THE NEXT CHAPTER..
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We headed for the highway and it was already apparent it was going to be a long ride home. The belts were all slipping, so the power steering was intermittent, it was pinging, and the temp was on it's way up. Add to that unknown fluid levels, a stall converter and steep gears, and you can imagine the anxieties. Here we were in a full race Buick holding up traffic on the interstate at about 40-45 mph........ Upon reaching Southbury (about halfway home) it was time for a pit stop to try to tighten things up. Thankfully my sister and her fiancé had recently bought a home there and he is a mechanic.....most convenient. We dragged him out to check out the car, topped off fluids, and tightened up the belts as best we could, knocked the timing back a little, and filled the water injection reservoir. With the pit stop done, we continued on with renewed confidence. I was beginning to see that it was going to take a little effort to tame this beast for street use. The temp was still hotter than I'd like, finding a setting for the water injection that was good at all throttle positions was tough, and it used up all the water before we got home. The stall converter whining away at anything under 3000 rpm was worrying me as well. I sure wished that nice transmission temperature gauge in the boxes of parts had actually been installed! Anyway, we made it home. I was still happy, but some things needed to be addressed. With the steep gears and the stall converter, the engine was revving pretty high all the time, which meant that the belts were all in danger of popping off, and I was having real trouble figuring out how to get them lined up and tight. I finally realized that the Pontiac bracketing system was not pieced together correctly. My friend Mike (who had been along for this ride) had a '65 GTO, and one day as I was staring into his engine compartment while he was working on it, I realized how mine should be put together, and thankfully, that is what all the extra bracketing in the boxes was for. It seems when he pieced this together he ended up with the proverbial "extra parts"! After fixing that, I had the cooling more under control. A little more tranny fluid helped the converter a bit, but I still suspected something was wrong. Some tuning of the carb and adjusting timing some more, using lead additive octane booster (on top of the "ultra 94") helped the ping some...but the water injection was bugging me and it was REALLY thirsty. The expense of the additives was no fun either. I also determined that the flex fan that was on there wasn't pulling enough air, but thankfully there was another one in the wonderful parts box and it worked a bit better. Other things that were a concern included: A leak I noticed coming from under the flex plate cover....tranny fluid, and it would puddle on the oil filter, drip onto the headers, and smoke, Some of the front end parts were "snapping" due to excessive stress from the extreme suspension. This I solved with a lube job and removal of the coil over shocks (replacing them with KYB gas shocks), but I suspected the upper ball joints had already worn a bit. The headers had some leaks as well. I replaced the gaskets top and bottom, but with the torquing of the motor they were a high maintenance item. Also noticed was the bubbling in the carb from the heat of the stock cast iron intake (with the unblocked heat crossover) and the occasionial problem under acceleration as though someone was pinching off the fuel line. Sometimes it'd wind up nice, and the next time it would buck. At best however, it would only wind up to about 5200-5300 rpm max.....not a big range cosidering the gear I had.....I either needed more motor or less gear. I eventually had new exhaust bent for it and did the ball joints and brakes. This was the way it stayed for quite some time, but I grew tired of the expense and stopped driving it around. It sat for at least a year. One day, I missed it, so I washed it off, and headed for town to get some gas. Not more than a mile from the house, I pulled away from a stop sign, heard a bang, a rattle, a crunch, and it quit....and started leaking oil from the front of the motor. I managed to push it off to the side, and walked home to get the Malibu and another driver, and pushed it home. Upon inspection, I decided it had to have been the timing chain, though I didn't understand the oil leak. Further disassembly revealed the truth. Remember the loose brackets and such? As well as this guy had done some things, other things were not so well done. The harmonic balancer on a Pontiac requires torquing to 160 ft. lbs. or it will break loose.....it did. The sleeve had broken on the crankshaft keyway, the chunks were chewed by the timing chain and sprocket, then the chain and sprocket gave up. I had hoped that was all I needed, but the further I took it apart, the more I saw that I could do, and the less I wanted to trust the specs. inside the motor (not to mention it was likely there were little pieces of gear and chain floating around inside the motor). I took off the heads and found bent pushrods and saw where the pistons had smacked the valves and bent them. Normal for a Pontiac timing chain disaster....they're known for it. What to do? |