The Engine Rebuild; Circa 1984

A little background on how car-smart I was back in 1984. I could maintain the two Mazda daily-drivers doing oil and filter changes, lubing the suspension, adjusting the valves, and doing tune-ups. I’d also bought and roadified a 1965 Buick Skylark. For those of you new to my blogging, roadification is the process of repairing and refurbishing a car up to the point where it can safely be driven on public roads - cosmetic restoration is not a priority. That car had required a carb rebuild and a coolant flush with a new thermostat installed. I struggled to get the Skylark to run right, so after a year of unsuccessful tinkering, I sold it.

Soon after, I bought the LeMans and flat-towed it to the carport of the rowhouse I was renting. As I relayed in my initial post, I got the engine to run, but a seized main bearing forced me into the adventure of rebuilding an engine in a carport in the fall. Thankfully it was the SF Bay Area and it never got too cold. Some of my memories of that effort include sweeping the leaves out of my work area every time I wanted to work on the car, rebuilding the carburetor and heads on our kitchen table (the lovely Loriann has always been very understanding), taking the block and crank to the machine shop in my dad’s VW bus, ordering the rebuild kit from P.A.W. (they did a lot of advertising in Car Craft magazine and were the Summit or JEGS of the day), renting a ridge-reamer and a dingle-ball hone to clean up the cylinder bores and a ring compressor to install the pistons, guessing wrongly on the color of the valve covers and air cleaner, and having the engine finally fire up after I reinstalled the distributor correctly.

One thing I’ve never admitted to anyone before now is that one of the pistons I put into the engine is missing part of its skirt. I was on a very tight budget back then (nothing’s changed) and when I discovered a crack in a piston skirt, I decided to remove the at risk piece and clean up the sharp edges with a file. I’ve only put a few hundred miles on the engine since I rebuilt, and, at this point, I have no idea if it’ll spin since the last time I started it was about ten years ago. Regardless, I’ll be keeping that in mind as I evaluate the engine. If it starts right up and shows good compression, I’ll probably hold off tearing it down to replace the piston(s). If it won’t run right, I’ll be yanking it and repeating the rebuild, but this time with complete components.

Here's a photo of the engine taken a very long time ago.