ok now that my wiring is all done... and my key starting problem is fixed...

im onto a new set of problems...

The motor that is in the car i bought was built by a buddy of mine, who im pretty sure i can trust his words. It sat for about a year. never started or anything, and then it sat with the hood off and rain got into the motor two weeks prior to me buying it... Off the bat i drained the oil, about two cups of water came out, than about 5 quarts of oil. I put in fresh 10w30 with a filter, dumped one quart over each head and then put the valve covers back on, and poured in the rest. The motor was supposedly started when first built a little over a year ago. I am unfotunately coming to the conclusion that the motor is seized. BUT one reason i dont think its completely frozen is because when i first tried to start it by arcing the starter out, it turned about 3 full rotations, then the teeth on the starter broke off. I than installed a fresh delco, and it cranked over a few times as well, than today it just sounds like its either shot or its selenoid is completely missing the fly wheel.

I have come to you guys, my fellow fbody brethren. to ask what to do next...

My thoughts are to take the starter off and inspect it, install a new one, try cranking it over again, and see what happens...

If that starters teeth break off again, i either dont have a 153 fly wheel (would it be obvious to tell this? what would the symptoms be?) or there is another problem (IE: a seized motor)


Please give me some ideas so i can try to salvage this motor, it would be very said to see a fresh 357 with a eagle rotating assembly go to waste!...

Is it shot? and i should strip it down and part it out?

or

Is there procedures that can be taken to re-incarnate a motor?

EDIT: It also had no coolant in it for a long time (over 6 months)

Thanks again guys...

 

Get a socket on a breaker bar and put it on the crank pulley and see if you can rotate the motor. If it turns witout having to sit and tug on it forever then it's pretty safe to assume that it's not froze up. I had a delta that out of nowhere I went to crank it and it started screaming. the teeth broke off of the bendix...never figured out why. I put a new starter off and it worked fine since.

If it were me would attempt to salvage a motor that sat that long. especially if it got water in it.

 

should i put it on the harmonic balancer bolt? or one of the crank pulley bolts?

should i be concerned about snapping off one of those bolt heads?


also, if this motor is seized, what do you think the cause was? the main bearing getting rusted or something?

 

Just put it on the balancer and give it a tug. the engine should turn without any major force if it's not seized. I wouldn't worry about breaking anything. even if it's rusted it should be damn strong.

If the engine is siezed and it had oil then it's not likely that anything rusted. at least not any major rust. The only time I had an engine seize on me was my camaro engine. I was letting the car sit around because I was doing work on my TA and firebird. After about a year, maybe a little less, I went to start her up and it seemed like it was taking oto much power to crank over. changed the oil (old oil still looked good too) and she still gave me a hard time. I did the breaker bar trick and she didn't want to move at all. took me a while to get it to turn manually. but when I tested this on my TA she turned no problem. took the camaro engine apart and she was just seized up from sitting around. talked to a buddy of mine who races pro street and he said that happened to one of his old cars too. He had a 355 freshly built, put it in a car. let it sit for just under a year and she seized.

 

damn, well looks like im in this for the long haul and better start pulling parts off this thing...


ill give her one last try...


what do you think is salvageable/reusable? i guess ill have to rip it apart and see what everything looks like...


thanks again man...

 

If it really was rebuilt about a year ago, and seized just from sitting, I'd say pretty much everything is reusable. Just tear it down, get everything machine. new gaskets, piston rings, things like that and she'll be good to go.
I recently picked up a torn down carb 350 that had everything to rebuild it. had it machined and put it back together and in my girlfriends olds for around $500 (not including the price of the eingine itself). runs great. it had been built up about 2 years ago, torn down after a year. and sat in pieces for almost a year.

 

sweet deal man, thats pretty cool, i wonder if it would be worth it for me to do all that... prob would be... its a pretty sweet motor...


if i tear it down, i may be tempted to just part out the whole car...

ill let you guys know whats up...

anyone else wanna chime in?

 

If the rides worth it don't part it out. definatly get that motor back together, get it in there, and go smoke the competition!

 

some very good news.... took all the spark plugs out and cranked it over a few times with the starter, it pushed out some water from the cylinder, than i sprayed some pb blaster in each cyl, cranked for a few seconds, sprayed starting fluid in each cyl to help disapate all the moisture, then cranked a few more times...


im doing the spark plugs and wires today.... can anyone inform me on which wire goes where on the distributor, and does it spin clockwise or counter clockwise?

im pretty sure the wires go on the distributor in the firing order witch is 18436572 ... starting with this post on the cap...




correct me if im wrong ....thanks!

 

you're right

 

You can start anywhere on the distributor, as long as you follow the fireing order and the roter is pointing to #1 when it is suposed to fire then you are good.

 

ok so say i start on the red dot in the picture i posted, will i than connect the next (cyl 8) to the next post clock-wise? or is it counter clockwise in rotation?

 

clockwise

 

Ok, so the motor was turning perfectly fine top end and bottom end w/o the spark plugs in and the belt off. But the starter sounded like hell...

AutoZone has 2 differnet starters for the car, one is for the 2bbl carb and one is for the 4bbl carb, What the hell is the difference? lol i guess the fly wheel changed?

I tried both, and they sounded like they werent functioning correctly....

I have the one for the 2bbl carb on now (same one that was on there when the belt and sparks were removed), with the sparks and belt installed, and it isnt even turning the motor any more, sounds like its not even hitting the flywheel and the teeth grinded off again, it did turn the motor tho, because i saw some smoke outta the carb, then it stopped and it sounds like the starters spining freely...

Whats going on here?
----------
the 1969-1970 elcamino 350 came with the 153 tooth fly correct? regardless of the 2bbl or 4bbl....


maybe its the flywheel? doesnt make much sense....

 

what really differs from starter to starter on basic 350's?

couldnt i just use a starter from a thirdgen 350?


***sorry for all the questions, im kinda just typing stuff as i think of it..


I checked the flywheel for a 1970 el camino 350 and it is 168 tooth for both 2bbl and 4bbl??

Why would the starters be different?

 

There were no 2-bbl carbs in these cars. On V8s, anyway.

The water in the oil should have been a clue. WHENEVER you see that, you MUST assume that it got there by running down the intake and filling up a cyl. That's why it stripped the starter teeth. You had a cyl full of water, which is incompressible. First thing you SHOULD HAVE done, when you got that clue, was to pull out the plugs and purge the water out of the cyls. Since you didn't do that, you attempted to compress the water, which can very easily put enough force on everything to cause damage. Hopefully the teeth shearing off of the starter, protected you from bending that rod, which would be the usual damage. Don't count on it though. If the motor runs funny, kind of uneven with a constant vibe that it didn't have before, or worse, then that's probably what happened.

I'm guessing that the 2-bbl starter for the El Camino is a 3510, and the one for a 4-bbl is the 3560. Aluminum vs iron. They fit exactly the same though, totally interchangeable. I'm also guessing that in that car, you looked it up for a "400"; in that year, a 400 4-bbl was a big block, and a 400 2-bbl was a small block.

I hope the solenoid is missing the flywheel. The solenoid is that small cylinder thing hanging off the side of the starter. If that hits the flywheel, then BAD THINGS are going on.

My next question would be, what do starter listings for a 70 El Camino have to do with one of these cars?

 

Your help is very much appreciated but if you read above i stated that this 1990 v6 firebird had a 350 swapped in from a 1970 el camino, it was rebuilt bored .40, tested to see if it ran, than sat for months....


the ONLY reason i asked about the carb, is because if you go on partsamerica .com they ask which carb you have....(now i know that doesnt pose a problem)


Yea i deff know know that it should not have been attempted to be started before letting the water out, obviously, but i really dont think that there is any more water in the cylinders because the motor cranked perfectly fine with the plugs out and the water pushed out of the spark plug holes, then i sprayed starting fluid in each to help evaporate the moisture.

i guess i should try pulling the plugs again, with a fresh starter, just to see if anything else comes out?


yea i know what a solenoid is as well, i just typed it wrong, i know that the actual piece that makes contact with the flywheel is a gear...which is what i think is not making proper contact, or is grinded off again...


thanks...

PS: what starter do you recommend? seems that you know what your talking about and are pretty well informed....

 

I guess I just missed that part somehow? Even after going back and re-reading?

I wouldn't be so rash as to accuse myself of being "well-informed"; but if I've got you fooled, well then, so be it....

I wouldn't worry too much about the 70 El Camino listings. The motor isn't in that car any more, so it's time to sort of leave it behind.

In a perfect world, you'd just use the starter for a V8 305 Camaro or Firebird; and a 12.8" (153 tooth) flex plate or flywheel. Whether that will work, however, depends on whether the block has the holes drilled in it for that type of starter. Look at the bolt holes; if there are 2 of them along the back edge of the block, plus the one that's about 2" to the front of the back edge, and the inner one of the back edge ones is about ¾" closer to the crank centerline than the one that's offset toward the front of the block, then the F-body starter will work.

Alternatively, you could just use the 3510 starter, which is the one with the aluminum nosepiece (probably ALOT cheaper than the other one, anyway), and just be done with it. If it fits the exhaust, of course; that's the only real potential issue with it.

But I'm going to have to repeat the bad news. It's ALMOST CERTAIN that the motor is damaged internally, specifically at least one bent rod, from being "hydraulic-ed" like that. Don't get your hopes up too high that you're going to be able to just run it like it is, or spend too much money on it; experience says you'll be yanking it back out of there and tearing it down before it gets 10 miles on it. Once a rod gets bent from being "hydrauliced", it's not going to just heal itself, no matter how good of a job you do after the fact of getting the water out.

 

sorry about that, i could have sworn i typed it in at the top...


i guess bottom line is stop wasting my precious time on this thing and rip it apart?

 

Almost... this happens to people all the time, and the results are rarely pleasant.

Somehow, you need to determine whether it's still OK or if it got wacked.

If you can get the starter working well enough to do a compression test, that will probably tell the tale. If the cyl that had the water is lower than the rest then you can be pretty sure that rod is fubared.

 

Okay, well ill give it one more shot, by taking the plugs out and cranking it with another starter.... then throw the plugs back in...

if that doesnt work... its gettin ripped apart...

in that case, what will need to be done to the motor to get it running again? all the parts were fresh before.... also the block should be fine correct?

 

Yup, block should be OK; might need a very light hone or something just to bust the rust. Nothing beyond that.

Pistons should also be OK. If it bent a rod, or more than one, it'll just need those replaced; and new rings and bearings. The crank and pistons are probably OK. Th epistons on any bent rods should be checked carefully though.

If you have to tear it down, I'd suggest getting the block drilled at that time for the late-model starter if it isn't already, so you can use one of those if you ever want to.

 

got the motor running today.... thank jesus.....



3510 starter and new plugs did the trick... thanks guys!