Sunday morning in the fields outside of Bowling Green, Kentucky…frost melting back into dew, a deer cautiously grazing near a fencerow, birds that are trying to make last-minute efforts to fatten up before their big trip South getting after the worms and seeds left over by the last of the harvests. Church-goers make their way to their respective pews in quiet, formal manners. It’s a quaint picture, one that should be on a postcard. And at a quarter till noon, that peaceful silence was absolutely and utterly shattered by a scream of triumph:

“It’s About F***ING TIME!!!”

On September 14th, 2014, just a few months after I started writing here full-time, I started a tear-down on the 1983 Imperial and it’s 323ci small-block engine to see two things: one, how badly I smoked the transmission and two, to see just how screwed I got on the engine rebuild I had paid for that had taken most of 2011 and part of 2012 to finish, back when that engine was powering my Dodge Mirada. The answers: the A904 automatic was more roasted than the Thanksgiving turkey I’ll be nibbling on later in the month, courtesy of a failed kickdown setup, and as far as the engine goes, no small-block Chrysler should be sporting a quarter-inch thick layer of burnt oil on top of the pistons after maybe ten thousand miles. I got hosed, pure and simple. But live and learn…after the period of disgust over those finds, I tried to big-block the car. You can go back and read the writeups if you want, but I’ll spare you the trouble: the 400ci mill I bought only had one useable part, the bare block itself. Thanks to Eric Rood, last year I gained a 360 and A999 automatic that was supposed to power a Dodge Magnum he wanted to run in the 24 Hours of LeMons…right up until the crispy-crunchy B-body Mopar snapped in half at the T-tops. The engine needed a build, and over the course of this year, I’ve gone from a bare block to the car idling itself into the garage under it’s own power with minimal help. Mahle Motorsports tossed in an engine rebuild kit and gaskets, and I had to source an oil pan from Milodon. And soon, I’ll have to source a new set of headers, but the rest of it? That’s the intake and carburetor from the old engine. The distributor is made up of one that Rood sent in the parts buckets and the old distributor. The front dress brackets are all from about five different cars that I’ve worked over in the last few years. And it all came together and runs as smooth as I dare dream. Yes, that’s happiness. It’s a great feeling of accomplishment seeing the engine light off the first time…that was the one last item that I was shit-scared about. I’ve heard horror stories of the cam getting wiped out on the first start, lifters sticking, oil filters that look like a unicorn left a sparkly sample inside…all of it. So here’s the final rundown on what led up to my neighbors getting several solid earfuls of noise:

The last update was centered solely on the oil pump drive shaft…also known as “this geared bastard”. Shortly after I wrote up that report, I had an epiphany I didn’t want: that shaft has to be properly timed to the distributor and the engine. Last report, I had sent this thing home with a hammer, large socket and extension. It wasn’t coming out with a shop magnet and a screwdriver working that slot. Anger grew. Resentment grew. The amount of times I searched for “Dodge truck 1972-93” on Craigslist grew. And I was just about to throw in the towel, drag Raven onto a flatbed trailer, and proceed to let Tony DeFeo perform some kind of voodoo rites in order to peel that thing out of there without harming the camshaft. At the last second, my wife’s uncle stepped in and offered to try to get it out while I spent a day with my wife for her birthday. I tossed him the keys to the shop and told him to have fun. In a couple of hours, he had it out with no harm to any other surface inside, using what I can best describe as a transmission shift linkage that has a hooked end and a set of Vise-Grips latched onto the rod for dear life. Crisis averted…now what?

Something that isn’t mentioned in any diagram of building your first Mopar LA block is the importance of proper lube. Not pre-lube, not break-in lube…no. I had put some motor oil on the gear the first time around and it wouldn’t mesh for the world. This time I smeared in some hub bearing grease on the gear (it was all I had in the shop, don’t judge too harshly) and the gear fell in like a charm. Your lesson for the day, folks: never forget the lube, you can’t have enough, and use the thickest stuff you can find! After building up two distributors (one had a shaft bushing that was falling apart), we wired the car up, raided the battery from the Cadillac limo, and primed the carburetor. After a quick prayer to not let the car burn down, I hit the key. The engine spun…but didn’t kick. Tried again after a timing adjustment…nothing. Pulled a plug and grounded it out, then cranked…nada. Not good. Looked over the whole engine bay and found that in my haste, I forgot to ground the MSD box. Stupid move, easily fixed. Another crank finally showed spark, and once the plug was threaded back in…

Sorry for the horrible cell phone video, but there was no way you were going to get an update about the car running without actually hearing it run. Keep in mind that the exhaust on the Imperial in this video is stock exhaust manifolds that have extension pipes with no gaskets in between and the crossover tubes missing…there’s exhaust leaks a-plenty here. But from the second the gasoline hit the carburetor, the engine fired right off, idled, and gave not one ounce of trouble.

In fact, outside of some tidying up issues underhood, the only problems we have with the car involve a radiator that’s leaking a bit from the petcock, a charging system that isn’t too happy (we suspect alternator and will be getting it checked out quickly) and a throttle cable system that isn’t working to our standards. I’m working on a fix for that, so that I can get to driving the car a little bit around the backroads to shake out any other problems.

So for now, the Imperial returns to the garage, with a stay of execution and a chance for parole. The next time you’ll hear about the car, driving footage will be in the cards!