Lesson for the younger guy's

It's probably been said a thousand times already,,,,but just in case it's been forgotten,,,here's something i was teaching my son about buying that beautifull old car from an equaly old person,,.
After finding that special car that was driven by an old lady,,or old man, just to go to the store and back,,,very little miles,,,no dents,,faded paint, the most common mistake made by some of the younger guy's ( I speak from long memory ) is taking that nice old car and gunning it before ridge reaming the cylinders,,,ending up with a motor that smokes and burns oil,!
An engine gets conditioned to the driving habits of it's long time owner.
Let's say the origional owner drove the car in the low RPM range,,,say,,,2800 RPM,*JUST AN EXAMPLE*,,,,,and now you own this rare prize,,,,the first thing your gonna want to do is give it some gas and see what the old girl will do,,,,,,I mean,,,It's a Hemi or big block right??
So off you go and take the RPM's up past the 2800 mark,and open that dusty old four barrell,,and you are impressed!!!
Well,,,,,now youv'e gone and done it,,,the higher RPM's have increased the piston travell in the cylinders,,,and the rings have hit the ridge of built up metal at the top of the cylinder travell, and cracked as a result,,,,,now it's smoking, and using oil,,,and your cursing that old fart who sold you this bill of goods.
He said it didn't use any oil,,,and the compression was really good,,and when you first took it for a test drive with him in the car,,you could tell it had TONS of torque,,,and just wanted to fly.
What you are forgetting is that the pistons in an engine will build up ridges of metal at the top of their stroke,,,and the RPM range the origional owner would drive at,, have determined where the ridges would be,,,,,after you have revved it past that point,,,whatever it may be,,,,the piston's have exceeded the normal stroke range,,and the rings have hit that built up ridge,,and cracked.
So now you have cracked rings and most likely scored the cylinders, leaving you with a big repair bill.
Most of us older guy's have been there,,,,,,and when it's your first car,,it really hurts.
Like i told my son,,,,,get yourself a gasket set,,,and a ridge reamer,,,pull the cylinder heads off,,,and use the ridge reamer to remove that built up ridge at the top of the bore.
Your total extra cost should be around $150,,,,and you can now ( in most cases) take the engine higher up in the RPM range,,,,End result for a little forethought,,,,,*HAPPINESS*
You probably want to upgrade the heads and intake anyway.


:3dSMILE:

Know what you mean. My Dad took me out at 15 to buy a 58 chevy impala(always liked them) and we looked at one at a dealer. I drove it and the motor was shot(348), front end was shot(needed ball joints and tie rods) tranny wouldn't shift right(3 speed on the colume) but I bought it anyways against my Dads better judgement. Learned a big lesson the day as it sat because I had no money to put into it and finally when I did the engiine had a cracked block,front end was totaled,tranny was past repair and I was out $300.00 Managed to sell it for $100.00

Yeah,,,my first car was to be a 1958 olds 2dr hard top,,,i was a trusting sould back then ( 16yrs old ) the guy at the gas station let me make payments on it while he kept it on his lot,,,i dealt with the guy on a hand shake,,,and just when i was making my final payment,,,some six months later,,,,,i found that he had sold the car to someone else,,,,,,i had no reciepts,,,my dad was away commercial fishing for months on end,,,my mother raised hell with the guy,,,but to no avail,,,,lost the car,,,lost my money,i was devastated.
I backed myself up with paper thereafter,,,,,once burned,,,twice shy.

There are alot of guys out there that will take advantage of a young kid and we were two of them!:(

Every thing was ok when my dad came home from fishing,,,he bought me a 1958 GMC pickup,,,,,i was a happy kid.

Ya I guess I would be happy myself if my Dad had done the same, but I had to buy the next one myself(41 ford pickup) and I had alot of fun with that.

Thunderbucket- boy is that right. You don't even have to be leadfooting it . Just having a new owner using a used car differently and bring out all sorts of stuff the old owner never had a problem with. If you drive freeway and the old owner never did. If you do lots of night driving and the old owner never did. If you start it often in your daily routine and the old owner never did. ...Well you know....

Good lesson Thunderbucket!


~ Vegas ~

how the hell do u increase piston travel, at rpm they all travel the same distance, if anything the carb was prob bad giving too much air and causing the motor to knock, or those rings where rusty.

Ya how is it possible for the stroke to change regardless of rpm and it being babied for years? I can't envision any way for the piston to travel more or less at different RPM unless something is wrong.

I asked my teacher about that. Here is the answer I got. The con rods and all will flex or whatever and cause the metal to expand more under more heat, etc and hit that ridge. If you think about it it's true.

Difference in RPM will cause a difference in crank flex,,,also,,,every moving part of an engine will change tolerance with either RPM or Heat,,,,,I know it dont seem possible when you first look at it,,but metal,,,any metal will stretch and deform with enough reciprocal, or centrifical force.
We are only talking mere thousands of an inch here,,,,,piston travell and ring run in,,will cause ridges to build up at the limmit of the TDC point of the cylinder,,,when the RPM is increased all of a sudden after years of consistent low RPM,,,those thousands of an inch will give you lots of greif.

Which of course is why it's healthy for your motor to be taken for a good RPM run once in a while,,,to prevent the setting in of such build ups.

It's the same with small engines, if you run an engine with a governer which all small engines have except dirt bikes and racing go karts but they have rev limiters nowdays, if you pull the governer off say a 6 horse ) OHV Techumsea powersport ( Common go kart engine ), that has been in use for a number of years, and get it past the rpm it had run at b4, it is going to snap the ring, I know, I had to fix 1 that did that, getting the pushrods back correctly was hard though.

Thats why i said earlier,,,a ridge reamer is your best friend.

Theres some good advice here. As for burns, I think we've all hit one or two. Easiest way to find out something suspicious is if its the driver or the friend selling the car. If its the driver, get all the info from him/her you can. If its a friend, ask to talk to the driver. If they arent able to be spoken with, walk away. Theirs probably a reason they dont want to talk about this car.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by synthetic
[B]how the hell do u increase piston travel, at rpm they all travel the same distance, :whacked:

Synthetic, Thank You ! Its late and I need to leave this alone ,But, I can't.

FMX, You need a new teacher.

If you have a motor that was built to turn , let's say-4500rpm, but it's normally been run at 2500, You're not going to stretch anything or hit anything at 4500,And! You're not going to hit a ridge that may or may not be there.

Now, If you're trying to turn that same motor a lot more than it's capable off, certainly damage is possible, but the old lifters are going to pump up and float the valves before you get to any extreme RPMs.:whacked: :whacked:

Yeap, Riverhorse, that's rig ht. There so many myths out there that's it's just crazy.

Been pulling wrenches for just about 25 years,Diesel and Gas,,,and i wont debate with you what i know is just plane fact.
Experiment at your own risk.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Thunderbucket
Been pulling wrenches for just about 25 years,Diesel and Gas,,,and i wont debate with you what i know is just plane fact.
Experiment at your own risk.

---

:) Like they say, It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. If You have held that belief for 25 years, it is highly unlikely that anyone here is going to change your mind.
Like you, we all have the right to our own opinions.

For years I was a manager for one of the most successful car dealership chains in the country. Such courses as Dale Carneggie and other positive thinking motivitational courses that I taught were important to our company. We would not hire a car salesman that had worked somewhere else. Most have bad habits engrained in them that we did not have the time or desire to try to turn them around.
For 3 years there I was the Service Director,over Service,body and parts.Although we did have some older established mechanics,most were the younger ones that we brought up within the system. They were the ones that grew to be the A- mechanics and team leaders. They did not have years worth of missnomers and miss information clouding their minds.

In 1962 I bought a totaled 57 chevy 4 dr SW from an old man. He had proberly never driven it over 60 mph. for 70,000 miles. It had a power glide and a 308 gear ratio. I jerked the motor,(283--220 hp power pack) slapped an 097 Duntov solid lifter cam in it,Put it in my 56 with headers,4speed and 411 positraction.For 2 years I would race anything and everything on the street and it got turned close to 7 grand on a dailey basis.Thats proberly 3000 rpm more than it had ever been turned before. It was still capable of 100 mph--13.90s on street tires,the day I sold it.

No Broken rings,No knocking, No smoke.--- Go Figure---

You may be a fine mechanic, I don't doubt that. But,

This Bucket Does Not Hold Water.

Have a nice day!! And Smile.










:) :) :)

Well go tell my teacher that. He is the master technician and has been for years and years. Because right when I told him about if that could happen he pulled the reamer out and told me to use it. That is just what I think Thunderbucket it was that said the same thing. Oh well, I am not going to fight about it, I will just stay on the safe side and tear the engine apart if I get this truck with the original 235 and look at it.

yeah when i bought my project car i was young and I didnt really know to much, now i know quite a bit and i cant wait until i see the guy that sold it to me so i can give him guff about how much i overpaid for it. Ah you live and you learn.

Well Riverhorse,,,you got lucky with your car,,,and i wont debate with you on the differences between older real world experienced mechanics and that of young school trained apprentices.
Some of the comments to the contrary got a lot of laughs with the "OLD" mechanics i hang out with.
And yes,,i will continue to smile.....:-)

Well Thunderbucket. I was wondering what took You so long. That was a good comeback and much nicer that I expected. Maybe we will have to just disagree on this one and see eye to eye on another.
You have a real good first day of Spring and Palm Sunday weekend.:) :)

As to how long it may take me to answer,,,,My daughter rules the computer,,,and lets me at the keyboard once she's done with it.

There are lots of things to learn for both beginners AND old timers. My first "hot rod" was a '70 Maverick with a sixbanger. Paid $50 or $100 for it because of a bad head. Being the genius I was, I decided to do a "complete" rebuild. Replaced all the rings bearings........... uh, was I supposed to check something in the cylinder size???................. and slapped on a junkyard head that I was smart enough to have a head job done on. After everything was bolted together, I excitedly added the water and oil. A steady dripping sound kept getting my attention but all the hoses and radiator were fine. Cranked up and ran like a champ! Man was I good! That is until I noticed the crack in the side of the block that kept letting the water on the insde get outside...:whacked:

Still anewbie in some ways... Can someone explain the difference in a world class T5 Ford tranny and a no-world class? I'm leaning towards a T5 in my T-bucket. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Oh yeah, the motor is a 347 blown stroker.

Thanks,
Steve

I remember an old chevy with a 283 i had,,,tried everything to get it to run right,,,then decided to take the intake manifold off,,,I found that it was plugged up solid with carbon deposits and oil,,,left about 1/2 inch diameter openings,,,,spent hours chipping away the crud,,,put it back on the motor and she ran so beautifull you could put a glass of water on the air cleaner and ntice there wasn't a ripple in the water when the egine was running,,I remember it ran so smooth and quiet that i was constantly trying to start it up when it was running.
I think i was around 17 yrs old at the time.

FL25T, welcome to the boards man. Make a new thread for this question so as not to get off topic and then more people will most likely read it as well. Good luck on your project!