Pre-assembly

The long awaited return of my block and heads from the machine shop finally arrived.  My machinist has been in the business for over 30 years.  He only takes projects from people he knows.  I had to have a reference from a friend of a friend.  He had my engine for almost a year.  I finally got to the front of the line and it was worth it.  This guy is old school good.  Very meticulous with a lot of attention to detail.  For example, he wouldn't just bore and hone to spec.  He had to have pistons in hand.  And even though the crank came balanced and my flywheel and harmonic damper were already balanced, he said they haven't been balanced together and made some minor adjustments.

So I put the freeze plugs in along with the oil galley plugs.  Yes, even the hidden one.  I considered drilling a hole in the hidden oil plug to spray oil on the distributor and gear, but decided against it.  I thought if Pontiac engineers thought it was good, then I didn't want to reduce oil pressure to other systems.  It will be much easier to replace a distributor that didn't get enough oil than it would be to replace a crank.

Now there's a thing of beauty!  A freshly machined head with those big Pontiac valves.  Another thing the machinist did was to put steel seats under the valves.  He told me that today's fuels would corrode the lip of the iron around the valve and eventually it would start to leak.  So, he put in steel seats to maintain compression for years to come, at least through my life time.

The next step was to calculate compression.  To do that, I needed the volume of the heads.  A piece of plastic, a syringe, insert a spark plug and fill with water.  These turned out to be 30 cc heads, which is what I guessed.  I measured a couple of combustion chambers to be sure.  After running the calculations, I came up with a compression ratio of 11.2:1  Looks like I'll be running Premium.

 After practicing on some of the old rings, I finally developed a process where I could grind them perfectly square.  There are a lot of YouTube videos and things where people say to only grind one side so you have a factory side that is perfectly square.  I just could not grind one side and keep the ring in a position that would make the grind perfect.

After a lot of trial and error on old rings, and a lot of measuring, I found that if I pushed both ends of the ring into the wheels on my grinder and lined up the side closest to me so that it was barely touching the edge of the crank retaining pin hole, I could get a perfectly square and flat grind every time.

The rings were gapped for a 200 HP shot of Nitrous.  I probably won't run spray to begin with and when I install it, I won't use it all the time.  I called Mahle and the tech guy told me that on my setup, I wouldn't notice any "blow by" when I'm not shooting the juice, with the extra couple of thousandths I had to take off the rings.

I am very confident with my ring filing.  Through this engine building process, I've learned that I have some very minor OCD issues.  I always end up measuring things like the ring gap half a dozen times...on each ring.  File, check, file, check, file check, check, check, check, ya it took forever.  But they are perfect.  I used an old piston to position them in the cylinder squarely for the measurement.

 I filed each ring to fit a specific cylinder, not that it would have made a lot of difference, but I felt better and then I would move to the next cylinder.

 

When I finished, I just left all the rings waiting in their respective cylinders so I didn't have to put them on a peg board or worry about getting them mixed up

The pistons were then assembled, valve notches up and crank chamfers out.  With the wrist pins drenched in assembly lube.  The wrist pins were a "clip in type" instead of a "press in type", lucky for me.  I decided to use the Royal Purple assembly lube.  I read a lot of good about it, got a bottle and it's super slick yet sticky.  When I took this engine apart I found gobs of assembly lube paste in the oil pan and corners of the valve cover area on the heads.  I didn't want that.  So far, I really like the Royal Purple stuff.  We'll see how well it works at startup.

Painting the Engine Compartment

After a week or so of degreasing, another week of wire brushing & sanding, and then a week of degreasing and metal preparation, I was finally able to paint the engine well.  I used POR-15, followed the directions meticulously, and so far, I'm really pleased with the result.

I was pleasantly surprised that it turned to a glass smooth finish even though I put it on with a paint brush.  I did some test pieces that I could beat on and the paint has turned almost like a ceramic.  It's very difficult to scratch, but it will scratch eventually.  I had to use a wire wheel to take it off.

Speaking of taking it off, if you are fast, brake cleaner will dissolve it and get most of it off of the floor or whatever.  However, if you get POR-15 on your skin and don't see it right away, it's there until the skin wears off which can take a couple of weeks.  You don't get it out of clothing.  It cures with humidity so I put a drop in a bucket of water.  Instead of breaking up it turned solid in short order.

I also put in new ball joints all around, new shocks, new brake calipers and new brake lines.  I hooked up the sway bar after it was painted and soon realized that there is no way I would be able to connect it to the frame until there's an engine in there.

Front End Tear Down

It's been a while, but I got word from the machinist that I had risen to the top of the list and my engine will be finished in a couple of weeks.  So, its time to tear down the front end and get all the suspension and steering work done, along with cleaning, sanding and painting the engine well before I install the engine.

The engine has been out for a while.  Now it's time to strip everything else.

Pulled the tranny.  After draining it, I just man-handled it onto the floor, jacked up the side of the car and slid it out.  Doing this project in a home garage is at least twice as much work has having a full shop.

 Ok, so this is new.  I knew the blower motor didn't work.  I wasn't to worried.  I figured it was going to be a wiring issue or something.  Well, apparently, the blower had gone bad once before.  I hadn't noticed the quick and easy method of replacement until the wheel well came out.  Instead of removing the wheel well to get to the fan, the prior owner simply cut a hole in the wheel well, large enough to get the old fan out...then just left it open.  Driving in the rain and snow, did a job on it as the water was flung up from the tire.  The replacement was rusted solid.  I'm deciding between getting a new wheel well or fabricating and "door" that can be bolted and sealed in place in case I ever need to get back in there again.

 Getting close.  Everything is off except for the control arms and the front brace.

 I intentionally left the shock inside the spring until I removed the knuckle and wheel.  That way, as you see above, the spring "chunked" down to extend the bad shock and that was it.  I was then able to unbolt the shock and work it out.  By that time the spring had little tension on it and more fell out on the floor than jumped across the garage into my wife's car or something like that.

Next up?  Take off a few brake lines, the front support the control arms, clean sand and paint.  I'll finally be at a point where I can start putting things together instead of tearing them apart.  That will be a good corner to turn.

Engine Paint Prep

The block is at the machine shop.  I should have the Stroker kit in the next few weeks so, I've started to prep engine parts for paint.  My goal is to have it all ready to paint as soon as I get it so I don't have to deal with the rust that will eventually come.

Here's what the oil pan looked like, after hours of degreasing and scraping off burned on oil.

And now, after stripping, grinding and doing a little dent repair.

The Valley Pan is all shined up now and ready for paint as well.

Engine Disassembly

With the engine out, I took it apart so I can send it to the machine shop.  I'm going to have the machine shop bore out the cylinders to 4.155, the amount required by a stroker kit from Butler Performance.  That will take this 400 up to a 461.

So out came the rockers and then the heads.

I was surprised by the size of the valves.

After taking off the valley pan, I removed the push rods and lifters.

The timing gears and chain.  No wear on the teeth and the chain looked good.

After taking off the timing and the cam plate, I took out the cam.  It looked good, but it's getting replaced.

With the windage tray (a Pontiac pan to prevent oil foam at high rpm's) removed I had access to the dipstick tube, connecting rod caps and main caps.  Off they came.

After taking out the pistons, freeze plugs, oil galley plugs (including the hidden one), the crank shaft and crank bearings, it's ready to go to the machine shop.

Out comes the motor

After spending a couple of weeks disassembling, bagging and cataloging all the engine components...

Out popped the engine.  Lots of room.  No problems.  The only tricky part is the way the headers have to come off as the engine comes out.  It will be even more tricky getting them on as it goes back in and lines up with the tranny at the same time.  (Can't wait.)

 

 Big open hole.

 

 Now comes the clean up.  I'm going to; degrease and repaint everything, replace all the brake, transmission, coolant, fuel, and vacuum lines.  First order of business is to degrease and tear down the engine.  Once I get the heads off, I can see what kind of shape the cylinders are in and measure them to see if there has been a previous rebuild.  If it looks good, I'll only replace the gaskets and seals.  If not, I'll have to do a rebuild.  I don't want to take a chance with a catastrophic failure.  These 400's are too hard to come by.

Front End Mock Up

The first thing I wanted to do on this car was repair the upper grill shown in red below and the lower grill inserts.  All 3 had been damaged in a small fender bender that kinked the bumper up a little and cracked all the plastic and composite.


If I couldn't repair those things then I would have to make a GTO clone out of this car, which I didn't want to do.  1970 was the only year with the beautiful chrome bumper that goes all the way to the top of the grill.  All the other years had grill inserts that are slightly different in size and connections as well, because of that bumper.  Also, the upper grill (because of that bumper design) is different than any other year.  So, I needed to know up front (no pun intended) if the front end was reparable.  It was.


I found that the passenger side clearance light had been weathered and broken.  I couldn't find one as easy as I could repair the old one so I took an old ohm meter connection, stripped the copper insert out of it, cut it, bent it and made a little bulb clamp.  I drilled a hole in the back of the connection, ran a wire through it and soldered on the new clamp.

Then it was just a matter of pulling the wire back through the housing and seating the little clamp.  Here you can see the finished product and the type of bulb that it uses.

The difficult part of the front end installation was making the fitment adjustments of the bumper supports.  There are about 10 variables to work with and a place to adjust all of them.  The bumper and grill on this year of Pontiac is kind of complex in the way it all has to go together and of course, I did it the hard way.  As I was nearing the end I could see that original assemblers had put the entire front end together and then bolted it onto the frame instead of putting it together a piece at a time.  When I pull it all off to paint, that's the way I'll do it.

Upper Grill

Bumper with Lower Grill Inserts

Mock Up Installation

The red paint is just some rattle can stuff I put on there to protect the fiberglass and composite from weathering.  When I'm ready to paint, it will have to be stripped, sanded, primed, etc.  But for now, it's nice to look at and imagine just how cool this year of Lemans really is.