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Due to the great
turn out on two day this week of
Lenny Ball,
George Nick, Ken Long, Frank Serafine,
Jerry Croston,
Ray
Schmitt, Dave Dailey,
Don Goodman,
and Thomas Deyle (the Photographer forgot to get a group picture)
We:
Installed rotors, calipers, brake hoes & lines.
Painted the steering gear box
Cleaned primered and painted the firewall
Made patch panels for holes in the firewall
Glass beaded headers, pained and backed Headers
Painted the transmission
Installed the flex plate
Bolted the transmission to the motor
Installed the motor (does not do justice to this task! Eight guys
worked 5 Hours and the
engine is just setting in place. This thing fought us all the way. I
was
ready to sell the car!)
Installed the headers
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Look the car now has rotors, calipers and
brake hoses. We are putting parts on instead of taking them off.
What a different process. I am not sure I know how to do this, I
better get a bunch of people over to help me. |
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Pretty, the steering gear box has been
painted. |
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We have brake lines, now all we need is a
master and the car will have brakes again. |
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George Nick hard at work cleaning the
firewall. |
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Thomas Deyle
creating the patch panels to cover the holes in the firewall |
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Don Goodman
standing by with the wire wheel to complete the cleaning of the
firewall |
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The firewall painted but no patch panels
installed yet. |
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The headers have been glass beaded and painted
with VHT paint, then baked in the oven. |
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All this work was done on a Wednesday in four
hours! |
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Ready for the engine. |
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Transmission is painted a nice dull aluminum.
Normally I do not like to paint transmissions because they give off
heat better when they are not. This one cam back painted black so I
went ahead and painted it again. |
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Now this task should have been easy. I have
done it a dozen times. It was to set the tone for the rest of the
day on Saturday. The torque converter would not go into the
transmission. we fought this task for half an hour.
Jerry Croston
was finially successfull! |
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The new mini starter had to be clocked to be
bolted onto the block. It turned out that once the headers were
installed it was resting right against the header tube. We had to
remove it again after the engine was installed in the car. I will
have to look for a different starter. |
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This flex plate installed ok, but there was a
lot of background struggle over it. It turns out that this engine
has a neutral balance harmonic balancer, but that flex plate is
externally balanced. The first FSI certified flex plate I got was
neutrally balance. This on was shipped overnight, arrived 10 AM
Friday, was shipped over to a machine shop and match balanced to the
original and was finished a 4:00 PM and really to install 9:AM
Saturday. |
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This should have been the easy part. We worked
three hours getting the engine from this point to sitting on the
motor mounts, and transmission mount loosely bolted in place. There
were several words that lased my lips that generally do not. There
was a sign written on the window in the dust "car for sale
$25.00 or Best Offer.
In the picture are
Lenny Ball,
Ken Long, Frank Serafine (behind the engine), Jerry Croston,
Ray Schmitt, and Dave Dailey |
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Who ever designed the exhaust/header
configuration for Pontiac 400's should be shot. The rear bolt on the
center port had to be tighten in with a set of needle nose vise
grips an eight of a turn at a time. |
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Well it is loosely bolted in place. Time to
take a break. |
