was the engine running before this or was it setting for some time?
Pete
Bought the truck last October. PO reported the engine/transmission to be rebuilt and running until the 12v battery on the 6v system did the expected. Visually, the engine looked clean enough on the outside, it was a plausible story, but I didnt take the PO's word as a bond... I figgered I had a 50/50 chance on what was true and not true that he was telling me... The price I paid reflected the things I could see on the surface. Pictures of this truck/engine are at the gallery and fotobucket links below. I dont have pix yet of the inside of the engine now that I can see it. But the top end (rocker assembly) is definitely not as recently re-furbished as the outside skin of the engine... From the bottom, the crank, piston rods, etc, dont look ugly at all, the the condition is pretty clean, and the color is dark golden, but definitely not black. Strained the oil after draining it, and it was clean. Although it had turned pretty black, despite being very clean/fresh oil before we started the engine.
Fresh in terms of the engine not run since the oil was put it... It actuall could have been old because I have no idea how long that clean oil was in there before I got the truck. Looking back, I should have changed the oil so that I knew it was fresh good quality oil...
In May we were ready to try to start it. The engine turned smoothly and quietly by hand, had compression, very clean oil... So I chose to see if/how it ran without taking it apart.
Had no real problems, and once I educated myself on the wiring and timing, it was running. It sounded very nice, ran very smooth once I adjusted the distibutor position... I didnt set the timing with a light, I just set it by ear. It ran easily, and I was amazed how low I could set the idle and it would still run. I didnt keep the idle that low, because the alternator wouldnt even charge, and the oil pressure was too low. It had 20 to 25 pounds oil pressure and the alternator was charging where I did set the idle. I dont have a tac, so I dont know what RPM that was, but it was a comfortable idle by my ear. When I would gun it, oil pressure would raise up to 30. Water temp would get up to about 140 and hold steady when idling.
At that point, the only problem was that every now and then I thought I heard a noise that sounded like the fins of the alternater pulley fan hitting the mounting bracket... That wasnt happenning, but that is what the sound made me look for.
It sort of sounded like it was coming from the balancer, maybe. But, I had no exhaust system yet. Just the 4 into 1 stock header, so there was a good bit of noise under the hood, and I wanst sure that the noise I was hearing might be an echo coming out of the header.
It ran good for a few weeks. Then one day, it wouldnt, and it turned out to be the fuel pump. The lower end of the bladder was full of gunk and debris. Cleaned it out, ran great again. The next week, the same problem. This time it occured to me that the bad-gas smell kept coming back each time I got into the fuel pump. So, I decided that my gas tank must be worse than I thought. I cleaned/rinsed it out real good, but did not acid-bath or seal it... I just put a good sock on the inlet hose, and inline fuel filter before the pump, and an inline filter before the carb. So I dont think I was getting and debris in the fuel, but I think the fuel was spoiling even though it was only a few weeks old. So I put a 5 gallon gas can in the bed, and ran the fuel line there, cleaned the fuel pump, and it started ran nice again. For 1 day. The next day, when trying to start it, is when this bad problem started. While cranking, the loud "click" would happen, and it didnt start eagerly like usual, and even gave a little backfire. It seemed like I may still have fuel pressure issue and or a timing/ignition issue too, but with the mechanical sounding problem in the rotation process, I did not want to solve the other issues and break something worse. So, here we are.
