Working Man's Burbon

[HO455]

Originally Posted by PAWS 72

That is what the uninsured motorist part of your insurance is for according to my agent said.

Unfortunately if they pay you, you will pay them back (with interest) Cheaper in the long run just to fix this myself.

And speaking of fixed. The WMB is back from paint!!!

[HO455]

I also installed my junkyard score! A tail light lens. First photo is the junkyard find and the second is the twin to the one I replaced.
I should get the bumper reinstalled tomorrow.

[Ol Blue K20]

Looks good......insurance is basically a loan shark....

[pwdcougar]

Looks great!

[HO455]

Thanks everyone for all of your support. Time to get some other things done on the WMB. Its out with the old carb and in with an even older carburetor. Something I've been wanting to do for a while now. We pulled the Edelbrock 1406 and installed a Qjet my buddy Karl rebuilt. It's a 78 truck carb we believe is off a 400. After installing it and checking for leaks. It fired right up but idled high. Although the mixture screws responded well the idle would not come down. The vacuum guage showed 20 inches of vacuum so we didn't suspect a vacuum leak.
After checking the timing and finding it to be ok, we were still unable to get the idle to come down below 850 in gear. We pulled the carb and checked the idle air bleed sizes in the base plate. They measured a whopping .120, a size more appropriate to a big engine with a lot of overlap in the cam, and not my little stocker. Took and tapped the holes and plugged them with set screws then drilled a .052 hole in each set screw. That got the idle down to 780 with good response from the idle mixture screws.
So off the carb came and a more complete examination of the idle circuit. After pulling the idle mixture tubes they were found to be .036's. Karl replaced them with a pair of .033's out of his magic box of spares. Once again more appropriate for a stock 350. Flipping the carb body over the idle bypass holes were tapped and plugged with set screws. They were not drilled out at this time but maybe later as things get more dialed in.
After reassembly and installation the idle was now around 700. Went for a little test drive and came back grinning. The throttle response was great, but I had no secondarys. Checking the secondary flapper spring found it to be quite tight. Loosening it up allowed the secondarys to open. For the first time since I have owned the truck I can tell when the secondarys open. Who hoo!
Time to put some miles on the truck and discover any other shortcomings or areas of improvement (like a choke). The choke stove we had didn't fit the 72 intake I had installed. From the size of the idle circuits the donor carb may have been a high altitude due to the large amount of air by passing the idle circuits. The carburetor number came out to a 78 350/400 which is right in the middle of the smog years when the manufacturers were struggling to pass emissions. It had to run enough to pass emissions, but running good wasn't as much of a concern.

The primary jets are 64's
The primary rods are B32's
The secondary rods are AR's

We noticed some irregularities in the timing at idle so a quick look at the idle weights reveled little except a well worn rotor center contact. A slightly used rotor seemed to solve the problem. Another thing we noted is with the timing set at 12* initial I am only getting 24 degrees total advance. We bumped it up to 14* to get a little better MPG, but distributor changes are required to get more advance.

[HO455]

I took a trip to Richland WA over Memorial Day weekend to see some friends at the Tigers on the Columbia event. It was a nice trip (about 500 miles) went up on Saturday and came back on Sunday. The WMB ran good. I went up on Highway 14 on the Washington side and came back on Interstate 84 on the Oregon side. The Washington side is more fun to drive but my mileage was only 12.3 MPG. On the Oregon side it was 14.8 MPG. Going east is uphill and Highway 14 has a lot of elevation changes.
The park looks pretty empty in the photos but I forgot to take pictures until things were almost over. Fortunately the Gassers were still around when I got the camera out. The Judge was absolutely perfect. There were at least 75 cars in the park when I got there.

[Average Joe]

Beautiful rides!

Thanks for sharing your results on the qjet. I love hearing about real world results. I have a couple qjets in my stash that i wanna play with but the 1406 I swapped on last year runs really well. I picked up over 1.5 mpg from the 625 afb i had been running. Im sure it was just leaner jetting but it was still a win and didnt cost anything as I already owned the Edelbrock.

Will it take any more initial without starter kickback?

[HO455]

No problems with starting, but I have noticed some slight pinging at low speeds when accelerating that wasn't there before. It will take some investigation to find out if things are too lean or it is the intial timing is just too much. Either way I will post the progress.

[HO455]

After 631 miles and 56.49 gallons of gas the new carb is getting 11.7 miles per gallon around town. Which is .2 mpg gallon better than the old carburetor! WHOO HOOO!
I haven't had an opportunity to do a longer highway trip to get those numbers. The inside of tail pipe is cleaner (less sooty) than it was, which I am pretty sure was from the old carburetor's choke issues. It was very slow to fully open and it was erratic as to how much choke the choke plate would close on any given day. Now that I have a reasonable base line I can start doing some more tuning and hopefully gain some mileage and performance too.

[Average Joe]

Thats not too shabby! Im lucky to pull down 8mpg if its strictly in town driving. The old 283 and SM420 with 3.73's would get low 11's though. Just didn't have any power though.

[HO455]

It was a M&R day on the WMB. On Saturday I noticed the starter didn't seem to be turning as fast it should. I poked around some with my multimeter and found the battery voltage was OK (not great it was only showing 13.3 when charging). I'm still using the starter that came with the truck. Considering the shape the of other things on the WMB when I got it I've probably been on borrowed time for a while now. Not to mention I know better. Whenever you get a used driver first thing you do is get a new starter, alternator, water pump, and bleed the brakes or expect a ride on a trailer.
So I got a brand new starter from NAPA ( #: NNE 4N1601). It is a late model gear drive style. It comes with a life time warranty and it is stocked at most NAPAs. But it wasn't cheap even with the company discount. I've had the life time remans from the budget parts stores and I learned to expect to have to warranty dance every 2-3 years. I hope to avoid that with this one.
Once I got the old one out it was obvious what the problem was (see Photo 1). The next couple of photos show the differences in the two starters.

[HO455]

Okay on to installation. First thing I noticed is the new starter's solenoid connection is a 1/4" spade lug. (Red line on photo 1) That meant removing the ring terminal and replacing it. After crimping the new lug on it I soldered the connection to be sure I won't be having problems down the road. Plus I got to use my new soldering iron!
Following the directions (photo 2) I checked the clearance between the flywheel and the starter drive gear. (Photo 3) The specified clearance is .100 +/- .040. Eyeballing the gap it looked on the close side of the specification (.060). Using a .032 and a .028 feeler guage I ascertained the gear was too close to the flywheel. (Photo 4 green circle) Pulled the starter out and went over the instructions again to make sure I understood the next steps.
They called out removing the 3 starter mount bolts (photo 5 green lines. The yellow Tee handle Allen wrench goes to the third bolt ) then separate the mount from the starter nose and adding a shim washer. It seemed straightforward so I dove in. Things started to go wrong on step two. Of course you won't find out until you get to step 5 and you realize that the starter nose and the mount will not bolt up correctly. The instructions should say add the extra gasket (Not actually a gasket but an aluminum spacer/ shim) to the existing gasket so the outside of the starter nose will be spaced out the same distance that the bearing is after adding the second shim washer.

[HO455]

Sorry my narrative got ahead of the photo capacity. Photo #1 shows the mount off of the starter and the "Gaskets" have green arrows. If you have to move the gear away from the flywheel like I did you will have to use both of them. In addition you will have to install the two round shims in the mount. They hold the bearing in place. Second photo look at the end of the green line and you can see the two round shims installed. The third photo shows the two "Gaskets" (shims in my world) installed.
The directions continue with misinformation as there is no reason to have removed the armature cover and o-ring. After torquing the bolt down (I hope those numbers are okay)
After reinstalling the starter the new clearance was .118. So the next check was for the gear mesh. They called for a pretty small number for clearance .040 +/- .015. I am used to seeing .062 which is easy to check with a 1/16" Allen wrench. There is no good Fractional Allen wrench for .040, but I got luck and found a small metric Allen which I believe was a 1 mm. It was too small to read but passed the caliper check.
There as plenty of clearance so no shims were necessary. The rest was hooking up the battery cable and the solenoid power and then a quick check with the multimeter on ohms to make sure the battery lead was not touching something it shouldn't. Hook up the battery and no arcing or spartking was detected. Turning the key and the engine jumped to life. But man that starter sounds strange. It will take a while to get used to that.

Tonights posting was done to the sounds of Chris Smothers.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o5mKCydD8no

[HO455]

Unpaid product endorsement. This is my new soldering iron IsoTip Solderpro120. This is the second one of these I have owned. The first one I got around 2002/3 and used it until last winter when it was no longer able to heat up correctly. I made literally 10's of 1,000's of solder joints with the old one. The new one works just as well. Of the dozens of soldering irons I have used over the years these are the best ones I have ever come across.

[FLYNAVY30]

Very cool....I'm always fascinated by the in-depth carb tuning. Being a child of the 80's and a high-schooler in the late 90s, all of my formative car years were spent on friends 5.0 Mustangs and then the LS series of motors, so carb tuning is very impressive black magic to me. I understand all the basic concepts, as they obviously apply to fuel injection and distributor-less ignition, but I find the knowledge of all the different jet/port size requirements impressive....especially as they relate to the specifics of given engine.

[HO455]

There will be more carburetor tuning once I get past the current issues.
One of which is newly discovered. It appears that my alternator is only charging for several minutes after start up. I'm not sure if it is the regulator or the alternator that is the problem. Although I am leaning towards the idea of worn brushes in the alternator. Irregardless I've decided the best course of action is to change to a newer style internally regulated alternator. Over the winter I noticed the current factory set up would go slightly to the discharge side when the wipers, heater, head lights, and the air compressor were on and the truck was idling. Not enough amps to go around. I will need to do a bit of a wiring upgrade to make sure the increase in alternator charging capacity doesn't cause a problem. Looks like it is time for a trip to the parts store.

While I had the WMB up on the jack stands for the starter replacement I added some Posi lube to the differential oil. The Posi had been catching (chattering) when I come off the freeway and turning while decelerating. The rear end did have some chatter after the rebuild and the shop added a second bottle of the Posi lube. They said if that didn't do the trick they would have to open it up and check it out. Fortunately it solved the problem until recently. As that was a year and at least 8000 miles ago. The chatter is not as bad now as it was just out of the shop so I'm hoping that refreshing the Posi lube will do the trick.
In order to refresh the Posi lube I removed the fill plug (Green arrow) and used a large syringe with a piece of clear tubing to remove about 8 ounces of lube from the housing. I saved this oil in a clean jar for use later Then using the same syringe and tube I added the 6 ounces of Posi lube. (Actually Spicer Additive Friction Modifier) Then using the oil I removed I topped the oil level off and reinstalled the plug.
I learned the hard way years ago that just jacking one side of the rear end up and adding the Posi lube (instead of taking the time to remove enough oil to make room for the new Posi lube oil) will result in having oil leak from the outer axle bearing seal and on to your brakes.

[HO455]

The old charging system was definitely bad. Pulled the WMB around the block and when I popped the hood the smell of hot battery hit me. Whew! It had gone from not charging to over charging. After disconnecting the battery I went to pull the alternator and discovered it was blistering hot. I got lucky noticing the voltage after the starter swap, otherwise I'm sure I would have been stranded somewhere.
Once things had cooled down I pulled the old alternator and compared it to the new SC130 I got to replace the stock system. ( The alternator I got is for a 1988 Oldsmobile Firenza with A/C. Listed as 100 amps. Non A/C ones are 78 amps but were more expensive. Going with this old of a listing meant it was a two bolt mount instead of the 3 bolt later styles). I found that they were comparable and nothing looked to be an issue bolting the new alternator to the factory brackets. The new SC style only has three bolt holding the back of the case on. This means there are only 3 positions to clock the back. I could not see any problems with the clocking of the alternator I ordered so I left it alone.
The SC style alternators come with a ribbed belt for a serpentine set up. Using an impact wrench and a good glove to hold the cooling fan I was able to buzz both pulley nuts off easily. A check with a ruler and caliper showed that there was no difference in how the fans are stamped in relation to how the pulley made contact. (I didn't want to distort the new fan tightening the nut on the old V-belt pulley). After installing the old pulley on the new alternator I installed it on the engine. There is not very much adjustment range due to the body of the alternator hitting the aftermarket valve cover. (Last photo) This was no different from the factory alternator.
The only slightly annoying part of the mechanical installation is the top bolt (tension bolt) on the alternator is threaded metric. I believe it is 8 mm x 1.25.
That wraps up the mechanical side. Now on to the electrical side, which was not nearly as straight forward and thus required several trips to the parts store.

[HO455]

First off I want to thank VetteVet for all the great information he has posted over the years. In addition here are some threads that added valuable information to make this conversion possible.

http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=567472

https://www.chevelles.com/techref/tecref14.html

http://www.madelectrical.com/electri...evymain1.shtml

Nothing I did here was new or ground breaking.
Thank you everyone.

Okay in a nut shell the scope of the wiring side involved removing all the old wires to the alternator, the wire from the main power splice to the battery. Those will be replaced, with larger wire, along with adding a new wire to feed power to the the relays I added earlier in the project.
Material and items needed are:
10' of 6AWG red wire.
10' of 10AWG red wire
4' of 16AWG brown wire
6" of 12 AWG fusible link wire
A plug for the new alternator. Napa #787128
Resistor for the ampmeter circuit. I was unable to locate a 85 ohm 5 watt resistor, but I came up with 2) 100 ohm 2 watt resistors that I wired in parallel to give me 4 watts of resistance capability.
A insulated post to connect the wires on the driver side after I did away with the factory power splice.

After removing the external regulator and it's associated ground wires, the gobs of old tape to get to the factory wiring and pull the loom apart to see what was what. Surprisingly things were relatively undamaged. The regulator was no longer mounted on rubber isolators and it had 2 ground straps to boot. (These things should be well grounded ) The only other issue is the fuse holder for the ampmeter by the battery has been removed.
The next step for me was to locate the factory power splice inside of the harness. With the charging rate going from 38 amps to 100 amps the existing wire was too small. All of the charge wires, the power to the cab, one end of the ampmeter circuit, and the alternator sensing need to be hooked together at one location for the system to operate properly. (Photo 2 shows the power splice's location, at the end of the green line) (Photo 3 I mined from the Mad Electrical site showing the splice up close. The difference being our trucks have a 5th wire. The small black with white wire for the ampmeter)
As I am up sizing all the charging wires I cut all the wires off the splice. I will only be reusing the red that goes to the firewall connector and the small black w/white. Those got new ring terminals crimped and soldered on.
From the plug on the regulator I cut the brown wire off as I need it to make the ampmeter work. The rest was removed.
This drawing from VetteVet is what I used to guide me in hooking everything up. (Photo 4). Notice how all the red wires come together at the bottom of the drawing. On my installation I used an insulated post to bolt them all together. (Photo 5). It will allow me to add wires in the future if needed without having to cut the harness apart again.

[HO455]

In order to have some over current protection I needed a fusible link for the battery charging. A fusible link is preferred in this application over a fuse since it will not blow if it is momentarily shorted. The result of a having a momentary short would be a blown fuse, if the blowing of the fuse wasn't noticed and the alternator was still trying to charge it would soon self destruct. Many new cars are using fuses instead of fusible links these days but the vehicle's computer is also in communication with the alternator and would know if there was a blown fuse and then would shut the vehicle or charging system down before the alternator was damaged.
The idea of a fusible link is a short piece of undersized wire that will burn in two if the over current condition lasts long enough. The fusible links found in factory harness have been engineered to meet the intended use. For me it was not as cut and dried. I spent at least 2 hours searching the interweb for the answer. Finally I was able to conclude that for a fusible link work properly it needs to be 4 numbers larger than the wire it is protecting. Numbers not gauges! This is where it can get confusing as a wire's diameter gets smaller, the larger the number gauge it is called gets. To protect a 10 gauge wire you need 14 gauge fusible link wire. A 14 gauge wire requires an 18 gauge fusible link. From what I was able to learn the link is about 5 1/2" to 6" long and is attached to the end at the battery.
The other part of the equation is that fusible link wire has special insulation. As the wire inside overheats and melts in two the insulation is designed to contain the heat and arcing. This will prevent damage to other wires next to it and to help prevent it from shorting to the chassis.
I was not able to find an over the counter fusible link anywhere locally that was large enough. Finally I found that Napa carries fusible link wire in bulk 10' rolls. https://www.napaonline.com/en/p/BEL785856
Not exactly what I wanted but it was local and got the job done today. As the #6 AWG wire I used should have a #10 AWG fusible link. I can't see it being too small in the forseable future. Now I have a extra 9'6" of wire. They also have butt splices that allow you to have two different sizes of wire connect up correctly. I passed on them and soldered mine. (Photo 1). See photo 2 large red wire on the left becomes the smaller blue wire hooked to the positive post of the battery.

[LockDoc]

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Good write up on the fusible link. I have been meaning to do some research on the subject but procrastination always seems to step in... I have a couple of trucks that have had the link replaced with regular wire over the years and need to be upgraded. Your explanation will make it easy.

LockDoc

[Ol Blue K20]

Originally Posted by LockDoc

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Good write up on the fusible link. I have been meaning to do some research on the subject but procrastination always seems to step in... I have a couple of trucks that have had the link replaced with regular wire over the years and need to be upgraded. Your explanation will make it easy.

LockDoc

X2, this some great info...thanks!

[HO455]

Thanks guys! I was able to find fusible links in 14, 16, 18, and 22 guage on the shelf locally. Also the folks at Mad Electric sell them as kits including 12 guage for about half the price. I ended up not finishing the post last night as my sister called, her stove had quit working. So off I went.
Now for the rest of the story. In order for the alternator to work there needs to be a minimum amount of resistance in the wire between the alternator and the ignition switch. In order to achieve this an external resistor needs to be installed in the brown wire from the alternator going to the firewall plug.

The 'L' connection is the lamp connection. The 'lamp' refers to the typical idiot light for an alternator. This connection requires switched (ignition) voltage through between 35 and 350 ohms of resistance. If the alternator sees below 35 ohms of resistance, the CS alternator will fail eventually. As long as you keep the total resistance between 35 and 350 ohms, you should be ok. If in doubt, measure the resistance of your brown wire to ground with ignition off to determine your car's baseline resistance.

The folks at Painless Wiring recommend using a 85 ohm 5 watt resistor, which as I mentioned I was unable to obtain locally. I used two 100 ohm 2 watt resistors in parallel for my installation. Photo 1 shows the first step of assembly. Out of sight on the other end of the wire is the 4 pin plug for the alternator (photo 2 installed). Then they were soldered to the factory brown wire. (Photo 3) Since the resistors are relatively fragile I put two layers of heat shrink over them. (#4 photo).
I chose to put the resistor on the fender end of the alternator harness as it should see less vibration and heat there.
One note on the plug is that it comes with 3 wires the center one is not used. I attempted to remove the pin but was unsuccessful. I have done this many times in the past but this one pin refused to come out. I quit trying when the pin began to deform from my attempts. I ended up cutting the wire off at the plug and sealing the exposed conductors with liquid tape insulation. ( See the black spot on the back of the plug in photo 2)
https://www.permatex.com/products/ad...ectrical-tape/

[HO455]

I had put the battery on the charger during the conversion so it would be ready to go, and there were also several warnings with the new alternator saying DAMAGE WILL RESULT UNLESS BATTERY IS FULLY CHARGED. I did continuity checks with an ohm meter before hooking the battery leads up. I was looking for grounded wires and crossed conductors. After hooking the positive leads on the battery up I put a hand held amp meter inline with the negative lead and its post. Zero amps. Everything thing checked out.
I put the negative lead on the battery but I didn't tighten it down just in case things went horribly awry and I needed disconnect the power quickly and as part of this precaution I also wore gloves during start up.
I put my multimeter on DC volts and set it so I could see it from the front seat. Voltage was 13.3. A slight drop occurred when I turned the key on as the fuel pump and compressor came on as expected. The engine fired right up and voltage went to 14.4. A quick check under the hood with an infrared temp gun showed no hot spots in the wiring or alternator. I turned everything in the truck on and the voltage never changed more than a tenth of a volt from idle to 5000 RPM.
The only issue at this point is the ampmeter just barely moves but prior to this it only ever seemed to move to the change side and back to zero. Which may have had to do with the incorrect way I had hooked up the power for the compressor, and the head light relays. I will look into the dash wiring and guage first. There was some kind of problem with it in the past since the fuse holder was removed from the harness.
On the way back from my sisters house I turned the lights on and wow the dash lights are brighter. With the old set up they started out kind of dim after starting the truck and got better as you drove.

[LockDoc]

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Thanks for the follow up.

I have never seen an original gauge that moved more than a needle width in either direction. My '68 CST 20 is the only truck I now have that even works....

LockDoc

[Average Joe]

Wow!

Fantastic documentation and write up. Thanks again for sharing your work!!