65 Barracuda daily driver
Made some progress over the weekend. Got the park lock cable assembly back together, installed the mini-starter, the intake, the center link, the thermostat and fuel pump, found the right copper washer for the 90 degree oil filter and installed it. Turns out that a slant 6 904 dipstick is too long and won't fit, which is too bad, because the V8 transmission had a dipstick tube, but no dipstick when I bought it. Found one on ebay though and ordered that. I had also considered modifying the slant 6 transmission cooler lines, but ended up ordering new ones to speed up the progress. Eventually I got to the exhaust manifolds. I wish I had installed them before the engine went in, but I didn't anticipate what a pain it would be to do that after the fact. I had to bring out the hoist again and lift the engine up to get the passenger side manifold bolted in. I dropped it back down only to realize that for the driver side I had to take out the steering column and lift the engine up on that side as well. And then I got really frustrated: I couldn't get the very last bolt under the master cylinder in. Not only is it hard to reach, but as it turns out there was an old heli coil in the bolt hole that made impossible. Once I figured that out, I pulled the heli coil out and went to the parts store to get a new one, but they had to order it.
After that I bought some beer and decided to clean up the garage, which was a total mess, and fiddle with some little things. I was really bummed out by the manifold snafu, because I can't do a lot of other things until they are in for good. Luckily I found all the parts of the Lokar kickdown assembly and started mocking it up. On the Super Six I had to modify it quite a bit, but for the Edelbrock it should all work as intended. Still need to change the throttle cable to make it work.
Anyhow, it was interesting to see what parts were easier to reach on the slant vs the small block. You can tell that the A-bodies were designed to fit the slant 6 and then the small block was designed to fit that engine compartment.
Made some progress over the weekend. Got the park lock cable assembly back together, installed the mini-starter, the intake, the center link, the thermostat and fuel pump, found the right copper washer for the 90 degree oil filter and installed it. Turns out that a slant 6 904 dipstick is too long and won't fit, which is too bad, because the V8 transmission had a dipstick tube, but no dipstick when I bought it. Found one on ebay though and ordered that. I had also considered modifying the slant 6 transmission cooler lines, but ended up ordering new ones to speed up the progress. Eventually I got to the exhaust manifolds. I wish I had installed them before the engine went in, but I didn't anticipate what a pain it would be to do that after the fact. I had to bring out the hoist again and lift the engine up to get the passenger side manifold bolted in. I dropped it back down only to realize that for the driver side I had to take out the steering column and lift the engine up on that side as well. And then I got really frustrated: I couldn't get the very last bolt under the master cylinder in. Not only is it hard to reach, but as it turns out there was an old heli coil in the bolt hole that made impossible. Once I figured that out, I pulled the heli coil out and went to the parts store to get a new one, but they had to order it.
After that I bought some beer and decided to clean up the garage, which was a total mess, and fiddle with some little things. I was really bummed out by the manifold snafu, because I can't do a lot of other things until they are in for good. Luckily I found all the parts of the Lokar kickdown assembly and started mocking it up. On the Super Six I had to modify it quite a bit, but for the Edelbrock it should all work as intended. Still need to change the throttle cable to make it work.
Anyhow, it was interesting to see what parts were easier to reach on the slant vs the small block. You can tell that the A-bodies were designed to fit the slant 6 and then the small block was designed to fit that engine compartment.
