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This was only a few years ago (about 5) and I should have known better. I live in toronto and was supposed to be going to a friends place in Waterford Conneticut in a week. My daily driver just tossed its timing belt and bent a bunch of valves. Crapity.
I had a very sweet 66' Pontiac Parisienne Convertable. Black on black, and lowered, rolling on chevy rallies. This is a canadian car so its built on an impala frame and driveline. The 350 in the car is tired and burns more oil than gas, and the powerslide slips a like a stooge on a banana peel.
I needed a plan. The Pontaic 'vert would be awesome to take, but the engine/trans were making death noises. My daily had decided to commit suicide, and my only other car - a 69' dart - was in many pieces.
A chance ebay encounter and we started formulating a plan around a case of beer. Never formulate plans around beer.
1 $200 ebay rusty 83' Monte Carlo with a mildly built 350/TH350 that is missing a carb and HEI, but supposedly runs great + 1 sweet looking 66' Pontiac with a motor on its last legs + 4 days left on the auction = just enough time to get the engine in and leave on this road trip in style.
Did I mention that there were 4 days left in the auction? And that I had little money? Yeah...
After much biting of nails and a last minute snipe attempt, I get the Monte Carslo for a grant total of $250.
We can pick up the car the next afternoon. Ok...2.5days left for the engine swap - no problem.
I grab the carb for the Dart, yank the HEI from the ailing 350 in the pontiac and take off to nearly Oakville to get the rolling ruckbucket monte. The guy that owns it is straigh with us, and after dropping on the carb, distributor, and setting the timing, the engine fires right up and run nice. Real nice! It has a mild cam, a performer intake, and headers on it. The trans seems to shift good and apparently has a mild shift kit. The rear frame rails are shot and the body is dead, but it runs and drives awesome! The 45 minute drive home on a borrowed set of plates turned into a 3 hour ordeal due to multiple idiots driving thier cars into stationary opjects in the pouring rain as we drive. Ran flawlessly the entire way however.
Did I mention that we are supposed to be leaving 2 days from now and the monsoon has come?
We pull the Monte into the garage, rig up a way to pull the engine using a come along and the i-beam that holds up the garage cealing, and get the tired engine and trans out. We only make 1 exxon valdez worthy spill and get the engine on the ground, and the transmission under the bench.
Out goes the 66' into the rain. We decide to clean up the thick gunge in the engine compartment. A can of easy off, and left the rain wash it off. Cleaned it right up and looked sweet with no effort.
In comes the Monte. It takes us a bit longer to get this one apart because the headers were welded to the exhaust pipes, and a few other gotchas like that. We called it a night at midnight with the Monte gutted - its engine and trans sitting on the floor, still together as a unit.
The next day, we start again at 8am. With a little luck we can just drop this sucker in and be onthe road for 12 noon. Its only a 10 hour drive. The engine and trans drops right in, except for the part where be lowered it a tad too much and banged the flexplate off of the rad support. The everything is bolted up and wire up. The hood is on and we are ready to fire this bad boy up. Turn the key and....nothing.
Several hours of wiring work commences. Seems that the oven cleaner degreased everything and also ate the crap our of some of the wiring that was a little iffy. Around 5pm the car lights off with a road and we celebrate our triumph. A quick drive around the block - nothing falls off. And we load up the car to leave on this fine friday night. We decide to be cautious and take the large floor jack and my track tool box along in the cavernous trunk. Its even stopped raining - the storm has passed.
By 5:30 we are on our way - top down. We notice one minor thing, a small vibration at highway speeds. Somewhere around 2 hours into the trip wear hear what sounds like a rock hitting the underside of the car, and think nothing of it. Just after 3 hours we hear it again as we cross teh US/Canada Boarder. We make it to the first gas station and stop as another one of those funny 'tink' sounds comes from the car. A quick check of the guages say there is nothing wrong except for the gas guage on 'E'. We fill up the beast and fire her back up. She leaps back to life with a touch of the key! I slide the shifter back down into gear and give the old girl some gas. The engine revs up, but nothing else happens. She doesn't move. Dead.
Its around 9ish at night and its dark out, and we are at some little podunk gas station in the middle of nowhere on I81. The attendant is yelling at us for blocking the pumps. We were the only ones there....but we dutifully push the car over under some other lights and jack the car up to take a look. After sliding under the car with the engine running I see the issue. The engine ishappily spinning, but the torque converter isn't. The flexplate looks slightly bent and can be seen wobbling as the engine runs. This wobbling has backed out all three of the converter bolts until they fell out. It must have happened when be banged the engine/trans off of the core support. Damn.
After a little thinking, and looking through the old tool box, I notice the brand new package of grade 8 ARP header bolts I had purchased for the 340 in my dart. Check them out - they are exactly the right size and thread for the converter bolts! The heads had to be filed down a little to clear everything, but I had a file and within a half hour we had 3 bolts that would work fine. Too bad there was no locktite to be found....oh well. At least we are off. We can probably find some locktite as a truck stop or something. It took four hours for the bolts to work themself loose, so we should be able to get an hour or tow without a problem.
We stop and hour later and check and jack up the car. The bolts are all about a half turn loose. We tighten them up, and away we go again. Another hour and they are a half turn loose again. Well, we are on I90 heading east and its starting to rain. We decide to wait until we see a rest stop with some sort of roof so we can check the bolts again. At the two hour mark we hear another one of those distinct "tink" sounds as we pull into a nice bright rest area with a nice big roof. A quick check shows two bolts almost out, and one missing. Un oh, Raggy...
Out comes the file and a header bolt. We tighten them all up again, and try a bit of silicone sealer as a thread locker.
Its now a monsoon. Again. We end up driving at 45mph because the rain is so bad and the top leaks right into our laps. The wicked rain is travelling sideways due to the gale force winds and finding its way past the top seal on top of the windshield. After 2 hours we find a truck stop and stop to check the bolts. They are about a half turn loose. A quick fill up, and tightening the bolts and we are on our way into conneticut in the worst rainstorm I have ever seen....
A few more stops to tighten the bolts, and an entire night of driving at 40 mph, finds us just before down and the highway we are on in Waterford flooded. After some checking by throwing a few rocks into the newly formed lake, we decide the fast lanes are shallowest and the best chance ad fjording. As we creep through the shoulder with the windows open watching the water reach nearly a foot deep, a brand new honda comes flying into the water at 55mph in the middle lanes. As the tsunami he created washes over our car and into the open windows, we get soaked. But at least we find out that we made the correct decision. It is deeper towards the slow lanes. The honda is stuck in the middle of the late and we creep past it and get out of the water. The A-hole in the car actually has the balls to ask us if we will back up into the water, tie a rope to his submerged honda, and pull him out with our 'ol junker'.
We just flip him off and let him figure out how to get his drowned car out of the lake.
Another quick check of the bolts and we are going up into the hills to my friends farm. Its dawn when we get there and its too early to wake them. We don't even know if we are at the right place because the address and directions are real hard to read when soaked by a hondo plowing into a lake.
After a few hours of sleep in the swampy smelling car, we get a tap on the window, and its my friend Min, smiling at us...it was a good trip after that.
I had a very sweet 66' Pontiac Parisienne Convertable. Black on black, and lowered, rolling on chevy rallies. This is a canadian car so its built on an impala frame and driveline. The 350 in the car is tired and burns more oil than gas, and the powerslide slips a like a stooge on a banana peel.
I needed a plan. The Pontaic 'vert would be awesome to take, but the engine/trans were making death noises. My daily had decided to commit suicide, and my only other car - a 69' dart - was in many pieces.
A chance ebay encounter and we started formulating a plan around a case of beer. Never formulate plans around beer.
1 $200 ebay rusty 83' Monte Carlo with a mildly built 350/TH350 that is missing a carb and HEI, but supposedly runs great + 1 sweet looking 66' Pontiac with a motor on its last legs + 4 days left on the auction = just enough time to get the engine in and leave on this road trip in style.
Did I mention that there were 4 days left in the auction? And that I had little money? Yeah...
After much biting of nails and a last minute snipe attempt, I get the Monte Carslo for a grant total of $250.
We can pick up the car the next afternoon. Ok...2.5days left for the engine swap - no problem.
I grab the carb for the Dart, yank the HEI from the ailing 350 in the pontiac and take off to nearly Oakville to get the rolling ruckbucket monte. The guy that owns it is straigh with us, and after dropping on the carb, distributor, and setting the timing, the engine fires right up and run nice. Real nice! It has a mild cam, a performer intake, and headers on it. The trans seems to shift good and apparently has a mild shift kit. The rear frame rails are shot and the body is dead, but it runs and drives awesome! The 45 minute drive home on a borrowed set of plates turned into a 3 hour ordeal due to multiple idiots driving thier cars into stationary opjects in the pouring rain as we drive. Ran flawlessly the entire way however.
Did I mention that we are supposed to be leaving 2 days from now and the monsoon has come?
We pull the Monte into the garage, rig up a way to pull the engine using a come along and the i-beam that holds up the garage cealing, and get the tired engine and trans out. We only make 1 exxon valdez worthy spill and get the engine on the ground, and the transmission under the bench.
Out goes the 66' into the rain. We decide to clean up the thick gunge in the engine compartment. A can of easy off, and left the rain wash it off. Cleaned it right up and looked sweet with no effort.
In comes the Monte. It takes us a bit longer to get this one apart because the headers were welded to the exhaust pipes, and a few other gotchas like that. We called it a night at midnight with the Monte gutted - its engine and trans sitting on the floor, still together as a unit.
The next day, we start again at 8am. With a little luck we can just drop this sucker in and be onthe road for 12 noon. Its only a 10 hour drive. The engine and trans drops right in, except for the part where be lowered it a tad too much and banged the flexplate off of the rad support. The everything is bolted up and wire up. The hood is on and we are ready to fire this bad boy up. Turn the key and....nothing.
Several hours of wiring work commences. Seems that the oven cleaner degreased everything and also ate the crap our of some of the wiring that was a little iffy. Around 5pm the car lights off with a road and we celebrate our triumph. A quick drive around the block - nothing falls off. And we load up the car to leave on this fine friday night. We decide to be cautious and take the large floor jack and my track tool box along in the cavernous trunk. Its even stopped raining - the storm has passed.
By 5:30 we are on our way - top down. We notice one minor thing, a small vibration at highway speeds. Somewhere around 2 hours into the trip wear hear what sounds like a rock hitting the underside of the car, and think nothing of it. Just after 3 hours we hear it again as we cross teh US/Canada Boarder. We make it to the first gas station and stop as another one of those funny 'tink' sounds comes from the car. A quick check of the guages say there is nothing wrong except for the gas guage on 'E'. We fill up the beast and fire her back up. She leaps back to life with a touch of the key! I slide the shifter back down into gear and give the old girl some gas. The engine revs up, but nothing else happens. She doesn't move. Dead.
Its around 9ish at night and its dark out, and we are at some little podunk gas station in the middle of nowhere on I81. The attendant is yelling at us for blocking the pumps. We were the only ones there....but we dutifully push the car over under some other lights and jack the car up to take a look. After sliding under the car with the engine running I see the issue. The engine ishappily spinning, but the torque converter isn't. The flexplate looks slightly bent and can be seen wobbling as the engine runs. This wobbling has backed out all three of the converter bolts until they fell out. It must have happened when be banged the engine/trans off of the core support. Damn.
After a little thinking, and looking through the old tool box, I notice the brand new package of grade 8 ARP header bolts I had purchased for the 340 in my dart. Check them out - they are exactly the right size and thread for the converter bolts! The heads had to be filed down a little to clear everything, but I had a file and within a half hour we had 3 bolts that would work fine. Too bad there was no locktite to be found....oh well. At least we are off. We can probably find some locktite as a truck stop or something. It took four hours for the bolts to work themself loose, so we should be able to get an hour or tow without a problem.
We stop and hour later and check and jack up the car. The bolts are all about a half turn loose. We tighten them up, and away we go again. Another hour and they are a half turn loose again. Well, we are on I90 heading east and its starting to rain. We decide to wait until we see a rest stop with some sort of roof so we can check the bolts again. At the two hour mark we hear another one of those distinct "tink" sounds as we pull into a nice bright rest area with a nice big roof. A quick check shows two bolts almost out, and one missing. Un oh, Raggy...
Out comes the file and a header bolt. We tighten them all up again, and try a bit of silicone sealer as a thread locker.
Its now a monsoon. Again. We end up driving at 45mph because the rain is so bad and the top leaks right into our laps. The wicked rain is travelling sideways due to the gale force winds and finding its way past the top seal on top of the windshield. After 2 hours we find a truck stop and stop to check the bolts. They are about a half turn loose. A quick fill up, and tightening the bolts and we are on our way into conneticut in the worst rainstorm I have ever seen....
A few more stops to tighten the bolts, and an entire night of driving at 40 mph, finds us just before down and the highway we are on in Waterford flooded. After some checking by throwing a few rocks into the newly formed lake, we decide the fast lanes are shallowest and the best chance ad fjording. As we creep through the shoulder with the windows open watching the water reach nearly a foot deep, a brand new honda comes flying into the water at 55mph in the middle lanes. As the tsunami he created washes over our car and into the open windows, we get soaked. But at least we find out that we made the correct decision. It is deeper towards the slow lanes. The honda is stuck in the middle of the late and we creep past it and get out of the water. The A-hole in the car actually has the balls to ask us if we will back up into the water, tie a rope to his submerged honda, and pull him out with our 'ol junker'.
We just flip him off and let him figure out how to get his drowned car out of the lake.
Another quick check of the bolts and we are going up into the hills to my friends farm. Its dawn when we get there and its too early to wake them. We don't even know if we are at the right place because the address and directions are real hard to read when soaked by a hondo plowing into a lake.
After a few hours of sleep in the swampy smelling car, we get a tap on the window, and its my friend Min, smiling at us...it was a good trip after that.
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