T-Bird Car Restoration Project Part 4 - Rebuilding the Engine - Page 3

Valve Work

The heads were in good condition, so after removing the valves and springs we degreased and pressure-washed the castings. This work was followed by a coat of etching primer (rust, you know) and an inspection of the valve guides and seats, as well as the valves themselves. All that was needed, we concluded, was a re-grind of the seats.

Torquing the rod caps.

Getting ready to put on the oil pan. The block didn't just get ugly by itself...we shot a coat of primer on it...

We re-ground the seats the old-fashioned way, with grinding compound and a suction cup on a stick. This will be covered in a future how-to article, so we won't go into detail now other than to mention that the task took about two hours. After cleaning everything thoroughly after the grinding we reinstalled the valves and springs and checked the spring height.

Lovely, aren't they...

The Intake

We had decided early on to replace the old "teapot" carburetor with a new, much more high-tech, Edelbrock carburetor. This required a transition piece to match the new carburetor's bore spacing to the old Y-Block intake.

Carburetor adapter for our new Edelbrock carb.

We stripped, sand-blasted and thoroughly cleaned out the intake and primed it for painting, then double-checked the carburetor mounting and fitting of hardware. It was then powder coated with a chrome-like finish.

Ready to move our engine to our test stand.

The Final Assembly

We installed the heads (torqued carefully, of course) and the rest of the components while the engine was on the stand. With everything in place we were ready to move it to our rolling test stand/cart for actual running.

The base of our test stand is wheeled into place. We will assemble the stand under the engine.

We used the engine crane to drop the 650-pound assembly onto our cart, then placed the necessary wood supports underneath. Once the engine was stable and in place we constructed our temporary "dashboard," complete with switches for ignition, start and fuel pump.

The test stand is taking shape. Our primary consideration is that the engine is on a stable base for our testing.

Ok, we're ready to start her up...

We were pleased when, after connecting battery and fuel, the engine started on the first crank!

T-Bird Car Restoration Project - Part 4 - Return to Page 1