...................................September 19th 2007...We got quite a bit accomplished today.
.........................................................Now open wide... and say... AWWWWW
We thought we'd try a trial fit...but it didn't. We had to take off the trany cooler lines, the kick-down linkage, and trade the trany dip stick tube for the one off the old 440, then she kind of slid right into place after we wrestled the motor mount bolts into place.
There's just not enough room for this stock kickdown rod to function properly...so it's going tobe replaced with a cable kickdown setup that i found at BPE
The condition of this timing chain tells us that there's a possibility that this 440 could have more than 59,000 miles on it. However it's really hard to tell because these things do tend to stretch over time, and after all it is 32 years old, so we're going to put a new one on anyway. The good news is that otherwise the engine appears to have been very well maintained and doesn't burn a drop of oil out the tailpipe. It did have a couple of leaky valve covers...but that's a very common problem with the type of exhaust manifolds that these later model 440s use. They are so close to the valve covers that the heat ends up cooking the valve cover gaskets. The 383 exhaust manifolds that we're using on "OBEASTY" will cure that problem.
Now that we know that everything is going to fit like it should (we really didn't have any doubt) the next step is to pull the engine back out so it can get a nice fresh coat of MOPAR Blue paint. After that it will go back in for good and we can start hooking things up and we can get serious with our new wiring kit. The Street Rod cruising season starts around the first week of April here in the Pacific Northwest, so we're planning on having "OBEASTY" road worthy by the end of March 2008. We've still got lots to do but we're right on track. More pictures on Page 12
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