| repak shawahb | |||||
| a.k.a. gorgeous gergis | |||||
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Fri, 24 Dec 2004
auto maintainence made difficult
One of the reasons I've always wanted Anastasia (the '69 Camaro, remember?) is because there's nothing as wholesome and satisfying as wrenching on good old GM iron. Working on a Toyota is all diagnostic readouts and sequential multi-port niftomata. The car knows what it's supposed to do and why it's not doing it, and everything will be just fine if you'll only push the button labeled "Fix". A carbureted Chevy small block, on the other hand, is controlled by what amounts to a few mechanical computers, viz., the distributor, the carburetor, and the valvetrain. Getting the three of them to work in perfect harmony takes a kind of talent for listening to what the engine is telling you and making the necessary adjustments. The reward is the knowledge that you really understand what's going on under the hood. Now, if I could write my own ECU firmware for my Celica I'd be perhaps a bit more satisfied—but only if installing said firmware involved at least a little bit of grease and expletives. Right now I'm on my way to Iowa to see the family (I just passed Texas mile marker 360 on Interstate 35). I'd probably be home already, but I undertook a bit of wrenching on the Camaro and wanted to finish it up before going home. It goes without saying that the whole ordeal took longer than I expected, but hell, that's the fun part, right? When I bought it, the Camaro's drivetrain was in essentially perfect condition, with two exceptions: first, there was something of an oil leak from around the oil pan, and second, the valve lash needed adjusting. I decided that I'd attack the first problem by installing a new oil pan gasket. This, it turns out, is much more easily said than done. First of all, despite all appearances, one can not remove the oil pan without lifting the engine at least a couple inches off the motor mounts. I half-expected this to be the case, but was optimistic that I could somehow make it happen. Nope. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't get the oil pan off without doing an unreasonable amount of disassembly. What, you ask, is unreasonable? Well, here's what I did do: removed the distributor, undid the motor mounts, disconnected the passenger-side exhaust, removed the starter, jacked up the engine as high as I could without crashing anything into the firewall. Unfortunately, that was only about an inch—more work room, but not much more. Unreasonable, then, is anything more than this (I suspect removing a good portion of the air conditioner system would have been the next step—yuck). So now here I am with the oil pan loose and dropped a couple inches, but staunchly refusing to clear the front crossmember. What, you ask, does one do? Clearly, remove the old silicone-and-cork gasket working around the still-mostly-installed oil pan. Being extremely careful not to let anything drop into the oil pan, I scraped and pried and grunted and cursed and cried for about three hours to prepare a pristine interface for the new gasket. The new gasket in itself was an adventure—turns out there are at least three different oil pan gaskets that have been used over time for the Chevy 350. Modern (post-1986ish) engines have the dipstick on the passenger side. Before that, the dipstick was on the driver's side, but depending on whether the engine is pre- or post-1975ish, the thickness of the front main bearing seal is different. Suffice it to say that I will be remembering the proper part number (Fel-Pro OS34509T, in case you're wondering) for a long time. In addition to swapping the oil pan gasket, I changed the spark plugs. This isn't a terribly difficult jub, except that the A/C compressor was basically directly in the way of the plugs on the driver's side, so figuring out the proper approach angles was somewhat difficult. I hate the spark plug on cylinder #5. I know you wanted to know that. Oh yeah, for good measure, I also ended up rewiring a bunch of shit because of a combination of 35 years of deterioration and some asshole who clearly didn't know the first thing about how to wire stuff to last. Soldering is fun. I suspect that I'm going to be posting a lot about the stuff I do to the Camaro. I know you're all waiting with bated breath. [ permalink | 0 comments (add one you lazy bastard!) ] writebacks (add one you lazy bastard!)post a comment: |
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