Time to start demanding a discount on that transport fee!!!

Well folks, Monday night and still no car. The hauler had an excuse from last Thursday, but the main hauler said it would be delivered today. Today only has 2 hours and 15 minutes left in it. Am I getting worried? YES!

Well I am about 90% done with prepping the engine for paint. I removed the throttle linkage so I could gain access to the back of the head for rust removal.

Here are the current pics. I just have a little grease in the bottom ribs areas where I can't get a die grinder in there. I will have to get in there with a screw driver. The engine here has been given a coat of Jasco prep and primer. Which is basically a rust convertor. This was needed to neutalize the rust that the wire brush could not get out of the tight spaces and cast grain. The black and white blotches on the block are from the rust convertor doing its job. You can also set the white residue on the frame, that is from the Jasco.

I will make one more pass with the wire brush after the Jasco is completely dry, and then wipe the entire engine down with thinner. Then it should be ready for paint.

In the pics you can also see the 288 head that is on my 327 block. I guess the 288 heads do not have the Thunderbolt stamping on them.

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JoeH -

You wrote:

Quote:
However, I can't get the math to work with the numbers you specified. A 1-49/64" plug is 0.515625 larger than a 1-1/4" plug - making it a bit more than a tight fit.

Please clarify, as I don't wanna make a wrong guess as to what you meant.

In a V8, a error often made nowdays is to install the common 1&1/4" freeze plugs, when the correct size is
1&49/64". The extra .0156" does make a difference in the tightness of the fit.

Joe H

We I managed to get more work done today on the '54. I was finally able to get the manifolds removed from the car. One problem I had was that the inner two studs twisted out of the block. The nut was basically welded onto the stud. No amount of PB Blaster made a difference. I have been spraying those nuts for days. Perhaps the fact they are the ones that get the most heat from the exhaust collector makes them such a pain.

The bad thing about those nuts is that they are in such an inaccessible area that I couldn't get an impact, or even a normal socket wrench on them. Even my gear wrenches would not fit in there. I had to use a normal box-end wrench and plenty of braun. Too bad you can only have less that a 1/4 turn of wrench play. It took me forever.

The threads on the studs look pretty good except for the last 1/4" of the stud.

A little bit more degreasing on that side of the block and a some sanding with a wire cup on my die grinder and I should be all set for when the paint arrives.

I ordered some high-temp primer to use on the non-cast surfaces (timer cover, waterpump blacking plate, value covers, etc). I also bought a couple cans of high-temp cast gray for the manifolds.

I made a trip to Harbor Freight today so I picked up a few things I needed. Their blue latex gloves are the best, so I go through them pretty quickly. They also had the Mityvac Brakes Bleeder/Vacuum testers on sale. So I picked one of those up. I figure I can use it to test my vacuum advance and other things. Plus they have the cheapest wire cup brushes with 1/4" shaft.

Living 1/2 mile for the store makes it very nice when you need something quickly.

None of my plugs are leaking at the moment. But I just going to remove the current ones so I can get as much rust as possible out of the inside of the engine. I am also going to pull the water pump so I can clean out the distribution tube also.

Any ideas on the correct plug size to get?

I need to pick up two brass freeze plugs to block off the exhaust and preventing those gases from traveling thru the intake manifold. It takes a couple of minutes to warm up the engine, but after that no problem. I block them off so my nice bronze manifold doesn't turn black.

Go to any Cadillac dealer and ask the nice man behind the parts counter for "cooling system treatment tablets" These are the miracle pill of the 80s still in use today.
They are really just ground ginger root, compressed into a horse pill. GM reluctantly began offering these in the early 80s after introducing their HT-4100 "wet sleeve" V-8, the predecessor of the Norstar and such. They were faced with catastrophic returns for coolant going everywhere it shouldn't, were trying all kinds of sealing compounds from Dow (which required complete disassembly to install) and were losing the battle when an experienced dyno mechanic, an old school wrench told the young engineers to "put some ginger root in it"--they laughed, kept on trying the next technological miracle, dealer reports kept multiplying. The mechanic went and got some ginger root, ground it up, put it in a test car (one of the many that were piling up daily) and VIOLA! the problem went away. The green engineers couldn't believe their eyes, tested the S__t out of that car and it held. The next week GM was the no.1 consumer of ginger root, cranking out horse pills to ship to the dealers. They put two in each engine, one per side at the Livonia engine plant.
I put one in each cooling bank of every engine I rebuild, and no problems. If you have a freeze plug leak after rebuilding it will stop (permanently) after about 15 minutes of running at temp.

I guarantee you it will be the best $6 you will ever spend.
One week after you start using the pills you can open the radiator and see no evidence of them ever having been there, no coating the rad core, robbing efficiency.


Check it out

The trick with any and all freeze plugs is to coat the backside that contacts water with a nice thin coat of black RTV silicone. I've done this on every engine I've worked on that I had to remove the freeze plugs. This seals them up, and resists corrosion. Also, I use brass freeze plugs exclusively. I've never had a problem with them, ever.