And just like that, it was Saturday. With the work week she had established for herself, keeping the Monday free to go to the gym with her cream and white skunk lover Fanni, the pastel yellow mouse woman Michelle Frelang actually worked from Tuesday to Saturday for a regular work week - even though it often happened things came up that threw the nine-to-five completely out of the window, and it was not at all uncommon she found herself working through her offset weekend as well.
But not this time. Work was going calmly and smoothly, the disassembling of the 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle was almost done, and it had been going well. There was just one thing left to tear down, and then she could start work on making the body and panels perfect and give them a new coat of paint. But first things first; the 350ci V8 smallblock engine that had been installed in the car and which had gotten some damage was still sitting on an engine stand and still needed to be completely disassembled.
That's what this Saturday was for. Arriving at her garage a bit after half past eight in the morning, Missy unlocked and opened the doors, switched on the light in the Mountain Dew display refrigerator and in the office, and took care of the most important task of all; petting and feeding Salmon the Maine Coon shop cat. Once that had been taken care of, the vanilla-colored mousette took her cameras and lights and tripods over into the secondary workroom that had been built onto the back of the original fuel station shop building. In the very back of that room was the engine clean-room she'd had built in there, and the Chevelle's engine was already sitting in there on its stand, ready and waiting.
After setting up the cameras and lights, Missy leaned into frame sideways from the side, looking into the camera from very close by as was her habit to start her videos.
"Alright, we live? We-e-e're live. Hey ho all you wonderful people out there in Youtube land, Missy here from Mousie Motorworks, bringing you yet another exciting episode! We're rolling right along, three episodes into the series now, four if you count the introduction video, and we're getting to more and more exciting stuff! Today, we'll be concentrating on this here," she gestured at the engine sitting behind her. "That motor was running well, it propelled the Chevelle up to over seventy miles an hour and right over the stub of an old warning sign, so it was a pretty darn decent motor. But the signpost stub ripped the oil pan and ripped off the oil pickup and tube, and the engine was running for a good minute with all the oil having dumped out, so we'll go and have a look inside to see what kind of damage may have been done. So follow right along, right here, at Mousie Motorworks!"
One, two, three, she counted to herself silently to give herself an editing point for the video. The cameras and one of the lights were repositioned, and Missy stood behind the engine to look back at the main camera.
"You eagle-eyed folks have already seen it; we're not in the disassembly hall anymore. That's right, we're now in my clean-room, where I either take engines apart or put them back together. This here motor," she patted the intake manifold with a paw, "...will be put back together in here as well, with some fresh parts in it. But for that, we first have to take it apart. And I have to admit, I'm as curious as I know you folks are to see what this thing looks like on the inside. Patrick Stewardson, who gave me the car, told me that the fellow he bought the car from put in this three-fifty motor and lost steam to finish the rest of the project, so he bought it, got it running and used it to do a bit of Dukes of Hazzard-ing on the backroads around here. Now, when you're aiming to restore or even just refurbish an old car, it's always a bit of a drag when you work on one that used to be someone else's project. When you pick up a car from a junkyard, or you pull one out of a barn or something, it's pretty straightforward because it's usually not been messed with and everything is still stock and the way it came from the factory. But when you pick up someone's unfinished or abandoned project, it's anyone's guess what they might have done to it, and you usually end up fixing someone else's problems and mistakes. So before we get into the innards of this motor, let's have a look at it and see what we've got here."
She took a smaller camera and started panning across the engine, pointing out things she noticed.
"We already know there was an Edelbrock carb on here, and this is an Edelbrock dual-plane intake manifold as well. So that's been changed. Nnyeeahh, and look at that... they gooped that intake gasket down with red RTV. Already not a great sign. What else, well, we see a Petronix Flamethrower distributor here, with matching HEI coil and wires, so that's been changed as well. Not bad, that's some good parts. Chrome valve covers, because of course, chrome adds horsepower, everyone knows that. At the front here..." Taking a paper towel, Missy rubbed some goopy grease and dirt off the front of the engine. "Wow, chrome timing cover as well, they went all out on the chrome, didn't they? Chrome water neck as well, and yech, more red RTV all around that timing cover and all around the water pump. I have a suspicion this motor might have been leaking here and there, and their solution was to just goop it up like mad. We'll have to do better than that, folks. Water pump looks okay, fan's damaged from that signpost. Of course, chrome bracketry for the alternator, AC compressor and for the power steering pump. Now, I've ran the numbers on this motor here, and it's a nineteen seventy-eight L-eighty-two three-fifty out of a C-three Corvette; as a matter of fact, it came out of a twenty-fifth Anniversary model. That means this motor made two hundred twenty horsepower, but it looks like they tried to get it up to two-fifty at least with all that chrome they bolted on, sheesh. But hey, at least this came from a car with power brakes, power steering, and AC, so that's nice, that's all things we're gonna need in a Chevelle. Anyways, enough yapping, let's tear into this motor and see what we can find!"
Again the vanilla-hued mousette repositioned the cameras and the lights, before pulling near a rolling stool without backrest and a tool chest and rolling the stand with the engine on it a bit closer to the row of workbenches along the back wall of the room. Using a power ratchet, she undid all the bolts holding on the chrome valve covers, and actually needed a pry bar to free the covers from the heads as the gaskets were glued in place with red room-temperature vulcanization cream.
"Hot diggity damn, whoever put this motor together must have used two full tubes of red RTV," she smirked. "And man, look at the mess under here. This motor clearly has been having oiling issues way before that oil pan even got ripped apart." She ran a finger through a layer of black sludge and even picked out a couple of chunks. "This is just terrible, it's almost solid at the bottom. A clear example of a 'just-add-oil' engine. Man, this thing must have been a smoker like nothing else. And over here..." She pried off the other valve cover and grimaced. "Yep, exactly the same. I can't imagine a lot of oil was dumped out of that oil pan, because it looks like it could hardly even drain out of these heads, yeesh." She wiggled all the rockers and shrugged lightly. "All pretty tight, so at least that's in order. Except for this one here and this one next to it. Now, that could be because it's on the low part of the cam lobe, or it could indicate a valve problem or a bent pushrod. Let's have a look at those, shall we?"
She started unbolting and taking off all the rockers, dropping them and their bolts in a small plastic bin. After that, the light yellow mousette pulled out all the pushrods, and shot the camera a cheerful grin as she collected all the pushrods in one paw and then shook her paw to jingle the rods and mix them all up.
"I can hear at least five of you screaming right now. Oh my gosh! You have to keep those in order! What are you doing!" She tossed all the pushrods into the plastic bin with a clatter. "What I am doing is telling you that I will be putting in all new pushrods, so no, I do not have to keep these in order. And let me tell you a little secret, folks; that is never a necessity. Many people will tell you; if you're gonna re-use the pushrods, you have to keep them in order so you can all put them back in the same holes they came out of, because of the wear pattern. Each pushrod is mated to the lifter it sits on because each of them will have worn into the lifter in a unique way so they should always be put back in the same order. Well, sorry to break it to you, but nope! There is hardly any wear to the top of a lifter from a pushrod. It's so insignificant that it doesn't matter one bit if you put them back in the same order or in a different order. That only counts for the lifters themselves; those wear across the cam lobes and create their own unique patterns, so if you're taking out the lifters and you aim to re-use them, those you should keep in order to put them back in the exact same holes they came out of. But not the pushrods, that's pretty much an urban myth. And I'll tell you right now; I'm gonna put new lifters in this motor as well, so I won't be keeping the ones I pull out in order either. You've been warned! Also, I'm doing this a bit out of order; I should first pull off all the accessories and pull the distributor, but I wanted to see what state the pushrods were in, and I wanted to tease you folks, hee! So let's go in order now and pull all the outside gubbins off this thing!"
Rolling around on the stool, Missy moved to the front of the engine and pulled the tool chest near again. The crumpled fan came off, the alternator and the power steering pump were loosened so she could remove the broken belts as well as the alternator and the power steering pump, the brackets for them also came off, and the bolts went back into the holes. Similarly, the air conditioning compressor was loosened and removed along with its belt and brackets, the bolts for which were put back into their holes. All hoses had already been removed, so it was an easy job unbolting and removing the water neck and fishing out the thermostat, which caused another grimace at the dirt-colored goop dripping off it.
"Of course, southern car things. No coolant in the system but pure water, and that gives you this tasty result. Come on people, please use proper coolant, okay? That excuse of "I don't need anti-freeze because it never freezes here" is a super dumb and lame excuse to save a handful of bucks on coolant. It does not just prevent freezing, it also prevents rusting, and if you don't use it, you get this soup in your engine. Bleh, I'm already dreading what I'm gonna find in that water pump." She tossed the thermostat in a trash bin marked for metals and started unbolting the water pump, needing a rubber mallet to break it free from the timing cover because of the red RTV used to goop the gasket into place, and grimacing again at the dirt-colored goop leaking from the coolant passages in the engine block. "Yeeeah, that's what I was afraid of. More soup. Dammit, I'm gonna have to flush out this block before I can even send it off to the machine shop, because it's gonna be full of this mess. And for goodness sake, stop using red RTV! You can use a little bit of RTV to stick the gaskets in place and keep them there, but you only use a very thin layer of it, and you use the gray kind, because that's the type that's actually rated for use on engine gaskets and such." A deep breath. "Well, anyway, let's see what's behind door number two." More bolts were removed to take off the timing cover, which also needed the help of a screwdriver to break loose from the engine block. "A-a-and more red RTV, by this point I'm not even surprised or shocked anymore. And it looks like whoever put this motor together may have put in a more aggressive cam shaft, or at least changed out the cam gear. That's a good thing at least. As for this..." Missy wiggled the timing chain back and forth with a finger. "Lots of slack, this has been in here a long time. That will have done this motor no favors either, and it might explain a few things. This will have affected the timing, and if you're not aware of the actual problem being the timing chain, you may find yourself trying a whole lot of things to make the motor run better; a bunch of fiddling with the distributor, a bunch of adjusting on the carburetor, and usually you end up with what at best are compromises. Too much retard or advance in the distributor, the carburetor way out of tune just to make it run right, and the actual problem was none of that because it was actually this chain being bad. So keep that in mind, folks; if you can't get your motor to run just right and you have to keep fiddling with the carb and the timing, it may be time to have a look at the timing chain. Anyways, let's move to the top of this motor and pull off the last bits so we can finally have a look inside."
Missy stood up from the stool so she could reach over the top of the engine. Off came all the spark plug wires, which were quickly checked and chucked into the plastic bin, all the spark plugs came out, were checked and tossed into the bin, and she didn't even bother taking the cap off the distributor but just unbolted the whole distributor and used a pry bar again to push it upwards out of the engine block and remove it - not at all surprised she even found remnants of red RTV on the small gasket. With the distributor also in the storage bin, the vanilla-colored mousette used the power ratchet again to undo the bolts holding down the intake manifold, and she took a larger pry bar once all the bolts were out.
Resting the pry bar against her shoulder, she turned to the main camera again and gave her head a light shake.
"Well, here we go, folks. Place your bets; how clean or how dirty do you think this motor will be? Let's go find out, shall we?"
She stuck the pry bar between two of the runners of the intake manifold and pivoted it over the edge of one of the cylinder heads. There was actually a decent bit of pressure needed to break the manifold free because of all the red RTV that had been used to glue the gasket into place, but eventually it came loose and Missy could lift if off the top of the engine.
"Oh..!" Her grimace rumpled her entire narrow muzzle and even part of her forehead. "Oh my goodness. That's not an engine, that's a darn soup kitchen. What even is all that?"
The valley under the intake manifold was caked full of a thick, black goop. By one of the intake ports even sat a thick blob of it all the way from the port to the bottom of the valley. With a smirk, Missy set the intake manifold on the workbench and put on a pair of thin rubber gloves, initially poking her fingers at the goop, then digging into it to lift out an almost gelatinous mass of muck that dripped slow drops of thick, soiled oil.
"Oh my gosh, this is disgusting. There's clearly a valve problem, because this is all carbon deposits that mixed with the oil in here. Eeeyuggh, what a disgusting soup." She dropped the blobs of muck in an old paint can and smirked at the camera. "Well, there you go, folks. Who had their money on there being a thick disgusting soup in here? Congratulations, you won, and at the same time, you lose, because man this is gross. There goes my appetite for the rest of the day, yeeagh." She scooped more of the thick goop out of the valley and dropped it in the old can, shaking her head. "Well, there you have it, folks. Valves not closing all the way for whatever reason will cause carbon deposits on the inside of your engine, and if you neglect your oil changes, it will turn your oil into this primordial tar soup. If this is not a good visual to spur you all into keeping up with your oil changes, I don't know what is. Good grief what a mess!"
After scooping out most of the disgusting goop, Missy turned the engine sideways on the stand and set a large drain pan under it, using a can or two of brake cleaner to clean out the valley of the engine. Half a roll of paper towels was also used to wipe everything off and get it as clean as possible, so the vanilla-hued mousette eventually finally could actually see the lifters sitting in the engine block as she turned it back upright. With a special grabber tool, she picked all the lifters out of their bores and dropped them in the plastic storage bin after spraying them down with some brake cleaner and wiping them with a paper towel. Turning back to the front of the engine, she unbolted and removed the cam gear along with the timing chain and the smaller timing gear down on the crankshaft, also dropping those in the storage bin, and using a long bolt to screw into the front of the camshaft so she had extra leverage to slowly pull the camshaft out of the engine.
More spraying down and wiping off was done to clean the camshaft a bit so she could inspect the lobes on it. She ran a finger over them and turned to the main camera again.
"Yep, cam's wiped. Look at this; see how these lobes here are shaped like pointy eggs? And now look at these; they're almost round. That means the lifters on these lobes were unable to lift very much anymore, so the pushrods didn't go up as far as they should have, which means the rockers didn't get moved as much as they should be, which means the valves didn't open and close the way they should have. And that is one of the main reasons of our blow-by both into the head and into the engine itself, which led to those huge and disgusting carbon deposits. This looks like the original cam too, I don't see any numbers on here that indicate otherwise, so this bumpstick is going..." She tossed it into the trash bin marked for metals with a clank. "...straight in the trash. At this rate, all we'll be using of this engine is the block itself, and maybe the heads. Let's have a look at how awful those might be."
Missy sat back down on the rolling stool after taking a large socket wrench and started cracking loose all the headbolts. Once she had all the bolts of the left head cracked loose, she used a power ratchet to fully unscrew the bolts, dropping them all in the storage bin and using the pry bar again to loosen the cylinder head, which unsurprisingly was glued to the block with red RTV all over both sides of the head gasket. Turning the cylinder head over and resting it on the engine block, Missy inspected the underside of it, running her fingers along the valves and pressing on them every now and then. After taking off the other cylinder head as well and doing the same, she turned to the main camera again.
"Here we are, look at this. These two exhaust valves are damaged, and this one feels bent. This intake valve also has some pitting, and it feels loose. This motor has been unhealthy from the get-go, folks. My guess is, it was beat to heck when it was still in the Corvette it originally came in, and it's very likely that whoever owned that Corvette wrapped it around a tree or something. Because why would you take a numbers-matching motor out of a Corvette, even a C-three Corvette? I may not like Corvettes, but even so, you only put the motor of one into something else when the whole rest of the car is totaled beyond salvaging. So that's my theory; bleep-bloop down in the comments what you think might have happened." She set the cylinder head on the workbench and turned the engine on the stand all the way upside down, with a few clanking sounds coming from the inside of the engine. "Anyway, on to what I thought was gonna be the worst damage when I first saw the car; let's see what happened all the way down under."
The power ratchet was utilized to remove all the bolts from the damaged oil pan. And of course, the pry bar came into play again as well to break the oil pan loose from the layer of red RTV that had been used to seal its gasket. The oil pan went straight into the trash bin for metals, and Missy took one of the smaller cameras in one paw to pan over the inside of the engine block while she picked out a small round disk with a metal screen and parts of a hollow tube with the fingers of her other paw, tossing them in the metals trash can as well.
"That was our oil pickup and pickup tube. And here's another proof this is an L-eighty-two motor; four-bolt end caps." She pressed her finger against each of the connecting rod end caps and wiggled them. "Li-i-ittle bit of play on all of them; just enough to be concerning. Let's take them off and see what's left of the bearings."
She took the power ratchet and unscrewed the four bolts of one of the end caps so she could take it off and check the half-circular bearing on the inside. With the handle of a deadblow hammer, the light yellow mousette also pushed the piston out of its cylinder and checked it and the other half of the bearing on the inside of the connecting rod. She took both halves of the circular bearing out and lay them together on the workbench, and after doing the same for the other seven pistons, Missy took the smaller camera again and stood by the workbench to focus on the bearings.
"Okay, some are worse than others, but they're all bad. Look here; see that copper color coming through? That is what you don't want to see, that's some serious wear right there. This silver color here, that's the color it should be. And look at these here, these came from pistons number three and number five, where we saw that huge glob of pudding. Copper coming through on the bottom, and a purple coloring along both sides. These have gotten very, very hot indeed, that's heat discoloration right there. This motor had been chewing on its bearings for a good while, and when what was left of the oil dumped out when that oil pan was ripped open, it fried these." She panned along the row of pistons which were sitting on the workbench as well. "I didn't see any damage to the pistons or the rods, so these might actually be salvageable. Nevertheless, I will have them tested by the machine shop just to be safe, and they're not going back into this motor, I can tell you that. Fortunately, there's no damage to the cylinders, so there's a bullet we dodged. But let's see if the crank bearings are as bad as these rod bearings here. My suspicion is; yes."
Setting the smaller camera back on its tripod and adjusting the main camera, Missy turned back to the engine block. She unbolted all the bearing caps one by one and took them off, turning them over to check the half of the bearing on the inside of them and shaking her head while she pointed out the copper color coming through on them to the main camera. With the caps set in a row on the workbench, the vanilla-colored mousette lifted the crankshaft out of the engine block with both paws and rested it upright on the edge of the block so she could wipe it with some paper towels and inspect it, then setting it on the workbench and sliding the other halves of the bearings out of the journals they were sitting in and wiping them before showing them to the camera.
"Man, I get tired of being right all the time. Crank bearings; wiped. It's almost a miracle at this point that there's no damage to that crankshaft. Still, it will go right along to the machine shop with this motor and the heads and I'll have it re-surfaced just the same, but I'm not sure if it will go back into this motor. Anyway, there you have it, folks; losing all its oil definitely almost killed this motor, but it has been unhealthy for a good long while before that already." A light chortle escaped her. "I can suddenly much more understand why mister Stewardson's wife hated this car, because it must have been one heck of a smoke machine and it most likely stank pretty badly as well whenever he fired it up." She tossed the damaged bearings into the metals trash can and sent the camera a light grin. "Now, there is one last thing we have to do with this motor, and I will give you a fair warning right now. Those of you with weak stomachs may want to skip to the end, because I'm gonna knock out the freeze plugs and flush out this block, and after what we found in that valley, I have a feeling that we'll see the Swamp of Everlasting Stench oozing out of here. So you have been warned, and I will see those of you who think they can handle it outside in just a second!"
Without counting to three this time, Missy turned back to the engine block while she took a smaller deadblow hammer and a large flathead screwdriver, as well as a pair of needle-nose pliers. A few moments were taken to tap all the freeze plugs on both sides of the engine block sideways into their holes so the vanilla-colored mousette could pull them out with the pliers and drop them in the metals trash can. She did shut off the cameras before rolling the engine stand with the block on it out of the garage and over to the washing station behind the main building.
All the cameras and lights on their tripods were brought to the washing station as well and set up and adjusted. Switching the cameras back on and taking a hose, Missy grinned at the main camera cheerfully.
"Last warning, folks! We're here in the washing station, here is the block, here is a hose, the tap is turned on, so soup is coming in three, two, one..."
She stuck the nozzle of the hose into one of the coolant passages on the front of the engine and turned it on. Muddy-looking water started pouring from the hole, and after a few moments even muddier water started gushing from the holes where the freeze plugs had been.
"And there it is!" Missy chortled at the camera. "Brown bean soup, folks! Yu-u-ummy! Who's for a soup dinner? Bring some garlic bread!"
She alternated sticking the hose into the holes for the water pump and into the holes where the freeze plugs had been, every now and then even sticking it into the intake and exhaust ports as well. The sludgy, muddy water kept pouring from various holes, sometimes with some streaks of black as well, only very slowly turning a lighter and lighter brown in color. When finally the water ran clear regardless of which hole Missy stuck the hose in, the vanilla-hued mousette shut off the hose and wiped her paws with a towel while she grinned at the camera.
"Alright, that will do. I hope none of you lost your lunch, but boy can I tell you I don't even feel like having lunch anymore at the moment. I may even skip dinner after all this. But there we go, the soup is out of the block, now I can send it off to the machine shop to have it Magnafluxed, cleaned, honed and machined, and I'll ask them to put all new valves, valve guides, heavier valve springs and hardened valve seats in the heads if those are okay to re-use, and once that's all done, we'll put this motor back together with all new fresh shiny parts. That's all off-camera though, and next week, we'll get to some more very exciting work because I'll start blasting, inspecting and straightening the body! Fun times ahead! But that's for next time, so for now, thank you all for following along, my apologies to any of you who may have lost their lunch at the sight of all that disgusting soup that was in this poor motor, and I'll see y'all next week, right here at Mousie Motorworks! Tata now, see ya!"
One, two, three, and Missy shut off the cameras. After bringing them, the lights and the tripods back into the garage and rolling the stand with the engine block back inside as well, she took some time to label the engine block, crankshaft and cylinder heads so she could put them in the wood stakebed of the 1977 yellow Ford F350 with its green driver door and hood and strap them down. A drive of a little under half an hour into town brought the vanilla-hued mousette to South Planes, the machine shop she had used many times before to drop off the engine block, crankshaft and cylinder heads and let them know what she wanted to have done.
On the way back, Missy stopped by The Patty Place, her steady diner, to have lunch as it was already close to two o'clock in the afternoon. Unable to help herself when the Pinyon mouse woman Patty who owned and ran the diner with her hamster husband Harvey asked her what she wanted for lunch, Missy shook her head and giggled cheerfully as she gave her answer; anything but soup!
