Some progress

Welcome to our newest team member, Joe. Joe has a background in a bunch of different motor sports from dirt bike racing to circle track racing. I look forward to the help and knowledge he brings to the team.


I was again unable to get the diff fill bolt off. I think I'll weld a bolt head to it so I can get a socket on it and try again. Do we really need to change the diff oil? Probably not, but it's good preventative maintenance.

The next project was replacing the pittman arm for steering. We pulled the steering box off the car to get the old pittman arm off. I ended up cracking the cap while trying to bang it off and dropping it on the floor. I think I can pull just the cap from the JY and we'll be good to go. On the bright side, I now see that I can unbolt the shaft from the cap and take it out of the steering box to get the pittman arm off of it.

The last project of the night was the most exciting. We started on the JY motor. The hardest part was jacking it up to get it on the engine stand. We didn't have a lift, so we jacked the pallet up, put it on jack stands, then jacked the engine up off the pallet. After it was secure, we started pulling it apart. The combustion chambers looked good with no scoring. There's a lot of carbon build up, but we'll clean that out. The valves looked good with the requisite carbon build up. The head gasket was good. There was no water or metal in the oil pan. We're going to clean it up and put it back together with new gaskets.

New Team Memeber

Forrest joined us on Wednesday to help work on the car. He brought along a piece of metal to cover the sunroof opening and installed it with 4 temporary screws. This should be enough to keep the rain out.

We pulled the 2nd engine out of storage and tried to fire it on the pallet. It was quite a kludge with the distributor from the good engine, the old carb and jumper cables, battery booster and various other wires running between the 2 engines. It turned over, but we couldn't get it to start. We discovered the 4the spark plug hole is "blocked". We got the plugs out to look at them and that one did not go all the way back in.

I ordered a gasket kit from Rock Auto. We'll put the 2nd engine on the stand and tear it down and refresh all the gaskets. We'll take care of the spark plug threads at that time.

Second Roadtrip!

At last Wed’s work session, we discovered the battery was the source for all our ailments. The original used battery we were using had run it’s life and was replaced by the one from the BMW a few weeks back. Well, the BMW battery is just over 5yrs old and, apparently, has run its life too. We were able to get the car started with a jump and hooned it gently around the neighborhood. At this point it’s cage, cage, cage and remaining stuff. The cage is the biggie, but we have a timing cover oil leak that needs to be addressed. We’re going to handle that by starting the spare engine and seeing if it’s solid. If so, put it in the Celi and pull the other to rebuild. Or rebuild the spare, then swap and rebuild the original.

 Tonight, I took the car out to return Ken's tow dolly. Yes, it has a hitch on it. I had to replace the 1.5" ball with a 2" ball I had sitting around. It pulled the trailer just fine. I blew the instrument light fuse less than 5 minutes after starting out. I did have my gps running, so I had a speedometer.

The temperature did great on the JY aluminum radiator with no fans. It did creep up at one extended stop. The oil pressure gauge ran on the High side when driving, but it was smack dab in the middle at idle. I found out that if you try to add oil when the car is running, it will blow out all over the engine. So, I added some patina to the engine tonight. 

The steering is still wobbly. Yeah, not scary at all, just wobbly. Brakes are good. Overall, it was an acceptable drive.