Wagon Build - Phase 2

[SmithKid]

I'm hoping my nails will grow out soon. Hope to help soon too, as I've recently returned from a 2 week trip visiting #2 son.

[Luva65wagon]

Hey all. I know it's been; like, forever ago, but it has officially begun. Jeff drove his wagon over on Saturday and a couple of us proceeded to begin excising the old to make room for the new.

The motor is being built... with a few minor hiccups along the way. I mean try finding a rear main seal, anywhere, for a 200 c.i. six. These are nowhere to be found. In-fact, the gasket set Jeff bought off eBay had a 289 rear-mail seal "thrown into the package" to "look complete." Being Roger, as I am, I said "Fine, I'll use the 289 seal" and made a set myself. With the promise, "if it ever fails, I'll put in a new seal." I figure, maybe by then the seal will be in production again.

So we had Jeff, Gene, Brian, and yours truly out there by 10 AM and pretty much playing around and joking by 2 PM. Brian, in his cool vintage 1983 Diesel Ford Ranger... hauled the block and transmission to Jeff's house. He was apparently hijacked and now some guy named Johnny Plaid has it and is trying to give it away on Facebook Marketplace. Everything he says, though, is true about it.

Anyway, Jeff and I worked a few more hours to pull the steering bits out so I can get the box to RedHead Steering Gears on Monday morning. Then we started pulling the rear-end out when we decided, Mmm, maybe we'll wait until Jeff comes back next. We were tired. We're changing the leaf springs and I need to devise a means to soak the leaf perch mount screws to get them out. Hopefully. One mount at least needs a slight massage.

It was obvious... Jeff is excited. And no, we helped Gene. He didn't do it all himself, despite how it may appear in the pictures.

[Luva65wagon]

It's been a little interesting building this motor. First hurdle was to discover the rear main seal in the gasket kit was wrong. I already knew they didn't exist (from a previous attempt to find one for a guy who reached out to me to see if I had one in my stash) so I looked at the 289 seal that found its way into the package and after doing some test fits determined I could insert the seal into the cap and cut it to length. Worked like a charm - so much so I may make more of them.

Then when I went to degree the cam - it's like 13 degrees out - out of the box. So we ordered a special gear set to allow some finer adjustment beyond a full tooth, which was 19 degrees. I plan to discuss why a cam is so far out. Is that normal? Rob at Action Machine didn't think so. I will call Clay Smith Cams tomorrow and confirm after checking dot-to-dot with the new timing set.

The other thing I discovered was there being a spacer on the cam nose. We didn't have one anymore. I discovered this is why every time I tightened the cam gear bolt, at all, the cam seized. They're not unavailable, but slowed us down. After a couple calls I found one in Tacoma at a very cool old cam grinding shop. $5 for the part and $275 dollars in gas - and we were back in business! To install the spacer meant pulling the pin, and making a tool that used vise grips, but not use them at the same time.

Not much to show yet, but here's a couple pics.

[Luva65wagon]

Just wanted to post a quick update on the wagon build. I apologize for the delay in posting.

The new motor is in as of today.

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Last week I changed out the worn leaf springs and swapped the 7.25" rear for an 8" 2.79 to go with the Automatic swap. Should be a nice freeway cruiser.

That's when we discovered the dreaded 'leaf spring too short" syndrome. Lot's of chatter about that on the Internet and we confirmed this settles out after the car is weighted. But on a wagon, and a Ranchero, I concluded there is a potential for the leaf shackle to do a reverse flip, which would not be good.

On a car this isn't a problem, but on a wagon or Ranchero the leaf spring shackle is on a step-down platform which can let the leaf go either direction. We discovered a bent rear shackle hanger I believe was caused by this factory phenomenon.

We could not even jack up the car without them wanting to go that direction

So I made bump-stops. Hopefully they never come into play, as is the case with most bump-stops.

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One great discovery was when we tried the driveline he got out of the Maverick that donated the 8" rear end - and it fit perfect! No drive shaft build needed. That deserved a toast!

This is the custom small 6 cylinder air cleaner to 5" air-horn plate I needed to make to adapt the Weber carburetor. We had another Weber adapter to use the small original hole, but it made the air cleaner sit way to high (image on right). It came out perfect.

I think the K&N plate we used was a leftover from a previous club swap meet, so thanks whoever left it with me. HA! I found a old rusty chromy base at a garage sale for a buck and used my new plasma cutter to cut the original base out and then welded it to the chrome base. It even fit the air filter. Mind officially bottled.

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Now that the motor is in place I can look into the various other issues like custom wire harness (not a kit), Duraspark II upgrade, upgrading the wiper assembly to intermittent from an F100 (easy swap) and getting brakes and steering upgraded. Oh and I had a new back window glass for it, and Jeff ordered a new windshield to do While We're At It ( AKA "WIAI?" ).

It'll be done in no time.

[SmithKid]

Disappointed to have missed all the fun.

[Luva65wagon]

Disappointed to have missed all the fun.

It wasn't much fun without you being there Gene. So you didn't really miss anything.

[Luva65wagon]

Nope. Between vactations, COVID (yep, I got it), lots of rewiring and probably some other things I'm forgetting, it's close, but no cigar. But here's a few pictures.

First set is of the motor in various states of doneness. Medium rare, I think.

The speedometer got the signature break-out of the turn-signal feeds to have left and right turn signal indicators. Of course, it never fails, something was not going to go right with that. The shaft broke, or was about to break, on the speedo gear. I'm usually very careful with these things and it was attached one second, and not the next. Thankfully I only needed to contact my speedometer guy (me as well) and had a very nice unit. And the clear plastic and chrome bit was in not so good of shape, worthy of all this effort, so I stole one from my Sprint wall dash. And, cleaning the GEN and OIL cel wiped the GEN right off. SO... since we updated to the internally regulated Lightning Whirler, it got a lightning symbol custom painted on.

And, of course, I had this spare wire on the new 2-speed intermittent wiper system I installed, so Jeff was forced to get the washer bag and pump to use that wire. Only made sense to.