All new seals, ready for service.





The same system was used for the ball joint.

 

It's important to use the red grease that is compatible with rubber here.

 

There you have it, pretty simple. If anyone needs a rebuilt steering cylinder, let me know. I just might have one I don't need.

 

I was able to buy a grade 8 bolt for the top of the idler arm locally, and just picked up a carriage bolt for mock up so I could finish the steering. After torging all the tie rod ends, and the hex nut on the new borg box, it was time to get the wheels pointed in the same direction. I temporarily put the rag joint on the borg shaft to use as a steering wheel. I turned the box stop to stop, counting the number of revolutions, which I believe was 2 1/4 at the box shaft. I then centered the box by splitting the difference in revolutions. This thought here is that with the box centered, and both wheels pointed straight, it will hopefully be somewhere close to correct alignment. So the next step was to square a string line off the rear wheels out past the front wheels, and square them to it. However, I am pretty sure that the rear wheels are out of alignment pretty far, because when I installed the trailing arms, I reinstalled the same shim thickness as came out, just hoping that would be close enough to get it aligned later. So I think I came up with a better, but nearly the same technique. Hopefully its close, depends on how straight the frame is tho. I found the centerline of the frame front and rear by measuring center of the little wheels to center. I then set the string line, (straight edge) up parallel with the centerline of the frame. The distance from center of frame out just needs to be past edge of both front and rear wheels. I wound up at 3 1/16". So then I just turned the adjusting rod on each side until I measured the same on the front side, and back side of each front wheel. Then locked everything down. Seems to be pretty close just by looking at it.

 

Now on to some fun stuff. MOTOR!!! I finally found the power plant for this car.



Why is the alt. on the wrong side?

I originally planned on buying a junk yard block and building it. Then I came across this motor for sale. It was still in a 70 c10, so I could actually run it before purchase. As it sits: Gen IV 454, block code 361959. Not the one I would have picked do to the cast rotating assy. but it has advantages I couldn't pass up. It came with Edelbrock 6055 aluminum heads, and the matching edelbrock rpm intake. There is no way I would ever spend the money to buy those heads, and I "THINK" I can make the intake fit under a new hood. The PO promised it was a fresh rebuild, approx 5000 miles ago. But he didn't build it, he bought this truck with the motor in it. So he is going off what the previous owner before him said. So I took that with a grain of salt. The motor ran extremely smooth at idle. It cruised at speed just fine, and all hello breaks loose if you punch the gas. Granted, he had really small tires on that truck, but wow. Plenty there to work with I think. So I brought it home, and now I'm gonna tear it down just to see whats actually in it.

 

Chrome timing chain cover? I guess it looks good if your willing to spend the time keeping it clean.



Full roller rockers from comp cam. Nice find. Someone did spend some money on this thing. Agh,, those polylocks tho. I hate them. Someone please invent something better to lock down a rocker.

 

Comp cam rockers, comp cam pushrods. and comp cam high energy lifters. As I said earlier, the idle was way to smooth to have any aggressive cam in it. But with all these comp parts, wonder if they put an aftermarket, but stockish sized cam in this thing?

 

Looks like this is where they quit on the rebuild. As far as I can tell, this is a stock cam for a truck motor. No identifiers on it on either end. the only thing I could find on it was EP2 forged in the middle, which I think means it cam from gm's cam makers. And overstamped letters that you can't read with the number 7162. I don't know what it is, but don't really care either. This car needs to lope at idle. not sound like grannys car with an exhaust leak.





The crank is original as well. However, it is the nodular cast crank. This is the only reason I would have picked a later model motor, that came stock with forged parts. Not because this motor needs it, only because it's better if the next guy wants to go high hp. The cast is actually a smoother running crank tho.

The connecting rods are new forged, and the pistons are new as well. I think they are cast, but its hard to tell. I was hoping to find a reference number on the pistons, so I could identify them, for compression. But again, there is no numbers that I can link to any piston.

 

The cylinders have been bored, and sleeved. At this point, I am going to assume that it is back to factory specs, and not anything extra.





It's a two bolt main, which is perfectly fine for the power I plan on. Maybe 500 hp, prolly less.



It also came with a new Melling high volume oil pump.

 

I tried several times to contact Comp cams today to see if I had enough info for them to help me pick a new cam, but the phones were flakey, kept getting disconnected. I'll try again tomro. I am really hoping that I don't need to pull the heads off. Might as well light a hundo on fire. So we'll see.

 

Almost forgot, the motor also came with the needed oil pan, I think. It measures 8" in the sump, and 4" at the front. Fingers crossed that it will work. As soon as I can get a cam in it, it's going to be bolted up to the frame. Course, the little voices in my head will prolly make me do lots of other stuff first, but I'm gonna try and ignore them.

 

I just found your build thread (again). It's good to see you've found an engine in good shape that meets your needs

 

So I spent several minutes on the phone with comp cams going over all the specs I knew, vs what I "was guessing". I thought the motor had the original cam, but new lifters? comp reminded me that it's always a matched set. Both are new, or both are original. Back to pulling my hair out. I know the lifters are new, did I get lucky and stop a future cam failure ? Someone spent a lot of money on this rebuild, why shortcut it on a cam? Oh well, I was gonna change it anyway. Comp cams basically told me I had to pull the heads and get the rest of the true dimensions before they could comfortably pick a cam. So I was prepared to bite the bullet and do it. I've never changed a head gasket on an aluminum head before, so I was researching if I needed special gaskets and what not. I was reading thru edelbrock's tech pages looking for recommended gaskets when I came across all the matched parts, part numbers. Intake numbers, roller rocker numbers, 7162 camshaft number,,,, wait a minute, that's what is stamped on the one I was thinking was stock. After going over everything again, I'm thinking that the rebuild included a complete edelbrock kit. After researching the kits, I'm thinking that changing the cam might not be such a good idea. Thier tech dept opens in about an hour. I'll see what thoughts they have.

 

Pull the heads and get all the info you need. Getting the right cam will be worth the extra cost and labor. You will be doing yourself a favor in the long run.
Once the heads are off you can decide on which head gasket would be best for you.

 

Just because the camshaft cam with the kit, doesn't mean that it was the right one for your engine. Example: Low compression with the wrong cam equals a turd.
Figure out what the static compression will be, what fuel you want to run, etc. and the camshaft manufacturer can make an educated guess on the cam your are looking for.

 

It's been a long and confusing day. I learned way more than I ever wanted to about cam degreeing, vs timing, vs lobe angles, vs how many beers one can consume.
I talked to the edelbrock tech this morning. All the parts I have in this motor were never included in a kit form, but I was able to confirm that all the parts are matched properly, and will work together well. I knew there was oddities about the parts I have, vs parts listed in the kits, I thought it was prolly just an old discontinued kit, but no, it was put together separately. There were a couple concerns I had, dual valve springs, and 1.7 ratio rockers. Both of these came up as no no's in the tech papers I was finding. Turns out, both of these are exactly what I need, and the papers were incorrect. The tech blamed it on too much copy and paste when posting the tech papers. So there you go, don't trust the first thing you read on the internet. Who knew? I wonder if I can still get one of those ww2 ****** jeeps for $500. Anyway, so now I knew that the parts all work together, now will they work with the rest of the motor. I asked the tech what compression ratio this set up wanted the most, and his answer was 9.5.1, 9.1 would do, but somewhere 9.5,or 9.6 would be ideal. I then questioned him about the idle of the 7162 cam. He said it has a pretty bumby idle. So then I talked about the experience I had with the motor running, and sounding very smooth at idle, his response was it must either be very low compression, or a valve problem. My heart sank at this. Although I do know that there were a couple of push rods that had slop in them before I pulled the rockers, I also know that alot of these old 454's were lucky to get 8.1.1 comp ratio. And I figured that was were my problem was gonna be. Also, to be noted here, when I pulled the timing gear, I first put a paint stick mark across the gear and cam. Pappy taught me that. Never assume the first guy built it right. I guess that's why I tore the good running motor down in the first place. That's a long shot, but I'm gonna re install the cam, and then check to see if the paint marks also match the alignment marks on the sprockets. That will be a bit later tho. for now, I gotta pull a head, and do some measuring.

 

Just catching your thread. Great read and great work!

 

Thank you for that, I'm happy you like the way it's going. I have three goals for this post. Document the entire process, show all the steps I did, and the results, mistakes and all. And try to help others avoid the problems, mistakes in the first place.

So far, I have been lucky that the mistakes have been few. Thanks to all the info available here from others.

Currently, I am still scratching my head over this motor. I pulled the heads, and measured, measured, and remeasured everything. I still am confused about what the compression ratio is. If I use the mathematical formula, I get a number. If I use an online calculator using the same numbers entered into it, I get a different number. If I go to a different online calculator, and enter the same numbers, I get another number. My heads spinning. Wow, I just turned a thank you into a full blown post.

 

Iv'e spent the last several days, going over all the info I have as fact, vs, the info I think, vs the info I'm using from manufacture specs. Here's what I know for fact.
Bore is 4.294"
stroke is 4.064"
gasket bore is 4.540" ( It did have the correct gaskets installed. they are felpro 1017-1)
compressed gasket is .038 ( i don't know the gasket cc's for a fact, but since I can't measure them after they are installed, I have to trust them.)

deck clearance is .018"
These are the hard numbers I have to go with. The combustion chamber on the eddy heads, are supposed to be 118 cc. So that's the number I was using. After I figured out that I couldn't trust the online calculators, I looked up the formula, and did all the math myself. I've learned that I have a tendency to transpose numbers. This has never been a problem for me before, and I now know I need to double check numbers I write down, or enter into a calculator. No wonder the results were all over the place. I am confidant that my cr works out to be 8.3 with the numbers.

This still doesn't solve my confusion on this tho. According to eddy tech, this is prolly too low for the cam to provide low end torque. It may, or may not be causing the smooth idle I described, that could also be a valve problem. As well as maybe too much muffler simply hiding the loopy sound. So all this keeps going in circles in my head. I know from experience, this motor has PLENTY of low end torque. We didn't run it up to 5000 rpm, just cruised the back streets, so I really don't know what the upper rpm's feel like. But the low end was strong.

If the cr is the problem, why does the motor feel so strong? It has been driving me crazy. All I wanted to change was the sound of idle. I really want that lope. But I also don't want to screw up what is certainly a well running combination.
I THINK maybe I've figured it out. Because I was starting to grasp at straws, I cc'd the eddy heads. I'm a little iffy on how accurate I was doing this. I used a baby medicine dropper that help 10 mls, and just kept adding every ten mls I entered. I wound up at about 110 mls each time. I did it twice. Due to serface tension and what not in the dropper, I doubt I was very accurate. But it does change the cr, putting it in the very bottom end of what eddy says will work. So I don't know. My thoughts right now are that the heads have been shaved, to get the needed cr. So I have decided to put the motor back together as is, and see how it does. Worst case, I have to pull the rad, and change the cam in the car. I just can't justify changing it, when I already know how well it pulled.

Back to the valve problem possibility. Being a novice at this, I did not do any kind of real inspection as I was breaking it down. But I do remember that after I pulled the intake, I ran my finger across all the push rods, and there was a few that turned. I honestly didn't give it much thought at the time. When I removed the roller rockers, I really fought the lockers. I forget the name at the moment, but it's the ones with a set screw in the middle to lock them down. After they were all out, I realize that ALL the exhaust rockers were the ones that came off easy, and ALL intake rockers were the ones that were frozen. Every intake rocker I had to remove the stud from the head to get off. Every exhaust rocker I was able to just loosen the set screw and pull the locker nut off.

What this means, I don't know. Please, if anyone has experience with this please let me know. I'm guessing that this meant that all the exhaust valves opened late, and closed early? How did this affect the way the motor runs? Where'd I put my beer?

 

I don't know if I mentioned it or not, but I did reinstall the cam, and check to see where the timing marks where. It was installed at zero, which is where eddy says it should be. What I am not sure of, is if the crank sprocket has been advanced or not. It is the aftermarket timing set with different keyways for changing the cam degree. I never removed the crank sprocket, so it is where it was to begin with, but I don't know how to tell if it is offset. Just thought of this, maybe I'll look into it tomro.