My 71 Duster work in progress

[b-body-bob]

It IS a good way to destroy the hairspring. It would depend on how high you revved and for how long.

The speedo seemed to be working when I put it in a forward gear. It doesn't take much to spin it up to 40 MPH with the wheels off the ground.

 

[RUSTY Cuda]

Does it have power steering, the top of my box was leaking & ended up on the K frame???

 

[b-body-bob]

Yeah it does have power steering, but that has ATF in it so it would be red. This is oil.

I've had the valve covers on and off several times but there's no trace of a leak on the head, and the oil pools on the head at the back end so there's no oil at the front there unless the engine is running.

I haven't checked it out beyond just eyeballing things, and cleaning up the mess. I need to look to see if it's come back but kind of forgot about it TBH.

 

[b-body-bob]

I checked there's no new oil, but realized I had the rear end higher than the front end for several days so that probably flooded the oil seal. Or something. Whatever it was I bet it was caused by having the rear end on stands and the front on the ground.

 

[b-body-bob]

I had about 1/8" of shims under the passenger side mount for some reason. I took those out. Now the other side header kind of lays on the torsion bar. I do not care.

Turns out, yes I do care. It's banging around on the torsion bar so much it sounds like the aircleaner is loose but that ain't it. Car on ramps, engine running, I can jam a screwdriver between the header and torsion bar and stop the noise. So, I get to redo what I undid, or undo what I did, either way the shims go back in so the header is off the torsion bar.

As for the clutch linkage, it does look like the bellhousing side pivot ball bracket got tweaked in one of the 10,000 times I've picked the engine up since it was installed. I've got to unbolt that anyway before I raise the engine to put the shims back in, so I will check it with a straight edge.

 

[b-body-bob]

This whole shim deal is a mess. I tried different combos of 4x 1/16 shims and stopped when I got the header off the torsion bar. So I've got 1/4" of shims in the passenger side as it sits right now.

I tried pulling it to the passenger side while Gina left the engine down on the mounts, which didn't help a lot because the dumb thing just kind of goes where it wants to go. And normally that's good enough but not on this car because now I've got the clutch rod through the firewall scraping again. I may try opening the hole up a little to deal with that.

Annnnd - I just remembered I didn't look to see if the header hits the steering box now. With my luck, it does. Update - I just checked and it does not.

To recap - the k-frame should only bolt in one place but somehow mine seems to cock the engine/trans to one side. It doesn't make sense but that's the way it is. If I had a lift I might be able to finagle things better, but I don't. I've R&Red more than a handful of engines and typically just drop it in and it self-centers between the V-shape of the k-frame mount and I'm your uncle.