First drive
Got the 83 put back together after the head gasket job. Water temp is holding, oil pressure gauge is working. Misfire seems to be gone now that it’s good an in time. I think it still needs a bit of a tune up and definitely needs a couple new manifold flange gaskets but she’s going strong so far! Water pump bearings are nearly shot though.. that’ll probably be the next dire project.
Got the 2.8 put back together and I have no gauges working in the dash. Pretty confident it’s the sensors themselves combined with the shotty remaining wiring to them. Wanted to see if I can get some confirmation on some of these sensors.
1st: top of the intake directly in front of carb and right of thermostat with 2 wires and as plug. Water temp?
2nd: front right (drivers) side of cylinder head. Single wire with a clipsh style connector and a nail head type conductor on top of the sensor. Oil pressure?
You can see the connector top of the manifold and the port into the cylinder head for the second connector. I wish I had taken a photo of the conductor on top. Bonus points if you can tell me what sensor is directly to the right of the thermostat?
There are a lot of wires and connectors inside the bay that aren’t being used.. I think equipment that broke over the years and was discarded as not needed. By my research this truck was pretty well equipped from factory and has factory water temp and oil pressure gauges.
The truck doesn’t have a thermostat in it at the moment and temps aren’t getting much above about 110-125 at the thermostat housing and radiator hoses (the gauge starts at 100 degrees). So it could just not be getting warm enough to measure.
Oil pressure gauge is pinned to max with the key on. No change after starting.
Continuing on with the Shitbox and started with the head gasket repair. For clarification, this engine was running and running decently when I bought the truck. Clearly the truck sat with water in the oil for a while. It looked really bad when I first got the heads off.
The plan for now as the engine was running is just a head gasket repair to limp it along through the next hunting season until I find a spare to drop in after a fresh rebuild. I did a backyard resurface of the heads and checked them for warpage and they checked good. Valley was particularly worrisome and it looked really bad but I think it cleaned up nice.
I couldn’t get the furthest back on the right side lifter out though, and so far this is the only hang up. Not sure how to get it out without pulling the cam or forcing it. Dont want to go either route until I’m ready to do the full rebuild. Any ideas what could be causing it or have ideas how to coax it out?
Also, these little engines are proving a little difficult to find. If anyone in the southeast has a junk engine lying around I would be interested in taking it off your hands for the rebuild? Found a website that sells blocks for like 500$ but I don’t want to drop that kind of cash in a block.
Thanks!