Nice work Seth! Have you guys been getting the great cold fronts too?
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Nice work Seth! Have you guys been getting the great cold fronts too?
Well, I went and picked up the other 218, seller was a little more optimistic about the condition of the engine than I was. It's in pretty much the exact same shape as the one out of my 48 so I'm going to go ahead and rebuild the one I have. I already sold the carburetor and oil filter canister off of the motor I picked up for $50 so I'm only out a few hours of drive time.
Well I'm pretty committed to the 218 now. I got the block and crank back from the machine shop, block bored .030 and .010 .010 on the crank. He put new exhaust seats in , new guides in and ground the valves as well. I had had most of the parts bought from line suppliers but my bearing guy said they they were out of the .010 mains so I told the machine shop to get the bearings for it instead. Later he called me and said that one of the cam bushings I got him was out of round so I told him to get them as well. When I got the bill, everything was as expected except for the bill for the bearings was $373! I about shat myself. Mains from Summit are $130 and rods are easy to get for $60 and cam bushings are averaging $45 for a total of $235. Lesson learned on not asking their price thinking that they would be in the ball park of others. I'm still grumpy about it.
Any one that thinks machine shops don't make money on parts is really wrong
That's how they keep the lights on and food on the table at home. If they can't make some bucks they will close.. like all the shops around me! And we don't know how many 218's are being built or if that part number is an A-1 listing or a D-4.. in other words how many are being sold?
In any event, it's done and your on your way to reassembly - the best part of the build!
I agree with the lights on and the food on the table, but it's not just a little mom-and-pop shop, it's Arnold Motor and they have 50 stores. For a large parts store I don't think it should be that hard to be in the ballpark within 25 to 50 bucks of the others. Oh well, they do fantastic work and I'll put it together.
Nice! Glad to see you sticking with the flathead; very cool piece of vintage iron.
Seth, I feel your pain. I got nailed by Arnold's in Ankeny last year. They quoted me $100 with the cam bearings to put cam bearings in my 5.3. When I picked it up the price jumped to $235 because they mis quoted the job. They charge $137/hr for labor so I believe they don't need to sell parts to keep their lights on. That's what I get for not making the 2hr round trip and using my normal guy I suppose.
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Well with the kitchen mostly behind us I finally had a chance to start putting this old girl back together. Christian showed up to help and we got the main guts put back together today. I'm hoping to have it on the road this summer, we'll see how it goes.
Good to see the "A" team back at it! Thanks for the pics too. 8-)
I have a guy on Communist Book that is telling me I better get the crank balanced. He said his vibrated bad and his crank ended up being 100 grams off. Do you think it's worth pulling it back apart or was his just a fluke?
You mean "CommieBook", formerly known as "Facebook"?
If you're concerned I'd think that balancing the rod, piston, bearing & ring assemblies would likely be enough for a street driven in-line 6, unless you're planning to rap it like a sewing machine? It's hard to imagine the crank itself being out 100 grams, but maybe I'm all wet.
I guess it could be. Mixing parts from different years?, who knows if it's all the original parts??
As an aside topic. A person I know, cannot call him a friend or acquaintance.. assembled a 66 fastback Mustang. It was a car I put together as part of a deal and it went south badly. In any event.. he had a SBF that he was unsure of the year and he didn't know how to tell. And he had bought a late model ( late 80's ) 5.0 that he wanted to put into the Mustang so he assembled all the parts that he had and got the car running. It looked really nice but the motor shook something awful! He wasn't aware that early SBF used a 28 oz flywheel weight and Later 5 point ohs used 50 oz... He mixed the 5.0 with his early 302 flywheel! I would only smirk... told him once he should find and fix the problem.. Another guy who knew my history with the car said he was trying to buy it, I asked him if he tried to drive it. He said no but he heard it run. So I told him what the problem was and swore him to secrecy and to use that knowledge to get a better price. Which he did and then brought the car to me and I swapped in a new flexplate and then drove it back to the previous owner. Revved the hell out of it with a nice burnout! Something they could never do! Satisfaction guaranteed! :rolleyes:
I don't know if any of you have ever put a clutch in or pulled the motor out of things, but it is an incredible PIA to do either. Because of that, I am going to run it on a stand first and make sure that I have no leaks on the pan or rear seal.When I do that I'm sure I can rev it up and down and run it enough to know if there's a vibration or not. I really don't want to take it back apart if I don't need to.
Mr. Spock says that is highly logical reasoning! 8-)
It sounds to me like you have a good plan going on. I've had cummins 12v cranks that far off but in those 2 engines it had heavier rods at the opposite end. Those engines ran without shaking so I think they had their stuff figured out when they assembled them. :LOL:
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I got a lot done today, the motor, trans, pedals, steering column, and master cyl in. I pulled the fuel tank and it defiantly needs some help. I'm doing the electrolysis thing on it right now to try to clean it up. I was surprised at how bad the radiator is, I put the garden hose in the top just to check it out and the water never came out of the bottom. I wish I checked that out earlier, our radiator shop guys nickname is fingerbut because he so dang slow. Hopefully I'll get to hear it run next week!
Don't need a radiator to fire it up for a short run. Just sayin'.. LOL
Looking great! I’ve put a bunch of these old mopar flat sixes together and never had any vibration problem. They only make 100hp but are really smooth and quiet. Very cool little piece of engineering.
A lot has happened to the old Dodge since my last post, I got the motor running and it runs beautiful! The last few weeks I've been putting it together and it hasn't been fighting me too bad. I took my radiator back from the radiator shop because it would still be there with nothing done to it if I hadn't. I pumped citric acid water through it for about 24 hours and it seems to be flowing pretty good now, I'll give it a try. I am actually still running the original points in it right now but I did order a Pentronix ignition kit for it. It's kinda fun to drive but it defiantly needs different tires and the non synchronized transmission leaves something to be desired. Still more to do but I'm a long ways with the old girl now.
One thing that was neat was I was able to repair the old mechanical temp gouge with the broke off temp bulb per instructions I found on another forum. I took a new gauge and packed the bulb in ice and rock salt to cool and suck most of the ether into the bulb and then cut the copper tube. I used another section of new larger tube as a splice and then soldered them together and to my surprise it actually worked!
Great updates. Sweet that you were able to fix the gauge too. Looks accurate to boot!
Great looking old truck, very cool.
It's a neat old truck! Driving the old non-synchro trannys is cool, moving easy and feeling the gears engage smooth as the rpm's match. A great way for that easy trip to the store when Mama needs an egg or two or a bag of sugar as long as she's not in too big of a hurry! I really like that repair on the gauge!
And there is nothing like driving an old straight axle, you drive it, it doesn't drive you.
Very nice to see you are getting it back on the road and it isn't fighting you bad. The gauge fix is awesome! Great work! Are you ready to chop up the other ones out back and build a custom yet? :LOL:
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:LOL:Jus' sayin'....
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This one will keep me from getting bored for awhile, we'll see what next winter will bring. I'm kind of excited to do that one, this one might find a new home when the next one is finished, It will be more of a daily driver and I'm running out of roof space to keep these things under. I got one antique tractor left, that one might have to go.
I don't know about that trans, I'm not that patient. One of my donor pickups has a three-speed with a three on the tree, apparently they were all synchronized. Otherwise I might put a ISO ad on the pilot house form on Facebook for a 52 or newer 4-speed trans, I guess 52 and newer they were synchronized. For now I'm going to drive it as is.
Double de-clutching is a thing of the past now. It's basically the same as marching while you're sitting down...left right left right
For the first left foot movement you take it out of gear and then give the throttle a blip.
The second left foot movement you put it down a cog, then bang the loud pedal again.
Left right left right.
The art is in knowing how hard to hit the throttle in neutral.
To double de-clutch going up a cog is much the same but without the blip on the throttle in neutral.
It becomes natural after a while.
Many years ago I owned a K5 Austin truck. If you couldn't double de-clutch or reverse by mirrors you couldn't drive that thing. It was so heavy in the steering you couldn't steer it slowly backwards with only one arm on the wheel. And being a slower revving diesel you had to get that blip on the loud pedal exactly right when changing down. There were no second chances.
What I got out of that is switch the transmission. Lol
Saw this and thought of you!
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That's a good one Roger!! LOL...
That's funny!!!!!