Oregon72 engine rebuild

[Amskeptic]

oooooooh....





Troy you better do what he says, he sounds serious.....

Hey bigguy it loiks like youse may needs a little visitin too HEH? Weeze gots a AFM dealio witchoo? Is dat right? Bigguy?
Itinerant "Help" Desk
"you'll be beggin for help"

[dhoch14]

Posting this in here because both of the stock-dual-carb locals are paying attention to this thread.

There are a couple of '73 Bays at the Pick-N-Pull (formerly U-Pull-It, formerly Rose City Auto Wrecking) on NE Columbia out near St. Johns. One still had the driver-side carb, paper-filter air cleaner and air-injection pump stuff (no linkage), the other I didn't think to check .. was too offended by the wheel-well/bulkhead butchery done for the Cadillac front-bench-seat installation.

There's also a purple-painted Bug of early-'70s vintage (Gypsie, get yerself a fender!), two or three WBX Vanagons, and a 1970 Audi of indeterminate model, engine in that thing looks like a precursor to the Porsche 924 mill...

thread hijack in progres.......

what condition on the Bays in? I might have to head up there if it's worth my time.

end thread hijack

[tristessa]

Depends on what you're looking for. The interiors are mostly stripped, most of the body & mechanical stuff looked to still be there. Fairly straight panels on both of 'em too...

[dhoch14]

Well today is the day that Troy gets to cruise in his new engine with dialed-in carbs....well hopefully.

I'm heading to his place in 15 minutes to get those duals dialed in. I'm studied Colin's notes, jotted down my own, went through the reps in my head, and now it's time to get er done.

Wish us luck. Expect a full write-up by end-of-day. A little freezing rain never hurt anyone right?

-dave

[Oregon72]

Well today is the day that Troy gets to cruise in his new engine with dialed-in carbs....well hopefully.

I'm heading to his place in 15 minutes to get those duals dialed in. I'm studied Colin's notes, jotted down my own, went through the reps in my head, and now it's time to get er done.

Wish us luck. Expect a full write-up by end-of-day. A little freezing rain never hurt anyone right?

-dave

The generous dhoch14 arrived this morning and we both had our game face on. Fully prepped and armed with hand written playbook and multiple printouts from Colin posts and such, we gave it the old college try on the dual carbs. In my opinion, we did well and got it pretty darn close. Could we be a 1/4 turn off on one thing or the other? Possibly.

The test drive resulted in what I would consider to be pretty good power, and realizing that the engine isn't fully broken in yet, I think it will be satisfactory for now. One thing that Dave and I had a bit of difficulty with was determining whether or not there was a drop or rise in RPM when manipulating the "reference" hose for determination of the idle mixture screw adjustment- just really hard to tell, but in the end, I think it will be fine.

A big a-ha moment for me was realizing that all my problems with my initial epic fail carb adjustment attempt stemmed from mistakenly trying to adjust the throttle stop screws with the fast idle cam in effect - big difference there (wheres the emoticon that represents a dumbass rookie move - oh well here's a blackeye )

Big thanks and bus karma goes to Dhoch for taking time out of his weekend to help me out - another IAC member who I'm in debt to (they keep adding up somehow ) I'm in bus carma overdraft no doubt. Thanks so much Dave.

[Amskeptic]

Well today is the day that Troy gets to cruise in his new engine with dialed-in carbs....well hopefully.

I'm heading to his place in 15 minutes to get those duals dialed in. I'm studied Colin's notes, jotted down my own, went through the reps in my head, and now it's time to get er done.

Wish us luck. Expect a full write-up by end-of-day. A little freezing rain never hurt anyone right?

-dave

The generous dhoch14 arrived this morning and we both had our game face on. Fully prepped and armed with hand written playbook and multiple printouts from Colin posts and such, we gave it the old college try on the dual carbs. In my opinion, we did well and got it pretty darn close. Could we be a 1/4 turn off on one thing or the other? Possibly.

The test drive resulted in what I would consider to be pretty good power, and realizing that the engine isn't fully broken in yet, I think it will be satisfactory for now. One thing that Dave and I had a bit of difficulty with was determining whether or not there was a drop or rise in RPM when manipulating the "reference" hose for determination of the idle mixture screw adjustment- just really hard to tell, but in the end, I think it will be fine.

A big a-ha moment for me was realizing that all my problems with my initial epic fail carb adjustment attempt stemmed from mistakenly trying to adjust the throttle stop screws with the fast idle cam in effect - big difference there (wheres the emoticon that represents a dumbass rookie move - oh well here's a blackeye )

Big thanks and bus karma goes to Dhoch for taking time out of his weekend to help me out - another IAC member who I'm in debt to (they keep adding up somehow ) I'm in bus carma overdraft no doubt. Thanks so much Dave.

Good for the both of you. I miss my carbs. I look forward to helping others with theirs.
Colin

[Oregon72]

I took the bus for work today which took me out to McMinnville, down to Monmouth, over to Salem, up I-5 and back to home (about 100 miles in total).

So the engine has about 170 miles on it right now. I'm wondering if it is a bad idea to travel about 250 miles south down I-5 to visit family for the holidays. Is that too long to have sustained highway speeds for this new engine?

[Amskeptic]

I took the bus for work today which took me out to McMinnville, down to Monmouth, over to Salem, up I-5 and back to home (about 100 miles in total).

So the engine has about 170 miles on it right now. I'm wondering if it is a bad idea to travel about 250 miles south down I-5 to visit family for the holidays. Is that too long to have sustained highway speeds for this new engine?

Don't worry about it. Wake everybody up an hour and a half early. Take I-5 South and every once in a while, blow off the interstate and take the parallel road, 99E or any other little frontage type road.
Mix up the driving a bit.
Colin

[Bookwus]

Hiya Troy,

Don't worry about it. Wake everybody up an hour and a half early. Take I-5 South and every once in a while, blow off the interstate and take the parallel road, 99E or any other little frontage type road.
Mix up the driving a bit.
Colin

Yep, absolutely!

You do realize that you have put the motor back in "motoring", don't you? Time to start enjoying now.

[Oregon72]

---- a little over a month has passed since the new engine ----

I have about about 500 miles on it now and I'm on my third oil change and third valve adjustment. I drove the bus to Eugene and back for work on Friday (a little over 200 miles round trip). Seems to be running quite well. On my last tank of gas, I figured I'm getting about 17mpg with mostly highway driving - not super great, but maybe it will get better as the engine continues to settle in.

The valve clearances have increased very slightly at each adjustment - is that normal with the break-in of the new cam and lifters? #4 exhaust seemed a little tight though .004" at this last check which was a bit weird.

Just adjusted the valves this morning and took a nice warm test drive. Afterward, I Pulled #3 and #1 spark plugs just for curiosity to see how Dhoch14 and I did on the mixtures.


Here is #1


Here is #3


Let me know your thoughts.

I do have a very slight oil leak which appears to be coming from the area around the oil pump. Barely enough to make a drop on the concrete. I imagine this could be the rear main seal (at the fan end) or it could be my oil pump. The engine carrier gets wet and a drip develops on the bottom of the case.

[Bookwus]

Hiya Troy,

As I approached 3000 miles on my rebuilds the engines seemed to gradually loosen up and gain more power. I'm a guessin' that, at 500 miles, you still have some running in to do. Assuming that your mixture and balance are OK, I'm also a guessing that you'll see some improvement in gas mileage as well as power.

And those plugs..............Geeez! I would wish that all our spark plugs looked as good as those.

You da, man Troy! Engine builder par excellance!

[Oregon72]

Got a couple thousand miles on the bus now and it seems to be gaining power a bit. Last weekend we went to visit family in So. Oregon (500 mile round trip). On the way back, I calculated my mileage and I was getting 20.19 MPG - WOW!!! Had to redo my math a couple times because I thought there could be no possible way. The bus was mildly loaded with two kids, wife, and a small amount of gear and would cruise easily 65mph with a good bit of pedal still left under foot. Many hills with no need to downshift - just fine in 4th gear.

I'm constantly thinking/worrying/toiling about the health of my cylinder heads and my mixtures - it has become somewhat of an OCD item for me. I think I have the mixtures pretty darn close to right on. Surprisingly, I'm having the most trouble figuring out where to put my central idle mixture at. It could be that one of my other adjustments before the CIM step is messing something up, but I can't seem to get the slight increase in idle with the finger off reference hose no matter what I do. Can't wait to see what Colin thinks come IAC visit time. I'm going from memory here, but I think I'm at around 2.75 turns out from seated on left carb, 3.25 turns out on right carb, with 3.75 turns out on the central idle mixture.

I do have the same couple of mystery oil leaks that have gotten a little bit worse. Nothing huge, but just a little bit annoying.

Here is a pic of my #1 and #3 plugs (one from each side of the engine) which appear to be OK - what do you think -- maybe a little lean? Not really sure? Opinions?

[chitwnvw]

Looking good. I 2nd bookwus's notion that around 3k I really noticed everything smoothing out and slightly better mileage.

[fancy pants]

Sounds like you did everything right, Troy!

[Westy78]

At 20mpg and those plugs it looks like you're pretty much dialed in. Question, did the engine idle at all before you pulled those plugs? That will skew the reading.