Back on the Road

The very bad day documented in the last post was actually two weeks ago. It took me a while to come up with the courage to post the engine failure.

The good news is that the car is now ready for the road. How did I manage that in two weeks? Was the damage to the engine easily repaired? Unfortunately, probably not. I swapped back in the car’s original motor, which I had in the garage. Fortunately, I had resisted the temptation to strip it down and study its internal parts so it was more or less ready to go.

It took about eight hours to remove the damaged engine and similar amount of time to have the old one back in the car. Experience helped, but this time all of the nuts and bolts came out quickly. During the first engine swap, for example, I spent a lot of time removing and replacing  broken exhaust manifold studs. I also replaced the universal joints on the driveshaft in the first swap and of course didn’t need to repeat this repair.

But all did not go according to plan. On its first test, the original engine would not run properly. Cylinders #3 and #4 were not contributing to output, or more simply they were not working. Testing revealed a large air leak at the intake manifold. Tightening the bolts didn’t help, so I decided to remove and reinstall the intake and exhaust manifolds hoping that I had something askew. The short answer is that this solved the problem, and the engine is now running properly. The long answer will be the subject of an upcoming post.