Some Good News for a Change

[AMX69PHATTY]

Great !

much better this time I guess ?

no funny spark timimg issues ?

Now the hard part, be easy on it for a few hundred miles,

before ya really wrap on it

Wheels in the Air !

[1980_Cj7]

Nope, no timing issues whatsoever. We set it at TDC and pointed the rotor at No. 1, and it tried to start right away, but wouldn't quite catch. Turned the distributor counter clockwise a hair to give a little advance, and she fired right up. After the 20 minute break in, put the timing light on it and set it at 10 advanced. She cranks real easy now, not that strained barely-able-to-turn-over thing we were experiencing last time around. Seems to be doing better temperature wise this time too, and running much cooler, but we really haven't had it out on the road yet either.

I've heard you should do a few half throttle hard acceleratons to seat the rings. I've also heard not to baby it and to just run the crap out of it from the get go.

All I know is so far so good. We do still have some racing fuel mixed in with the gas currently in the tank from when she was pinging last time around, so we won't really know how the pump gas works til we use that up, which shouldn't take long if it goes thru gas like it did last time it was running.

Now, I just hope it lasts A LOT longer than the 300 miles we got out of the last rebuild!

[AMX69PHATTY]

That's good to hear.

300 miles aint too bad, I only got 30
but I was the one who put it together
This is the first thing found when I went looking
then from there found the bad #4 ex lobe & lifter.

Keep an eye on your rocker adj and lifters for a while and
maybe after awhile, pull the dizzy and check the gear.

[1980_Cj7]

Fuzz, post up a picture of your "pretzel connecting rod", ha, ha. Maybe we could put that and AMX69PGHATTY's pieces together and make some kind of 401 sculpture, ha, ha.

I had forgotten just how loud and vicious our 401 sounds until we terrorized the neighborhood last night on "maiden voyage II". And right at "quiet time", of course. Even had one neighbor come out of their house and stare. It was a different neighbor than the one who read Fuzz and I the riot act when Fuzz came to visit and made some noise. We're becoming more and more popular, ha, ha.

Fuzz was the first one besides us to hear the beast roar last night, long distance, courtesy of "can you hear it now". After all, he had a big part in our successful rebuild. Wish I had a way to make a good recording to share it with all of you here who helped us out. Tried recording on the cell phone, but that really comes out crappy-sounding.

[AMX69PHATTY]

I try to imagine what it was like way back when in the day
when a whole lotta folks had loud jeeps or cars.
Nowadays they've gotten so quite, a loud one sticks out.

So to keep "reputations", did you terrorize ...... er .... drive
it around the nieghbirhood again yet tonight ???

Gotta hear that buba-buba-buba-buba-buba sound man

[fuzz401]

[1980_Cj7]

Well, as high as I was last night, I'm just as disappointed tonite. We changed oil and filter, checked all the fluids, then took her for a ride. We didn't go very far last night, but went about maybe 5 miles tonite.

Well, first off, the temperature is climbing again. It hit about 220, and I think it would have gone higher, but we stopped driving it. It's funny, it will sit and idle all day and not go over 180, but as soon as you take it on the road, it starts to heat up. Same thing is was doing 1st rebuild. Once we stopped driving, we let it sit and idle and the temp came right down. The 2 speed Taurus fan is pulling plenty of air, much more that the stock belt driven fan. It will suck a rag right up against the radiator from about a foot away.

The other thing is it doesn't have much power. Again, about the same as last time around. Hard to believe with all the problems it had last time.

WHAT A BUMMER!!! It sure does sound good though.

[CoriolisSTORM]

sound clips?

[Rhinolined360]

It can't be the fan, my fan is really crappy for my 360 and it does the job, is your thermostat opening, there should be like a peak in temperture then a drop you know...

[1980_Cj7]

It can't be the fan, my fan is really crappy for my 360 and it does the job, is your thermostat opening, there should be like a peak in temperture then a drop you know...

I'm trying to remember what thermostat we have in it. I just looked on the shelf and found a 180, a 195, and an empty box. The empty box doesn't have a temp on it. The two t-stats are Stant's, but the empty box is a CST, made in Israel.

If memory serves me, we started out with the 180, then went to a 160. I just looked up the CST part number and that empty box is from a 160, so I'm betting that's what's in the engine.

I'll have to watch carefully next time we start it up and see if it does momentarily drop back after it initially hits 160. We have a real good Autometer gauges in it so we can monitor it a lot better than with the crappy OEM "cold/warmer/hot/uh-oh" gauge. I'd say the t-stat is opening because I was watching in the radiator the other night on the first start up and at one point I could really see the coolant start to circulate.

Wonder what would happen if we ran it without any thermostat? Fuzz, what temp t-stat are you running?