Taking an early break after a long couple of days and nights.
I had a productive and good day today, but not without its moments of worry and problems. I got everything finished and ready to start the engine at about 2:00. I filled the tranny with 6 quarts, with another 3 ready to add as soon as the engine was running.
Well, the engine fired immediately and ran perfect right from the get-go...for about 15 seconds, when I suddenly heard a grinding sound. That kinda freaked me out, so I looked everything over carefully but couldn't find anything wrong. Everything turned free and there were no witness marks on anything to show any metal to metal contact. I went through this 3 times, and every time it started to grind after about 10+ seconds. And I mean a loud, stomach curdling grinding. I finally slid under the car and could see some fine dust inside the bellhousing, and then I could see the teeth on the flexplate had been hitting against something. A slow turn of the engine showed that all the torque convertor nuts looked fine and I could see no other issues. I figured it had to be the starter at that point, but why after 10 seconds of running? At first I thought maybe the bendix was creeping out and engaging the ring gear, but that is just odd and not something I've ever heard of before. I started to pull the starter out when I thought about checking the solenoid, to see if somehow it was sticking, which still didn't make sense after 10 seconds of being unpowered.
I did a check with a test light and found something odd. The "Start" circuit was getting power just fine, then disengaging when I turned the key to the run position, but when I checked the "Ignition" circuit, I found that it was getting power in the run position, although it was fairly dim, so I don't think it was getting a full 12 volts. After thinking about it a minute, I came to the conclusion that after the engine started, the "Ignition" circuit was energizing the solenoid and engaging it with less than a 12 volt coil voltage. That would explain why the grinding started kinda soft, then got worse quickly. It was slowly engaging the bendix. At least that's my theory. I disconnected the "Ignition" wire from the solenoid and the problem went away. I don't know why it's feeding voltage back to the "Ignition" circuit, but at least I had figured out the issue.
Having that semi-settled, I was checking the engine out as I filled the tranny with another 3 quarts of fluid. There were zero leaks, nothing odd, no weird noises and the temp was holding rock steady at 180, the exact temp of the thermostat I put in it. It was 85 here today, so the new radiator, shroud and flex fan seemed to be doing a nice job. The oil pressure was fantastic, with 75 lbs cold, and it never went below 50 when it was hot and idling. That made me happy. With this old short block, I wanted good pressure to feed those stock bearings, and the Melling HV pump was performing great. I used Shell Rotella 15w-40 and I'll probably run that during Drag Week because of the heat down south. I did have a couple issues with the carb; one being that I noticed fuel seeping from the spacer, towards the rear of the carb. It was flooding the engine in the secondaries after I would shut the engine off, making it hard to start again if you waited a minute or two. I could see fuel spilling out of the boosters after shutoff. That explained why my idle adjustment screws weren't doing anything either, which was the other problem I had. Still, it seemed to run great, so I concentrated on other things for the time being.
Here's a shot of my gauges after being fully warmed up after a little drive, sitting and idling. That's the highest the temp gauge has gone.
After nit-picking over everything, checking the timing etc, I took it for a short drive. It drove nice, responded well to throttle adjustments, didn't pull when the brakes were applied and just generally drove like a nice '65 Galaxie should. The temp never went over 185 and the oil pressure went up to 65+ at speed. I stopped at my Dads and took him for a short ride, which he got a huge kick out of. He loves these old cars as much as we do, if not more.
After getting back home, I checked everything over good and didn't find any issues at all. The fuel seeping seemed to go away, and my idle screws were working now, so I think it was a stuck float needle on the secondaries that freed up at some point. Ya gotta love it when things fix themselves!
I took it for a couple more drives, and again no issues came up. The car seemed to be settling in good, so I decided to work on some wiring issues, like no turn signals or running lights on the right side only. I also finished wiring up my tach. I started it every so often and each time it fired instantly and ran beautifully.
Here's a couple shots of the engine compartment completely done and ready to go....as of now anyway. As I mentioned to Joe, I took the time to really detail the engine and paint everything up nice, so if it won't be fast, at least it'll look decent.
And here's a short video of it running. My phones sound recording makes the engine seem a bit noisey, but it's actually pretty quiet.
https://youtu.be/qvOh56NxsikIt's nice to finally have this thing hitting the pavement again. It needs a darn good cleaning though!
Tomorrow I'll be getting back on the wiring and taking it for a longer drive, assuming I get the turn signal issue fixed, and I'll probably change the oil to look for anything odd. I put a bottle of Crane break-in lube in it just to be on the safe side on the initial start-up. Hopefully it'll be an eventless day with no major issues coming up!