3-Day Engine Overhaul - Roadkill Garage Pilot
Transcript
00:00 This is the very first episode of an all-new show called Roadkill Garage
00:04 with myself David Freiberger and him Steve Dulcich and we are gonna show you
00:09 how to do the wrong thing the right way. This time we maim a 351 Cleveland and
00:15 your car the 67 Cougar. I can't deny it.
00:21 [Music]
00:33 My theory here is that two guys working on a car like this can get the engine
00:39 out and do a quick dingleball rebuild on it with the new rings and bearings in it,
00:42 new gaskets and they can get all of that accomplished over the weekend starting
00:47 Friday afternoon after work and then by Sunday being able to drive the car to
00:51 work again. That's my goal. Are you ready to fire it up and see actually what's
00:55 wrong with it? Something wrong with it? No, there's nothing wrong with it. It's perfectly good water.
00:59 Well let's see. No, it has a lot of lifter clatter and I don't think that it's a
01:03 solid lifter Cleveland.
01:06 It sounds pretty good to me. By Roadkill standards this is like new. It does that.
01:17 Isn't that annoying? So yeah we're about to break the seal and ruin it. So I just
01:23 want to tear it apart, dingleball hone it, put new bearings in it, make sure the
01:28 crank isn't totally gacked and paint it all nice and purdy and if we have time
01:32 even paint the engine compartment, throw it back together and fire it up, drive it
01:35 away. When? By the end of the weekend. All right, sounds reasonable.
01:42 I've never done a Cleveland before. Kind of looking forward to it. The Cougar is
01:47 just like a '67 Mustang mechanically. It's got a three inch longer wheelbase.
01:52 So I don't know. It's like an ugly version of a popular car. This engine is
01:59 a '72 351 Cobra Jet. It's a Cleveland engine whereas they did not put
02:05 Clevelands in Cougars or Mustangs until 1970. So somebody has swapped this in
02:09 here. It has the same bellhousing bolt pattern as a regular Windsor 302 that
02:13 would have been in this car, 389 actually. So it's a fairly easy swap. Same motor
02:19 mounts too, but the heads are completely different so the exhaust manifold is
02:24 different. We should have had this thing out by now. We're dragging. I'm a little
02:27 rusty on the Fords. My goal for the end of today is to have the engine out and
02:32 completely disassembled.
02:36 I don't think there's a pep talk on the radiator. Oh there isn't. When I bought it
02:47 the guy had gacked it off with a tie-down strap and so I just JB welded a
02:52 patch onto it. I'll get the big splash pan then. Yeah. How's the flood? Not as bad
02:59 as I was expecting. Pretty good distance on the splash there. Oh man. What happened?
03:07 Everywhere? Everywhere. Yeah. My money says you have no mop. So at this point all we
03:14 have to do is take off the bellhousing bolts, the exhaust, and the motor mount
03:19 bolts and it's ready to come out. We were talking about whether we should take the
03:22 transmission out with the engine or leave it in the car and we're gonna leave
03:25 it in the car that way we don't have to deal with like the shifter and all that
03:28 other kind of junk or the driveshaft. We're gonna take apart the engine from
03:31 the bellhousing and hope that the engine will slide forward enough to get off the
03:35 input shaft of the transmission right? Yeah it should come out no problem. You
03:38 want to get underneath and undo it all the bellhousing bolts? Are you
03:41 volunteering me right now? That's the fun part right?
03:46 There's something I never found in a putter before. Butter knives.
03:54 I'm just gonna let the starter dangle by the wire. Is that okay with you? Yeah.
04:00 These are the two bolts that I took it out of the motor mount. Check out how
04:04 they're two different sizes and this one's coarse and this one's fine. This
04:07 one was just like dangling freely in the blot.
04:11 Oh yeah we're home free. See you can tell by the way the water is hitting the
04:17 ground. Yeah that's how you can tell. Yeah right. It's usually the key. You think we
04:22 should put a pan under there or wait till it completely drains out and then
04:25 put the pan in? It's crazy. Just let it drain.
04:30 Well the extraction took longer than it should have but it was way too easy
04:36 which means we're gonna have a huge problem putting it back in. We're pretty
04:40 much on schedule right now. Still Friday evening. Hopefully we don't have any
04:43 burnt valves though. I know that's what I'm worried about. We'll see. That and
04:48 ring ridge. I didn't really hear it misfiring though. No. You really want to
04:52 back these out a little at a time but we're swapping it out anyway. Assuming
04:56 the parts we got are correct don't jump to conclusions.
05:00 Clutch looks like brand new. It does. What's up with that? I don't know. Let's
05:05 look at the disc. Oh wow that flywheel's all heat checked to the max. Okay. It's
05:12 like they put a new clutch on a destroyed flywheel. Look at that. Oh
05:15 that's not very good either. Man that was slipping. There's a lot of heat marks
05:19 and slippage here on the pressure plate and a few little cracks. Look at that.
05:23 That's a big crack and this is like polished smooth and smells like bacon.
05:30 Check it out. Bacon. Mmm tasty. Yeah. Yeah. So that's junk but even worse look at the
05:36 flywheel. All these little cracks in it. I mean it's not horrible. It could be
05:40 surfaced or whatever but I got a new one.
05:44 [Music]
05:49 Yeah. Not that bad. Wow. Kind of impressed. Oh there's our dead guy right there.
05:58 Boy there's our clatter. This is a really common problem on an old motor that
06:02 hasn't been running zinc in the oil and it's got a flat tappet cam. The lifter
06:06 and the cam where they come together will just eat each other. Probably what
06:11 that is. Okay. Let's go ahead and pull the heads. Taking the heads off is probably
06:18 the most significant part of the whole process right? That's the most fun because
06:21 we get to find out if they're open chamber or closed which they're open and
06:24 then you get to see how get to see what the ring ridge looks like. Yeah that'll
06:28 pretty much tell you if your engine is pretty good or total garbage or trash or
06:33 junk. The biggest concern we have in doing a home rebuild job like this where
06:37 we're gonna hone the cylinders ourselves and just bang pistons in and out of it
06:40 with new rings is that the top of the cylinders can have what's called a ring
06:43 ridge which is when the ring on the piston comes up and creates a bunch of
06:46 wear in the bore and leaves a groove at the top. That means there's a lot of
06:50 cylinder wall taper and it means you can't really hone it with a dingle ball
06:52 like we want to do. So right now is the moment where we could find out if we're
06:55 gonna be victorious or pretty much pack it in and go start drinking beer. We're
06:59 also gonna myth bust right now because this is a 351 Cleveland four barrel and
07:04 one of the reasons you know that without taking the engine apart is this four
07:07 that's cast in the end of the cylinder head and a lot of people believe that
07:11 there is a dot cast next to it. Some people call it a cannonball in the
07:16 internet lingo. Really? That means that it has an open chamber. This does not have
07:21 the dot on it and I'm betting it's still an open chamber. So it has no cannonball.
07:25 That's right. That means it's closed chamber. Right. All right. It's not though.
07:29 Oh man. How can it not be if it doesn't have the cannonball? Nope. My money says
07:33 the internet. Open chamber. Yeah. The cannonball. Okay. Moment of truth. It all comes down to
07:40 this right now. These are actually closed chamber heads. Open chamber has no
07:46 intrusions like this. It's actually a perfect circle. This has a pad right here
07:51 which will lend some quench to it. It actually has a little bit around the plug
07:55 here too. Yeah. So that is a closed chamber head without cannonball. Very
08:00 cool. That's a score. I'm impressed. That's a good score. Yeah. So this is a
08:04 little more compression. We just grew up a lot. Yeah. Watch this and we'll be open
08:09 chamber. What we're doing now is taking the lifters off the camshaft and having
08:15 a look at them and the deal is if I have any intention of reusing this cam I have
08:20 to use the lifter that came off that lobe back on that lobe later. So we have
08:25 to put them back in the same place they came out of. Exactly. This is something
08:29 you don't want to do on a lifter you intend to reuse. Wasted. Okay. Textbook
08:35 example of wasted. So you can see right here this is a good lifter. Completely
08:39 flat on the bottom but this one is concave. Actually dipped in because it's
08:44 been wearing on the surface of the cam. When we pull the cam out you'll see that
08:46 that lobe is just destroyed because that's trash. That basically means every
08:50 one of these lifters is garbage. Yeah. This lobe is completely destroyed. You
08:57 can see right here how the top of this is virtually round and has a wear mark
09:00 and you can feel it. See how the one next to it actually has a sort of a point to
09:04 the lobe and that one does not. That change in height in the lobe is what
09:07 opens and closes the valves. Junk. The end of the first day we got the engine out of
09:13 the car and everything is gutted on it and there's a lot of good news and bad
09:16 news. The good news closed chamber Cleveland heads. Bad news they're garbage.
09:20 What's gonna burn us tomorrow is I didn't get cam bearings and those have
09:23 to be replaced. The rest of the night's just gonna be a whole lot of
09:26 cleaning and then painting tomorrow when it's not as freezing cold. We'll clean
09:32 this spotless. Meanwhile tacos.
09:36 It's Saturday morning. Remember how last night I told you we were gonna stay up
09:43 really late and clean a bunch of parts? Yeah that didn't happen. We did however
09:46 make our own home-brewed caustic solution out of I don't know what soap
09:52 and lye and a whole bunch of stuff so parts were self-cleaning overnight. I
09:56 call it the sauce. Don't shoot it in your eye. Do you think the parts are clean in
10:00 there? I'm not reaching in there. No you don't want to. Let's find out if it actually
10:03 cleaned parts or if you're just completely delusional here. Well that's
10:07 not pristine. Well you got to hose it off. Should I touch this? No. No? Get a rag
10:13 you'll be alright. Too late. It totally burned my fingertips in that amount of
10:18 time. I know but see how much cleaner it is right there than there? That proves it
10:22 works. Not bad. Look at that. What happens when you scrub it? It doesn't take any of
10:29 the rust off but it'll take all the grease. I think the fact that these weeds
10:33 are still growing pretty much proves there's nothing wrong with it. You ever
10:36 realize that you actually have well water? Yeah. Where do you think this is all going?
10:43 Your point is? It appears the dulcet concoction worked. The grease hosed off
10:49 but we're still gonna have a lot of grinding to do. You want to just go ahead
10:52 and tune out for a while while we clean all this stuff up.
10:57 Steve's a pressure washer is neither.
11:04 That's not roadkill. No? You're a little too good for us. You look like a Star Wars
11:14 character.
11:16 [Music]
11:25 This is a brush hone. What it's gonna do is it's gonna put a new surface in
11:30 the cylinders basically honing out the bores very lightly. What I'm using here
11:34 is diesel fuel. That's my lubricant and it also helps clean out the slag and
11:39 grit and debris while we're honing this thing out. It's a cheap and quick way to
11:43 resurface the cylinders for this kind of overhaul. This front cam bearing is
11:49 absolutely destroyed and I've called a bunch of people locally and we can't get
11:53 one till tomorrow but if we don't get one till tomorrow we're never gonna get
11:56 this finished and back in the car by tomorrow. I think we're just assembling
12:00 it. We are just totally screwed on this one. Let's give up and just call it good
12:05 enough. When all else fails just decide that it's fine. What time is it? It's time
12:11 this thing should have already been assembled. 445 Saturday evening. In a
12:18 perfect world you would have this professionally polished at a minimum. In
12:22 our world we're slapping it back together. It's not gonna be any worse
12:26 than it was before. Aside from the parts that are terrible this motor is pretty
12:30 good. That is a tapered piston ring compressor which is pretty cool. It
12:40 is tapered like this so that when you push the piston down it squeezes the
12:45 rings in so that they'll go in the hole. It's pretty cool.
12:49 Squirt. Smack it. Stop. Do you want to submerge the lifters? No. No? Do you have a
12:58 pre-luber? No. You don't have a pre-luber for a Ford? It's called starting the
13:03 motor. Wow we're really going to that level.
13:09 [Music]
13:13 Starting to look like a motor.
13:22 I have to point out you realize that we spent more time on cosmetics than we did
13:29 on things like oh the destroyed cam bearing or the broken cam plate or the
13:34 not very good crank journals. Well it looks good. Focus on the positive here. I
13:41 was really really optimistic yesterday when we got the engine out of the car
13:45 and completely torn apart and got some progress and then things just started to
13:50 go downhill sometime in the middle of the day and then the next thing you know
13:54 you're standing here at 1030 at night with zip ties forming an extension on
13:59 your dial indicator so that you can find top dead center from the underside of
14:03 the motor. Now we got a bunch more junk to button up on this thing. When we come
14:07 back tomorrow we'll finish off whatever's left then drop in the car
14:10 fire it up and get out of here. It's Sunday morning now. We were here till
14:15 2:30 in the morning last night doing all sorts of little detail-y stuff that was
14:19 pretty boring. Don't worry you didn't miss anything. Right now we're gonna slam
14:22 the intake manifold on it and the valve covers which will cap off the motor.
14:26 We've got to get it off the stand put a clutch on it and then slam it in the car
14:29 and fire it right up. Coming down, coming down, coming down. Oh! What? Popped right in
14:38 place. Oh it's installed. Boom. Boom. Bam. Boom. Only boom. Dulcich has a new catchphrase.
14:49 It's boom. Look at that. Doesn't that just put a tear in your eye? Oh man. That was
14:53 almost too easy. What's gonna happen? Well it didn't really put up a fight did it?
14:57 No but something's gonna happen now. There'll be some reason we have to take
15:00 it back out. All that's really left now is exhaust, carburetor, spark plug wires,
15:04 alternator. Look how long the cardboard was. I know. I was expecting much more.
15:09 I just wrapped up the flawless and time-consuming spark plug wire
15:14 installation which reminded me to give you the Roadkill Garage zip tie moment.
15:19 Now I've surprised every time I do this how many people have not seen how to
15:25 make a spark plug wire separator with zip ties. So I'm gonna show you what to
15:29 do. First thing is get them nice in order. You're gonna put one of them here and
15:34 then simply slide a zip tie in between each wire. You gotta keep all of the zip
15:41 tie tails on the underside so that they can't be seen. It's those little things
15:46 that count when you're building garbage. So once you have all of them in loose
15:50 like this, now's your opportunity to make sure all the wires are exactly where you
15:54 need to be and then tighten each individual zip tie in between the wires
15:59 first. Once you're done with all the individual ones you can tighten up the
16:02 overall one, snip the tails off and BAM! Flawless plug wire separator made out of
16:09 zip ties for virtually free. Look at that list! Fan, done. Plug wires, done.
16:17 All right, wiring harness. Working on it. Almost done? Almost done. Okay, turn the
16:26 key. This will be the very first fire and we do need to rev it up and break the
16:29 cam in but I'm thinking the timing is probably questionable. You good? Sure.
16:36 It doesn't work. What did you do? I don't know.
16:47 Are there two starter bolt hole sets and you got it in the wrong one? Did you get
16:56 the right diameter flywheel? Oh, we never even looked at that. Oh that would suck.
17:04 The old clutch was... Oh fail! 11 inch? Yep, that's the problem.
17:16 Oh that blows. Fryburger, you've got to be freaking kidding me. That flywheel is way
17:22 bigger than the one that we put on there. Wow, that is the stupidest thing ever.
17:26 There's no salvation now whatsoever. We're gonna try and push start it in
17:31 here. And... oh we're gonna have to tow it.
17:42 Oh stop!
17:51 Debacle!
17:57 [Music]
18:03 It's a month later. Does that surprise you even a little bit? I don't think so.
18:08 Since the last time you saw us here trying to drag start the car out front,
18:13 which was complete redneck butchery, we've actually put this thing together
18:17 pretty right. We made sure we had power to the ignition, set the ignition timing,
18:21 fixed a massive fuel leak that I'm glad we didn't burn ourselves to the ground
18:24 last time, and we've got gas in the carburetor so it's gonna fire right up,
18:28 right? Well yeah, if you got the right size flywheel in it this time. I think so.
18:32 Yeah, you wouldn't make that mistake twice would you?
18:37 It runs good and sounds terrible but that's not gonna stop us from driving it.
18:48 [Music]
19:16 The radiator leaked really really bad. Fortunately it did not overheat though.
19:20 I'm trying to C-clamp it together so it'll hold water long enough to go do
19:24 burnouts for your entertainment.
19:27 Why don't you pull over? We just run out of gas? Figured.
19:39 Out of gas, on the side of the road. That's a perfect way to end the very
19:44 first episode of Roadkill Garage. Check us out every single month on
19:49 MotorTrendOnDemand.com. Sometimes we'll be working on roadkill cars, doing some
19:53 crazier stuff, getting stranded hit by garbage trucks. Yeah, I was wondering if we should stop that guy and ask him to give us a ride to the gas station.
20:01 That would be perfect. Yeah. So we're gonna go do that while you come back and
20:05 see us next month on MotorTrendOnDemand.com.
20:09 This thing weighs a ton. That's all you got? Oh, hold on.
20:20 Hold on. Try and push again? Okay, back me back up. For some reason there's no second gear.
20:32 You're kidding me. It's in second. So I would just waste that whole push?
20:36 Yeah. Okay. I'll try it.
20:40 Boom.