It is with a heavy heart, and with severely bruised self-worth that I must declare that I will not be making the journey to this Grand Event.
I have had fits with putting my rebuilt 235 back into Sweet Pea ('50 3100). I got everything buttoned up and drove it to break in the new rings. There was an odd noise in the front of the engine. The harmonic balancer was wobbling horribly. I removed it and the noise went away. I found a guy who had a nice eon out of a '57. The only difference was that the pulley was 3/8' larger in diameter. It turned out to be a significant problem with the aftermarket front mount oil shield. I removed the oil shield and cut out enough metal to clear the balancer pulley and drove it. It began to make a tinny metallic sound coming from the timing cover area. Upon further inspection, the seal was all jacked up.
I pulled the balancer and the seal came off with the it, and it was all torn up and the coil spring was missing. I looked at the balancer and saw that there was a significant chunk of metal messing from it at the keyway area. When I pressed it on with a balancer installation tool, I missed the key/keyway alignment by half the width of the key. This caused the chunk of metal to break off inside of the timing cover, but allowed the keyway to finally line up with the key. all during this fiasco, the HB installer was not all that difficult to turn.
So then, with a chunk of metal and a spring inside of the timing cover, I had to remove the cover. Guess what? I had to also remove the oil pan to get to those two timing cover bolts inside of it. The timing cover got mangled up too.
To add to my long string of misfortune, I bumped the radiator while rassling the heavy balancer into place. Now I need to take it to the radiator shop and hope that they can fix it.
With all of this happening, I still profess to be really good at taking stuff apart...
Drink some for me boys, I know that I really need to right about now.
Last edited by 52Carl; 09/24/2020 1:36 AM.
