Seems pretty straight forward just a little time consuming. I really want to get the intake and valve covers all on to get an idea of what it’ll look like when it’s done.
New guy 79 factory 4 speed wagon.
- Thread starter Mighty
- Start date
you can just temporarily lay those items in place, now, to have a peek; you don't have to wait for final assembly.
I might do that after I torque them down tomorrow evening since I don’t go to the shop on Wednesdays. I was thinking about maybe running to a junkyard this weekend and looking for a ford Taurus to grab the electric fans off of. That’s what my brother used in his 85 regal. Then again, he put that car together (.040 over roller vortec headed 350 and turbo 400 trans) about the time he graduated high school 2-3 years after the wagon was initially being tinkered with. I doubt there’s many of those Taurus’s left out there. He’s still got the regal but he blew the blew the 7.5 rearend out in short order drag racing it. He bought the car off of my aunt for $500 when he got his license and she had bought it brand new. The interior in it still looks immaculate. Once the wagon is done I’d like to either get it inside the shop and start tinkering on it or talk my brother into the two of us finishing up my dads 68 coronet for him.
I am liking your dad's taste in cars. In high school, I had a 1967 GTX. I sold it in 1982, never to be seen again.
My personal favorite mopars are the 68 and 69 GTX. This is my dads coronet that he bought out of Oregon and had shipped here years ago. Originally had a 318. Now it’s got a brand new dana 60, brand new 727, all brand new interior, sound deadening covering the floor under the carpet, and he bought a 1969 hi po 440 6 pack motor. This is where things get interesting. My brother and some people apparently talked him into ditching the 3 2 barrels and going to fuel injection. It’s got an edelbrock pro flo 4 on it now. He also bought a stock appearing radio that has a computer on it that connects to your phone from Bluetooth. He also planned on putting air in it and bought everything but it isn’t installed yet. He had quite a bit of money tied up in 2 different sets of headers for it. He sold the intake and 2 barrels for a decent chunk of change then spent something like $1800 on a new trunk lid because he said something about them being specific for the year? Don’t quote me on that. He kept the 6 pack air cleaner and his entire goal with the car was to be able to pop the hood and have it still look factory. It was running and driving and he drove it to the shop where it currently sits inside at all times. He was never happy with how all of the wiring looked and constantly complained about it so my brother decided to tear it all out and start over to try to surprise him while he was on vacation. Then a day or two later his boss decided to retire and leave him the business so the car needs a lot of electrical work and my brother is running all 3 bays and doing financial stuff on his own. That wiring stuff is all waaaaaayyyy out of my league. My dads getting up there in age and his back is shot. He had it running once and I offered to go through and run all of the wiring for him a few years ago to his liking because I’d love to learn that stuff too but he’s pretty irritated with it. My dad has been on a huge mopar kick over the last 10 years or so. He’s retired and I always wanted to get that car going so he could enjoy it because he deserves it. That’s another big reason why I got moving on the Malibu. It’s just a simple small block Chevy though. He goes to the good guys car show every year when they’re in town but usually takes a lawn chair and watches them drive by. I can at least get the wagon going so we can enjoy it next spring and summer.
Here the most recent engine picture I have of it. I think the pro flo 4 fuel injection kit is the second set up he’s had through edelbrock if I remember correctly. He bought a different kit right when they introduced it for big block mopars before the pro flo kits were around and never got it working right. He made a number of calls and their customer support was pretty decent but they ended up taking the previous kit back and sending him the pro flo free of charge.
That is a nice looking Coronet. I wish your brother the best of success in running his new business.
Got them all torqued down tonight. Started at 40 ft lbs and worked my way up to 70 in 10 ft lb increments. Then had my brother check them over but he only did the passenger side and told me “just go over your side one more time. They’re fine.” Turns out I have to buy new push rods no matter what. The afr instructions said to use hardened chrome moly rods because they can rub on the provided guide plates. I put the guide plates on by hand and slid the pushrods in place but only put one rocker on. My brother said it’s been so long since he’s had to measure a push rod that he’ll have to refresh his memory and walk me through it. Something about marking the valve with a marker and spinning the engine over by hand and maybe filling the lifters with oil. Seems pretty over my head but we’ll see. I just set the intake on a rag and put one valve cover on to try to get an idea of what it looked like.
Got my adjustable push rod and waited on my brother for about a half hour but he was too busy replacing a thermostat in a 2017 Buick with a 3.6 and had the entire top of the motor torn apart so…..I pulled up a video on YouTube and got to tinkering on my own pausing the video and starting it again as I went along. Things were going pretty smooth the first go around but I ran into an issue tightening the adjuster nut on the rocker stud. I had a piece of tape covering the top of the nut with a mark on it so I was able to count how many rotations I was making. There was plenty of threads left on the stud. It took me 5-6 minutes to figure out the issue but after thinking back to watching someone adjust valves I peeled the tape off the nut and realized the poly lock needed backed out. Started over. Process went smooth so I did it another time just to be sure. The pushrods that have been in the engine were 7.75” long. The deck of the afr heads looks beefier than the world product heads that I took off and if I did everything correctly it looks like lll need pushrods that are 7.8125” long. Hoping to get some tomorrow.
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