I posted on another forum, but I figured I'd post here too. Hey everybody, I just thought I'd share some of what's going on with my car. It has about 136,000 miles on it; maybe more. The speedometer stopped working for some time. It had a noisy lifter and I was just getting more and more worried about how much life it had left in it. I was worried about the nylon timing gears. Also, the bushing in the tail shaft of the Dynaflow had tons of slop and I was getting quite a vibration from the driveshaft. All of this led me to the decision to jump in to an engine rebuild. While I was at it, I decided to swap in an ST400. I'm not great at documenting this stuff, but I'll share what I have. Here's the car in question My Son helped me pull the engine and transmission last November. If I had known how long it was going to take the machine shop to get it done, I would have pulled it sooner. Also, I don't have a heated garage, so I figured I wouldn't get much done if I got the engine back in February. It turns out, I had nothing to worry about there. Upon disassembly, I discovered that the nylon from the timing gears was completely gone. There were huge chunks of it in the oil pan. The timing chain was wearing the cam gear down and as far as I can tell, the engine was a ticking time bomb. Amazingly, everything else looked quite good. I inherited the car from my brother and I know he liked to abuse it. I expected much worse. This was a factory low compression model (9:1), add to that, at some point the head gasket had been changed for a newer blue composite type gasket. I'd bet this was lucky if it was 8:1. There was no scoring on the cylinder walls to speak of and the cam looked appropriately worn, but certainly not worn out. In hindsight, I probably could have replaced the cam train and gotten more life out of it. These engines are clearly way overbuilt. I sent the parts off to the machine shop and started the tedious engine bay clean up process. Winter set in soon after this and I moved as much of my operation indoors as I could. Earlier in the year, I sourced an ST400 from a 1965 Riviera. I went through that completely, upgrading where I could. I also found a rebuilt torque converter from an ST300. So I should get some nice stall speeds. Winter ended, Spring came and went. The machine shop was pretty clear from the beginning that they were quite busy. I asked in the beginning if May was reasonable. I got a definite "maybe". I could have chosen another machine shop, but these guys were pretty highly recommended and they also made their knowledge of Nailheads pretty clear. I figured I'd wait. May came and went. June came and went. July and final mid August, I got my engine back. They did a great job. It was worth the wait.
I can't attribute all of this to my machine shop. There also was a 6 week lead time for the pistons that I ordered. So, around May, my pistons came. The Machine shop started trying to get me back in to their schedule. At one point, they had the block cleaned and a preliminary bore for the new pistons. I actually had to borrow my block so that I could make a crossmember from the new transmission. Finally, at the beginning of August, they got it all done. I brought it all home and started the assembly process. I started with paint. I know some people save this for the end. But there are lots of nooks and crannies. I wanted to make sure I got good coverage. Next came assembly. Crank, pistons and cam. I checked all of my clearances and all was good. After that came heads, valve train and pretty much all of the external stuff. I got my harmonic balancer torqued up last night. My new driveshaft was supposed to be ready Thursday, they called today to tell me that the CV joint needs repair and they can't find one. I fould a repair kit on classicbuicks.com. The shop probably won't get it until next week. The plan is to wrap up a few last things and get then engine/transmission installed this weekend. I'll have to wait for the driveshaft, but I cna get as much else buttoned up as possible.
Thanks, I'm hoping he'll want the car someday. My Uncle bought the car new and I'd like to keep it in the family.
Nice build. Keep up the good work. Good to see an old Nailhead being rebuilt and saved. Also, Nice Car. Jim
Ok, so I'm still ondeck to install the engine tis weekend. I have to rent a cherry picker. I debated about buying one but there's the problem of storing it the 362 days of the year. Anyway, here's the old cam gear. Definitely riding the ragged edge of self destruction Also, I have a question about the dipstick. Should there be a rubber grommet between these two disks? The dipstick has always stayed in ok and never seemed to leak, but it just seems like there should be something there.
Dan, send me the part number if you can read it and the measurements. Overall length, tip to the fill line, tip to full line, length from tip to bottom washer. I'll check a few places.
Not one plastic tooth to be seen Is this a 364 or 401? and did you up the compression with the new pistons?
This is a 401. Trunkmonkey, here's the part number on the dipstick : So I got the engine in. No help from my Son this time. I rented a cherry picker, so I was feeling kind of pressured to get it in and get the rental back. Still plenty of work to do. Among other things, I want to wire in an oil pressure, Volt, and temperature gauge. I also want to keep the idiot lights functional. I found a Bosch oil pressure sending unit that has terminals for a gauge and a warning light. For the temperature gauge, I'll use the original and then open the tap on the other head for the analog sensor. The delays contnue with getting the driveline rebuilt. The guy I bought the CV kit from was supposed to ship it last Thursday. We had a very long talk about how I was in a hurry. I offered to pay extra for expedited shipping. He refused but assured me it would go Thursday and that he's send a tracking number on Friday. I called him yesterday Monday, and he started backpedaling and saying he wasn't sure if it shipped. Supposedly it will ship today. I doubt I'll see my driveshaft this weekend. Grrr! Anyway, I'll report more as I get things done.
When Dan gets to the first start stage, what is the accepted procedure for Nailhead cam break-in ? I'd like to know also.
Ken, my plan is to run the engine at 2000 RPM for 20 minutes. Maybe not 20 minutes straight through. I think some heat cycling will be important as well. So, likely 5-10 minutes, shut it off, let it cool, 5-10 minutes, etc. This assumes nothing tragic happens during that time.
Good luck Dan. I started mine for the first time last week after re-build. Apart from me not seating the distributor down fully and the timing being out a bit, it started and I ran it only for a few minutes. Once the coolant is in the system I'll break in the cam.
If you have a new cam, run it for 20 to 30 minutes continuously above 2000 rpm and vary the rpm. Shut it down and let it completely cool before restarting. Cheryl
^^^ How I did mine. Spun up oil pump to prime, fired it off, adjusted the timing a bit and played the throttle 2000-2500 for 30 minutes. Watched oil pressure and temp the whole time. Never exceeded 210F. Shut it down, let it cool about 2 hours, drained and inspected oil and filter, refilled, and drove 500 miles. (tweak and tune) Repeat on oil and filter, then never looked back. Daily driver.
I know these are best practices, but i wonder how Buick did it off of the assembly line? I looked up Buick production numbers for 1962. 400150 cars. Assuming 20 minutes per engine, that would be 3 per hour. This wouldn't consider any setup or take down time. That would have 133,383 hours, or about 15 years to get through all of those engines. I have to guess the only real run time they got was when they drove off the assembly line.
I saw old film and they had a room with a bunch of nailheads with exhaust hoods/tubes and looked like they could run hundreds. Remember, this was back during post war time where production was not concerned with dollars at the time. All that came later, and now, one cannot fart without 15 bean counters trying to factor cost impact to the fraction of a mil.
You definitely would have to do so.e kind of batch processing if you wanted to have any hope of running that many engines in a year. So, in other news, the car is effectively ready to go. I still need my driveshaft, which means, I cant start the engine until i get it. Hopefully this week. I primed the oil pump to validate that oil pressure gauge was working. The static timing mark is set so i can time the distributor when the time comes.
