It's alive!!!!!!
Well, I lucked out and had the day off yesterday, so I figured that was a sign I need to go to Winslow's and do some wrenching!
Even though it rained most of the morning, I had the most productive day I have ever had down there. Usually it is one fubar after another, but I was rolling yesterday.
Since I wanted to try and run the engine, I needed to make sure the tranny was freshened up with fluids and filters. I pulled the pan, found some nastiness in the bottom, swapped out the filter, put on a new pan gasket, swapped the pick-up tube o-ring, and torqued the pan back down. The biggest PITA was trying to get the dip stick tube nut to come loose! I had to break out the 24" pipe wrench to get it started!! I completed the tranny service with a fresh spin-on filter in the engine compartment, a new dip stick, and a case and a half of Dexron 3.
Next up was closing up the engine. I cleaned everything up in the timing gear case in prep for the gasket and cover. I lathered both sides with RTV sealant, put on the new gasket and torqued the cover into place. I had to use an alignment tool supplied with the new crank seal to align the cover. Once that was done, I was able to beat the new seal in place over the crank. That was probably the 2nd biggest hassle of the day since it wanted to wobble all over instead of going in straight!
After the cover was done I installed the harmonic balancer, the new fan clutch, the engine oil dip stick tube, and the dip stick. In order to get the fuel system right, I needed to figure out the problem with the return line. Turns out it wasn't downstream in the metal line. There was a mud dobber nest in the bano fitting that bolts to the injection pump! I hate those things!! It took a good bit of jabbing with an allen key and a zip-tie to get that crap out of the fitting. The return was flowing well after that. I ran it into my 5 gallon fuel can so I could keep track of the amount of fuel coming out.
With that done, I hooked up a slave cable to one of John's deuce's to do some cranking. I hoped to get all of the air out of the lines and get it running. After about 10 cranking sessions, I had fuel coming out of 5 of the 6 nuts at the pump and the engine would sputter a bit. I tightened all of the nuts down and cranked some more. It sputtered and sputtered and finally roared to life with a big cloud of smoke and some pissed-off bees!! I guess they had a home in the muffler!! LOL!!
I am psyched that it runs!! I wish you could here the engine in the video better! That dang deuce roaring in the background about drowns it out. There was a nice turbo whistle so I know that it is good. Yes!!!!
Next time, I will get the cooling system put back together so I can let the engine site there and idle for a while so I can dump the oil, swap out oil pans and put in new oil and a filter.
It's coming together y'all! I'll post the pics and video tonight! What a project! It sure feels good to make some real progress!