This is my dad's car, he bought it new off the lot. I think he still has the sales reciept. This is a 1978 Ford LTDII, 351M, 3speed auto.
It hasn't budged from that spot since about 2003, which is a majority of the reason it's in the shape that its in. We know that a few valves are stuck, as you'll see below.
Gee, I wonder if something is wrong from this compression test :nono:
Hard to see in this pic, but there's a lifter arm (?) down there, and not in the fashion that it should be...
Burning oil?
I think we found the problem, captain!
I'm going to go ahead and assume that poor oiling was the cause. My dad started it and ran it at varying RPMs, about once a month for the first few years... but then got really busy and neglected it for 8-10 months, and here we are now, fixing it, lol.
Edelbrock intake goodness
Ick
A shameless plug
As it was when I last saw it:
Just the heads are coming off, at this point. We're adamant to leave the bottom end alone if there's nothing wrong. I'll check the specs on the cylinders and the flatness of the deck, but if it checks out, we'll just be doing a top-end job for right now.
The stuck valves that bent their lifter arms, we broke loose with a pair of hammers (one to set on the valve and one to hammer)... but they returned to closed very slowly. My dad has removed the heads completely, and I haven't seen them yet. I don't think we have bent valves or damaged pistons, I think the valves were just ceased up.
I know that we're likely going to have to replace all of the valve train as a result. But what else should we get along the way? We're looking to get a bit of a jump in performance, but not too major... We were talking about a new cam, but what brand should we be looking at?
What headgaskets do we have to choose from (since we're not doing anything to the block), and I'd assume to use ARP hardware to bolt it down...
Any advice, well founded criticism, and comments, are welcome, thanks for reading. I'll be out this weekend to give my dad some tools, I'll get some pics of the damage for your entertainment.
-Don
It hasn't budged from that spot since about 2003, which is a majority of the reason it's in the shape that its in. We know that a few valves are stuck, as you'll see below.
Gee, I wonder if something is wrong from this compression test :nono:
Hard to see in this pic, but there's a lifter arm (?) down there, and not in the fashion that it should be...
Burning oil?
I think we found the problem, captain!
I'm going to go ahead and assume that poor oiling was the cause. My dad started it and ran it at varying RPMs, about once a month for the first few years... but then got really busy and neglected it for 8-10 months, and here we are now, fixing it, lol.
Edelbrock intake goodness
Ick
A shameless plug
As it was when I last saw it:
Just the heads are coming off, at this point. We're adamant to leave the bottom end alone if there's nothing wrong. I'll check the specs on the cylinders and the flatness of the deck, but if it checks out, we'll just be doing a top-end job for right now.
The stuck valves that bent their lifter arms, we broke loose with a pair of hammers (one to set on the valve and one to hammer)... but they returned to closed very slowly. My dad has removed the heads completely, and I haven't seen them yet. I don't think we have bent valves or damaged pistons, I think the valves were just ceased up.
I know that we're likely going to have to replace all of the valve train as a result. But what else should we get along the way? We're looking to get a bit of a jump in performance, but not too major... We were talking about a new cam, but what brand should we be looking at?
What headgaskets do we have to choose from (since we're not doing anything to the block), and I'd assume to use ARP hardware to bolt it down...
Any advice, well founded criticism, and comments, are welcome, thanks for reading. I'll be out this weekend to give my dad some tools, I'll get some pics of the damage for your entertainment.
-Don
