1500 top end refresh

[tosoutherncars]

Well, the blown head gasket has forced me to take the car off the road for the week. On the plus side, it has allowed me to check a few things and the head will be going back on slightly better than it came off. Here's the list...

- Head milled .100" to raise compression ratio
- mild port job (intake runners only)
- Valves cleaned and lapped
- Viton valve stem seals installed
- new water pump
- fan delete
- electric fan with automatic controller
- Payen head gasket and all ancilliary gaskets

Hopefully I can get it back on the road in a week, we'll see how long the machine shop takes. Funny story, I told them I wanted "a tenth of an inch" off. "That's too much, you mean ten thou" said the owner. "No, really... a tenth" said I. Had to show them the low-comp head before they would agree to do it...

The bottom end looks / feels pretty solid, hopefully I can feel the performance gain... and this doesn't turn into a "season-ending injury"!

Now, to go fit that fan...

 

[blkcorvair]

many machine shops do look at you funny when you say that. Been there.

 

[tosoutherncars]

Once he saw the head, with those deeeep combustion chambers, I think he understood...

 

[texas_bugeye]

OH ya they think your nuts. I had a cortina that we used pinto pistons in Told them to take off 1O/TH ? if I remember it was huge amount at any rate.
Carl the shop owner looked at us and said I'm going to charge you by the LBS that much will finish my tooling!!

 

[tosoutherncars]

Well, all this downtime is causing me to dig into the parts cache...

I've got a couple of old vw rads I was thinking about using, but the MG rad is probably in the best shape of the three, and it was cooling well...

Opinions on whether to set this up as a puller or pusher? Looks like it's got enough room either way.

I wasn't sure I'd be able to live with the flat cutouts... but it still looks far better than the rubber bumpers, so I'll just shorten the brackets a little bit and slap them on.

Oh, I have one of the 'curly' rear bumpers, if anyone in the area wants it. Chrome is crazed, mounts are rusty but salvageable. Both overriders, one with a ding in it.