[AMC-list] all's quiet on the western front

[tom jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx>]

And elsewhere it seems. Between holidays, out of town visitors, and a
multi-week cold I didn't get crap done on anything except my website, until
today.

Preparing to pluck the motor from my American, I had to clean up the yard,
the concrete pad where I'll do the plucking, and clear off the outside
workbench where filthy things are done in the dark, like disassembling old
motors.

And I've had one on the stand for... most of a year?! (I'd got a 195.6 ohv
that from someone's storage unit for free "runs good", I wanted it for a
core). There was grey goo in the crankcase (hmm...), and it had a lot of
miles but nothing done blowed up. I got that one totally down to inventoried
pieces. (Bearings were dark grey, all the crank journals were shiny but
"scratchy" under a fingernail, cam lobes pitted at the crown, scuffed piston
skirts, etc) all point to fair-to-poor maintenance over the life of the
motor. No broken rings or severe abuse indicators (still dirty though).
Mains were marked .010 under, I forgot to mic the bores, oh well, I'm hoping
it's a 0 under block... the head has already been boiled and magnafluxed
(it's good).

ANYWAYS now the place is ready for me to yank the 195.6 ohv from the
American. For a few minutes I toyed with the idea of a "new" driveline, once
again, but once again, again, I came to my senses, don't want to spoil a
Twin-Stick hardtop! And I like this foolish motor... but FYI I think a
superb candidate for a driveline swap for this car is a Nissan 240Z motor
and trans. TheKA24E  motor is 300+ lbs less than the 195.6 and has 140 -
150hp, stock. The trans is a 5-speed, aluminum, all synchromesh, physically
small, and I bet it saves another 50 lbs. You can get carb versions of the
motor if you want. In circumstances like this car, I'm totally "over" the
foreign-make under the hood issue. It ain't the normal, boring case of
'stuff a 350 innit'.

I still have Joe Smith's '61 American, the guy who wanted it seems to have
faded away, so it seems I remain it's owner. If it's here in the spring I'll
have to seriously prep it for storage. Maybe I'll do a super lightening job,
stuff in a 240Z driveline, leave the interior clean but utterly bare and
make a sports car out of it. It could be done without mangling the chassis
at all (nod to you purists :-)

If it EVER STOPS !@!#$!@!! RAINING I will pull accessories and the head next
weekend and see what's in there. Maybe I'll get the axle and trans pulled
too.


It's clear to me that these motors have a head sealing problem, I'm assuming
that the water in the crankcase came from the head until I know otherwise.
This means that except for the one with the hole in the block (!) every
single one of these motors that I have personally seen deceased (4? 5?) ALL
had head sealing issues (and the holed-block had a head crank repaired!).
Clearly this is a design issue/tendency, not simply bad maintenance. But the
two I've checked myself, the head and deck surfaces were not very good, and
one of these was a REBUILT NEVER RUN short block. Looks like 'slap it
together' work. I will ensure that a very fine finish is done to my new
motor, and do some research on modern sealants for the head.

There's a lot of new sealant tech out there, but almost all specifically
state NOT FOR CYLINDER HEADS. I think the new felpro-blue type gaskets work
really well, but those are not available for this motor.
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