Ordeal is over....at least this part anyway.

[Gray Ghost]

I sure hate PO's. They do the dumbest ****.

This one had replaced the timing chain recently. Unfortunately, he reused a bad balancer and a bad timing chain cover and RTV'd the holy hell outta the darn thing to cover up the leak. No wonder it was for sale when the middle man got it.

Here's what happened. I had just put new wires on it and was on the way to an appointment in Cedar Hill. Two wires weren't on good and came off making the truck run badly. It actually backfired a few times on me [it may still since it did that before I swapped wires]. I stopped to check under the hood and saw oil dripping rapidly onto the crossmember. Checked the oil and I was three quarts low [I had just filled it the day before].

Heard what I thought was ticking noises and shut her down. It was actually the big exhuast leak I have....header gasket is bad on the passenger side.
So I get towed home on Memorial Day.

I tore it down that evening and found all the bad stuff he had done, went and got the balancer and verything except the gasket kit for the timing cover. Realized this morning that the cover was worse than I tought, so then the hunt was on. Finally found one in Mesquite at Performance Auto...no one in Terrell had one for a 70.

The balancer and timing cover gasket went on like a dream...the two things I thought would give me trouble. I bought an installer for the balancer and it was easy as all get out to install. Thanks to veryone who had suggestions about how to install it.

So now it's back together, but it still has two quirks....it 'backfires' [sorta hard to explain but it acts like it is gonna die, then goes back to normal right away].

Anyway the other one is it has a lot of little tiny 'stumbles' as it accelerates...almost as if it is way out of tune. Course it could be fuel oriented.

I am now out of cash to fix anything else past the exhaust gaskets, so I hope it runs ok tomorrow and the rest of the week.

If anyone can help me figure out what it's doin' and how to fix it, let me know. It only does those two things after it warms up. The 'backfire' is the most larming of the two...kinda remotely reminds me of the Buffalo's dropping 500 rpms, but a little bit different.