Barracuda
12 11 07 - 08:27 My 67 Barracuda is now going through re-conditioning. I've put off putting a balanced motor in this car long enough. It hasn't been any fun to drive this machine as that the 360 motor that's in it requires a balanced torque converter. When I bought this car I thought that I could just re-paint it, recover the seats and fix the steering box. The motor has such an odd vibration due to it needing the externally balanced converter.I've acquired a 318 with a 727 transmission attached. So far I've pulled apart the 727 and replaced the clutch plates.
Now the motor work. The 318 was running and pulling it apart I used plasti-gage to check the clearances before making a decision as what to do. I was lucky enough that all the clearances were very tight. The bearings showed signs of wear, but not a whole lot. So the plan was, new rings, new main and rod bearings. I took a lot of time polishing the tops of the pistons to a finish that come close to a chrome look. Balancing these pistons at this point takes some patients, but if you work long enough, you can do it.
The re-assembly was planned so that I could have the motor in the machine before the cold weather came along. Then I ran into a glitch that I couldn't believe. I went on-line to order the bearings, and everything went very smooth. I'd placed an order for the stock size bearing, and within a week they were sitting on my door step when I came home on day. That weekend I spend a whole lot of time setting the bearings in the journals, using an assembly grease I placed the crank into the motor and started to tighten down the crank, when I noticed that I couldn't turn the crank at all. I went back to my order sheet for the bearings and everything looked fine. I spent the rest of the day looking to see what I might have done Wong. After no success I ended the day, cleaned up and to a longer look at the order that I placed, and checking it against the web site.
As it turns out the web site never showed the undersize bearings as a different part number, they just pulled what ever they could off the shelf and sent it to me. Well, when it comes to motor building you really need to have precision with those tolerances. $165.00 down the drain. I called these folks up, but like most businesses these days, you get directed to an operator, order taker, that know absolutely nothing about engines. Even the web development team have no idea that the differences in sizes will make a major difference when building a motor. After about an hour on the phone explaining how this is a major problem, and that I was sold the wrong bearings, I got now where. Maybe after many meetings with the rest of the staff they'll call the manufacturer to get an explanation why bearings are different sizes. At least these folks use English as the first language, well, er sort of. 8th grade English.
Taking time off from work to run to the parts store was required to get the correct size of main bearings. I went to a store where I know the people are mature enough to not only know that their talking about, but can speak in full sentences. A few days later, and the bearings were in my hands. Now that three weeks had past, it's to cold for me to be swapping a motor. At least the motor will be ready for spring!