Nervous Man's Engine and Tranny swap: sbc350 and sm465 (1 Viewer)

[cruiserkreutz]

Nervous Man, just a quick comment to let you know your not alone. I get intestinal turmoil every time I start to do anything other than changing the oil on my 40 for fear it will never run again. I have yet to really screw anything up, although I have had to do something's several times to get it right (freaking drum brakes almost caused a bleeding ulcer and a divorce). Your doing great, I've subscribed and look forward to future updates!

 

[saryon7]

I am glad to hear other people get nervous like that. Seeing the cruiser all apart like that, I am always thinking....I sure hope I can get this all together again. There are so many posts by the rock stars of Ih8mud, you don't always get to hear other people have difficult times on the builds.

Nervous Man, just a quick comment to let you know your not alone. I get intestinal turmoil every time I start to do anything other than changing the oil on my 40 for fear it will never run again. I have yet to really screw anything up, although I have had to do something's several times to get it right (freaking drum brakes almost caused a bleeding ulcer and a divorce). Your doing great, I've subscribed and look forward to future updates!

 

[saryon7]

So didn't get much sleep last night. I was restless with build issues floating through my brain. I am one of those people that has a hard time just relaxing. I always need to be doing something and with so many problem areas on the swap I am constantly thinking of new concerns and possible solutions. So, since I couldn't sleep I ended up getting up and hopping on the computer to do some research at 3am. The dogs got up and wanted to go outside....

We have two jerk russell terriers that are sheer menaces so we have gotten in the habit of checking for skunks before letting the dogs go outside after midnight. I turned on the outside light, checked, and all looked well. I release the hounds and they tear off into the backyard. Well, of course just as they start running away, what do I see but a **** black and white tail stick straight up in the air and the stupid skunk goes stupidly walking along in the back garden. The dogs haven't seen it yet so I urgently call to them trying to get them to come back. When on the hunt, they just don't listen.

So Tank tears around the corner of the shed, sees the skunk and missiles straight for it. Henry isn't far behind and sinks his teeth in too. My wife hears me yell ah ****! as slip on my shoes and tear into the backyard so she comes running too. Then promptly slips on the wet grass and slams her ankle onto the pavers. Tank subs out after a minute because the skunk mace is doing its trick and we snatch him up. Now it is just Henry and the skunk engaged in mortal combat.

He goes in and bites the skunk, does the terrier death shake and then backs off. Sometimes he goes in and tries to bite it and suffocate it. The skunk is pretty well finished up by this time, but not before it bit the **** out of both dogs faces. I am finally able to pin the skunk with a two by four I had in the backyard. This allows my wife to scoop up Henry. He is the sweetest dog in the world, but at this moment he was totally frenzied and his whole mug was bloody with his blood and the skunk's. He looked like Cujo.

I finished off the skunk by standing on the 2x4 and suffocating it. A shovel to the head made sure it was out of its misery. Then we spent and hour cleaning the terriers, disinfecting their wounds, and cleaning the towels. Turned out the Terrier brothers were bit a lot, but just with superficial wounds. Tank only got hit on his shoulder and Henry got the musk on his neck. All in all, a pretty easy clean up. Tank has gotten really good at attacking skunks. Once he didn't even get hit at all. Plus, my wife and I have developed mad skills at dealing with skunks since this is about the 8th time they have been sprayed and the 4th skunk they have killed. We've had times where the boys got maces so bad in the face that they were throwing up and ****ting at the same time in the bathtub. Not a pleasant thing to be a part of.

Here is the culprit.The whole rest of the night the boys (10 yrs old) were acting like they were little puppies. They had such a spring in their steps. So not too much sleep.

 

[saryon7]

Well, some presents came in today. These helped to offset my trepidation about this build. I have never had a vehicle with a v8 so I am pretty excited about this. Should be pretty cool.

 

[saryon7]

I got some more work done today too. I cleaned up the firewall a bit because it looked real ugly and I new I would be mad at myself if I didn't attend to it while the engine was out. I primed it with rust bullet and was going to paint it with high temp gloss black, but I just like the flat black look too much so I am going to stick with that. I used flat black on all the black parts of my cruiser. Just looks a little tougher to me. I am not going for a masterpiece here, but just want it to look good and be protected from rust. I would love to strip it down to the frame and have that painted like so many people on this site do, but I just don't have the space or time to do it.

 

[ARCTICMUTT]

what size edelbrock did you go with?

 

[saryon7]

The 600. That is what is recommended for the size and build (stock) of the motor I have. The 450 one is for engines up to around 302ci. If you put on a carb that is bigger than the 600 on my engine some of the possible problems are: bad gas mileage, and lugging on acceleration. I found that out from Edelbrock.

what size edelbrock did you go with?

 

[saryon7]

Damn skunks! Our dog tussled with another one last night. Got sprayed again! This time too the damn skunk made it out alive too. I swear our yard has become a skunk proving grounds. It is where all skunks must go when they become a man. They must face the terrier brothers and live to be accepted in the gang. It is really wearing on the wife and I as we haven't gotten much sleep since it always happens late at night and then we have to clean everything up.

We had a couple of break-ins in the neighborhood lately and we decided to get an alarm to hopefully not get hit ourselves. Our neighborhood is good, but we have a ton of scumbags roaming around our area. So dealing with all this alarm crap has seriously cut into my cruiser time. I had to take a whole day off from it because we had some losers checking out houses and mine was one of the ones they were looking at. I really hate thieves. Oh well, I am hoping this finely convinces the wife we need to move. I sure would love a house with a bigger shop.

Well, work-wise I got a little more done today. I was able to paint the rest of the firewall. I use the word paint loosely though since there were a number of runs. I just couldn't get good angles with all the crap in the way. I am not going for perfection anyway and just want rust protection and it to look good.

I also tackled the motor mounts today. The first one came off in about a half hour, but the second one was being particularly stubborn and probably took me an hour to do. It actually bent my chisel.

The trans and transfer case are up next. I was able to get them hoisted up and drained of fluids. I plan on tackling the old transmission mount tomorrow and then cleaning and painting the frame before I have to get home for the alarm install.

 

[saryon7]

A few more shots.

 

[bikersmurf]

The 600. That is what is recommended for the size and build (stock) of the motor I have. The 450 one is for engines up to around 302ci. If you put on a carb that is bigger than the 600 on my engine some of the possible problems are: bad gas mileage, and lugging on acceleration. I found that out from Edelbrock.

I recently installed a 600 cfm 1406... It works really well on the street. Edelbrocks don't have a good reputation for offroad, I figure I'll sort that out later.

If I was buying a new carb, I'd get a q-jet! I couldn't pass on the opportunity to try the 1406. When I could get a free, like new carb (did I mention it was free?).
It runs perfect and pulls from below idle.

 

[cruiserjunkie]

Woody has a great write up on making that a great offroad carb. Most people are pretty impressed at the angles my junk will run at

 

[saryon7]

Made a little more progress today even though I had to call it early. I tackled the trans mount today. While sitting there looking at it, I realized it was going to be hard to get the grinder into the corners of the mount to grind out the rivets. After doing some head scratching, I wondered if an air hammer could be used to cut off the rivet heads. Turns out it worked pretty well. Each one took a couple of minutes to cut off, but way better than having to grind and have grinding dust going everywhere. You can see what was left of the rivets after the air hammer cut the heads off.

In the second picture you can see the rivet in the top left corner going down. I like when I get to that part because I know it is just a matter of time after that, I have started to win.

 

[saryon7]

Started the day looking around. You know..... if I was to ...... it just might be possible...doesn't look like there are too many bolts involved in taking the body off... I could take the frame off and get it sand blasted and painted.... Then I came to my senses, slapped myself and said.... You want to drive this thing soon, don't you? So I just told myself you have to stop somewhere. I stopped at the cross-member. I will clean the frame up to there, but no longer.


I also did a little bit of clean up too. Got the heater fan painted and the the frame whire-wheeled and primered. I didn't get a picture of how it came out, but will snap a couple of pictures of it tomorrow.

 

[saryon7]

And here is what came out of my frame when I blew it out. It would probably be double if I could get into the interior of the frame better. I wonder how long some of this dirt has been in the frame?

 

[Coastline]

Started the day looking around. You know..... if I was to ...... it just might be possible...doesn't look like there are too many bolts involved in taking the body off... I could take the frame off and get it sand blasted and painted.... Then I came to my senses, slapped myself and said.... You want to drive this thing soon, don't you? So I just told myself you have to stop somewhere. I stopped at the cross-member. I will clean the frame up to there, but no longer.


I also did a little bit of clean up too. Got the heater fan painted and the the frame whire-wheeled and primered. I didn't get a picture of how it came out, but will snap a couple of pictures of it tomorrow.

Clear evidence that you are sick. Seek help before it takes you 2 years to finish.

 

[saryon7]

LOL, yeah, that kinda snowball stuff happens to me WAY too much. One thing leads to another. This time will be different though. I want to get this thing back on the road soon. Summer doesn't last forever and I want to get the family out on the trails. The terriers told me I owe it to them after all the skunk fighting they have done to keep the yard safe.

Clear evidence that you are sick. Seek help before it takes you 2 years to finish.[/QUOTE]

 

[saryon7]

Well, I have been continuing to work on this thing. It is still sucking up my money faster than I can believe and I still have a fair amount of things I need to buy.

The motor mount situation has been pissing me off. The company that sells the Firestine mounts now is absolutely terrible to work with. They never answer their phones. I ordered the mounts 3 weeks ago and they still aren't here even though we are in the same state. I finally got a hold of someone last Monday and they said they would be here tomorrow. It is now a week later and after 100 calls I finally got someone to answer the phone today over a week later. He told me they were leaving today and would be here tomorrow or the next day. I am NOT holding my breath. This has really been a big stressor. I wish someone else sold these things.

I have made some progress, but not much photo-worthy stuff. I have been doing the worst part of the whole job, which is wire-wheeling and sanding the frame. What a mess. I am so glad it is done. I really hate doing that, but I know it will bug me if I didn't do it.

 

[saryon7]

I also got my heater and fan box cleaned and painted. While taking apart my heater, the heater core looked a tiny bit clogged. I figured I might as well replace it so I can have an entirely new cooling system. I would be mad if I had to take it apart after I spent all that time putting it together for a heater core leak. For $56 I figured it was worth just replacing for piece of mind.

I also got the ramshorn manifolds painted. They look like a weird gray in the pictures, but are actually flat black. The directions say that they have to be baked to cure, but when I mentioned that to the she growled and threatened me. I tried to tell her then she would be a part of the build and that would be special to me, but that just earned me the middle finger. ( My wife is the fastest finger in the west) I wonder if I could bake them on the barbeque.....

 

[saryon7]

I had this really great idea for drilling out the output shaft of the sm465 transmission, unfortunately like most of my great ideas it met with epic failure. The shaft was too hard for me to drill and it just instantly dulled my best drill bits. Too bad, because the guide I made worked perfectly. It kept the drill bit perfectly straight and true while my drill bits got chewed up. The cone I made fit over the output shaft perfectly and then guided the bit straight.

My second plan is to talk to one of my friends who is a fantastic machinist and see if he will let me try on one of his mills. My plan is to attach the bell housing to the tranny and then center up the hole with a drill bit, mark the coordinates on the digital readout, swap to a carbide end mill, and then see if I can drill it.

If that fails, the next option is to hit the end of the shaft with an oxy/acetylene torch and see if I can soften the end. This will be my last option, because I have visions of me melting the shaft, or burning down the shop.

 

[saryon7]

And finally to get me caught up. The gas tank has a rubber hose that goes from the tank to a hard line under the frame. This looked old and crusty so I figured, I should probably just switch it out. Again, I would be mad if it starting leaking after I got this all together. So I took it down to Parker hoses in West Sac who is a great shop and saves my butt when it come to hard to find old fittings like are all over the land cruiser. They looked and looked and couldn't find any matching threads to the end of the fitting that attaches to the tank. Luckily the guy was able to cut off the old end and reattach it to a new fuel line. They are simply geniuses.

And, I started cleaning threads antiseizeing all the bolts that are going back together.

Oh, and I was able to get out all 4 broken bolts in the tranny hump by locking vice-grips on the remaining threads and turning them all the way through from the bottom. Yeah!!!!!