Pat Delaney finished his work on the motor Friday afternoon. He primed the oil pump, getting an indicated 45 psi of oil pressure, buttoned up the motor and we loaded it into Jeff's pickup, since I sold mine about a month ago.

Then I headed for the Lansing Christian School Hoe-Down.

At about 9:00 p.m., Jeff and I met back at the house. We took the transaxle off the engine stand, and reassembled the flywheel, clutch and pressure plate. For some reason we had three longer bolts for the pressure plate, and I'm not sure that they are going to clear. They said "Mr. Gasket" on the head, so I know they're not stock. We got a matched set of six grade 8 bolts and lock washers, so before we marry the engine and transaxle, we're putting the new bolts in.

That done (or at least partially done), we attached the engine stand yoke to the motor and put the motor on the stand. We cleaned up and painted the blower fan, blower pulley and idler pulley and bracket, installed the Pertronix unit and a new head temperature sender, and called it a night.

Saturday was an unseasonably warm day. Seth had a soccer game in the morning, Jake in the afternoon, and both teams won their games. Between household chores and running to soccer games, I (everybody guess) (1) varnished a boat, (2) reshingled my roof, (3) worked on my motor.

Everyone who guessed (3) gets a star for today.

Here's my oldest daughter Allison helping with exhaust manifolds:

I got an e-mail from Mark Morrell on Friday commenting on the pictures of my upside down motor shown in Legends 15 and asking where the air deflectors were. Well, sitting on the roof of the '63 Olds, naturally.

When I took the motor out of the car, I found one air baffle on the left side. The gentleman who performed the first rebuild kinda stuck it to the bottom of the pushrod tubes, so I figured that was where it went. I ordered a replacement for the baffle the former wrench twiddler lost, ordered new clips, sent the baffles out for powdercoating and set them aside. Of course, the error is mine, because the list of his mistakes is long. Thou shalt thinketh before thy doth rely upon fools.

So Saturday, I laid upon the garage floor for quite some time, and paged through the shop manual, trying to figure out how they attached. Slow I may be, but eventually I figured it out. The baffles go between the pushrods and the jugs.

A Normal Life Process

No, they can't really go in there. To get them in there would require pulling the pushrod tubes out. That would mean draining the oil, taking off the valve covers, rockers, rocker studs (head loses torque!) pulling the tubes, and then putting everything back together, of course loosening the head nuts in the process so that the entire head can be properly retorqued.

Well, no one to blame but myself. AUGH!

This is the part where I called information and got Rick Norris's phone number. I figured, hey, I didn't see any baffles in Rick's coupe, so maybe I don't need them either. Rick basically said, quit whining and get back to work.

I went in the house and had some pizza.

Here's a picture of me disassembling the left side:

The baffles are back where they belong now.

Once I was done with that I started reassembling the shroud. By 2:00 a.m. the exhaust manifolds and chokes were reinstalled, most of the shroud was in place, the alternator was on, the coil was in place, and I was tired.

After church (my it is hard to pay attention when your mind is on Vairs!) I headed back out to the garage. Most of the afternoon was spent installing new 52 jets in the carbs. It's fair to say that the old jets did not come out without a fight. One had to be drilled out and its seat retapped. We blew it out very carefully, also removing the venturi cluster and cleaning out that area. One of the secondaries was full of junk. The jet was plugged and from the condition of the carb it couldn't have ever worked that well.

I finished polishing and clearcoating the vacuum tube that runs between the rear carb pads and the breather tube and mounted them, got the freshened carbs on the motor, and installed all the fuel lines.

I know that the air cleaner has to come off before the motor goes in the car, and that plug wires would be helpful, but I thought it would be nice to put it on for a picture:

Tonight my goal is to get the exhaust on the motor, put the oil back in, cut the dipstick tube to the right length, set the timing per the shop manual procedure at 14 BTDC as recommended by Larry Shapiro, and get the plug wires back on the motor. If there's time, maybe we can get the motor and trans together, but I am not counting on that. Probably that happens and the motor goes back in on Wednesday.

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Back to Part 15.

On to Part 17.

All images and text copyright Norman C. Witte 2002.