Gearhead 102 – Jedi Knighthood

Cars March 19th, 2012

OK, Tubbs, first off, let me apologize to you. That shit with that girl was not very fun, right? You’re pretty depressed and that makes sense. But don’t sublimate it into anger. That’s a shortcut to a really shitty couple of years (OK like ten years, seriously, get some therapy or something, you take WAY too long to figure that shit out yourself). But now we’re back to cars. Last time, we had a very nice talk about how you need a place to work on stuff and we got you a basic toolset, along with the required support shit to do almost everything you need, right? You’ve probably picked up a few oddball tools along the way as required to do some bigger jobs, maybe like an 1 1/4 socket for crank bolts and a drill (why did you buy a sawzall before you had an angle grinder, dumbass?). Well, stop buying stuff right now and I’ll tell you what you should do. (aside from continuing to enjoy that hair, I know you’re finding it on your pillowcase right now and that’s a bummer, but you still have PLENTY up top. NOBODY NOTICES YET. KEEP HAVING HAIR. Enjoy your tan, too, you will never be that color again except for the skin around your asshole.) Parts washer is pretty great right? I know it’s a pain in the ass to drain and refill and the shelf bent but who cares, it’s better than wiping shit down with your shirt before bolting it back together.

Alright, so you have your basic toolset, and you have your consumables, and you’re looking for the next big upgrade to your project handling capabilities. Trust me it’s not a bottle-brush hone and it’s not a tubing bender. It is an angle grinder. This thing is good for dozens of otherwise impossible fixes, like hacking through rusted in place bolts or putting a wire wheel on to clean up nasty undercoat. This thing is gonna run you like $50 if you shop around and you’ll end up using it everywhere. Be careful with grinding stones and cutoff wheels, you can very easily fuck yourself well past being able to fix, but sometimes it’s invaluable to be able to delete metal from a part or delete a bolt head from something that’s truly stuck. If you don’t have a quality drill, get one now, find one with a keyed chuck, and get the following accessories: a set of drill-to-socket adapters, a set of step-drill bits. You also need a good plumber’s torch (you already have one you pyro, but this isn’t JUST for you, OK) because heat is Doctor SpaceJesus’ magic blue/yellow wrench, and you will end up burning some rubber bushings clean before it’s all said and done. A vacuum gauge (and a vacuum pump/brake bleeder), and an oil pressure gauge and sender are pretty invaluable. This is another couple hundred bucks in tools that will multiplex your capabilities hugely. Still have money left over after smokes and beers? Lets take care of that now.

Build yourself a workbench. Set the top of it right around your beltline, make the top out of two layers of 1/2″ plywood. If you can find an old laminate countertop or something to use for this, so much the better. Make sure the legs are sturdy — stop looking at those 4×6 timbers, some 2×4′s will be fine, and adjustable, so you can level the damned thing. Then go out and get ready to spend some serious money on a vise.

I know, I know, a vise is just a big pair of channel locks you can’t stuff in your pocket, but it is SO much more. It’s the key to drilling and cutting stuff square and not, for example, tearing off your thumbnail, snapping off drill bits and dulling their ends, or gouging a hole in your palm while you do it. It’ll help you install all those seal savers straight — you are installing seal savers on everything, right? And a high quality one, with some creativity, can do everything from driving out balljoints to bending tubing. If you want to do these jobs regularly, and right, what you really want is a 20 ton press, but that thing is HUGE LIEK XBOX (do you… I don’t know if you get that or not. The Xbox really is quite big. Oh and the cords are gonna catch fire? So keep an eye out for that recall.) and will not be friendly to your free wheeling lifestyle. It’s a great tool, and one you’ll want eventually, but right now for intermediate-level car repair, you want a bench mounted vise in the “large cat to small dog” size range. Don’t cheap out on this one, get something with a warranty that isn’t written in crayon.

Want more? Of course you do. You don’t have Smokey’s Speed Shop Mobile yet, so you’re still looking for more capability. Well, look no further than a compressor. This is another one that will weigh you down, so get something in the 3 gallon range and recognize that you’ll never be able to run a DA or body saw full time off it, this is strictly for filling tires, running a small paint gun, and short blasts of power like the impact gun for loosening stuff that you can’t quite get leverage on with the cheater and the breaker. Know that with this increased torque and impact, you are gonna shear off more bolts than ever, so always start with the tools from 101: penetrating oil, then wrench, penetrating oil, then breaker; before moving to 102 tools: oil, then torch, then oil, then impact, then grinder. Grinder don’t need oil. Grinder don’t care. Get a long hose and quick connects for whatever tools you have. Learn the maintenance schedule for your compressor, and pay attention when it’s leaking. Upgrade to a bigger one when you feel like you can swing it (I am at 20 gallons now and it’s just a teensy bit small for full time use but as long as you wait for it to catch up it’s fine).

Now, this is the biggest, most important lesson for 102. Documentation. Write down what you’re doing. Take pictures or draw diagrams of what you disconnect. Don’t count on your memory to save you, don’t count on hoses pointing in the right direction, take the extra couple of minutes to tape a label to some shit. Trust me here, this is going to save you some serious embarrassment and frustration down the line. The “there’s always parts left over” joke is good for a chuckle, but that turns to a groan when you hear a terrifying PLING on the freeway and you lurch to one side, or can’t ever get a carburetor to idle right. When you’re doing little shit like replacing a shock or an alternator, you’re gonna be fine just winging it but once you have to dismantle two or three major systems to get at your repair, you will wish that you had a little note that told you which of two wires was on the 12 o’clock stud on the alternator versus the 3 o’clock one instead of trying to divine position from where the crudded up things hang.

And while we’re on the topic of wires. You’ve not jumped into too much electrical, just because the systems are complicated and you hate trying to learn, but mastering the art of wiring replacement is critical. You’ve already got a cutter/stripper/crimper, now it’s time to add some smart accessories: a soldering iron, some flux, some solder, some heat-shrink tubing, and a variety pack of wiring connectors, along with a cheap digital multimeter. This won’t cost you more than $30-40, buy four or five different colors of wire and take the time to learn how to use it, and you will transform from the guy who can replace his alternator to the guy who can fix the car that mysteriously turns off when you hit the dash in this one place. IF YOU CAN’T FIGURE IT OUT, READ A BOOK. IF THAT DON’T HELP, TAKE A CLASS. Find somebody to teach you. This is a stumbling block for you now and unless you fix it soon it’s gonna leave you fed up and out of patience for cars altogether.

About the wires, and the documentation — if you can, find the factory service manual. If you can’t, buy a Haynes or Chilton, but don’t expect much out of them. FSM’s are precious like gilded Angel eyebrows. Hayes are like… listening to the guy at the parts store tell you how to do something over the phone. It’s better than a kick in the balls but for the most part you can figure out whatever the H/C is gonna tell you by just staring at the part you need off. Remember, these are SUPPLEMENTS to your documentation, not replacements. They tell you how stuff “should” be, your documentation will help you realize how stuff currently IS. And with those docs and some troubleshooting methodology with your multimeter, your vacuum gauge, and your oil pressure gauge, you will be able to track almost any problem down to its root within an hour or so. Knowing what is wrong before you start disassembling the motor is always a good thing.

That’s basically it, that’s all I can offer. Welders and benders and fishmouthing and metal work and all that crap? That is off in the distant future. You need a place to work on your cars, and then you need to build up your toolbox, you need to work on your patience, and everything from there on up is cream. It’s building experience and confidence on a solid foundation of tools and techniques, not just running to the tool store every time trying to buy the biggest, most badass thing you can find and then manufacturing a reason to use it. Trust yourself to find people who can do what you want, learn how to ask questions and judge answers. (serious about the therapy too, you need it)

Gearhead 101 – Notes to 19 year old me (and anybody else who is just starting to love working on cars)

Cars March 18th, 2012

Hello.
I am from the future, and I am here to bring you knowledge. Potential Future Spoilers are in parenthesis if you want to avoid paradox but it’s probably not a big deal. As I am you I will tell you one thing that only you and I know. For Squirrels Example was criminally underrated and their first-album-tour van crash cut short what could have been a shortcut to the future of rock (trust me I am here in the bleak totally fine post-apocalyptic renaissance-like future of rock and they were fucking on to something maaaan). OK so now that I have established my credentials lets talk about cars.

What are you driving right now? The Lincoln? Or is that guy already gone, that sucks dude. The Honda ain’t a bad car, and you should have taken better care of him while he was yours. You’re in a bad period, though, and it’s about to get worse. You’re about to take your fucking show on the road (you know this, already, in your heart. Arizona doesn’t get any better. It doesn’t change to magically be an OK place for you. Just go.) and you’re gonna drag a bunch of cars halfway across creation while you do it. Do it. Love them. Hate them. Throw wrenches, it’s gonna be great! (you’re gonna bust sooo many knuckles you dipshit) But anyways, here’s a list of worthwhile things to think about before you pick up a leaker and try to make it into a looker.

This is basically rule number one. Never trust that guy about the motor. It is not put together right, it wasn’t recently rebuilt, nobody went through it, it didn’t roll in purring like a kitten, it’s currently fucked, waiting to get fucked-er, and the longer you ignore that the worse a situation you will be in both financially and physically when it fails. Don’t trust that guy about the brakes, either. Don’t trust him about the carb, or the electrical. Assume you’re gonna have to tear into it early, or have somebody you trust tear into it. You are not going to have anybody you trust for quite a while, so here’s some big ass things to do, IMMEDIATELY.

Do you have a garage? Not a driveway, not a dirt lot, a garage, like a place with your tools and shit in it? No? You need to consider finding a place with a garage. Spend your precious time and learn how to deal with strangers and haggle enough to find one you can afford. If you can’t afford a garage, and you don’t have a driveway… you’re kinda screwed. I’m not saying you need to go buy a Tiburon (but you totally should turns out those Hyundais are fine! Despite all the ko-cars-are-crap talk. Who knew? No matter what Grandma Mickey says, don’t buy a “Kiva”. Not OK.) but maybe nothing French or pre 1950, OK? We’re not trying to buy up all the Francophile toolchest bits on, where the fuck are you working now, the school district? Yeah, you’re not buyin’ 2CV parts on you janitor bucks so calm the fuck down. Anyhow, my point is, you need a place to work on the car. So get working on that now.

In that garage, you need many tools, but the first tool you are going to need to buy is this. Yes, it costs more than a torque wrench, but trust me you’re going to need to use it thirty times more often. Don’t be tempted to get the little one, this packs down pretty small when you put the legs in it so it won’t get in your way (for example when you move to California next year with no plan and no money, smaaaart. No really it’s totally fine you needed to get out of there, it’s fine. God you dipshit.) when packed up. As a matter of fact it would store most of the tools you are gonna need right inside (since you will never, ever own or maintain a cohesive tool box or tool chest). Clean stuff. It takes more time than wrenching ever will but the difference between a fix made with clean parts and a “fix” made with parts that are soaked in grease will make a gigantic difference in how much you enjoy the cars you love. Add to this a giant bottle of the cheapest degreaser you can get for it, the big can of WD-40, some brushes and rags, a spray can of penetrating oil, a bottle of Naval Jelly, and an aerosol trio of paint stripper, black engine paint, and silver exhaust paint along with some masking tape to cover gasket surfaces. If you wanna really set yourself up right, go buy a box of nitrile gloves AND USE THEM. DOUBLE GLOVE FOR SPEED. KEEP A DOZEN IN YOUR POCKET. CHANGE THEM FREQUENTLY. This whole package will set you back about $200 and it will change the game as far as car work goes. You won’t have to snap off bolt heads (but you’ll do that plenty, dummy) or bolt rusty parts back on to an engine ever again. You won’t have black crap jammed in your cuticles. (And while we are at it enjoy that fucking hair buddy, grow it the fuck out and put some product in there, you have some great hair and I’m not gonna ruin the big surprise of “when” for you but it does NOT last forever, tiger) Gaskets won’t leak incessantly, things won’t rust into place, things that ARE rusted into place will be removable. You won’t cringe when you open the hood, and it’ll make it EASIER to identify leaks and track down problems. Tools you can borrow beg or buy, but having the right chemicals makes everything easier.

Second step… you need to learn where your local car wash with power wands is. Or you can borrow a pressure washer. This is where you’re gonna do your big degunking projects. And yes, you need to degunk that car. Unless you can see all the bolt heads and not just bolt-like-shapes beneath oil and dirt cake, it is not clean, and it sucks. Pressure washers aren’t quite cheap enough for me to mandate them like a parts washer, but for a couple bucks in quarters down at the car wash you can take care of whatever you need taken care of.

Third, start with a simple set of Craftsman tools. The warranty is great (now, not so great. Kobalt maybe.) and the tool quality is better than that dollar store home fix it kit shit you stole from Dad. As long as you stick with an American car, a basic set of SAE sockets, 3/8 drive ratchet with a few extensions, set of box/open end combo wrenches, screwdrivers, and a good pair of needlenose pliers, channel locks, and wire-cutter/crimpers will basically let you take apart any portion of the car and put it back together with confidence. If you go import, buy metric. If you buy British… (just… just don’t buy British right now. Wait till you have a shop with a welder and stuff man those guys… don’t buy British yet) Once you’re into bigger projects, get a 1/2″ drive set with a breaker bar and a torque wrench — do not confuse these two. There are some special tools you’ll want to buy — go cheap on these, don’t think Matco, think… the lobby of the Ace Tools on a rack — a harmonic balance puller, a steering wheel puller, a three arm/two arm combo puller. You are now equipped, plus or minus some cheater bar leverage to do basic repairs on a car.

Fourth, and this is important, so pay attention. Get a bike with fat tires. Put a basket on it. Trust me nobody cares if you have a basket on there (in the future it’s actually cool to have a bike with a basket. I mean, not in Arizona, I don’t think, but where you’ll be) and you’re gonna have to get to a parts store and back with some fairly heavy things. (Plus it’ll help you lose some of that chub there, Chubs McGubbs. Put down that Burrito Supreme and listen to me please.) It sucks to be stuck without your car. It sucks MORE to have to rely on some dickhole to run you to the Napa.

Fifth, and finally. Find a good parts store. Your local parts store is not only a highly efficient warehouse operation capable of bringing parts from across the country in just a few days, but also a tool library for stuff that you use so rarely or cost so much that you can’t justify it yet, THIS IS CRITICAL. FIND A GOOD ONE AND IT WILL PAY DIVIDENDS. Shopping online is great, and you can save a lot of money (especially as time marches on. Holy crap I can get anything delivered now hahaha sucker), but sometimes when driving — or specifically not driving — a project car there is a time factor which cannot be denied. This isn’t something you’ll ever regret doing.

That’s it. Every car is different, every project is different, they all have foibles, and they all have character. They’re all gonna require some kind of creative thinking to figure out. You’re gonna need power tools eventually and instead of just being in break/fix mode you should really be planning out maintenance in advance but that’s kinda 102 level shit so lets leave that for 22 year old us, OK?

Shamwow, the Shamwowening

Cars March 11th, 2012

So, it wasn’t the head gaskets. Best guess is it was leaking from the timing chain bolts, which would be NO surprise, the engine is all original, as far as I can see, but there have been half a dozen chuckleheads inside it over the years, all armed with different colors of RTV and not a one of them with a gasket scraper. One manifold coolant crossover was half-unblocked so maybe that made it overheat? Tough to say. Everything cleaned up real nice and I’m treating it to a couple cans of paint. I don’t have a really good underhood “before” picture, but here’s a corner that will give you some idea. Note: the one centimeter section of paint which remains on the timing cover, the two different colors of blue overlapping on the valve cover, and standing oil on top of the intake manifold. All important details.

So I am balls deep in motor right now, I haven’t the foggiest idea how or why I worked on cars before having a parts washer. How did ANYTHING ever hold oil? Oh, right they didn’t, for the most part. This motor has been a sludgemonster for quite a while, seems to have been weeping out of the hand-tight intake manifold bolts and down from the four-different-flavors-of-RTV valve cover gaskets. Dribbling down the back of the timing cover, and out of the back of the intake manifold by the distributor. Everything is gently preserved in a quarter inch of dusty sludgegrime. Stripped and scrubbed the valve covers, the intake manifold (what a mother fucking boat anchor holy jesus christ), timing cover, and crank pulley. Used Naval Jelly to strip the rust off of the exhaust manifolds and heat shields. Scrubbed everything as best I could, and then shot it with some engine paint. I’m into her for about $120 (and $23 worth of ibuprophen) now, gaskets and timing chain along with the paint and the stripping stuff. Here’s some progress pics.

Valve covers getting stripped

Timing cover after paint

This shit is taking forever, BUT, it’ll be the last time I have to do it for a long while. I’m going to do the motor mounts (and the transmission mount) while the manifolds and shit are off, only makes sense, because I have plenty of time. Why do I have plenty of time, you ask? WELL. At the very end of the night, I tried to pull the choke shaft out of my Carter BBD to do the Idle Tube Fix ™, and lo and behold I managed to shear the heads of BOTH the screws that hold the choke butterfly on. Turned over the shaft and lo and behold my screws were staked into place after tightening. FUUUUUUUUUUU.

I doubt highly I can remove those screws, and I’d be hard pressed to tell you where to go for Carter parts in town, I could find brass screws but that shaft? Maybe if I go dig around in the pull-a-part for a few hours. Plus this carb has been a royal pain in my balls (and the balls of thousands of others, if the insanely high number of forum hits on a google search for “carter bbd issues” is any indication), and a rebuilt from the parts store is $240. Frankly, I’ll be fucked if I spend a fucking DIME on a newly rebuilt Carter BBD when I have a Road Demon Jr 625 waiting on the bench for a thorough cleaning and an electric choke, and a 4bbl aluminum “Crosswinds” intake being shipped to me like… Monday. There’s the slight possibility that the stock throttle cable and kickdown lever assembly won’t fit right with the new intake, but a fix for that (which will very nicely transfer over to the new motor when it is ready) is $150 worth of Lokar shit away, and was very much on my list for the engine swap anyways. Sigh, it’s just money, right? Anyhow it’s stuck me in a very minor carman’s funk. I didn’t actually want to spend the money on this Lokar shit (and some brackets and shit from FBO Systems), or Bouchillon but at least it pays forward.

Princess Shamwow addendum

Cars March 4th, 2012

I’ve settled on a probational name for her, and she is most definitely a female car*, Princess Shamwow. She’s finicky as a hairless cat, and decided she didn’t like her new shoes so she simultaneously ran out of gas, killed the battery, and sucked a head gasket on the way home last night, like a truly psychotic girlfriend reacting to a poorly chosen birthday present. She does love me though, like junkies love smack – a simultaneous loathing combined with truly needing me to fix her. I ran out of gas coming off the freeway, dropping me and the lady just a mile from the house on for a post party misty walk back to the house — then an annoying cold painfully sober walk back to the car with a can of gas, then halfway back home again after realizing I left the keys in run and killed the battery. Then I got a divine reprieve and saw a tow truck driver taking a roadside break.

Well the devil is in the details and as soon as I got her charged back up and started, she had a nasty miss on the passenger side. I was thinking maybe fouled plugs, but then it got a little ticky, so I was thinking collapsed lifter or low oil, pulled the dipstick and lo and behold we have the gooey brown foam of a blown headgasket. Fuuuuu, etc. I swore her a blue streak for a minute then she hit me and we started to have hate sex and got into another argument and then I just made a pot of coffee, went out to the garage, and started running the numbers on my options. This is gonna get long so unless you’re into cars and numbers and hypotheticals, you can probably “tl;dr-Aaron’s stupid zebra car broke down” the rest of this post.

I could just re-gasket the top end. Doing it up with super overkill Cometic MLS gaskets is still only like $200 (regular type gaskets $45), which has a 70% chance of being “just fine” (meaning it seals and doesn’t knock after the hours I’ll throw at it). Say $200/350 to be safe with all the gaskets and a timing chain like a good boy. This is both very cheap and fairly risky, with zero residual benefits except like… a fresh timing chain to put on the next motor I build and some fancy head gaskets.

Re-gasketing without getting a good measurement on the head and block surfaces is a little bit like sharting into the wind. And deck measurement, well – I’d have to buy some quality surface/depth gauges and a magnet block, which could run me another couple hundred easy. Admittedly, good tools are good karma and pay for themselves in the long run, but bleh. What if I spun bearings? Flattened a cam lobe? Since I’m gonna have it apart anyways it would only make sense to throw a somewhat more modern cam in it, Summit has some RV/Tow cams which will make for a real dependable grocery getter smooth idling ride, even Crane has some sensible sticks that will give me a fat wide torque curve down in the cruising the city streets range, so tack on a couple hundred there between the bumpstick, lifters, springs, retainers, stem seals/valve guides. And if I’m doing a cam it would be kinda irresponsible after having water in the oil NOT to do the cam bearings, which is a machine shop trip unless I wanna “eyeball” the cam bores are OK and also trust myself to drive em’ in straight. Throw in $150 for water pump/timing chain cover gaskets and a timing chain/tensioner. Also it’d suck ass to pull the motor, take it to a shop and trust THEM to check the deck and flatten the surfaces on what amounts to an ancient economotor with small-valve heads with ultra malaisey 7.8-8.1:1 compression. Decked block means machining the intake manifold. Decked block and decked heads requires finding a machinist who has some pretty good triggeronometrical thinkulating, and guessing at WHO to trust is the door to seven types of dealing with bullshit like a fresh motor that can’t keep gaskets in it or has weird vacuum leaks. Plus I’d be $200 into the heads to get bigger valves ground in and it’d still be a shitball malaise head. Aftermarket aluminum heads are out of my budget, admittedly, not FAR out of my budgetary range but 1) I’d rather spend that money on handling and braking than on power, and B) I like shit I can get replacement parts for at the Napautomotivezone, y’all. I give up ponies for “holy shit I’m stuck in New Hicksburg At The Sea” parts availability 9 times out of 10. There’s RHS Magnum heads ($300 a side bare, throw another $300 for springs and retainers, $200 for stock stamped steel rockers and hardware or $375 for roller rockers) which are nice and iron and use parts-counter parts and will bump my compression up and add a nice quench area — if I swap in some KB pistons. Tacking in, another $300 or so, the stockers are so far down in the hole there’s no quench to be had, and if I’m going to modern compression ratios I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be $1500-2000 worth of parts and labor into a non turbocharged rebuilt 318 that detonates unless I’m running high-test. Homey don’t play that. Magnum heads also means new pushrods, another $150 or so. Throw in some new valve cover gaskets (and some fucking nice valve covers, I hate drippy motors), may as well do the oil pump while you’re in there, freeze plugs, main bearings, it’d be stupid to do all this work and not paint it so another $200 for a pro job or halfass with $40 worth of rattle paint. Down this road lies madness, and a $3000 318. I could probably pick up a core 360 to do all this same work on for $125, so it would only really make sense to go down that route instead of reworking the 318. It’ll require a new flexplate and oil pan but big fucking whup. $3000 318 or $3250 360. I waste more than $250 on junk food in a year, it’d be stupid to leave 60 ponies and 70 lb/ft on the table (probably more like 80/100 if I’m buildin’ right). And this motor would need a new carburetor and intake manifold to perform, pitch in another $300-500 for that or cheap out with a $40 rebuild kit for the shitball carb. We’re up into $4000 nose-bleed country and we’re still at stock strokes and shit. That’s fuckin’ silly. It’d purr like a little kitten and be fresh as hell, giving me thousands and thousands of miles of reliable streetable performance, but it’d make me pay through the penis to get there. Proper LA 318 rebuild is basically off the table. Proper LA 360 build is still pretty unappealing at the price point.

Cheapest swap, overall, would be a $225-350 Craigslist 318. They’re pretty readily available, some of them even promise they have low miles. Big gamble with almost no residual benefits except maybe they’ll have a nice aluminum 4bbl intake, add on $150 for a used 4bbl and we’re off to the races (hoping that the head gaskets on this one don’t blow too). Sinking even this small amount money into a slightly different low performance used motor is un-appealing, and I think the price difference between this and the magnum swap is a false economy.

So… magnum swap. There is of course a cheap, an expensive, and a mega expensive route here too.

Cheapest low-effort swap with best residual benefits would be – buy a 5.2 or 5.9 magnum, put in a cheap magnum-drilled 4 barrel intake, and bolt on a carb. I’ve seen magnums for $400-750 pretty consistently (both on craigslist and through car-part.com). Admittedly, they have miles on them, but if forum swap reports and magazines are to be believed the modern moly rings can leave sparkling, straight bores well into early six-digit mileages. Throw $250 in for a timing chain and the gaskets to do the job. Decent carbs that would suit go used for about $150/new for $350, magnum-drilled manifolds go for $150-300. Requires a 360 car style oil pan ($60 for steel vs $300 for milodon – guess which way I’m leaning). ~$1100-1750 ish for a pretty good gamble on a motor that’s 23 years of engineering newer than the old block (including a free swap to a hydraulic roller cam and 1.6 ratio rockers) is WAY more appealing than a $4000 LA. And if I want the thermonuclear overkill build detailed above on a magnum, it’s only 10% more than the LA360 option anyways. If the heads aren’t goofed, it might be CHEAPER. And the motor made 235 horsepower and 300 lb/ft (all in the “seriously streetable” rpm range) with the factory efi and manifolds farting through fuckin’ catalytic converters. Tuned right, a straight carby magnum swap would match that or beat it. And the motor would take all my stock electronic ignition (and benefit exactly the same amount from an HEI swap, which I could build on the engine stand), this would be a “hook up the vacuum lines and choke wire, time it and set some lean best idle” shit. I might be able to do it all on the engine stand and do a one-weekend beers and a buddy engine swap. This is, frankly, the option to beat, and most likely where I’ll start. Lets me resell my LA in parts to recoup some dough, and already comes with a power steering pump (I’d probably have to figure out how to temporarily delete that unless I feel like doing the power steering box at the same time – And I probably don’t. One fucking project at a time and she steers just fine, just sucks to park).

Cheapest high-effort swap would be a factory EFI swap. The magnums on CL come with all the wiring and the computer, and even if they don’t I bet I could find a harness and ecu at the LKQ for a Franklin. The part that will suck about this is wiring. EFI means wires, wires, wires. Wiring is hands down my least favorite thing in all of the automotive hobby, so I tend to do it slowly and with lots of swearing breaks. I’d have to find a good place to mount the stock ECU and figure out the ignition relay wiring to get it really soundly situated. Drill some bigass holes in the firewall, find grommets, but still, this is dirty fucking cheap cash wise, basically just the $550-700 for the engine and wire harness, the standard $250 timing chain and incidentals, and maybe $50 for various connectors, and of course the $60 oil pan, and I’ll have to figure out an EFI pump and hoses(and decide whether to modify a new tank (money)or modify the old one(effort/risk)). Say $1500-1750 for dead nuts Late 90′s OEM style reliability. $175 worth of beer to deal with the headaches from the wiring. Only caveat here is while I know the engine and the transmission will hook up “just fine”(tm) I don’t know how the factory ECU will handle not being able to control the transmission. Probably “just fine” but I’ll probably be leaving ponies and miles per gallon on the table.

Most overkill price AND effort option is Megasquirt. I’ll not dignify the idea of assembling a megasquirt myself from scratch on a deadline car-down engine swap except with a scoffing noise and eyeroll, so we’ll be doing calculations on the complete kits from DIYAutotune. Megasquirt 1 will run me $500 over the price of the OEM efi swap by the time I’m “all in”, and I’m wiring in all my free time for a week of vacation, probably twice the PITA factor of OEM EFI (but ultimately cleaner packaging), and I’ll know for sure that the ECU doesn’t give a fuck about what the tranny is up to inside. Megasquirt 2 is same effort but $130 more expensive (for poorly documented benefits I still don’t quite “get”, I’m still learning about MS). Megasquirt 3 is same effort but $250 more expensive (than the 1) but then it gives you 8-injector sequential firing instead of batch mode. All megasquirt options feature a pretty easy path to go to distributorless ignition/EDIS coilpacks. That much I do know. Also annoying about the MS series is that it doesn’t appear you can “wire once and upgrade later” from a MS1 to 2 or 3, they all have different connectors on the ECU. Stupidgineering there, you guys. Really fuckin’ weird choice for a project based on the idea of being able to tune every parameter and update the source code on demand. There are a ton of success stories out there and a pretty active support forum so I feel confident I could wring every last erg out of the motor with tuning. This has serious appeal, but it is a big financial AND time commitment to get set up right. I don’t think this is the right way to start on the swap.

Right now, the real fight is between the cheapest head gaskets/timing belt and an oil change hail mary out in the yard with a case of beer and the carb’d magnum swap. Lots of motors get shadetree head gaskets this way and work just fine for many more miles, but if I do that and THEN end up finding out the bearings are all fucked out or the valves are bent, I will be many types of angry and out a weekend of stooping over an engine compartment and $300 cash money for nothing and staring down the exact same choices I have right now. With the magnum swap there’s approximately the same risk of swapping in a pre-blown motor or blowing a head gasket pretty soon after I swap, but then I’m already at magnum heads, 1.6 rockers, roller cam, and I can reuse all the sensors and accessories, letting me just freshen a $200 junkyard 5.9 shortblock/longblock to the tune of probably $1200-1500 and have a zero-mile modern motor and a buildable spare core for the same price some people want for a bucket-and-box 340 or, christ forbid, one of those meth fiend listed “4V 318s” which they “know was a drag motor” which look suspiciously like regular old truck blocks that are returning to the elements in a corner of a backyard. This plan runs $1500-2000 less than a fresh mainstream builder magnum motor (which are all seemingly unavailable without rumpity rump car alarm triggering drag cams that would strangle on my fuddy duddy old man manifolds and want a holeshot torque converter), and EIGHT TO FOURTEEN THOUSAND than Ma Mopar wants for her new crate motors, all of which feature single digit potential gas mileage, and create extreme chassis compromises/complications that range from “pretty ridiculous amount of exhaust and suspension fabrication which will cost $3700 to truly fix” to “completely ruins weight distribution and requires offset master cylinder and no more power brakes or power steering ever”, and several interesting combinations of the two. Plus without chassis and drivetrain work they’ll tear the rest of my car apart in weeks.

The nicest part about going for the carb magnum swap is that I can always retain the EFI parts and eventually bench-build a Megasquirt (I could even do it from kit and get in for much cheaper), buy a new gas tank and prep it for an in-tank EFI pump, then when I’m ready bolt it in – after I’m done with some other reliability/driveability projects (suspension bushings/balljoints, new wiring harness/gauges, explorer rear axle swap, subframe connectors, weather stripping, interior jesusgodwhatdidigetmyselfintoohfuckohfuck) – it’s a weekend project. Then resell the carb and intake to somebody else in need, and motor on into the next decade in my EFI updated hot rod Dodge. This is pretty appealing, it’s got good residuals on investment at every step, with plenty to be recouped at the end, and a very high bang to the buck ratio on total investment even if I just take all the spares and throw them away at the end.

Sorry this was crazy long winded, but it’s a complicated problem with a lot of factors. But I think the final cost benefit analysis I’ve presented here is fairly clear. Excepting a bizarro-world gift-of-luck like a free recently rebuilt 318, nothing else comes close. You’ll excuse me, I have to talk to a Vantuckyite about a motor.

Update: Decided to shadetree some gaskets into it and source/build a 5.9 to swap in later. $120 for a full gasket set and roller timing chain, even if it only runs for another ocuple thousand miles that’s a cheap stopgap that will let me “do it once, do it right” on the magnum (with a 5.9 instead of a 5.2). Plus I can probably throw the “freshly head gasketed 318″ on craigslist for a couple hundo when I’m done swapping.

* The way I determine a car’s gender is by analyzing the style of its failures. “Boy” cars tend to have stubborn, impossible to track down problems which rarely leave you completely stranded, simply perpetually baffled. To own a male car is to forever be replacing parts, tracing wires, checking sensors, and replacing bulbs to absolutely no avail. It’ll