Projects Gasser on Maui..... but it's just another '55

That's what he has, 1350 joint.
Two things for certain, it makes power and can stick it.

 

The driveshaft is a custom chrome moly unit I had made up at Strange Engineering, and I put 1350 u-joints in it.

LINK to Strange Engineering Driveshafts.....

But I had a yoke for the Doug Nash that I used, and looking closely at that yoke, it looks like there was a crack on one of the ears on the yoke, and it looks like that ear failed and sheared off, taking the u-joint with it. The ears on the front of the driveshaft are pretty beat up, but it looks like I can clean it up, press out the u-joint pieces, put a new u-joint in, find a new front yoke, and at least get back on the road with it....

Will NOT be racing this driveshaft any more, not with those beat up bearing ears on the front end, it is now only a cruising driveshaft, I'll get another one made up later when I have a little more money available.

I could cut off that front piece on a lathe and tig weld in a new one, there's room to shorten the driveshaft a half inch and it will still fit just fine. I don't have any problem getting it straight, the problem is getting the driveshaft balanced after welding it up. There's a weight on it now where Strange Engineering balanced it.

I should have also got the chrome moly yoke from Strange, was trying to save a little money, and look what it got me!!!



I did find out how well my tow bar worked, I had taken it down to the track (Just In Case........ ), so after calling my wife to come down and get me, and pulling out the driveshaft, we hooked up the towbar and it towed home behind our Jeep Liberty just fine!!!



Just trying to get it back on the road for now, will look into something else to run at the track later on....
Aloha,
Willy

 

Well congrats on the first run down the track...I can't wait to do that, hopefully my first trip won't be as eventfull as yours, but it will also be my first trip down the 1320 in this or any car! Then again I'll be lucky to run 13's much less 10's.

Anyway the car is looking great, I really like your work!

 

One thing I can't quite figure out, is that I know that on my one run I made, I went through the lights riding solidly on the rev limiter all the way through, which was set at 5800 rpm, and the time slip said I was doing 110 mph. My calc sheet says that with my 3.50 gears, in fifth at 1:1, with 28" tall tires, I should have been doing 138!!!

I rechecked it online at the Richmond site ( http://www.richmondgear.com/101032.html ), which gave me the same numbers!

What the heck, was I slackin' off and never shifted to fifth? And went through the lights on the rev limiter in fourth? My calcs show that in fourth (1.24 gear ratio) that would be just about right (111 mph), and the Richmond calc. shows the same.... (use 3.5 x 1.24, or 4.34 for the rear gear ratio on the Richmond calculator)....

Dang, am I gettin' to be a space cadet or what? Looks like I plumb fergot to shift one more time when the shift light came on....
Yeee Hawww
Willy

 

How old are you????????? I forget things all the time!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Stan
Great looking 55' Gasser. Have fun!

 

great thread....

 

This machine is looking KILLER man!

 

A young 70, how's that? And still riding my Panheads and racing down at the track.... Now that I'm finally retired, I can go at it full time. Well, except for the wife's "honey-do" list!!! Still getting out in the waves too, although if it gets more than head high, I head for the beach these days.....

 

First a family trip to the mainland for a couple of weeks, then came home to find my new driveshaft waiting for me, put it in and went for a test drive. Hooked up the A/F logger to see what's happening at WOT on a deserted piece of back road. Started that run and the motor quit. No spark. Found that the distributor gear had sheared off!!!



Cleaned up the motor inside as best I could, fresh oil and filter, and put on a bronze dist. gear that I had ordered, and it came in the mail after the races were over for this month!

Now there's a vacuum leak somewhere, the idle went up from 900 to 2,000 and it doesn't respond to tweaking the carbs, so now I gotta go look for that and fix it!

I suspect a gasket leak under the blower, as I observed a slight amount of fuel leaking out at one corner when I flooded it trying to start it after putting on the new dist. gear and didn't have the timing right yet....

Tightened down the blower bolts but it's still there, so will check it with propane gas to see if it sucks any through that gasket at idle (still good vacuum at idle, it sucks 17"!!), if it speeds up it should confirm that!

In the meantime I'm working on my '55 Chevy pickup that I converted to a 4x4 with an Olds 455 for power, ten years ago. Steering needs a rebuild and modification to stop a bump steer problem, so am also working on that now. Have a couple pages on that if you're interested:
(LINK to my '55 4x4 Chevy truck pages....)

Gotta run, lots to do, and yup, it's still fun to do it......
Aloha,
Willy

 

When it stripped the dist. gear and backfired, it did blow a leak in the gasket under the blower, so it's now pulling in air at vacuum......

Been working with CompCams to try to find a solution for the dist. gear wear problem, they asked me for some other info on my motor build, I sent it to them, still haven't heard back from them. Might call them and try to find out if they can help me with this dist. gear failure problem.

In the meantime, since I have to replace that blower gasket anyway, I am going to pull the motor and strip it down. Since I did the initial balance job on the internals, I have changed the flywheel and the rods, and now have a pretty good vibration I don't like. Will be redoing the balance job and see if I can't get rid of that vibration.

Always something...
Willy

 

The vibration issue has been bothering me a lot, so finally decided to strip it down and re-balance it. The vibration starts about 3,000, so on the street it has not been a major issue, but I'm not going to run it hard on the track until I get that taken care of....

Have been up in the Pacific NW visiting family, first a wedding, then a family reunion, spending the Fourth of July with the grandkids, so haven't been home much to work on the gasser....

And I've been working on my '55 Chevy half ton pickup 4x4 (LINK to that project) every chance I could, so been pretty busy....

But started pulling it apart when I got back home, man that's hard, I just put it together and now I'm pulling it apart again?

The only machine shop I would trust to do a good job of re-balancing this motor is on Oahu, so I have to strip the motor and crate up the rotating parts, and ship them off, a royal PITA....

But, I want to feel free to run this motor hard once in awhile, and feel like it will stay together, so I know I have to do this....

LINK to the "Disaster Page" (hopefully not!)
More Later....
Aloha,
Willy

 

Pulled the motor yesterday, now to strip it down and get it balanced!
Aloha,
Willy
LINK to more pix....

 

Spent today breaking down the blown olds short block. Just have to pull the crank and separate the pistons from the rods. And I started cleaning the blower heads, (expertly ported by Johnny here on Maui), to put them on the 4x4 55 truck. Olds 455 there, it will like the increased air flow. Can always run more pulley if needed on the gasser. In fact I have 'em on the shelf, a 34 and a 38, am running a 36/36 combo at the moment.

Pix soon, been pretty busy....
Willy

 

Got the motor torn down, the parts washed up nice and clean, and packed up to ship to Oahu for balancing. Going to do that next week.

Those rich running Mighty Demon 650's, which I finally got tuned down through a long succession of ever smaller jets, are still running way rich on the idle circuits, even with the four corner idle adjustment screws turned nearly all the way in, 1/2 turn out now. Got to upsize the air bleeds and downsize the idle fuel.

The inside of the motor was black with carbon, the pistons cleaned up nicely with a green scrubber in my solvent tank, halfway there in this pic:


Put the ported heads I was running on the blower motor on the 455 for my truck, and the "stock" Edelbrock heads will go on this motor when I reassemble it....

LINK to more pix....

More later,
Aloha,
Willy

 

Yesterday I took the motor's internal parts to Oahu for balancing. Unfortunately I forgot my camera, so had to use my cell phone, pix came out blurry, but it's all I got....

The front end of the crank was wayyyy out of spec, too heavy with those heavy rods in there, so had to take a bunch of weight off of the front counterweights, and some out of the rear counterweight. It took awhile, remove some weight, reassemble, spin and measure, and take some more weight off.

We could never be sure exactly how much weight we were removing, so we had to "sneak up" on it a little at a time. At the end we got the balancing within half a gram of perfect zero. Now to reassemble the parts and see if we were able to settle this motor down. It should do the trick, it's pretty obvious why I had such a bad vibration in this motor, but I've learned never to try to predict what these old dinosaurs are going to do when they get "hot rodded".....

Here's one shot of the crank being spun to check the balance factor....

LINK to more pix....

There is a counterweight on the back side of that red dampner on the front of the crank, we removed quite a bit of weight from that and it made a big difference.

Will post again after I get it all together....
Aloha,
Willy

 

Finally got the new main bearings and rod bearings delivered, so now putting it back together. Will post some pix when I can....
Willy

 

How did you get from Maui to Oahu for the ballance job? If you flew did you have the crank in carry on baggage? We go to Maui every few years and love it there.

 

It's a bit of a problem, here's a pic of the two wood crates I built, one with cradles inside to bolt down the crank, the other had two flywheels (al. and steel), pressure plate, and my front dampner bolted down in it:


Barge service between the islands all goes through Oahu, takes a week to Oahu, two weeks from Maui to any other "neighbor island". Those two crates weighed a little over 100 lbs each, too heavy to check in w/ airline as "baggage", could do that if they weighed under 50 lbs. Barge is about $50 each, each way for those two crates, so about $200 total. Plus I gotta rent a car on Oahu to pick 'em up and haul 'em from the barge depot to the machine shop. We were able to do all the work in one day, from 9 am to 7 pm, too late to ship 'em back, but a buddy dropped 'em off at the barge for me the next day.

If I had gone air freight, overnite service, it would have cost me about $120/crate each way, nearly $500 that way.

I took the 8 pistons, rods, pins, rings, bearings with me as carry-on when flying over to Oahu, it got strange looks and a thorough inspection from TSA at the airport going over, but on the way back they didn't even look at it. The guy on the xray machine just said, "Oh, you building up a motor?......"

I flew interisland so much when working, that I had a huge amount of miles piled up with the local airline when i retired, so at least I was able to fly over and back on miles, saving a couple hundred that way....

The balance job, some extra work loosening up the piston pin fit, and chamfering the oil holes on the crank and polishing it, cost me $400, I figure it was worth it. The guy on the balance machine was willing to work closely with me on it, and knew what he was doing. He is a perfectionist and took his time closing in on getting the balance factor as close to perfect as he could.

Finding that huge imbalance in the front counterweight on the ATI Rattler and taking the time to pull it off, remove a little weight, put it back and check it, consumed a lot of time. It took 5 cuts to get it real close. Once we got the front imbalance down from 400 grams to 40 grams (same as the rear imbalance) by working on that ATI unit, then we tackled the crank itself and got it down to less than a gram! That was with the steel flywheel. Then we put the aluminum flywheel on and only had to trim about 10 grams out of it to match it up to the steel flywheel. Now I can run either one and it should still be in balance.

We were gonna try and balance the pressure plate, but it was not doweled to the flywheel in one fixed position, and the bolts do not give it a fixed position, it can move around a little as the bolts are tightened down, so we decided not to do any work on that. It is definitely way better than it was, and I'll see how it feels/sounds when I get it running again.

A lot of work, but I think in the long run it will be worth it.

The Edelbrock heads I am using were bought a while ago, and I just found out that Edelbrock recommends heavier valve springs when using roller hydraulic lifters. The flat tappet lifter valve springs I have are 125 lb seat pressure, which is fine for the cam I am using and up to 6000 rpm. If I was using flat tappets! Edelbrock recommends upgrading to 150 lb springs with the roller hyd. lifters, so ordered those springs. They are back ordered, but I can put them in later with the motor assembled, done that before, not a big deal.

Decided to start at the track with the rev limiter set at 5000, and play with the boost and timing to attempt to get my low ten second runs. Don't want to dip into the nines, if the car is even capable of that, as that involves NHRA licensing at our track, and I don't want to get into all that! The chassis is NHRA certified for 8.50, so got that covered. Running 36/36 pulleys now for 5 psi, have 38/36 and 38/34 pulley sets available if I want to run more boost. Want to stay on pump gas and keep it street worthy as much as I can.

The Mighty Demon 650 carbs I am running are a problem too, have them jetted down to pretty good mains and secondaries, but the idle air and fuel feeds are set way too rich, I'm running about 1/2 turn out on the 4 corner screws and below that it won't idle, and it is way fat of gas at cruise conditions up to about 2500 rpm. There are no blanks available from Demon Carbs yet, called them again yesterday, so will just have to pull the ones in there and drill the air bleeds out and solder up the fuel bleeds and redrill them smaller. It's trial and error and a PITA! But the goal is to get it leaned out for cruising, with the four corner screws at 2 to 3 turns out. The A/F mixture can go all the way to 15:1 on cruise as long as I am pulling good vacuum, and this motor pulls 10 to 20 inches vacuum when crusing around.

I tune with an Innovate meter and a broadband O2 sensor in the collector pipe. Right now idle and cruise is at 10 to 11, way, way too fat. WOT above 3000 is running around 13.5 to near 14, about where I want it.

Gotta run, am fitting pistons back in today, then heads and intake, then back in the car, then blower etc etc, a lot of work ahead of me to get some back road tuning in before the track opens up 21-22 this month!
Willy

 

It's going back together, slower than I want, but it's happening.....


More pix here....

Aloha,
Willy

 

Having to clean up as I go, heads, then redo the heads with 300 lb/inch valve springs, instead of the 250's Edelbrock supplies with flat tappet projects. The CompCams roller hyd lifters, Edelbrock recommends the 300 lb/inch springs. Installed seat pressure goes up from 125 lbs to 150 lbs. With a slightly over 0.5 valve lift, the open pressure goes up from about 250 to 300. Let's see how this feels at WOT....
Maybe I can even up the rev limiter a little from 5500? Cam is somewhat mild, but limited at 6,000 might be a fun ride....
Aloha,
Willy

 

OK, quickly put a coupla pix up on photobucket, haven't tried this method before, so lessee how well it works:

Couldn't find my clutch alignment tool, so borrowed one from a buddy, and it worked sweet,
the tranny just clicked right into place....



Easy does it, that's a heavy and slightly tippy load I'm threadin'
into a fairly tight hole there! That 7 qt pan has to clear the front
axle and the sway bar then drop down into place, while putting
the tranny tail into the right place....

That cable is on a come along hooked onto my trailer hitch on my Jeep
as a safety against any tipping. My wife backed the Jeep along side the
cherry picker as I moved the motor into position. The come along
required a couple of tension adjustments as we went, we took our time
and just inched it into place a little at a time, took about an hour all told!



Once I got it in there I discovered the tranny mount was torn in
half, I figure that happened when I tore the front U-joint in half,
as the piece on the drive shaft was jammed in the safety hoop
under the piece that was in the tranny tail end, the safety hoop
was cracked (welded that up), and that's when the trans mount
must have torn open. I didn't spot that until now, and I had driven
it a little after I repaired the driveshaft!!! Scary, glad I didn't do any
"hot roddin"! But the vibration by then was scarin' me and I took it
real easy until I pulled the motor down to fix the vibration!



Got it in there! My local Napa store had another trans mount in stock,
I'm using a th350, '69 Camaro spec as the locator for the tranny mount
that fits this Doug Nash setup I'm running.



Cool! The photo bucket thing worked....
Aloha,
Willy

PS, Still aimin' for the drags this coming Saturday....

 

Oh, they're around, stashed away here and there, not many drive on a daily basis like I try to do. But weekends and Peggy Sue's restaurant in Kihei usually there's a fair number of cars out....

 

I like the 4dr gassers. I always thought it was a cool idea to make a family car haul ass!

 

Once I got the distributor in the right place it started and I got it timed, there are a few problems, coolant leak at the water pump, hope a new gasket and some sealer will fix that. The Olds uses an open back water pump sealed against the flat plate that covers the timing chain. I had not removed the water pump with I pulled the motor apart, just removed the timing chain cover with the pump on it, so don't know why it leaks now, did not before!

There is also a noise from the clutch, when the clutch pedal is all the way out. Depress the clutch pedal a very small amount and the noise goes away, clutch operates normally, drove it around the block a couple of times, everything normal, the vibration is gone, GOOD!!! As long as I depress the clutch pedal ever so slightly that noise is gone.

With that blo bell on there can't really take a look to see what is happening. When I get a chance will crawl under there and check out the free play on the throw out bearing and the clutch arm and see if I can make an adjustment.

The only thing I did was to change out the flywheel from the light weight aluminum one to the heavier steel one. It's possible the steel one is thicker, and has pushed the diaphragm clutch fingers just enough closer to the clutch arm that when the pedal is all the way back the weights on the diaphragm fingers are just barely touching the clutch arm and making that noise.

At least that's what I have come up with thinking it over while watching my buddies down at the track last night! Was not about to take the car down there like it is, so have a month before the next race night to get it right, and drive it a bit to get the rings seated before racing it, probably a good thing!

Motor sounds good and everything drives normally otherwise though, so think I am good to go once I solve that.
Aloha,
Willy

 

Willy, just curious why you took out the aluminum flywheel? I've been thinking of putting one in. I'm having clutch/trans issues now and about to pull it down to see what's going on in there. This is my second Centreforce dual friction clutch to fail (although maybe this time not the clutch, hard to say yet).

I've been following your thread for a long time and in fact drove by your place a couple times in the last few visits, but never see anyone around and don't like to just drop in. We have a condo down in Kihei and spend every March there for the last 35 years or so and we're heading down again at the end of October. Good luck solving your "noise" as well. Bill in Victoria, B.C.

 

I've never run a light weight flywheel before, thought I'd try it and see how it worked. The motor revs up really fast, sounds wicked, but is way easy to stall out on the street if I don't get the rpm just right and slip the clutch just right. Easy to stall, or do an unintentional burnout, not a good thing in heavy traffic! The boys with the blue lights on top take a dim view of that!

So put the heavier steel flywheel in to see if I like that better out on the street. When I balanced the assembly, balanced both the steel and the aluminum to the same specs so I can run either one without affecting the balance job.

PM me when yer here in Oct, maybe we can get together. Oct. 20 is our next race, I fully intend to be running that night!
Willy

 

I hadn't thought about the stalling out, good thought. I run a pretty heavy roller cam and it already wants to stall out when starting out unless I keep the rev's up, so maybe the aluminum isn't for me either. I'm not coming in until the 28th so will miss the drags and leaving before the next set up, so will have to catch them in March when I'm there.

 

Guys....
I crawled under there yesterday so see how the clutch linkage looked at the clutch arm, it was solid tight, couldn't move it at all, not a good sign! There should have been some slack, some "free play", but it felt like the throw out bearing was up tight against the clutch fingers! One thing I don't like about those blow bells is that they enclose everything so thoroughly ya can't see a bloomin' thing inside there!!!

The bore scope was up at my buddy's shop where I am working on the '55 Chevy truck, so went up there and worked on getting that motor (a '70 Olds 455) back together so I can put it back in the truck, and picked up the bore scope. Will take a look at the clutch internals with the scope this morning.

Am tempted to cut a hole in the bottom-back of the blow bell and fab a solid, "bullet proof" cover to put back over the hole, just for occasions like this one!

I'm just really happy I still have the health and interest to enjoy doing this work on my cars, even if it is frustrating at times, but I love solving these challenges and making these things work!
Aloha,
Willy

LINK to my 55 Half Ton page....

 

Bore scope revealed that the clutch arm looks like it might be off center, not completely on the pivot ball, and the throw out bearing looks cocked slightly, hard to tell for sure though! The clutch arm is jammed pretty good, tried to wiggle it around and see if I could get it back on the pivot ball all the way, but no go! Gonna pull the trans and see what's going on in there! Major PITA!

 

Had some time to work on it yesterday:

Removed the driveshaft, shifter and shift rods, blocked the motor up, removed the tranny mount and cross member, backed the tranny bolts back about 1/2" and wiggled the tranny back and tried to realign the throw out bearing and arm, no dice! It was still jammed tight!

OK, pulled that heavy tranny out, laying on my back and using my arms and legs, got it straight out and down and on the ground, a challenge!

Can't see a thing wrong in there, except that the throw out bearing and the arm are in their proper positions and are tight against the clutch fingers. Don't know why it is so tight, looked at as much as I could through that small hole in the blow bell, can't see anything the clutch arm is hitting or jammed against, the pivot ball in in the right position in the arm, the bearing is in the right positon in the fingers of the arm, but it is jammed hard up against the clutch fingers!

Popped the throw out bearing loose, the arm moves around as it should, popped it off the pivot ball, but can't get it out of that blow bell.

When I set it up this time, after centering the clutch and bolting on the pressure plate, and putting the arm and throw out bearing in postition, there was room to put the link in from the Z-bar's lower leg to the clutch arm and to put the spring on. Now, it is to tight I couldn't get the link out of the arm, so don't know what happened between when I assembled it and when I started it up, it's like when I started it up, the clutch settled and the fingers came back and pushed against the throw out bearing, where during setup there had been a 1/4" of "free play", so where'd that go????

It's a mystery to me.....

I'm gonna adjust the pivot ball shorter and put it back together.

See what that does.
Aloha,
Willy