Bump and Whine

Another thing that happened last week:  I submitted a request to Comp Cams for a camshaft recommendation.  I filled out a bunch of information for the request, and I thought I'd get a pretty simple, almost automated reply.

Instead, I was contacted by an actual person, and after exchanging e-mails for a while, I was very happy with the result.  In the end I decided to get a hydraulic roller cam, although it will be pretty mild as far as roller cams go.  I told the guy that I am building the engine for driveability and low-end torque, and as we discussed things I eventually mentioned which cylinder heads I was planning to use.

I plan to get some Edelbrock heads, but they come assembled with springs intended for flat tappet cams.  I told the guy at Comp that I planned to just swap out the Edelbrock valve springs for the Comp springs, so that it would be OK for the roller cam.  (Roller cams tend to require heavier valve springs; I think this is due to a combination of roller lifters being heavier than flat tappet lifters, and also due to roller cams' generally more aggressive lobe profiles.)

Well, it's always a matter of asking the right question, and when I mentioned the Edelbrock heads, he looked up the Edelbrock springs and said that actually they would be fine for this cam, because it is such a mild grind for a roller cam.  But the roller lifters should give better wear characteristics and there should be less chance of wiping a lobe during break-in or anything like that.  It's probably overkill for this engine, but it gives me some peace of mind.

(I am reminded of a program I once saw about tanks; they declared the German Tiger tank from WWII the most dominant tank ever, realtive to its era.  They said its only real weakness was that it was so over-engineered.  As an example, they mentioned that its crank rode on all roller bearings.  The roller bearings had a service life of something like 40,000 hours.  By contrast, the Tiger tank itself had an average combat service life of about four hours.  So maybe this roller cam is just my inner German coming out.)

Anyway, eliminating valve springs, retainers, keepers and stem seals from the order saved me a couple hundred dollars, so I was glad for his help.

Today I had jury duty.  I never got called out of the waiting room, and they let us go home at about 2:30.  So, I decided to take advantage of being home during normal business hours and call up the place I wanted to get my transmission from.  This place sells 100% new Muncie transmissions with a few design improvements over the original factory units, and the guy on the phone here was also very helpful.

I told him that I wanted to get the Muncie M20 wide ratio trans.  Like I said about the Comp guy, it's always a matter of asking the right question, and fortunately the guy on the phone knew the right questions, because I certainly didn't.

He asked me about my project, and when I told him that I'm building a 1965 Impala with a little big block and 3.08 rear gears, he told me that the M20 was not a good fit.  With that rear gear, even with the M20's lower first gear ratio, he said the Impala would be a slug off the line.

In the end, we decided to go with his Muncie M22Z, which has an even steeper first gear than the M20.  The M22Z is based on the famous M22 "Rockcrusher."  The Rockcrusher's helical gears are cut at a shallower angle than the M20 and M21 gears.  This makes the transmission more efficient, but it also creates somewhat of a gear whine.

I think high-efficiency transmissions like this are the main reason why NASCAR stock cars have such a whine when you see the in-car camera views during caution flags, and I think it's also why the '55 gasser in "Two Lane Blacktop" had such a whine to it at lower speeds.  In other words ... gear whine and M22s are awesome, so I am delighted that this guy has one with ratios that will work for me.

Also when I got home, I had a package from Summit, which was my 1965 Bel Air Mark IV big block motor mounts.  I haven't tried a real test fit yet, but it looks to me like these are going to work.  They also delivered my bellhousing at the same time.

There was also a slip from FedEx saying they tried to deliver something that requires a signature.  I think this is probably my cam kit from Comp.  Glad I have lots of empty house to store all these parts in.  It's all (very, very slowly) coming together....

Mounting Mystery

So ... what happened this week?

* I've started thinking that I ought to try and fit the engine block, bellhousing and transmission into the car and see how everything lines up before I send anything to the body shop.  That way I'll know if I need to put any new mounting holes anywhere before the frame gets powder coated.  Looking into that, I found that Summit Racing doesn't list any motor mounts for a Mark IV big block in a 1965 Impala.  That's strange, because that engine came in that car from the factory.  They list mounts for the small block and the W-motor, but not the Mark IV.  And they list motor mounts for the Mark IV big block in a 1966 Impala, which are the same as the motor mounts for the Mark IV in a 1972 Monte Carlo, but, the engine mounts from the Monte Carlo won't fit onto the frame mounts in the Impala, so there must be something different there.  Of course, there's no guarantee that the mounts in the car now are the mounts that it came from the factory with.  Anyway, I decided to order a few other Mark IV-compatible mounts to see if any of them could be made to work (and return whichever ones didn't).  I also found some mounts for a Mark IV big block in a 1965 Bel Air, which is weird, because that should be the same frame and mostly the same body as a 1965 Impala, so I ordered those to try them.  A bellhousing is on the way, and I guess I better get the transmission on order soon.

* Friday I went to visit another body shop, Miller Streetworks.  Looks much more promising than the other one, as far as what I'm looking to have done.  I think I'll probably go there.  I mentioned my motor mount problem to him while I was there, and he said he had a pair of mounts that should work.  He said he'd removed them from another car and had nothing to use them for, so I could have them.  I'm skeptical as to whether they'll actually work, but I hope they will because they look a lot more robust than the other options I've seen.  And also, of course, they were free.  Anyway, I have a few things to do still before I send the car to him.

* This weekend was the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona, and I spent a lot of time trying to watch parts of that on TV and online.  This was the race debut of the C7.R Corvette, so I wanted to see that.  Unfortunately, it didn't go very well.  One car retired with overheating issues, the other car dropped out of contention when they lost 30 minutes changing the transmission.  But, a few problems are probably to be expected with a new car, and the overall win and second place went to the Corvette Daytona Prototypes, which also had a terrible debut in their first race at Daytona a few years ago.  So, nowhere to go but up.

* This weekend I bought a couple gallons of carb cleaner and some pans and soaked the engine parts that I'd blasted, to try to get all the last gunk out of their inaccessible nooks and crannies.  After soaking, I blasted the carb cleaner residue off with Brakleen.  This seemed to work really well and I think I'm finally satisfied that they are clean enough to use on the engine.  So today I masked them off to get them ready to paint.  I ran out of time for actual painting, though, so I guess next weekend will be painting day for that stuff.  To get a pan big enough to soak the intake manifold and rocker covers in, I bought a floor pan from Autozone and bent it up around the intake manifold to make it deeper.  Here's a picture of how that worked out:

Not real pretty, but it was effective.

* Today I went to Lowe's, and while I was there I found some aluminum straps that look perfect for putting blowout straps over the rear window.  More to come on that, eventually.

* Lastly, tonight I watched the movie "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry," just to verify that mid-'60s full-size Chevys are awesome.

Biggs, Where Are You?!

 

 

 

So, a couple weeks ago I went to work and used the blast cabinet to clean up Matilda's bumper brackets.

 

They all looked pretty junky when I started, dirty and rusty.  I worked my way through one of each type and then took before and after pictures.

 

Before:

 

After:

After I did one of each type, I worked my way through the rest, starting with the biggest one and working my way down to the smallest one, so that it would seem like it was going quicker as I went.  Then I took everything back to the truck and discovered that I had left the two biggest brackets in the truck.  Nuts.  So the last two took me an hour each.

So then this past weekend I took some more stuff over there to clean it up.  I spent a solid eight hours there on Saturday, and then went back for another hour and a half or so on Sunday.  By the time I was finished, I think I was just starting to get good at setting up the cabinet for best results.  There will probably be more stuff to blast before I'm done, though.

Blower motor housing and heater core housing:

Oil pan and rocker covers:

Timing cover and intake manifold:

So now my big concern is how to make sure I get all the blast media out of the engine parts before they get assembled back on to the engine.  I think I'm going to try out the parts washer at work and see how that goes, then hopefully just blow everything off with Brakleen, and then paint it all.

Moving along....

Who's in Charge Here?

OK, so I've been absolutely terrible at updating this.  For a while that was because I wasn't getting much done, or at least it didn't feel like I was.  And that was also partly due to some Corvair projects that came up and pulled me off of Matilda.  And also due, in large part, to laziness.

To bring things up to speed, the current situation is something like this:

* The engine block has been back from the machine shop for months and is sitting on my engine stand, awaiting assembly.

* When I got the engine block back from the machine shop, I ordered a bunch of parts to start assembling the bottom end.  But then I realized that it didn't make sense to start assembling the engine when the car still has to go out for bodywork.  So now I have a bunch of parts sitting on the floor just inside my front door, and I've been working on getting the body ready to go to a body shop.

* Last weekend I visited a local body shop, which is called "Muscle Rod Shop."  It's a very impressive operation, they do some very cool stuff.  A lot of custom touches and extremely high-quality work.  In fact, probably higher quality than I even want, considering my car will be mostly a driver, and considering that they would certainly charge me for it.

* I am planning to go visit another body shop on Friday afternoon.  It's outside of town, on the way up towards Austin.  I looked at their website and talked to the guy on the phone, and it looks promising.

* Last weekend and this weekend, I used the blast cabinet at work to clean up some parts, including bumper brackets, blower housing, heater core housing, oil pan, rocker covers and intake manifold.  It took a lot of time (I spent eight solid hours there yesterday), but it makes everything look nice and clean.  I think next weekend will be painting weekend for all that stuff.  First, though, I also need to figure out a good way to try and make sure that I've cleaned all the blast media out of the engine parts....

* I've been doing a lot of online window shopping for parts and trying to make some lists of what I'll need to buy as the project progresses.  It is kind of incredible how much time can be consumed by this....

I also spent a week or two trying to figure out how I could build the engine with dual quad carbs.  Actually, I became briefly obsessed with building the engine with dual quad carbs.  I worked out a couple of workable options, but in the end I decided it wasn't quite cool enough to offset how impractical it would be.

Anyway, the blasting work in combination with the move to pick a body shop gives me an encouraging feeling of progress, which is exciting.  I'm going to try to put up a couple other posts this week, with photos and more specific details of recent progress, but this one should help to update the current state of the project in general.