Gas, tires, oil.

Or “chrome won’t get you home”. I don’t know how many times I’ve ended up at the parts store, buying an edlebrock or moroso chrome aircleaner because I’ve switched carbs and/or intakes. They’re only $25, but like most cheap chrome stuff, they rust up after just a couple years. There are other alternatives, get a stock aircleaner from the junkyard, buy an expensive one or make one from scratch. This time around I remembered that a friend had got him self an aircleaner from the junkyard that was made of aluminum. Turns out Ford used aluminum for some aircleaners in the ’70s and 80s.

I picked this one up for $7.99 at picknpull (think it was a ’80s granada, 2 barrel, but with the large 5 1/8″ 4 barrel flange). It’s pretty ugly and loaded up with various vacuum hoses, but it’s incredible light. I decided to bring out its inner beauty with tin snips and air nibbler.

Here’s the parts I didn’t use:

And here’s whats left.

It’s very light and if it starts to get corroded I can polish it up with a buffing wheel. A word of warning, some ford aircleaners are unpainted, plated steel and may resemble aluminum at first glance.

With my cam bearing tool made, I just had to put it to work. Below I am using it to remove one of the old bearings.

It worked really well, but I was worried about dropping a nut or washer down inside the engine. I didn’t replace the rear-most cam bearing, it was impossible to get to. But it looked pretty good, the bearings got worse toward the front of the car (farther from the oil pump). Next was the reassembly, I soaked the lifters in some oil and worked them with a pushrod to get some oil inside.

Below the cam and lifters are in, new timing chain (if you have the opportunity, always replace the timing chain and/or oil pump on a pontiac motor), new pushrods and new roller tip rockers (some of the pivots were galled on the old ones).

It runs great: no more ticking lifters and I think the oil pressure has gone up a bit. In spite of it being rather mild performance cam (mellings mtp-1, 278 duration and .422″ lift on the intake and 288 duration and .444″ lift on the exhaust), the gas mileage doesn’t seem to have decreased (16-17 mpg on my commute to work).

From the last post you can see that I need new cam bearings, but I didn’t have the installation tool. You can get one for chevy for about $75, but a universal one is about $300. A quick look on google shows several people making their own out of threaded rod and an aluminum mandrill. I didn’t have any suitable aluminum stock, so I looked around for something I could modify. I found a tapered bearing race driver that was already close in size.

I chucked it up holding its handle because I needed to turn the whole outside. I didn’t want to turn half and then flip it over because I wanted to keep the 2 steps concentric within a couple thousands of an inch. I know it’s bad practice to hold something so far from the chuck, but aluminum turns easy.

Basically I just wanted an area that would support the bearing and keep it straight, then a step that would be just a tiny bit smaller than the OD of the bearing. This way the tool can also be used to remove the old bearings. Below I’m testing a bearing for fit.

Just some 1/2″ threaded rod, nuts and washers and it’s ready to use. Next time I’ll show it in use and show the reassembly of the engine.

My ‘68 Tempest has had clicking lifters for the couple years that I have owned it. Not a big deal, but I hooked up an oil pressure gauge and saw that the oil pressure was actually pretty good. That meant that the lifter problem was either a worn valve train part or clogged hydraulic lifters. I found a new cam (mellings) on ebay for $92 and thought it would be a quick fix. Unfortunately, when I pulled the cam, I found this:

The cam bearings were shot, several had pieces flaking off. This was a Friday night, nobody local had cam bearings for pontiac and it was going to rain the next week, so I didn’t want to take the Harley to work. So I ordered some bearings from summit (and pushrods and rockers, might as well make a clean sweep) and rushed to put the ‘55 back together before monday (that’s a future post). The other problem was that I had always had cam bearings replaced when I got an engine rebuilt, so I didn’t have a puller. Next time I’ll show how I built a cam bearing installation tool and put the engine back together.

I wanted to know what my ‘68 Tempest had for a rear axle ratio, I’m thinking about using it for commuting and am wondering what I could do to improve mileage. First I jacked up one side of the rear axle (if you have positraction you’ll need both wheels off the ground), then put a chalk mark on the drive shaft and the differential.

Then I put a mark on the tire where it lined up with a crack in pavement.

Next you just rotate the tire, and count how many times the driveshaft rotates and the tire rotates until both marks line up similtaneously. It takes a lot of turns, I kept tally on the sidewalk with a piece of chalk.

It took 32 turns of the driveshaft and 25 turns of the wheel before the marks lined up again. 32/25=1.28, but since only one wheel was turning I have to multiply by 2 to get 2.56 for the actual ratio. I guess I’ll have to look elsewhere for gas mileage improvements.

Last time, I showed the mechanical installation of the hei distributor. Next I needed to get 12V to it. HEI distributors have a built in coil, so you only need one wire (besides the sparkplug wires) to hook them up, but stock powere wire for points distributor won’t work. First, it needs to be rather large (on cars with a stock hei it looks to be about 12 ga.) and it needs a full 12V. Points type distributors have either an inline resistor or (more insidiously) the whole wire is a resistor. This is to reduce sparkplug erosion, it only get a full 12V when the starter is cranking (provided by a second wire that goes to the extra lug on the starter solinoid). Sometimes you can get a 12V source from the fuseblock, below in the pic you can see three spots marked “BAT”, “ACC” and “IGN”.

Many times you can just plug a spade connector in these spots, but in my (low option, base model?) Tempest they are just blank. So instead I unbolted it and turned it over, on the back are where the three different power sources connect with 1/4″ spades. I went to Radio Shack and bought some spade splitters:

This gave me a spot to hook up the power wire, I would have preferred to use a crimp-on piggyback spade connector but couldn’t find any.

Then it was just hooking up some new plug wires:

The ‘68 has been running rough when intermediatly warmed up, it was fine when cold, then it would stall at stop lights, then it would run great again. It didn’t seem to be the carb, so I pulled the distributor cap. It was pretty oily and nasty. I cleaned it up, but it only lasted a few weeks before it started to go down hill. Probably a bad seal letting engine oil get inside. I figured I’d just upgrade to an Hei distributor instead of messing with stock one. So I found one on ebay, new (but probably made in china) for about $80. First I put the timing mark on TDC (checking that the distributor rotor was pointing at the #1 sparkplug wire to make sure I wasn’t 180 out).

Then I removed the cap and wires. I used a distributor wrench to take off the holddown bolt:

I hadn’t done it in the above pic, but I made a smudge on the firewall that showed where the rotor was pointing. When I pulled the distributor up though, because the gear is helical cut, the rotor twisted clockwise, as seen below:

It’s this position that I will line up the rotor on the new distributor, so that when it is lower in, it will twist counter-clockwise and line up with the smudge. And it does:

Sometimes the oilpump shaft will need to be twisted a little, you can do that with a large screwdriver. Now I just need 12V power thats not from a resistor wire (like the old coil was) and some new sparkplug wires to fit the new style cap.

I had alluded to the fact that sedans (or posts) are lighter than the corresponding hardtops in spite of the fact that they have more metal showing (a vertical post in front of rear side window and a rim around window on the door). I found some actual numbers in this book, “Chevrolet, a book of numbers):

It has codes for the serial number plates and the codes stamped just about all drivetrain components (axles, engines, transmissions). It also has the weights for various models, lets look at ‘55 V8s first:

The first column of 4 digit numbers is the model, the second is the price and the third is the weight. My ‘55 candian pontiac (the model is a “Pathfinder”) is a utility sedan, its based on a Chevrolet drivetrain so the numbers should be comparable. The number right after the number of doors is the number of occupants (3, 5 or6). For the utility sedan, it’s 3. That’s because it doesn’t have a back seat (nor do the rear side windows roll down). This also makes it the lightest model at 3055 lbs with the normal sedan coming in at 3080 lbs. There’s no hardtop 150, so we have to go the a more deluxe model (210), where the 2dr hardtop is 3142 (some of that weight is other options, the 210 sedan is 3115). To get a convertible we have to go up to a Bel Air, where the weight is 3285 lbs., but again, some of that extra weight is other options. So, model contributes as follows for a sedan: 150 to 210, 35 lbs; 210 to Bel Air, 10 lbs. Body style: utility sedan to sedan, 25 lbs; sedan to hardtop, 27 to 40 lbs. and hardtop to convertible, 120 lbs. Each step doesn’t make much difference, but a convertible Bel Air weighs 230 lbs. more than a utility sedan.
Here’s the numbers for ‘68 V8 Chevelles, with much the same trend.

I recently bought this ‘68 Pontiac Tempest off of ebay. A woman saved up her money and paid cash for this car in ‘68. She drove it until the ’80s, then her daughter drove it, then her granddaughter and husband used as a family car until this spring (they had a 4th child and had to switch to a suburban). I got to keep the original black and yellow California plates. The interior is just about perfect, it has a little rust from living in Pacific Grove its whole life (salt air).