hi,been a while so ere we go!
well i made it to dragstalgia with still a few jobs to do but was very happy just being there! it had been a mad few weeks to get the car finished but made it,albeit without firing the motor up and having a temp paint job as when we painted the body ,the paint reacted so just tried to make it presentable for the meeting,my brother antony applied some signwiting which came out really nice!
so on the friday of the meeting i left work with the car around 11am and sat on the effing m25 all the way from dartford to the m1 at 35mph,finally getting to the pod at around 2.45 not in a very good mood as when i stopped at toddington services i checked the trailer(as it was its first time on the roads!)looked inside only to find something had come loose and landed on the top of the cowel and rubbed through some of the signwriting right down to the aluminium!!!
as my brothers were there already setting up the pitspace we got on with finishing bits and pieces on the car,first problem encountered was that we found that the brake cylinder was knackered but as luck would have it antony had just bought one so on it went !,then beer and food time!
Saturday morning saw us attempting to fire up the car for the first time but strangely the engine was very,very tight!
It was turning over very slowly so we checked the battery,that was fine so i tried to turn the engine by hand which was bloody hard! After talking to a few people it was suggested that maybe i had put in 2 of the conrods back to front causing them to bind which was news to me but over the course of the weekend i found out it was quite a common mistake to make so it was lucky the engine didnt fire and do some real damage! As i was borrowing my brothers shortblock i decided to leave it alone till back at the workshop and investigate hoping that i hadnt damaged his engine! When i finally pulled the eng/trans out i split them and tried to turn the engine by hand and it turned over lovely which was the good news but upon turning the convertor about 2/3rds of a rotation there was a horrible grinding noise! So rang a couple of trans specialists and upon hearing my description they both said front pump on the box so i am now saving for a powerglide trans to replace the th350!! will post pics when i can!