Tranny x3

This part is supposed to be hidden inside the tranny up under the truck.

It’s not.

This means my tranny guy took time out of his evening and came over and pulled the valve body hoping to find the problem why the pump isn’t putting out any pressure.
Long story longer-tranny has to come out and go to his shop where it will be further dissected and hopefully returned to its original proper glory and begin motivating me in a forward motion instead of not.

The rule of threes.

I pulled the driveshafts, put all 4 wheels up on jackstands and in the process found that one of the rear wheel studs was spinning in the axle-joy! I am swamped at work so its prob gonna be after Easter before I even get the tranny out. =(

I have been racking my brain trying to figure out any possible reason that this would happen but no answers have presented themselves. Possibly this motor makes too much power? But that doesn’t make sense as I did fireup and so forth in Park sitting in the garage. It’s not fluid level since I added almost 4 gallons in a tranny that takes 17 pints(8 pints=1 gallon) bone dry! My pan is deeper and I have 17' of -6AN cooler line and a 10x10 plate cooler so that is added capacity. Dipstick read slightly above full in neutral by the time I pulled the tranny.
Nothing could have got in the tranny while I worked on it since the converter never came out of tranny from the day it left the build shop and if dipstick was out-I was adding fluid yet when I pulled the pan there was a small 5/16” lockwasher in the bottom of the pan.

Nothing left to do but wait and see.

It's ALIVE!

Well, it’s alive. Yesterday. Sorta. It’s still dead but the engine lives. This is a video of one of the times starting it.

(I chose this video since it was low Mb content. It stopped running because I didn't realize choke was on too much and the fan noise is a large blower I set up to make sure overheat during fire wasn't an issue)

There are other earlier videos but none of the other ones ran for long enough because… first it didn’t have fuel cause the hose going to the gas can of brand new 91 octane had floated up out of the fuel. Then it wouldn’t fire since I had forgot to connect the IGN wire to the module.

Once those things came together-it fired right up. And I broke in the cam.

Well… a few issues… one-the new tensioner pulley literally touches the electric fan… it ‘clearanced’ itself but I will need to spend some time doing some custom fan work to get some real clearance! At this point-I cant even remove the fan belt or the fan… LOL!

Second-the starter sounds like death sometimes when engine is warm. And the el cheapo key switch I custom modified is a piece of junk and will actually keep engaging the solenoid unless I manually move the key back to “run” anyone know where to find a good quality universal key switch?

And the kicker…truck will only go forward under extreme throttle input and … so the rule of 3 applies. I initially put this brand new rebuilt tranny together with the engine only to remember/discover that I forgot to include the bellhousing cover plate. So back apart and then back together with the right parts in the right places.

So it appears after 2 visits(without truck) to the tranny shop that

1-I have no pump pressure
2-tranny has to be drained, pan pulled and POSSIBLY for the THIRD time(charm) pull the tranny out and have the shop do(warrantied) repairs.

JOY.

Fenders On

Weve all seen this before and hopefully this will continue to be the view instead of a naked motor with no fenders! Thanks to my wife for wrestling this across the yards and over hill/dale to "next door"

Before

After-plate style transmission cooler rated for 24,000 pound GVW attached to tranny with -6AN braided stainless hoses and fittings. 18 feet of hose combined with the cooler should bring my system fluid capacity up a bit from the OEM 17 pints. I put in 2.5 gallons so far to compensate for the bigger pan, the lines and the cooler. Should be close enough to not damage tranny while parked and during initial startup.

Monday should be fill transfer case, bolt down carb and attach linkage and attach battery cables and fire it up for cam break-in.

Countdown

So the countdown begins. Today was speedometer gear fixing a stripped thread, fuel pump relay, fuel line hookup, heater hose, carb/links, the correct oil pressure sender, power steering hoses/fluid, hook up wiring, prime oil system, clean and install distributor, spark plugs, wires..., wiring buss bar, valve cover gasket(which prompted cutting some of my fuel line and replacing it with hose-you know-3x work)clean up tools and floor, and some other misc stuff.
Tomorrow I hope to get front end in place enough to install tranny cooler and lines and get that finished. Once it is in place, I can add rest of tranny fluid, water in radiator, fill transfer case and fire up motor.

I got asked today why this is taking so long and why I have to do things 3x when other people doing same build dont have as much trouble.
I try my hardest to be difficult and non-conformist and luddite..
But seriously. most people take the fuel injected base motor, rebuild it and put it back in.
I chose to take some 1981 parts, 1981 intake manifold, 80's fxxx carb, put the parts in/on a 1989 block, use a 1991 head, and go back to using the non-standard 1981 accessory system while adding an air compressor. Not to mention I slowly and 5x checked all my motor specifications(blueprinted) and do to that diligence found some errors in the original castings that had to be modified for optimal results.(3x)
The end result is hopefully a 300,000 mile motor that will make over 275hp and tow reliably and much stronger than the worn out thing that blew mocha mud all over the inside of my hood.

The primary action requires a secondary action that makes the intial action a tertiary action.

So every single action on this truck has required an initial but secondary action in order to complete the primary(now tertiary) action.
-
This driveshaft was sold to me by a IFSJA member as my original one was too short since I changed from a 219 transfer case to a shorter 208. It came with bad U-joints-no problem. So in order to install shaft I had to order and install new ujoints. Rear half installed in vehicle with ease. Front half would not install the last bolt-super hard and 1/4" bolts so I didnt want to break them.
Sooo off to Valley Wide Fasteners(best bolts supplier!) for new un-stripped bolts. Driveshaft BACK out of vehicle so I can get my tap in there to clean up threads. Then driveshaft BACK into vehicle for the last time. (primary action now tertiary)

Good thing I checked(again) the intake manifold gasket as it was severely impeding the airflow into the chamber. I didnt notice the tin snips on the ground when I took the picture but they came in handy as I had to modify(every part on this truck?!) the gasket to not impede airflow.

After modification.

  AS you can see from the following 2 photos that the attachment of the manifolds that do not belong together(1981 intake, 1991 exhaust, 1991 head) I had to go BACK to VWF and get some heavy washers to go under the OEM washers. Well, rather than go back a THIRD time in one day to correct my too long bolts-I added generic washers under the bolt head for spacers.
  Those SUPER heavy duty washers are there to reach out and grab both manifolds at the same time and hold them securely to the head.


This is what the drivers side of the engine looks like when its put together (for the last time!) Thanks to my machinist Bill for 'tanking' my manifold.

And the front at close of business.

Tensioner OBA bracket complete

Today I spent a couple hours in the wrecking yard, finding both a fffford and Chevy tensioner that "bends" the correct way. I took one off a 91 ffffford and an 89 Chevy. I ended up using the 89 Chevy as it has a bit more clearance to the heater hose. Plus it’s a Chevy. So I cut up the 73 ford York bracket to fit where I wanted it, then I cut up the 89 Chevy bracket so just a little bit was remaining where the tensioner mounted. Then it was a 'simple' matter of tacking it in place and then bending/measuring and fitting to make it line up properly. Some welding and cutting and welding and spacing and cutting and welding and bending and grinding and here we go.
I have the luxury of using the tensioner OR removing it and simply swinging the alternator to tension the belt.

Finally I can move on to other things. Will paint/condition tomorrow and get a lot of stuff put back together. Fought the driver tire tonight-took off lug nuts and wheel wouldn’t come off. Beat and pried and finally resorted to my favorite tool-plumbers torch!
BTW-I realized last night that I have been routing the belt improperly. This is the correct way. This is a 930K6/K060930 belt.

serpentine pulley bracket

been waiting for this all week(friday) this is a semi-truck serpentine pulley to convert the air compressor from V-belt to the serpentine style belt on my motor.

before

how may pairs of vise grips does it take to hold 3 pieces of metal in alignment?

gap

no gap

notice the stratigic lever to keep the compressor from falling over and messing up my alignment.

fakie after (end of day saturday w/vise grip hold belt "tight")

All I need now is a longer belt and my tensioner installed. BTW-front face ofwater pump pulley rim to 3rd rib(not valley) from the back of every pulley is about 9/16" FYI.

waiting

During the last few days(gone over weekend) I have been piddling around getting brackets sorta aligned while waiting for my clutch pulley to arrive. I finalized the motor mount position, got donor distributor ready for oiling by removing gear and welding nut to top of shaft so I can spin by drill, found/cleaned/painted various brackets and so forth.
This is a bypass filter that is stock for this year that I am going to run. It uses an off-the-shelf NAPA 1503 4" x 8" filter. OEM was 4.5"x8"



I have also figured out as far as I can the way the air compressor will be mounted. That belt tensioner will take the place of the "force it, hold it and then hurry to tighten bolts while my arm gets tired" way of doing things. Thats a fffffford tensioner but I am thinking I want to find another one that spins the other way for easier mounting.

OBA=on board air

posting out of order. this goes back a few days ago.

Due to the head having some cut off it and the block getting a lot cut off, the intake is higher than original and so forth… the brackets for the PS and other parts don’t line up like they should.

I have no use for the A.I.R. pump and wanted to install an air compressor. I didn’t want to give up future air conditioning so I chose to install a York 210 AC compressor in addition to the cab AC. The advantage is that the York uses an oil pan instead of the freon to lubricate the pump. Thus no oil in air line. Google it for more explanation.

These are the 2 pumps and one of them is going in the upper right red circle


This is what I had done to the intake to make it the same size as the adapter and carburetor.
This is the stock size hole

This is the new size hole that should allow more air into engine!

Longer delay for OBA

Due to unrelated factors I am kind of stalled and since it wasnt going to be ready in time for heading into the snowy mountains today I decided to accept the delay and increase it... pics coming but I started putting the accessory brackets on and am thankful I took many pictures.

What a PITA... and silly me-I sent some of the 91 and 89 brackets along with the 81 brackets to the hot tank so they got all mixed up... more headaches... Also I had to contend with the intake being moved up much higher than stock and almost 0.060" being taken off the head and block in total.

So the delay is me going forward with doing the OBA york conversion NOW instead of later.

This means I needed to find the serpentine clutch pulley for my York. I actually got 2 Yorks and it turns out I ended up with a 209 and a 210. The 209 puts out 8.x CFM and the 210 puts out slightly over 10CFM free air. I will be using the 210 off a 72 ford extended cab camper special w/maybe the 460? anyway... the other one came off a dodge van and was vertical. Ive got plenty of room either sideways or vert. These York can be run in both sideways or vertical configuartion AND they dont care which way they spin! CW/CCW doesnt matter.

4 CFM at 90 pounds pressure at 1,000 engine RPM with the 258 crankshaft pulley and the 5.875 york pulley

So ebay wanted $165 for the serp clutch, kilby wanted 145+20 shipping, and I am not only cheap but poor... so I used google and a few hours of my time to find the same 5030 clutch kilby uses and at a cheaper price.

these guys; http://www.valairinc.com/airconditioning/ac.html sold me the clutch for $65 +$15 shipping.
B48927 12V - 6" - 6 Groove York Clutch (1 or 2 wire coil) $65.00
B48531 12V - 6" - 2 Groove York Clutch (1 or 2 wire coil) $65.00
B48 8Groove 12V - 6" - 8 Groove York Clutch (1 or 2 wire coil) $65.00
for those in the future-in case the link is dead- call ValAir Inc. @ 940-327-0682 and ask for Todd Harrington.
Super helpful and pleasant.
I compiled an excel file with part numbers and cross reference numbers using the ryder website. http://www.ryderfleetproducts.com/cgi-bin/ryderfp/browse/srm/oid/-8242/erm/browsemain.jsp