Im leaving you all :(

[69C10@16]

Hey everybody,

I am sorry to say that the great grey beast that I have enjoyed driving since August has finally died. It is no longer going to be driven, at least not until that beautiful(ly crappy) 307 gets replaced.

Here's the story (which is so long it should be a book).

About a month before it's demise it was running like no other mother. She was doing great. Or so I thought. Drove to a car show about an hour away in it, just because I could. It was me and two friends and I decided that we were going to roll up in a classic truck, be it a primer grey pile of you know what or not, it was happening.

On the way home it started this really odd puffing/rattling sound under load. At idle the oddity was not present. It began to run extremely poorly as it had before the carb and intake replacement, which also included a new set of points and a timing adjustment. I started my investigation.

After ten minutes in the garage I thought I had it found. My points were burned up, AGAIN. In a months time, MAYBE 1000 miles, I had burned up a brand new set of uni-points?? Checked my coil voltage and had 12 volts hot at all times instead of 6 volts at run and 12 volts at start. Installed an ignition resisitor before the coil, slapped in a new set of points and went for a spin. Same problem, different day, $20 for the poorer, and a bit peeved.

Oh well, keep looking. Tried to solve the "puffing" issue with a new set of exhaust gaskets at both the top of the headers and the bottom. No-go. No help. Ok, let's spray some WD-40 around the intake and see if we have an intake leak. No sir, she's all sealed up. It HAS to be a misfire. New plugs and plugwires, even though they were new in August, screw it, sometimes you just get a bad set. $40 later, same problem. This little issue cost me about $100 dollars and a lot of time that ended up replacing absolutely nothing that needed to be replaced.

Frustration had begun to kick in. I called up a mechanic buddy and asked him if I could borrow his shop for about 45 minutes after hours one night. No problem come on over. Let the compression tests begin.

1 - 125 lbs 2 - 105 lbs
3 - 105 lbs 4 - ZERO
5 - 100 lbs 6 - ZERO
7 - 125 lbs 8 - 120 lbs

This is when I started the profanity. I realised that this meant issues WAY beyond what I had the time, effort, and money to fix. While running the tests I noticed that when the compression tester was in cylinders 4 or 6 the "puffing" sound I had loved to hate had magically reappeared and was coming from my carburetor. Oh boy. It's time to check valve springs. All good. What the heck? I got stupid, which I'm very thankful I did, and decided to put a plug in 4 and test on 6. Now I had 35 lbs of pressure and the puffing sound got louder. We figured the only reason this would happen is that the head gasket was blown between the two. I was not losing any water so It shouldn't hurt it to drive ONLY between school and home or absolutely neccesary transportation. It was crippled and had to be treated as such until it got fixed.

We figured it would be best to make sure the engine was perfectly in time so that even as a cripple it would still run as best it could. The timing light was SO erratic on spark wire one it wasnt even funny. Damn, the timing light is busted. Just for the crap of it I put the light on plug wire 3. It worked PERFECTLY. Huh?? Ok, let's try 5. A-ok. 7, good. 2, good. 4, all sorts of messed up. 6, decent but not good. 8, same as 4 and 1.

Wait, just a moment here. Let us recall the firing order of my lovely little small block. 1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2. Wow, the first three are jacked up. Hello new distributor cap and rotor, even though you were replaced in August and it's now March. Screw it. Compression AND ignition issues? No wonder I can barely drive this thing. Problem was, that didn't help anything. Great. That probably meant that the distrubutor shaft was for some reason cocking itself at an angle and then straightened back up at around 1000 rpm because when revved, the odd missing issues went away. When driving, the engine would reach a certain rpm and then "take off" as though it had suddenly gained about 150hp. I mean grandma driving to put you in your dang seat difference. Night versus friggen day. It was all we could think of for the ignition issue.

Talked to the parental units (lol I like that name for them, it's just funny) and since they had just gotten their tax rebate, and I had jsut gotten a job at O'Reilly Auto Parts and have this nice little buy-at-store-cost discount, they decided they would loan me three hundred to get myself running again. I went nuts, New HEI Distributor, Wires, Plugs, Head gaskets, Head Bolts, Motor Mounts, Transmission Seals, Wire looms, valve covers, I mean everything I could get for three hundred, which is more than the everyday average Joe because It's all discounted.

Hauled the truck up to my grandpa's house to pull the engine and transmission. I know I didn't HAVE too but I wanted to give it a coat of paint while I could and also put new seals in the transmission. Who knows if they'd ever been replaced and I don't want to fry up a tranny cause the seal gave on the highway. Its ten bucks and a lot more effort but it's worth it. Get all that pulled and get the engine on the engine stand and give up for the day.

Went back up the next week over spring break and took off the intake and heads. Oh yeah, that gasket was BLOWN all to hell between those two cylinders and both heads were leaking at almost every cylinder wall in between the cylinders. My uncle, a mechanic on these engines since Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden I think, came up and took a gander at things. He put it simply and bluntly without a sugar coating. "Newton, you....are....FU(K3D. This gasket's been blown a LOT longer than just this small amount of time. It's worn a groove in both the head and the block. You're better off putting a new engine in it. You'd have the same amount of money in it either way. You could mill that head surface and put new heads on it, but I think you're wasting your time and money on such a beater." I got sad, mad, angry, upset, frustrated, and pissed all at the same time. I told him thanks for taking his time to come look at things for me and drove home. The next day I returned every bit of what I bought for the engine and paid mom and dad back. We began the hunt for a new truck.

What ended up happening was my dad bought him a 2006 Chevy Silverado Quad Cab and I bought his 99 GMC Sierra K1500 Ext. Cab from him for 5000. Which is 2500 under its bluebook value so I made out like a bandit. I pay him directly $150 every month. Out of a $500 a month salary and being a teen that likes to go out with friends, that actually makes things tight. But it's good for me. I'm learing VERY well to manage my money and time so that I have what I need to get by. My parents rely on my payment to help with their new payment on the '06 so me messing up could cost them BIGTIME. I'm not going to let that happen and have already lost some friends over the fact that I can't go out as much as I used to but if that's how they want to be then I don't really want them as a friend anyways.

The '69 isn't leaving me any time soon. I've already had one offer to buy it and I simply replied, "I hope the time never comes when I get stupid enough to sell that truck." and walked off. I always hear these stories of people saying "Man, I can't believe I got rid of it" or "If I could only go back it would never have left me." I told myself when I was ten years old I'd never sell my first truck. I won't. I refuse. I'll throw a little girl's hissy fit before I do that. I finally got my dad to agree to let me stow it in the backyard. I told him I'd build him an eight foot privacy fence around it if I had to but I'd never let it go. He tried to argue that his name was on the title too and he'd sell it if he had to but in reality he couldnt ever do that to me and we both knew it. I'm gonna keep the engine too, even though it's primary use at this point would be an overweight boat anchor. I figure since I'm going to college in a year and a half that it will all probably sit there for another 6 or 7 years as I slowly tinker with it more than anything. I hope to do a frame off on it and make it a number's matching 2/4 dropped restored pickup. If the ole 307 and TH350 get rebuilt it will even have the original engine and transmission in it. That will be pretty cool. It wont get driven daily, especially with gasoline at 3.20 a gallon here at the moment but it will be sweet to cruise in every once in a while, especially with the sentimental value it has to me. I mean yeah I only had it and drove it for six months but I spent a TON of time on that thing and learned a LOT. I love working with vehicles and since I don't tinker on the '99 I've kinda been going nuts without anything to paly with. I did put a glasspack on the '99 which made me happy for the three hours it took but afterwards I didn't have the same satisfaction of knowing I'd get to do something else to it the next day.

Anyways, there's my book. I won't be around much on the 67-72 side of things but I will probably frequent the 99+ side. I'm wanting to put a 6" lift on the 99 with my second job this summer and I refuse to pay anyone to do anything so I'll be screwing it up myself and I'm going to have lots 'o questions. Especially when it comes to finding tires and wheels to put on that thing after the lift. Ugh I dont even want to think about that right now. I hope I didn't put you to sleep and if you made it this far then you deserve a candy bar or a pop or something. Lol.

Have a good one, God be with you,
Newton