IROCtheRoad

Bad News.

While working on removing the transmission the E-brake failed and the car rolled off the blocks and fell on me. Ouch.

Thank God I'm alive. My wife and roommate heard the car fall and were able to grab a jack and jack the car up off of me and pull me out.

My arm and leg are jacked up and my chest is very bruised from the crush. I'm on watch right now to make sure my ribs don't crack and my blood is being monitored for 'stuff.'

My lesson here: Don't rely on the E-brake to keep the car from rolling when you remove the driveshaft.

And KMCN, the transmission worked perfectly before the rebuild. The only thing that didn't work on the car was the carb.

kmcn47

jesus, should have had some blocks or stands under her too, glad your alive, these cars are pretty heavy, but perhaps its the pan and not the gaskets

86T/A_Ram_Air

I know things are a little rough for you right now but you are one lucky man right now. right now you need to work on getting yourself all patched up and then get back to the car when you are ready. just remember safety first. I have had a handful of f-bodies and most of them the e-brake worked terribly. always block, brace, what ever you have to do to keep the car stationary. for me i am a bigger guy so the higher it is the better so I usually get the rear as high as I can with stands and put the front up on tall ramps and then stick a floor jack under the rear just in case. I have had jacks fail on me and things start moving when they aren't supposed to so you are one lucky man. your wife probably saved your life so now you really have to kiss up because she wil never let you forget haha

Get better soon bud, use your recovery time wisely

kmcn47

yes, lucky indeed, get well soon

Confuzed1

iTrader: (4)

WOW....Sorry to hear about that. Hope you're OK. That HAD to hurt bad, good thing you're alive. Get well soon!

IROCtheRoad

A bit of an update:



It's been 3 weeks since my Camaro tried to kill me. Between the pain and fear of getting underneath the car, nothing transmission related has happened. I have been able to upgrade my brakes to a 1LE setup. I'm VERY pleased with how everything turned out. This was a 30 minute swap but as luck would have it I had a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE TERRIBLE time with the ball joint and castle nuts spinning together.

I kid you not, I spent 6 hours on the drivers side and 4 hours on the passenger side dealing with this. I'm fairly certain I destroyed the ball joints, but at this point I could care less. Everything is on.

A picture of the stocker:


And the 1LE:

IROCtheRoad

The bottom caliper is how I received them and the top is about 1/2 an hour of cleaning.






I wanted to take the brakes completely apart and the everything media blasted and painted/powdercoated, but due to my formentioned accident I'm not able to get the bolts off (they are on there really tight). So for now I just cleaned everything up as much as possible got it installed.

I also installed SpeedBleeders and ordered some ATE Racing brake fluid.

Last thing, here is a picture of the factory lug nut. The outer shell came off on a few of them.

kmcn47

glad your okay, uh sorta mine hasnt tried to kill me yet, hope yours wont anymore sorry to hear about your trouble with everything

IROCtheRoad

Well I finally got the transmission out.


Turns out I did not have the car up high enough to remove the transmission, but thankfully my neighbor had some 4 ton jacks that did the trick.

And this weekend I picked this bad boy up from Bowtie Overdrives


And here's a side-by-side comparison

IROCtheRoad

So apparently those pictures didn't turn out too well.... stupid Iphone.

I had to swap my speedo gears and move a bunch of stuff over.



And 1 more

I'll get a lot more pictures up when the tranny is in and my SS transmission line are installed, along with the new TVmadeEZ plate.

I'm waiting on my neighbor to get home to help me put the transmission back in.

I also have a thought on why my transmission was leaking while under pressure. I found very little fluid inside the tranny cooler, but what little i had PORED out as soon as I loosened the inlet line just a little.

When I hooked up the transmission lines the first time I had to cut and reflare the bottom line. It looks like that flare was bad/misaligned which didn't allow the fluid to go through the radiator and cooler. This build up of pressure has somewhere to go and the weakest point is the pan.

This simple solution would have saved me $1500. Oh F*cking well

Bow_Tied

iTrader: (1)

I admire your tenacity!! Great thread.

kmcn47

cool, glad to see ya back to work on it

RSFreak

Man, that sucks about the car falling on you! Cool that you're still working on it. I had an '84 H.O.Z28 a few years ago. Fun car. I was gonna swap the drive train into my '91 RS but other projects came up. Good luck with it!

Dakota W.

And also, never jack your car up on even a slight incline...learned that the hard way. Glad to see you're still alive and kicking!

Stonehenge

iTrader: (3)

IS THE CAR OK..???? (just kidding..) now you can't ever sell that car.. it'll be in your life forever. because it caused you pain. That could be a good thing or a bad thing.. glad you're ok though.

Stone

IROCtheRoad

Haha, even though the car was jacked up on the door to pull me out, everything is on the car is safe and sound.

86T/A_Ram_Air

good to see your back at her. be safe

84z28BlueDevil

glad to hear you are alright bro!

IROCtheRoad

A quick update on the car:

I got the Bowtie Overdrive all set up and ready to go. And guess what, the car fired right up!!! I completely redid the timing and valve lash and I did it perfect!

But all good things must come to an end. I have a few transmission leaks: 1 at the lower radiator inlet and another where the braided hose meets the hard line. I've tightened everything up as much as I safely can but still no luck.

So now I'll take the lines off and see what is going on.

1 more thing: I bled the brakes and oh my, how bad that was. The fluid that came out looked like mud. I can only assume that the fluid was the original fluid, eek. For the first time since I've had the car I have a nice, firm brake pedal. I used ATE blue fluid.

Dakota W.

Something you can do for more power with timing is advance timing a little bit via distributor.

IROCtheRoad

Well good news! The car fired right back up again! Woot Woot.

I finally got ahold of a timing light and on initial startup my timing was at 0 degrees. I moved it up to 14 degrees before TDC and everything smoothed out pretty good.

I still have a few leaks: The plastic speedometer housing has bad threads so I need to find a new one of those and the tranny line inlet on the radiator is leaking. Somehow the threads are stripped. I added some tephlon tape but that didn't help too much. I found a thread where someone cut open their Champion radiator and the tranny cooler in it is extremely tiny/pointless. I'll probably bypass the radiator completely to stop the leaks.

I spent the entire day yesterday diagnosing an overheating problem. The car warms up fairly quickly and gets to around 230-240. Pretty unacceptable for a brand new cooling system. I burped the radiator and got a fair amount of air out. Cool - I figured I fixed the problem.

Ran the car again but no luck. I waited another couple of hours and pulled the thermostat. I took it inside and put it in a pot of water on the stove. The stupid thing didn't open until 220 degrees!!! That explains why I was running really hot. So that was my day.

It's mother's day today so of course I'm not allowed to be in the garage. Once I get a new T-stat I can work on dialing in the transmission. So close.....

I'll get some pictures up soon.

Jeffs82TA

iTrader: (1)

I remember the 84 305 h.o cars when new, I bought a brand new 84 trans am with that motor. decent power back in its day but still couldn't beat a 5.0 mustang.

Jeffs82TA

iTrader: (1)

Do you have a vacuum line running to the BARO sensor (the map sensor looking thing by you ac delete box) ?

IROCtheRoad

A vacuum hose? No..... I have the pigtail plugged into the sensor though. From what I know there was never a hose there because it senses barometric pressure, not vacuum.....

Bullydawg

iTrader: (7)

Cool build. Just read the whole thread. I remember some people talking about how they loved the L69, so I figured I would read up about your's. Some of those engine shots look awesome. I wish I had more time when I put my new engine together... I didn't get a chance to repaint the block, or clean up the superram. Just kinda threw it all back together. Oh well, this is just the temp engine until I build a 383 or a 406 for it.

86T/A_Ram_Air

evrything sounds like it coming together nicely

IROCtheRoad

I agree. Everybody rags on the 305. Sure it isn't as powerful as a 350, sure it costs more to get the same power, but it can still make enough power for what you put into it.

I'll have a year into the build next month and it finally works correctly. Having more time than funds allowed me to take my time. I've cleaned up the engine bay even more - pictures to come this weekend.

kmcn47

hey awesome news, cant wait for the pics, you ever get a hood that your motor fits under? and hey got mine running good again tonight, had some bad plug wires, turns out the original delcos went bad after almost 30 years and very little driving

IROCtheRoad

Nope, still no hood. I'm out of money for a long while. Oh well, running hoodless is cool, right.....? All the leaks have been fixed AND I put the correct speedo gear in the transmission. At some point in the car's life the gear housing had been replaced with a light green gear instead of the yellow one. Thank goodness there were an over abundance of v6 cars in the junkyard.

The radiator's transmission cooler has been bypassed. I have a temporary temp gauge installed so I'll keep my eye on things for a while.

Unfortunately it got late and the baby had to sleep so I wasn't able to run the engine today........../sigh/

Here is my next project:


I have an extra engine block and set of pistons. I'll have the block media blasted and powder coated. But to make things even cooler, I'm going to have an LED bulb in each cylinder that will be connected to an 8 terminal programmable relay. This will allow me to set it up so the lights go off in a SBC fire pattern AND I can adjust the speed (more throttle)


But with red lights and not on all at one going off at 1 8 4 3 6 5 7 2

IROCtheRoad

Here's another idea I had that I actually found a picture of, but my fab skills aren't very creative - maybe one day

kmcn47

i've wanted a table like that since i saw jeremys porsche one on topgear, i already sit on two old camaro seats in my room lol

IROCtheRoad

A much overdue update:

Here are a few more pictures of the transmission installed.


This is where the pressure gauge is routed.


Like I said earlier, I'm fighting and overheating issue and a small leak coming from my timing cover. So in the name of good fun I pulled the entire front of the motor off.

Tonight my dad and I (who is in town visiting) removed the old timing cover and after much cutting and scraping of the old crap we finally got the new cover on. I swear I used a whole tube of RTV to never have another leak. So far everything is coming out nicely I just pray that there are no more leaks from the engine.


I also rented an OBD1 scanner that I'm hoping will show me the dwell on the carb so I can get that thing running correctly. However, I did pick up a FREE Holley 3310-4. It's overkill for my engine if worse comes to worse....

Tomorrow we'll get the front back together and fire this puppy up one more time and see if everything is golden.

Edit: Sorry for the unuseful/random tranny pictures. I thought I had more.

IROCtheRoad

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

The good - no leaks!!!

The bad - the engine isn't running correctly

The ugly - I pulled a spark plug to find it completely black. So the engine is STILL running stupid rich after a full carb rebuild. We found a loose header bolt that had unburned gas coming out AND the plugs were so fouled that not all of them were firing. So bad in fact raw gas was coming from the tailpipes.

We weren't able to fix the overheating issue because the engine was running so poorly.

Long story short - the car is going to sit there for many months until I can afford a rebuilt non-cc quadrajet from SMI and new distributor. Oh well, I tried to fix the CC system. Time to start removing stuff.

If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.

86T/A_Ram_Air

Q-jets do have adjustments on them. I have heard many older guy say they are easy to tune. You might need to go down on the jet size and then tune the fine adjustments from there.

N.J.-SLICK-1

Hey Bro, I'm moved by your hard work and determination, and also the fact you are in the Armed Forces, if it were'nt for you reaching out to me about the Quadrajet, I'd never known or made your aquaintance, so what I can do is Give you the Carb as well as a late model HEI distributor to help you along, now they both need to be freshened up before use, but you won't have to go throught hell and high water finding them, and I'm sure you know or have a friend who knows who can handle the job, I sent the pic of the carb to your phone as you requested, but I'll need you to send me your address so I can ship these items to you! Bless you, Get Better and be careful Bro, your friend Slick.....

kmcn47

wow your giving it to him? thats awesome i have a spare q-jet from an old 70s blazer but its gonna need a total rebuild and i plan on ditching my qjet and egr just to clean up and pertyfy the engine, yes i made up a word, goodluck getting it running good bro, goodluck finding a hood

86T/A_Ram_Air

thats really great of you slick. But I may of done the same if I had any of that stuff laying around but it's all gone now

burnout88

Just put in a Edelbrock 1406 Carb in it with a Summit Racing HEI Dist. and you will have an easy to tune setup that will run great. Don't mess with those Q-jets. I ran this setup in my 85 Camaro LG4 and the car ran great!!! The Edelbrock is tuned with two simple screws.

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/EDL-1406/

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/SUM-850001R/

N.J.-SLICK-1

I'm gonna ship your goods out after the Fourth of July Holiday Bro, so look for it after then, I have your number and address and you have a number and this site to reach me when it arrives, enjoy your holiday and to you all if you can help the next guy, just pay it forward to a good cause or good person!

IROCtheRoad

Thanks, Slick! Like I said earlier, you have no idea how much this is going to help me out (the wife was getting 'upset' with even more of my/our/my money going to the car. Ha!

Burnout88
I considered going that route but I already have everything setup for the quadrajet (linkages, Bowtie Overdrives' TV system). If I went with Edelbrock/Holley I would have to buy even more stuff. I've learned how to tune Quadrajets fairly well - my electronics are just meesed up somewhere. As reliable and easy as Edelbrock is I personally really like the Quads.
As far as the distributor goes I was planning on getting the MSD Streetfire HEI but since Slick is being awesome I can use most of the internals of my HEI to freshen it up.

IROCtheRoad

Slick,

I'll dedicate my work on the car this week to you and I'll get an overdue update on here as well :-)

IROCtheRoad

I got a LITTLE bit of work done today. I mentioned earlier that the car was running STUPID rich. Well... here's a spark plug I pulled.



And a comparison with a brand new AC Delco vs the Accel shorties.


I attempted to index the plugs but after half an hour of not finding a plug to work in any cylinder I gave up. At least I tried.
I also found out that I'm using the wrong spark plug. Notice how the AC Delco is conical and the Accel is a flat washer. Yep, I didn't know there was a difference. Looks like this may have been cause of the engine smoking. I found soot around most of the wire boots which means they spark plugs weren't sealing aka lack of compression aka my bad. You learn something new everyday they say.

I figured this might help a few people:
Here are the tools you must have in order to change spark plugs with headers. A ratching wrench and spark plug socket are invaluable.


And to tighten the headers I bought a 60 degree box wrench; another highly recommended tool!!! I was able to snug down all but 1 bolt with this.

IROCtheRoad

Also, here's a niffty tool I found on the interwebs. It attaches to the radiator and allows you to burp the system without the help of another person and it doesn't make a mess what so ever.

You attach it and fill it up with fluid and start the car. As the car burps out the air the fluid is sucked into the radiator instead of more air.

Lisle Spill Free Funnel


A few weeks back I relocated the ECM coolant temp sensor to the manifold instead of the water neck. It looks much cleaner and there are a lot more threads for it to grab onto.


One last thing, I promise. I installed the AC Delcos and they work perfectly with Dyno Don headers except for the number 1 cylinder. The boot has maybe 2 millimeters of clearance. I've tried to buy a single spark plug but the local stores only sell them in sets of 8.....
Don, if you made that primary stick out just a bit further everything would be golden.




Oh yeah, that's what happens when you cherry up a brand new set of headers....... I've since bought a timing light.

IROCtheRoad

I found this setup (from a 1969 Z28) that I'll be using once I get a cowl hood.
I'm going to mate the factory dual snorkel setup with this sealed to the cowl.



I've got a set of lightweight connecting rods from when we used to race when i was a kid. I believe the rods/pistons were $1000 for the set if that give you any idea of their quality - very lightweight, forged, and floating pins.

I also found a local shop that has a large journal 3" crankshaft that they are willing to part with. That just leaves the pistons I'll have a full 302 setup

Confuzed1

iTrader: (4)

That boot on #1 plug will most likely start looking pretty burnt after just a bit. I've had my Dyno Dons headers on a couple of times, but had to remove them due to the Y-pipe not fitting. I used/use the Accel header plugs (mine are tapered also - and yellow?) But they do give a bit more clearance.

Yeah, headers will get a nice cherry red real fast if your timing's too retarded....I've had the pleasure of finding that out myself a couple of times...

The Q-jet is a great carb and the HEI will give you all the spark you need. Once you tune the secondary air valve on the Q-jets, it'll run great.

kmcn47

only question is what the hell parts store wont sell 1 spark plug 0.o?

IROCtheRoad

The shorty Accels only come in packs of 4 and they don't want to break them up. I can see why but that makes me spend unnecessary money.

IROCtheRoad

I went to Autozone today to compare spark plugs after I got a tip from a 10 year old thread here on TGO.

Turns out Bosche Super Plus spark plugs are actually shorter than the Accels!!



And here it is installed


MUCH more room to work with now. As far as I know the Bosche spark plugs are just fine. I compared a few AC Delcos but they are all the same size length wise. All other 7 plugs are just fine where they are so no need to replace them with the shorter plugs.

Edit: Champion plugs, length wise, are in-between the Delcos and Bosche

kmcn47

just saying, i personally think accels are garbage plugs, and another just me thing i like symmetry i wouldn't be able to run just one Bosch plug and the rest ac delco

Confuzed1

iTrader: (4)

It would be interesting to see the comparison between the Bosch plugs and the yellow Accel header plugs instead of the AC Delcos....but I can see the Bosch's are shorter than the AC's in your pic...by quite a bit! Interesting!

And it's OK to think Accel plugs are junk....but I'd bet any mismatched plug would foul out if it were the wrong type and reach for the head in question. I've had great luck with mine. NGK makes a great plug too.