Motor Vessel Ghost

It looks easy in pictures, but I spent half the day jacking the engine round a little at a time.  Third try and she finally settled right in on her mounts.  Engines in!   

with clear access to the firewall, it’s time to pull out the old engine harness and swap a new harness, quite a bit of wire routing and behind the dash mount the new EFI computer.  Unfortunately, this will mean starting from scratch with a new fuel map and tuning.  Since I swapped to a roller cam, I would have had quite a bit of new mapping anyway.  It’s time to get after all these things when access is available, but this also means many new things being tested together.  

A little tedious work, and then intake gets put back.  Tons of little things and this engine is ready to go back in.    

Tonight’s garage adventure was to clean and mount the water pump.  

Next up is to put a new throttle cable mount on the intake and then set it down. 

Lots of progress already this week.  Last night I got the heads bolted on and torqued.  Tonight I installed pushrods, rocker arms, aligned the guide plates and set the valve lash.  Not only does she really start to look like an engine, she’s not bad looking either.  

I decided to go ahead with the Edelbrock pushrods.  I trust them more than most companies.  Upon further research, it appears these are chrome Molly, so they should survive.  I’ll just have to pay attention to the valve lash until it’s clear they are working out.  Definitely gun shy of a repeat on the pushrods.  

If I keep this pace up, I’ll be getting close to dropping her back in towards the weekend.  I’m trying not to rush.  If it happens, super, but not a requirement.  I’d rather not get ahead and miss something simple. 

So here are the pushrods that Edelbrock provided in my cam kit.  It is the same welded ball pushrod that I bough from Comp cams that ground themselves at the Rocker Arms.  

I’m sure I simply got a bad batch from Comp, but since the spring pressure has gone up nearly a hundred pounds with the roller cam, I’m thinking that some hardened push rods may be a good idea.  Problem is, until I get the heads bolted down I can’t test one of the pushrods for length to confirm I would not be better with pushrods a fraction bigger or smaller.

That may not leave me enough time next week to get a set of pushrods ordered before the next weekend.  It will also leave me with two full sets of unused pushrods.  I’m thinking a garage sale may be coming.

I 

It’s so much easier to do the simple job of bolting on the oil pan while on the stand. So much better than on your back and straining.

Next up is to prep the heads and lay them on the block.