The boat turned out to be a typical boat... problematic. The owner said that the "tires are good, we just moved it from 2.5 hours away". One tire was flat when we arrived, they pumped it up and it had a audible leak. We limped it to the nearest gas station to grab a can of fix a flat, then to a parts store to pick up a tire plug kit. Made home, then found rust in the ports when I pulled the intake. There is orange paint under the black paint on the block so it looks like a truck block was swapped in at some point; I doubt it has the hotter Mercruiser cam. At least the valve seats aren't pitted, they actually cleaned up pretty well. I'll drop it off at my machinist since it's not usable as-is.
After getting it home I noticed that it had a 90* sweep 5k tach, and factory six cylinder tachs are super rare so I was hoping I could graft it onto a block off plate and use a decal to make it look like an original tach. After getting it out and doing some research I found out that it's a generator driven tach and uses the signal from the boat's alternator. The boat had a bigger pulley than the truck so the calibration would be off, and I didn't want to swap pullies and have less charging at low rpm. So another disappointment out of the boat.
I tracked down the source of the brakes dragging- the stock drum brake master cylinder has a built in residual pressure valve that is meant to keep pressure on the wheel cylinder cup seals so they don't suck in air when the brakes are released. I wanted to replace it with a dual circuit m/c anyway, so I've been researching the best way to upgrade. A disc/drum system needs a hold off valve for the front circuit so the discs don't activate before they system builds enough pressure to overcome the drum's shoe return springs. The rear brakes don't need to lock up before the front so a proportioning valve is used to limit rear brake line pressure. GM used a combination valve with both built in, and I had a new one leftover from another project but the proportioning valve isn't adjustable. I want to be able to adjust the rear to get the most out of them without lockup, which will change with different tires and different brake pad/shoe compounds when they're eventually replaced.
I pulled the combo valve apart to see what was inside. The hold off valve simply unscrews. In the middle is a shuttle valve that activates a warning light switch in case one of the circuits fails. I deleted that. The proportioning valve in the rear was more complicated to delete, if you gut it there's a weep hole that is exposed and would need to be blocked.
The theads for the prop valve were an oddball 3/4-20 and I couldn't find a readily available adapter or plug, so I machined my own to accept a 1/8 npt to 3/4-24 inverted flare adapter. I'll use an external Wilwood adjustable proportioning valve to set the rear bias, and a 10 psi residual valve for the rear wheel cylinders. Those parts and a new master cylinder will be here later this week.
When I had my last blue '66 dad found a red '66 about a mile from their house and bought it. We went through it and got it back on the road, but he ended up selling it around the same time I sold mine so we've both been truck-less for a few years. He knew his neighbor had a blue '64 that had been in the family since '68 and had asked about it over the years, and finally got the call that they were ready to sell it last week.
His new '64. Its had a 350/350 swapped in, 5 lug swap, power steering and brakes, old Sears underdash A/C installed, has a newer bed floor, and it's fairly straight and solid. He's wanting to drop it and go with wheels/original caps like mine so we've been rounding up parts to start wrenching on it.
