350 Buck Truck Project engine revival

Robert kenney said:
Thinking now about the symptoms steve told me, I wonder if the right side plug is missing. Kinda hidden under the dizzy hole.

Seems to quiet down upon initial cold start but after the oil gets hot the lifters go flat. Btw I left it out on my 152 when I built it 6 years ago.:icon_gonk: so the thought doesn't suprise me. :icon_rolleyes:
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I know it makes you blush, but once again you pulled out an answer... :icon_up:
 
The good news: runs right finally. It wasn't easy that's for sure.

Man oh man I feel like such a rube. Remember that scene in animal house when the fat freshman exclaimed, "oh boy this is going to be great!!!!". That is how I felt at the beginning of this project. Now its: "what's the next disaster?" ok enough whining.

Folks its no fun to have to pull the front cover off the engine when you hylamared the orings on the water tubes and used 3m black gorilla snot on the timing gear cover gasket. By the time all was said and done the missing oil gallery plug created about 12 hours of hard labor for me and my helpers. I forgot to grease the front seal so I had to take the balancer off twice. Then the drivers side water tube top oring was leaking like a sieve. I think it rolled out of the groove at the top. Then the water tube clamp broke at the bolt hole. It's on there by a thread for now. It leaked again and this time I could see where the oring had rolled out of the top of the groove. This time around I did what the service manual said. Put the oring on the tube and then apply a coating of hydraulic brake fluid. I guess this provides lubrication and swells the oring. Finally no leaks. Ran it for a half hour and then drained the water from radiator. Then I filled the radiator with coolant. Runs nice but now I am off to burningman to work as a fire/medical dispatcher for 8 days in the Scout so no time to enjoy it quite yet.

Next valve covers need some love as they are leaking after being disturbed about 10 times. I have 2 newer gas tanks on the bench that need going through and exterior paint. Then the tank switch. Then the issue of the missing evap can that sits up in the passenger fender. Then the windshield. Then the ignition cylinder as the chrome ring broke off. Then the speedometer. Then rustproofing the bed as best as possible. Then a move to the high desert where my internationals can rust in peace. :yikes:
 
Steve, my hat comes off to your tenacity and fortitude.

I have to keep telling my self every time shit goes a stray that nothing worth doing is ever easy. If it was everybody would be doing it and I'd be going the other way. :p
 
Well no interesting IH vehicle sightings at burningman but I sure saw more than I wanted to see of other things.

Scout ran turn key out there the whole time even though I had to idle around out there all week long.

I got back and started in on this dam orange truck that is not a "turn key" vehicle. Getting to the point of fine tuning it best I can with a isky 256 supercam, stock Holley/ignitor dizzy and the dang original 2210c that seems decent enough. Same one I posted about in the 2210c carb post.

When we stabbed the dizzy post gallery plug fix it landed on 18* btdc and seemed to run quite nice. I had conservative erik come over to play with the timing and he said that s too much and knocked it down to 10*. Eldo power tuned it up on Saturday and we had it up to 22* without too much obvious pinging (hard to tell with rotten glass packs). Decided on 20* btdc till we get that exhaust note right.. Seems spunky but the vacuum levels are not making me real happy. Either the gauge is lying to me or 15 inches hg is all she wrote. I dialed in that cam 4 times with the degree wheel and was convinced with the new timing set that it was a few degrees advanced. Vaucum is telling me otherwise. Must be a leak I have not found yet or the carb went bad on the shelf.

On the bright side the busted windshield was removed this pm by me and my Dad. A real pain in the ass but pulled the locking strip and went a slicing with the sheetrock knife on the gasket and she came out with a rubber mallet. Expecting to find a rusty mess but I'll be damned; found nothing but factory orange painted solid metal.

Shoot also the coolant recovery tank that I repaired so well with plastic weld epoxy sprung new leaks. Finding a cherry nos tank doesn't look possible or cheap so I went dorman 603-100 for like a 94 gmc 2500 truck

next up........ Fresh gas tanks that look showroom clean inside and tank switch rebuild? The canadian fellow eh? Who sold me the canopy sent me some sweet tanks too... Anyone know the specs on those orings in the tank switch and what to use for a proper gasket material??

Who knows this thing might make it to the fall rallye?
 
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Well I think that I can say that we got her going pretty good. On a whim after getting pretty far down the todo list I went on the first real test drive on Saturday. By the time I was rolling down the driveway it was close to 2pm and I made it to the IH fall rallye just in time to park her with some of her relatives, crack open a beer and sit down to eat with lou, micheal and doc and the rest of the show folks. That gold country character I met in tulare that has an orange IH 1210 ( and got me to thinking I needed a pickup too) even bought me dinner.

The test drive(156 miles one way): upon fire up there is a bit of clatter on the right bank but that goes away quick. She seems to like to hit the road. Not quite as fast as my 345 Scout but smooth as hell. That kickdown still needs some adjustments but not too bad. I was careful not to run it at the same speeds for too long. It was hot in yuba city and I noticed a definite drop in oil pressure idling in gear at the stop lights in traffic. As soon as I got going again the pressure seemed very normal. Climbed up marysville rd ok all the way to the show.

So this is where we are at right now. I am getting only 15-16 inches of vacuum. I have spent a lot of time searching for a vac leak but seems to be alluding me. Ign timing set at 15* btdc, idle 650rpm, dist hose plugged. So to make it perfect I need to find a couple of inches of hg somewhere.


Two things come to play here: compression ratio ( was the block decked properly to account for the.030 silvolite flat top pistions/ fel pro new style gaskets) or should that cam be advanced some?? Or both????

Its the isky 256 supercam. So with the engine pro timing set and my summit racing degree wheel I lined up the dots and well something like this in the notes way back when:

"yesterday I went about degreeing the cam to make sure it was timed properly. After verifying tdc using the positive stop method on #8 we found that at .050 lift on the intake of #8 we got a reading of 9 degrees after top dead center. The cam card specs for this isky 256 supercam are -11btdc which now I finally understand also means 11 atdc so we should have a total of 2 degrees advance using this new engine pro timing set".
(per ron isky he said that's where it should be)


rk said the following: "

I looked at your cam specs and the lcl is 112*. 11* atdc is straight up. I would have installed it at - 7* or 4* adv 108 intake lcl. That is not the issue however. You are close enough to have a healthy idle mani vacuum."

which I guess means 2* advance offset cam key.

So I guess compression test to see if it is abnormally low. It sure would be nice to have an engine dyno set up for an IH rig. Maybe that's what erik's parts Scout is going to mutate into a rolling, towable engine test machine.
 
If you are "looking" for the 19" that Robert kenney stated early in this thread, it might not be there...

I do not know the differences in cam setup, but when I talked to Jeff about the isky cams, he stated that the cam you have (190125-26) would have a slightly lower vacuum reading at idle (the "blurb" on the cam in the store sort of indicates it, also) than the stock cam.

Fwiw, it did not seem to me that you had / have a vacuum leak when I heard your engine idling at the rallye.
 
I have heard that too about Jeff's experience with these cams but from what I can tell rk has achieved high vaucuum at idle only because he said so. Now if he advanced the cam and or jacked up the compression I do not know but the answers are forthcoming I am sure. All things considered she seems pretty quick on the highway and rolls like butter even on the original shocks.

I tell you what though: that was one heck of a breath of fresh air... Low vac or not. I mean cruising through the farmlands on the 113 between woodland and yuba city in a reanimated IH pickup. I was getting the thumbs up from old timers on their newer case IH tractors working the earth. That was worth the price of admission ten fold.

Thanks robertc. Great to see you and everyone else out there in the hills.
 
As I wrote in a pm to steve, I would have installed it at 108 intake lc which is 4* advanced and on a 304 definitely made sure to at least maintain 8.0:1 cr. But would have made sure to have a proper 0 deck setup. I have always preached cr increases with these cams for this exact reason.

Steve said he was going to run a compression check to make sure he has good cylinder pressures. The engine got a composite head gasket and that would have lowered the cr some. I don't know whether or not the block was decked to comp for that or not but that is more likely the cause than 2* of came timing. May be a combo deal where both cause some of it.



A few 345's with the same to more aggressive valve timing made 19". But cr's were higher.

My honest opinion is forget the manifold vacuum and focus on the feeling you have regarding driving performance and power. Sounds like it gets along good.
 
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I agree...who gives a shit about manifold vacuum if tha dam engine runs right??? And it does! Manifold vacuum is "relative" to all systems working in harmony for a given setup by oem specs. You and (most of the rest of us) are far away from oem specs on any of this shit!

If you woulda sukked down at least three more bottles of that free/giveaway beershit yore manifold vacuum (what I call sukkage) woulda greatly increased at least until ya woke up the next afternoon. As it was, yore personal sukkage wuz goin' purdy good!

Bitch don't leak (that's a plus), the lifters rattle until the erl pressure gits up (that is a test that the motor's got oil in it), and it suks gas like a bitch which it's supposed to do! What tha hail else ya want, a prius???

Now if ya put a real carbamixer on it that dragrace cam can use, the bitch will really sit up and bark, them burnin' treehuggers would be very impressed next year when ya can brag about all the carbon ya converted!!!!
 
I really cant complaintoo much. I wanted an IH pickup and I found one that was headed for the scrap yard. I gave it new life. It aint perfect...yet. Life goes on. At least now I got more knowledge than before and when it comes time for the rusty Scout engine revival I might get it closer to where I want it the first time around. Its just all part of the trials and tribulations of a newbie wrenching on old IH junkiron.

So this 350 buck truck is hovering around 4000 bucks and lots of time invested to get this far.

I started out with an IH 74-75 pickall knowledge factor of about 1.5 and now its about a 3 out of 10.


If you think I have way too much time on my hands then look at this piece of work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiv1birvfni It May even be IH powered
 
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Ok second major test drive and happy with the results. Seems to have plenty of pep to it. Probably better than my 79 Scout with a 345 4bbl. Carb is definitely a burden though. I can't wait until the cash is in order for a fresh 2300 set up by ihonlynorth. Seems that the accelerator pump is acting up a little. Also I did not mention this but I snagged a mallory unilite distributor up in plumas county a few weeks ago. It is sitting in a box ready to go if it checks out on the bench. It came with the ballast resistor, filter thing, msd blaster 2 coil and summit racing 8mm wires all for 140 on craigslist. Hopefully it tests out but not too worried as it looks to be in great shape and the dude was a binder purist. Anyway with the addition of these upgrades I hope she will run better yet. So I can say that it was a bitch to get this far but well worth it.
 
Awesome job man. Doing what's right is never easy, so let it be said, this truck is being done right. Its a good feeling, even for the rest of us looking in on you.
Just fyi, check the endplay on that unilite. Mine needed almost .100" of washer shims to bring it back to what I felt was safe (about .010" or so). Ignition upgrades are always a crowd pleaser. You'll notice a difference if you're currently running the ghost box.
 
The current distributor is a Holley ghost box retrofitted with a pertronix ignitor. Nothing recurved or tuned in this distributor. Egr system "improved" and fitted with a block off plate.
 
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I added my 2 cents about leaving decisions up to the machine shop and where that can lead in another thread. Kind of where I am at mentally now on this build:

"I left a lot of things up to the machine shop and things went wrong. Next time every detail will be double checked by myself. The front passenger side lifter gallery plug was left out by the machine shop which caused a lot of un-necessary bs in my life.

The other thing that bugs me about my 304 build was that I was unclear on the need to increase compression ration slightly for the isky cam to really perform like it should. Instead the compression ratio is probably slightly lower than stock due to thicker new style head gaskets. The other unknown is what exactly did the silvolite pistions do for the compression ratio? Also maybe I should have advanced the cam slightly with an offset camkey. That's all history now cause its under the hood and being driven anyway. It runs ok and a hell of a lot better than it did with the old flat cam and mushroomed lifters. Just thought I would share some of my frustrations."

its not perfect but I can live with the results and take the knowledge gained for the next engine.
 
dealbreaker74 said:
awesome job man. Doing what's right is never easy, so let it be said, this truck is being done right. Its a good feeling, even for the rest of us looking in on you.
Just fyi, check the endplay on that unilite. Mine needed almost .100" of washer shims to bring it back to what I felt was safe (about .010" or so). Ignition upgrades are always a crowd pleaser. You'll notice a difference if you're currently running the ghost box.
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Proper endplay setup for any distributor is critical for constant dynamic timing throughout the engine rpm range.

No mallory distributor for an ihc application came out of their facility with a drive gear installed. That is because they could not source 'em, just like us! So a donor gear had to be found and installed. And it needs to be a donor gear from either a delco or a Holley distributor as those have the spring pin hole drilled dead center across the shaft. The prestolite distributor uses an "offset" to match the gear and the hole in the shaft so those can't be used on any other brand distributor without having 'em re-drilled dead center.

After dealing with many prestolite distributors of both types (points and electronic), it appears that the gear and shaft were drilled simultaneously at the point of manufacture, that means that prestolite gears can't even be swapped around with other prestolite distributors unless ya just get lucky!

The mallory distributors (all variations) have a shim/thrust washer installed under the mechanical advance unit. So setting up a new one involves shimming only at the gear end, leave the upper thrust washer alone. In my experience with those, it takes quite a bit of shim pack to get the end play set. Likewise, I shoot for 0.010>0.015" endplay on those.
 
I should pull that mallory distributor out of the box I stashed it in. I almost forgot about it. It has a gear on it and we'll get to the bottom of it soon. Hopefully its not some kind of botch job. I already downloaded the mallory test instructions and was all set to test it out but life got in the way again. I'll make it a point to post pics of what I got.

The job that is really dragging its heals is the fuel tank swap. Waiting on some dry weather for some rust killing and prevention before that goes anywhere. Not even going to consider a carb upgrade till the tanks are finally squared away. I almost stalled out on a 18% grade due to a sudden power loss. I checked the rust pre-filter and it was choked with rust paste. I cleaned it and had no problem after that.
 
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