From the 14th St update desk: The past week has seen Jorge finish the replacement of the 2.6l narrow block engine obtained from the mysterious Mesa stronghold. He reused the intake manifold and carb from the old engine, but just about everything else on the "new" long block was retained. We rinsed out the block's cooling passages, as they had a considerable amount of scale in them, and had to put in one new 50mm freeze/expansion plug since it leaked. This, along with blasting out the heater core with a garden hose means a nice heater to go with the 50-50 distilled/antifreeze combo. The new water pump and alternator from the old engine were swapped, too. Also, from removing the balance shaft chain's adjustment cover, we saw there had been a b.s. elimination kit installed. After getting it running, I can say the difference is noticeable and would urge anyone with a choice to retain them if at all possible. He also put in new engine mounts since the old ones were torn. Lots of cleaning and painting also took place, as Jorge, and to a lesser extent, the rest of us in this "club" are kinda big on the clean look. After settling in on about 10 degrees of advance on the distributor, according to my timing light, things are running quite well, just have a couple of minor oil or power steering leaks to track down and fix.
The old engine had absolutely seized, causing the #1 connecting rod to become disconnected and forge a new path through the driver's side of the block. It had been showing signs of fatigue beforehand, obvious gigantic clearance issues in the rotating mass causing a lot of clatter and burning so much oil that the insides of the windows would get an oily film on them. Putting the choke plate on the carb only made it more unbearably smoky. The '83's odometer only registers 99,999 before rolling back to zero, so there's no telling how many times it made that trip. Might have to try adding the choke plate back on to improve cold weather performance, starting and low vacuum applications.
Yesterday we got his latest acquisition, the '85 Montero (white with black decal lower body trim and a tan interior) to run. The previous owner had said it misfired on #4. All we did was charge up the 9 year old battery, replace the distributor cap that was riding in the cargo area, connect the spark plug wires, drain the old gas, blow out the fuel line, add a new fuel filter and put a couple of gallons of gas in it. Then while spraying starting fluid, we keyed it on and it ran, taking a little bit to get the new gas up to the carb. Seems fine and even warmed up to the point of dropping to low idle before it presumably ran low on gas. The cooling system, presently filled with tap water, held and there were no major leaks...except for the transfer case. For whatever reason, the P.O. has removed the driveshafts and the 5-speed's shifter and left them in the passenger compartment, and had started to attempt to remove the transfer case from the transmission, so they're unbolted from each other and pulled slightly apart. We're not sure what that's about yet. For all we know, the transmission could be in gear, so that's next, after we get some replacement gas tank filler hose, readily available off EBay. So far, this $400 Montero hasn't turned out too bad. The body is remarkably straight and the one fender I polished turned out almost new-looking after five minutes of polishing compound and a coat of wax. The interior sucks, but hey...
Other than that, HoseB continues to clean things on his 89 V-6 (the one with the welded-on harmonic balancer) and we bled his brakes and clutch. He got his 90 V-6 auto back from his mechanic with a new crank bolt in it (but without a Time-Sert insert, so not sure how many threads are holding that bolt), but it's just sitting.
John B.
