, got distracted and came back out about 15 minutes later, forgetting the fact that i still hadn't gotten the cam timing set right. I started working on the valves and turned the motor over to rotate the cam and BLAM! The pistons and valves had a lovely handshake. Head comes off again. This time I decided to clean up the ports a bit, polish the exhaust, and port match the intake to my new offenhouser single plane weber intake. Got the motor back together. It ran amazingly now. But and there always is a but, two days later at 4,000 rpm, one of the bolts on the cam gear sheared off, got in between the gear and the chain and this happened.
This was not fun, and the truck sat for another month, well into november of 2017, before I pulled it apart to see how bad the damage was. Fortunately, as a testament to these motors, all that happened was some bent valves and the timing set was ruined. Nothing else! The head wasn't damaged at all. The valve guides were fine, the timing cover good, everything else was ok. Except the pistons did get a little dent from the valves but those were fine. Again on this installment of how many times can pete pull his motor apart, I wasn't taking any, I mean any chances. I ditched the adjustable cam gear, milled the head another 4 thousandths to bring the total milling around 20 thousandths, and used a head gasket that was 20 thousandths thicker so I could use all the OEM timing parts. No bolts to break off, no retarded cam timing to burn out exhaust valves and eat head gaskets, nothing!. This motor is as close to OEM spec as it can get. Got it together and was happy to see my math was correct. Cam timing was set dead on 0 degrees and I was ready to finish this motor once and for all. It runs, it finally runs, and well too. better then it ever has. No air leaks, water leaks, oil leaks. It was perfect. Once I get back to California I'm gonna take this thing into westech performance and have them tune that thing on the dyno so its perfect. It should be making really good power now and still go 200,000 miles or more easy. The motor has a 270 cam, oversize valves, mild porting (really just port cleaning and polished exhaust ports), Port matched to the intake, offenhouser single plane intake, weber 32/36, no more smog stuff except a cat, header with 1.5 inch primaries going down to a 2.5 inch collector to a 2.5 inch hi flow cat and 2.5 inch free flow muffler and then 2.5 inch all the way out the back. ˟˟˟˟s MINT!
I bet on you generating enough horsepower to scrap your engine again Jr. Roadkill
Have some faith will ya, I've done my research and I'm looking at an extra 25hp maybe. That will bring the motor to just about 125 hp total. If you ask most guys on here its a pretty solid and reliable setup. Gives the 22r a bit more umph and only putting a tiny bit more stress on the already beefy stock internals. Toyota even turbo charged the stock 22r for some models making 135hp on the same internals.
But your right, wth my history its almost a guarantee that on the first dyno pull ill be greeted with a piston shooting out of my hood
In all honesty I wish you the best with your build. I just felt like harassing you for the roadkill stuff. I'm actually watching hotrod garage as I type this.
In all honesty I wish you the best with your build. I just felt like harassing you for the roadkill stuff. I'm actually watching hotrod garage as I type this.
Haha, good, love that stuff. If you watch the video I posted earlier which was my first car vid, it totally is a roadkill wanna be. Actually came out pretty good though. While your at it you should check the other cars n chaos vid on my channel. Totally not boosting my channel
Here’s an update I’ve been waiting for a long time to post. My custom seat vinyl I ordered from SMS auto fabrics finally came in. It’s only been 2.5 years since I ordered and paid for it ��. It’s not Identicle to the original fabric but if I wanted an exact match it would have cost over 2k cus they would need to make custom tooling for that pattern. What I got cost me around 500 bucks and is pretty close to original style. At least it’s color matched. I’m going to have a lot of extra vinyl so if any one is looking to do thier seats as original as possible and wants some vinyl shoot me a PM
Been waiting too long and the seats have deteriorated quite a lot. Now it’s time though I crack out the old singer sewing machine and get to work on this turd of a bench seat ��
The seats are finally done and I couldn’t be happier with how they look in the truck. It took a lot of work but they are amazing. Can’t even tell the difference between the old vinyl and the new vinyl
02-24-2018, 04:29 AM
Here’s an update I’ve been waiting for a long time to post. My custom seat vinyl I ordered from SMS auto fabrics finally came in. It’s only been 2.5 years since I ordered and paid for it ��. It’s not Identicle to the original fabric but if I wanted an exact match it would have cost over 2k cus they would need to make custom tooling for that pattern. What I got cost me around 500 bucks and is pretty close to original style. At least it’s color matched. I’m going to have a lot of extra vinyl so if any one is looking to do thier seats as original as possible and wants some vinyl shoot me a PM
