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.

 

[b-body-bob]

First time out this year. Still runs and drives good, 2nd gear still has problems but I've got no place to pull it out or time to fix it so it is what it is.



I drove it to Lowe's and when I walked back out to it some goober was pulled up next to it. He started to pull away when he noticed it was mine, and as I walked past he said something like "what you got there?" but he said it low and not to me. I just threw my hand up and walked on like the grumpy old man I am.

Now that I think about it, he could have been eyeballing it to steal it for all I knew. He could have, it was unlocked.

 

[b-body-bob]

I got the Duster out today, brought it over here and while turning it in, made full lock and the horn started blowing, wouldn't stop. You know what that is, there's a wire pinched or something grounding the relay.

I got it silenced, then went under the Grant wheel cap and found the dumb spring in there had popped out and was against the grounding wire so I unplugged it there and taped the end of the wire so it wouldn't ground. No more noise, so off I went.

One thing I noticed is the idle goes up, won't come down so either my distributor has slipped, the centrifugal is sticking, or it has too much initial that's setting the centrifugal into action at idle. There's nothing good about idling at 1k in a car with a manual transmission. No big deal but man it's frustrating and wasteful so I'll mess with that some before I put the car up again.

I decided I was going to drive up to the next burg on Rt 60, then loop back on I-64, but before I got there I started noticing what sounds like god awful detonation. It's happening all the time, not just when the engine is loaded and all my brain could think was the timing must be really fast and that it's basically a brand new engine, so I turned around and came back before getting to my destination. About half way back I remembered the horn button, noted that it's rattling around loose, and I'm mostly sure that's what the nerve wracking "detonation" sound was. I drove the rest of the way holding the button and the problem seems solved. I'm not going to swear it isn't still detonating, but it's not doing it cruising in 4th at 2k like I thought it was.

I've been in and out of here twice. My neighbors probably hate me by now. No smoke, no black marks but it spins them as long as I care to hold it down. The thing seems to get to a certain point and start howling but the road's only so long and the last thing I need is to take out a mailbox showing my ass. I do think need to try to drop a foot on the brake the next time to see if it will sit and spin like it should though.

 

[b-body-bob]

The timing was set at 22, so set it back to 15 like it should be then set the idle to about 700. Fixed. I don't know what I was thinking about - I need to check the curve again, to make sure it's set like it should be - I've got one of these in it How to limit mechanical advance in a mopar distributor, tuning for street, strip or all out racing, cure that rich stinky idle, win races

I also took that stupid horn button off and tossed it in the glove box. There went 90% of my funny noises; apparently it had been singing in that chorus all along. Much better. I was thinking if I could get the pipes off without using a reciprocating saw, I'd take that leaky junk off and run it uncapped for a while. I'm half deaf anyway, I wouldn't know the difference.

No burnout on return - there was a dog walker on my street.

Looks like I overcharged the battery this past spring