Bringing it back to factory specs!

[resq302]

solid spacer previously had been painted black along with the fan at the same time. Paint stripped and RPM applied to prevent oxidation.



intake manifold paint stripped and then blasted to remove any flash rust after the paint stripping. I was lucky enough to have to remove maybe 2 coats of the recent street hemi orange, 2-3 heavy coats of red paint on the engine, and even got to see the original color of the factory applied street hemi orange. After the intake was cleaned, a coat of primer was applied to prevent flash rusting again and should have street hemi orange applied tomorrow.



date code of 7-3-68 in line with the build date of the car.





poor picture of the date coding on the original radiator but I think it was something like 276 8 which is the 276th day of 1968.





Date coding on pass side exhaust manifold. Sept. 16th, 1968



Pass. side exhaust manifold. This is what the driver side exhaust manifold looked like prior to me blasting it and repainting it.



This is what the driver side exhaust manifold looks like now! driver side exhaust manifold blasted and painted with VHT Nu Cast iron paint. Excellent product!

 

[george68hemirr]

nice job.....looks great

 

[resq302]

thanks. Still a long road ahead but making lots of progress.

 

[george68hemirr]

it all takes time....dont rush it....she will be like brand new when shes done

 

[resq302]

With all the attention to detail, I don't plan on rushing it. I cant wait to see the finished product.

 

[resq302]

master cylinder all cleaned up and ready to be bolted up to the power brake booster



Original radiator stripped, pressure tested, and also flow tested. Dated 246th day of 1968. Rad shop said the 2 row 053 rad is spec'd to flow 18 gals/min. Ours tested at flowing just under 20 gals/min.

before:



after:









Pass side exhaust manifold dated 9/16/68. Lightly blasted and revealed some stubborn paint which did not want to remove that easy. Appears to be factory paint from when the engine was painted which backed onto the exhaust manifold and turned whitish.











Original harmonic balancer, dated 256th day of 1968.

 

[resq302]

Fan restored and "ENGINE SIDE STAMP" reapplied.

Before:







After:

 

[Budnicks]

doing a great job keep up the great work... you'll be driving a beauty in no time

 

[resq302]

Thanks. Its coming. The sad thing is that I won't be doing most of the driving (if any) in it. This is Dad's car. I'm just helping out doing the work on it.

 

[Budnicks]

Thanks. Its coming. The sad thing is that I won't be doing most of the driving (if any) in it. This is Dad's car. I'm just helping out doing the work on it.

Ok you'll be "riding" in that beauty in no time...LOL... the good son

 

[resq302]

Not really. If anything, it will most likely be Mom riding with Dad. I typically take my charger wherever we go to shows. Mom typically takes her Chally vert. What can I say..... its a family affair! lol

 

[resq302]

Before pics of the underside condition of the engine.






Engine ID pad (will repaint once I get other stuff bolted back up.)



In the previous pic, there is a B that is stamped under the front part of the valley pan. Also this sideways 1 is stamped on the driver side cyl. head. Also this 2 I or upside down T in the center of the driver side head.





Also came across this 242 written in red paint marker on the tail shaft of the tranny covered under 44 years of grease!



making progress on the top end!



Notice the lack of paint on the back side of the fuel pump. Paint would never have gotten there from it being painted after it was mounted on the engine. (yes, I know the engine mount hardware is not supposed to be painted. I'll tackle that later!)

 

[MsBeep]

Great pictures! My wiper pivot gaskets are not showing up like yours ( probably due to previous dash R & R ) but at least the factory used the red nuts and oxide primer in my car also.

 

[Rocket]

What's the best way to paint the letters on the switch plate? Did you use gloss black for the panel itself?

I also restored the faded white metal switch plate that goes in the lower paded dash. A little black paint and some flat white paint for the letters and wa-lah!

Before:




After:

 

[resq302]

The switch plate was more of a semi gloss or satin sheen. The lettering I used a flat paint brush and used just a very little bit of paint. I have also heard of people dabbing an eraser in the paint and kind of stamp like dabbing the eraser onto the raised letters.

 

[resq302]

Well, we had a little set back. We were certainly lied to by the seller / broker that this engine was rebuilt. I look at it as a blessing in disguise that when doing some engine clean up and part removal to clean and paint, I ended up unbolting the oil dipstick tube and ended up breaking off the part of the tube where it flares out right at the point where it enters the block. Figuring that the easiest method of removal would be to knock it out from the bottom up and out, I dropped the oil pan. Again, being told that the engine was rebuilt (and the way the thing performed, I would have agreed!) I was never expecting what I found. Keep in mind, we were told that this engine was "rebuilt about 3000 miles ago!". Aside from this, I also found thick light gray sludge in the lower front part of the oil pan. Someone had told me it could have been from break in lube as it seems the timing gears and possibly the cam was changed at one point.







This is what was all clogged up in the screen for the oil sump pick up. I could only imagine what oil starvation was like for the engine! This was all the broken nylon parts from the OE timing gear.



bottom end of the engine which looked pretty good till I pulled two of the main bearings.



orange inspection mark on the sections between the 4th and 5th bearing.



still cross hatch marks on the lower part of the cylinder.











and then I pull the number 2 and number 4 bearing caps.....







and starting to go back together...

 

[Roadcuda]

WOW, good thing you found that out now! Were those the only bad bearings you found, and were you able to replace them in the car?

 

[resq302]

A friend who races told me the bearings can be slid out with a thin screw driver with the crank still in the car. When I asked him how would I know what size they are, he mentioned that the sizing is stamped on the back sides of the bearings. I don't know if I am that adventurous to go and do something like that though. My luck I would get the top half out and never be able to get the top part back in and really be up the creek. If anything, I think I will mention it to Dad and see what he might want to do with it over the winter. At least at that point we would have more time to be messing around with it. Right now, there was no scoring of the journals on the crank and the engine ran perfectly with plenty of power. I'd sure hate to do something and totally mess up the rest of the car show season for Dad.

Anyway, here is what the distributor turned out like after I cleaned it up and applied RPM to it. Pay no attention to the crack in the distributor cap as that was one I had laying around for testing purposes and wanted to protect the points and rotor. Unfortunately, I have nothing really to compare it to as I forgot to take a before pic. I'm sure you can see the condition in previously posted pics of the engine.

What I would love to know is what that larger "67" that is cast into the housing means or stands for. It seems to be every 90* or so on the circumference.

 

[resq302]

so, I was able to get to my Dad's house on Wed to get some more work done on the car. Instead of putting stuff back on the engine like I probably should have done, I decided to tackle the pesky trans leak which was coming from the gear shaft selector seal (apparently, a common problem). While trying to get the seal out gave me a little bit of grief doing it from above, I ended up having to drop the pan and the valve body to get the seal out from the bottom. When doing this, I was able to find out that the selector shaft was scored, most likely from the hardening up of the rubber seal. Similar to what happens to the harmonic balancer. Unfortunately, they do not make a repair sleeve like they do for the balancers. There is an upgraded seal that is a piece of machined aluminum with a rubber o-ring inside the ring and another one on the exterior of the o-ring. This will hopefully conform to the grove.

Anyway, here are some pics of the trans cross piece which appears to have never been out of the car. The paint on the inside of the cross piece as you can see in the pic is a shiny (gloss for lack of a better term) black. As you can see, there was a ton of grease on it from 44+ years of service.



Here is how the nut that holds the trans mount to the cross brace. It appeared a clear zinc at first, however, once I removed it you can see a little of the factory red zinc left where the grease and oil could not get to.





Here is the same nut restored!



What I was shocked to find was that the trans mount that was in the cross brace, was the original factory installed one. Mopar logo, part number, and even a date code of 7/68 on it. The pics are of how it looks after I restored it. Prior to restoring, it was nothing but covered in grease and grime.







pics of the cleaned up, restored bolts from the cross brace and the two bolts that mount the trans mount up to the transmission housing. Once the grease was removed, the bolts were soaked in Evapo-rust to remove the minimal amount of rust, then they were treated to RPM to prevent any future oxidation.

 

[tallhair]

Nice reference photo's. Good job