Texan 73 Challenger Rally

[lemming303]

Well, I couldn't think of a better title, so I came up with that one. Anyway, I just picked it up last week on Oct 17. I haven't been able to do much yet, but I will be doing what I can.

Background on where I got the car:
I found it on Craigs list. A lady had bought it for her 14 yr old son as a first car. He races circle track stock cars. Well, they had someone disassemble the car to send it off to get media blasted. When they had it apart they decided it was gonna be too much work to restore it. So, they put it back up for sale within a couple of weeks of getting it. I found it and went and looked at it. I decided it wasn't too bad and bought the car.
When I picked it up it was in pieces. Everything was off the car except the rear quarterpanels. So now my garage is full of parts.
The other day I took the long block to my shop to disassemble and clean. That was the first engine I had ever disassembled! I made sure I marked the piston order and kept all the rod caps with the right piston. The oil pan was full of oil and water, so apparently this thing sat in the rain for a while. The cylinders have a decent lip on them. I haven't taken the block to get inspected yet. I'm not sure when I'll be able to do that, but when I do I will update this post.

[ShelbyDogg]

Keep us posted Lemm. Get some pics posted as the car goes along.

Rob

[lemming303]

Here's the engine, minus the heads and intake. I drained it and disassembled it. It was full of a lot of water. One of the piston rings was broke in half. All the bearings look pretty good though, and this car was originally Plum Crazy Purple. Now it is yellow (obviously) but it is not a bad paint job. In fact, I thought it was the original color. So this leads me to believe that the car was restored sometime around 1990. The only reason I think that is because I found a 1992 Chuck E Cheese coin in the car. Anyway, here's then engine. Notice all the water in the oil drain tub.

[NoMope Greg]

Yuck!     Any pics of the cylinder walls?

[lemming303]

No, but they washed out pretty good. Not very much rust after I hit it with the pressure washer. I need to take the block to a machine shop, I just haven't had the chance yet.

[lemming303]

Well, I took apart the heads today. They were pretty nasty. Still are, I only took them to the car wash. I need to take them to the shop and clean them real good. There was a lot of rust in the exhaust ports. Most of the valve guides are ok, but one or two has some decent corrosion in it. One valve was really hard to get out. We tapped it a little with a hammer and it broke.
You can see some of the intake valves have real heavy build up on them. They could be used in a Shell commercial! lol Some of the exhaust valves have eroded real bad around the shaft. If these heads are still usable I'm gonna replace everything except the rocker shaft.
The rocker shafts have some corrosion, but not too bad. They will look a lot better after I clean them up with a sanding bit.
I took the cam out a while ago. It's no good. It has a lot of pitting in it, you can't really tell from this pic. Thats where I'm at now. Later on I'm gonna pull all the pistons apart and see how much wear is on the rod pin.

[lemming303]

Oh I forgot one thing. There was yellow overspray on the springs and rockers, like someone had painted the car while the valve covers were off. I thought that was pretty weird.

[ShelbyDogg]

One thing you have to know if you never took valves out is that sometimes the rocker mushrooms the top of the valve stem and it doesn't slide out easily till you grind the top edge. It doesn't help the guide by driving it out with a hammer.  Is this the type of "hard to get out valve" that you were talking about?

[lemming303]

No, that was the first thing I thought. When I felt too much resistance I pushed it back in and ground it down with a dremel. I still wouldn't go. I tapped it as far as I could with another valve but didn't want to get it stuck. I sprayed a whole bunch more deep creep on there and let it sit while I took out the rest of the valves. I was tapping it to get it back in to work the spray in and thats when it broke.