Now its time to start working on getting it running. Honestly I probably should have started with this in the beginning but oh well.
I took some ‘base’ pics of the engine bay so that I have something to refer back to once I start taking things apart. Overall, it doesn't look like its been messed with much. The factory smog equipment is still in tact but some of the wiring is torn. The PO also installed what looks like a trans cooler, I doubt it still works or doesn't leak, so I'll probably end up removing it. Its definitely really, really dirty and will require a lot of cleaning up. You can tell its been sitting in someones yard for 21 years evidenced by the hornets nest on the radiator, lol.
The first day I got it back to my house I got excited and jumped the gun and sprayed some ether in the carb to try and get it to start. I could immediately tell by the way it cranks that it has low compression in a cylinder or two.
The next day I took my compression tester and went to work. The results kind of scared me.
For more background, a day or two before I compression tested it I had removed the carb to rebuild it. I’m sure the compression test results are a little lower than they would have been had it been installed, but that doesn’t explain 25 psi in cylinder 5 and 0 psi in cylinder 6. Honestly, I got a little upset about the results and lost the motivation to work on it and just went to bed.
Yesterday I decided to pull the valve cover to check the rockers and valves to see if any were sticking. With how dirty the rest of this truck was I was expecting to see sludge and a lot more grime but to my surprise it looked really clean.
Getting excited again I set up my camera and took a video of the engine cranking with the valve cover off. I watched the video afterwards and sure enough the exhaust valve on cylinder 6 is stuck open, so that explains cylinder 6. But what about cylinder 5?
Before cranking the engine over for the first time I made sure to put MMO in each of the cylinder’s and let it sit for a few days. While compression testing I also tested the rings by pouring a little oil in the cylinders after the first test. This helped ease my nerves a little because the compression didn’t increase with the oil, leading me to believe the low compression is stuck rocker/valve related vs. worn rings.
With the valve cover off, the valves appear wayyy out of adjustment, I pulled on all 12 rockers and 7 of them are super tight. I’m going to try and free the rocker and valve on cylinder 6 which I think will bring that cylinder back to life. However, I still need to game plan my approach for cylinder 5. I'm hoping it'll come back to life with a little run time or after I adjust the valves. I'll have to settle for a cold adjustment since the engine isn't running yet and will adjust them again later when I get the engine running and hot.
I know these compression results seem scary to some, but I really don’t want to pull the head or replace the engine. I’d rather try and bring this dinosaur back to life and I don't think getting to that point requires either.
Okay that’s it for today. Thanks for reading this far, I’ll hopefully post an update in a few days with some good news.
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