Not much good news on the tow rig lately, bad news I've got plenty of though.
I rebuilt it and finally had it all back together and running fine, but on my first trip to town to go get some gas, the distributor's thrust bushing split apart and fell into the cam gear. The cam got locked up long enough to shear the timing gear dowel on the nose of the cam and things went south from there. It's only got 30PSI of compression now, so the valves and pistons apparently got a little too up-close and personal with each other. The #2 cylinder exhaust lifter also managed to knock a big chunk out of the cam lobe. So right now I'm still shopping around for a new cam, lifters and timing set.
The machine shop where I get my engine work done has a pair of closed chamber big block heads that are supposed to be in good shape that I'll be picking up next week. The new-to-me heads are going to cost less than fixing the valves, seats and guides on my current heads, so that's one bit of good news at least. I may still need push rods as there's a very good chance mine will be bent from the valve-to-piston contact. I'll be going through the new heads completely to make sure they're good to go before using them.
I already picked up a HEI conversion distributor to replace the original hall effect pickup type distributor, as well as a set of HEI style plug wires to fit it. One nice thing about going to a HEI system is that I'll be able to remove the firewall mounted ECU, coil, ballast resistor and all the associated wiring. It uses a stock Chevy cap/coil assembly, rotor and 4-pin HEI module, so maintenance/replacement parts will be easier to find as well.
I'm hoping to get the engine fixed and running again before the end of the year, if nothing else goes wrong with it that is.:dizzy:
And there's been one other boat project related thing to come up recently. It gets
very windy up here in the mountains, and that wind along with the UV damage took a toll on the tent my Laker project resides in. In a wind storm (30MPH winds w/60MPH gusts) we had here last week, the tent ripped apart until I only had the small back wall on the west side remaining. Everything else was in shreds. The tent garage my wife has (identical to mine) for her Jeep, was recently converted to a short barn type of structure for the chickens, turkeys and sheep. Since she wasn't using the tarp parts on her tent frame anymore we put them on my tent frame to cover it back up. The sponsons were both still fine and the build table still appears to be solid and level.
So that's what's been going on with me lately. I'm still reading the posts here, I just haven't been posting anything myself for a while. Here's to hoping 2018 goes better than 2017 for the Laker project.:tea:
EDIT: I'll be going back and replacing the pics in this thread a little at a time. Thanks for the headache PB.
The first couple of pics in the first post are done, just a few hundred more to go now.
