Engine trouble

If you end up getting into a timing chain job, make sure that if the the old gear set has a nylon coated upper gear, check to see if the nylon has cracked and fallen off. If the nylon has cracked and pieces are missing, they have fallen off into the oil pan. If this is the case, it is extremely advisable to have the pan dropped and the oil pick up cleared of the broken nylon pieces. I rarely find the nylon gear in tact when I do a timing chain job on these older cars. I personally would also replace the oil pump with a new one as long as the pan is down. If you don't do this the oil pressure can severely be effected which will cause a lot of oil starvation wear.
 
I finally got the car to the shop on Wednesday. They checked to see if the problem was the timing, and they determined that it was not.

The issue seems to be the carburetor. It is leaking in a few places around some of the moving parts, and it is also leaking from the base gasket. I can fix the gasket leak myself and I ordered a new carb. It should be here next week. I opted to go new instead of rebuilding.

On Thursday, I called around for a base gasket, and the third place I called had one. Off I went, and, yeah, wrong gasket. Four hours later, I drove to an engine rebuilding shop. One of those guys that has been rebuilding engines for ever. When he saw the base gasket, he knew exactly where it came from, and also knew that he did not have one in stock. So, off he went to the back of the shop and came out with a spare gasket that I could place between the old gasket and the base of the carb. This should do the trick until the new carb arrives, and at least stop the leaking from the base.

So, I get home and install the. New temporary gasket and hooked everything back together. I am very proud of myself, as so far everything is working according to plan, until I try to attach one of the two pipes that run from the intake manifold to the carb ( for the choke ). Shaped the darn thing flush with the manifold. After a few choice words both in French and English, I decided to start the car without the pipe connected, to see if the carb was still leaking from the base or not. Started no problem, and no leak. All was good.
 
The day was still relatively young, so I decided to temporarily fix the pipe so that I could go cruising and be ready for the car show on the weekend. Off I went to a few automotive stores to get the necessary tid bits to get me going.

Got back home and decided to remove the piece of pipe that was stuck in the intake manifold. As I gently pry and tug on the little piece of pipe, and tug and pry some more, I gently insert my forceps in the hole, and voila, the friggin thing falls into the manifold. Good work dumbo!!!
 
I'm think off the top of my head here but it should be OK that's the cross over for the exhaust and does not go any were but out the tail pipe. they are always rusty as then are in the heat all the time. I usually just drill them out, if you saved all the pieces you can cut it flush with the brake and braze a small piece of brake line on it. but that down in the hole. you go just a hair oversize and drill out the hole to clean it up then tap in in place. making one is hard to do the tight bends and never looks right you can't find a used one that's any good and I don't know of a source for new. but glad that all it was that was wrong. we have a man here in town that can drill the shaft holes in the base and put bushings to stop the leak. common problem with the GM carb.
 
Anyhow, no need to say that I missed all of the weekend's activities at the car show. I participated as a spectator instead of as a participant. My wife was right. I should have let the pros figure it out.

Following her advise, I decided to take the intake manifold off to see if I could find the part. Easy enough job following the Pontiac Shop Manual's instructions. Went to one of the local automotive store (I try to go to different stores so that they don't recognize me, but there are only so many stores around) to get a gasket kit. No problem, they had one in stock, and it was the correct one. Everything came out like a charm. I even made a short video clip of the process that I will put on YouTube once everything is back in place. The only problem is that I was not able to locate the piece of pipe that fell in.

Did I forget to mention that without thinking I decided to get the car in the garage before taking the manifold out? Yeah, I'd like to forget that part...

Once I could not locate the part, I decided to remove the cylinder head under where thwart fell to see if the part was stuck in a valve or fell in a cylinder. Back to the Pontiac manual I go and start to take the head apart. Everything is going well until step three where I have to loosen the rocker arms to remove the push rods. All of the push rods accept the socket but one. I do not know why, but the socket will not fit into the space where the bolt is located on that one rocker arm. That was enough fun for that day, so I decided to leave everything there before I burned the car.

I went to see one of my mechanic friends today and told him the story. After looking at things, we concluded that the part may have fell directly into the exhaust manifold. I borrowed a scope and looked inside the tunnel where the part fell in, and I could not see any damage nore the missing piece of pipe. As he said, if I am lucky, the piece of pipe either fell straight into the exhaust or got blown out of the valve area and then down the exhaust when I started the car.

I will decide tomorrow if I put everything back together, or if I take the heads off just to make sure. In the meantime, I decided to paint the engine, since it is half apart. Got some Pontiac engine blue at the car show this morning and cleaned the intake manifold all out. I'll give it a coat of paint tomorrow and will clean some more parts of the engine so that I can finish the paint job within the next few days........as long as nothing else happens.....
 
John ED Renstrom said:
I'm think off the top of my head here but it should be OK that's the cross over for the exhaust and does not go any were but out the tail pipe. they are always rusty as then are in the heat all the time. I usually just drill them out, if you saved all the pieces you can cut it flush with the brake and braze a small piece of brake line on it. but that down in the hole. you go just a hair oversize and drill out the hole to clean it up then tap in in place. making one is hard to do the tight bends and never looks right you can't find a used one that's any good and I don't know of a source for new. but glad that all it was that was wrong. we have a man here in town that can drill the shaft holes in the base and put bushings to stop the leak. common problem with the GM carb.
Click to expand...

If I get it right, the function of that pipe is to control the choke. I'll have an electric choke kit installed on the new carb and will plug the holes. From what I read, this should do the trick.
 
Started to paint the engine this evening. Got some Pontiac Metalic Engine Blue paint from Eastwood at the car show this weekend.

Acording to their catalog, Pontiac used Metalic Blue from 1966 - 72 but no, not on this car......the engine is Light Blue......go figure, something else that is going wrong.

I wonder if I can find some Pontiac light blue in town tomorrow.
 
Anyhow, no need to say that I missed all of the weekend's activities at the car show. I participated as a spectator instead of as a participant. My wife was right. I should have let the pros figure it out.

Jean-Marc I feel your pain!
 
I finally got almost everything back together. There are no extra pieces left over and thanks to my video camera, in the few cases where I was not sure where a piece went, I was able to look it up in my video archives.

I used my torque wrench to make sure that everything was tighten as per the book. The only two things left to do is to plug the holes where the pipe went into the intake manifold for the choke (I removed it all together and will install an electric choke) and fill the radiator with new coolant.

I'm still waiting for my new carburetor, it should arrive this week.

As I said a few posts back, I was initiallylaning to remove the heads to find thence that fell in the intake manifold. According to the book, in order to do that, step one was to remove the muffler from the exhaust manifold, which I did. So today, I went and reversed the steps to take it off. This was a very dirty job because I greased-up all of the bushings a few weeks back. As luck goes the two bolts holding the exhaust to the manifold went in relatively easily by hand and then with the air ratchet. Looked into the book and it said to York the bolts at thirty three, pounds. Easy enough. Set the wrench at thirty three and torked the two bolts a litle at a time until one of them felt like, well you know when the all of a sudden start to turn easier ? Yep, snap.....

The manifold itself broke off around the bolt and fell off. If it was not for bad luck, I would have no luck at all repairing the car.
 
none what so ever. you going to be taking the head off now. no lets say that all the bolts will come out of the manifold and you'll find another on on the floor of your garage. ben a while since I have see a cast iron piece broken. so pet it was cracked and about ready to fall off. you get this car to New York you got my vote for the hard luck award right now.
 
Engine Trouble?

Before you go tearing stuff apart, remember that when you hear hoof galloping sounds, it is usually horses, not zebras. In other words check all the simple stuff first. Didn't you mention new plugs and wires? Check them to be sure you didn't get a bum one out of the box. The quality control on these items is not what it used to be. Since you changed both if you find a bad cylinder doing this check, you will then have to determine if it is plug or wire. I have seen more bad plugs than wires, but both are subject to QC problems.
 
If the choke tube is not cracked, you dont need to plug the choke tube holes. Its just a warm air passage to the choke assembly.
 
If the carburetor is properly set, and the choke tube isn't clogged, it actually is better than an electric choke in my opinion. The cars operated properly for years with mechanical chokes. The key to getting an old car to function as originally designed is to carefully set everything to the original factory specifications and make sure that there are no worn out parts.
 
What else would you be doing?

Hi Jean-Marc. Sorry to hear of your troubles. Just think how much more you are finding out about your '67 though. Really...what else would you be doing anyways...working on the '69?

Hope your summer is going well.
 
When you get everything back together and gliding down the road, you can have a chuckle on me, when I redid the plugs and wires on my 63 I took them off one by one and put them back on one by one just backwards. I have not figured it how I did it, but the car didn't start I managed to be joke of the week and finally my dad came in and we started over, and he's a GM man and I am learning. LOL :yum:
 
Just got back from the shop where i took the car to fix what is left to do. They received the new carburator yesterday. It is a Holley, not a Rochester, which will work for me, except that it is a 2 bbl, not a 4bbl.:drama:

I think that the chances of making it to Albany with the Pontiac are now slim to none.
 
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