Project: 1967 GTO 400 Rebuild

[Lucky SOB]

Project: 1967 GTO 400 Rebuild

Things are moving now. Picked up the engine a couple weeks ago as well as the rear axle and transmission this week.

The engine needed some of the paint touched up, but overall pretty happy with the way it's turning out.

Here's some pictures of the progress. FYI the valve covers are the old ones and will be replaced with new chrome ones so don't worry about the overspray

[MP81]

Sexy.

[JoeliusZ28]

I cant help but imagine how fun it has to be to bang gears in this thing with 4.33 gears.

[meissen]

Great job guys!

[DynoDave]

Love that Pontiac blue...makes for a great looking engine.

[Lucky SOB]

I cant help but imagine how fun it has to be to bang gears in this thing with 4.33 gears.

When there are only 4 gears it goes pretty quick haha

[farmington]

Had a 71 Dodge Demon 340 with a 4 spd and 4.56 gears. Many times I would get into 4th and want to shift another gear. Was great out of the hole, though.

[Lucky SOB]

Project: 1967 GTO 400 Rebuild

Last week we installed the engine and trans. Tried to slide them in together, but there was no way no matter how we angled it. So we pulled the trans off and installed it from below after the engine was in.

I then spent most of this weekend doing small things, but Kolin and I also got the new Gardner exhaust system installed. It's all factory spec down to the hangers and clamps. Amazing concours quality.

My goal is to make it a rolling vehicle by the weekend and hopefully fire it up over the weekend.

Enjoy the pictures.

[Lucky SOB]

Installed the rear axle tonight.

[MP81]

Good god. Looks great!

This thing is never going to be as clean as it is now. Or are you planning to just leave it on the lift and stare at your [clean] hard work every day?

[DynoDave]

It's going to look fantastic.

[Lucky SOB]

It runs!

[Lucky SOB]

Well we got it all back together last Thursday before our road trip that we left for on Saturday. Ran into a few snags in getting it to completion. Since we were busy putting it together, some updates on the process are below.

The exhaust manifold on the driver's side was cracked. QC Coatings found this when doing the blasting before ceramic coat. So we ordered a reproduction from NPD and had it coated. After installing it, we noticed it was about 1/8" away from the driver frame rail. So we drilled up from the bottom and then cut off about 1/4" to get more clearance.



The rest of this update is all things we ran into in the last week before the trip.

The engine builder used the incorrect intake gasket on the passenger side. The intake manifold has a rectangular exhaust port for the choke, where the head has a square port. So we were getting a massive exhaust leak. Ended up tearing it off, getting the correct gasket and putting it back together the next night. Kind of annoying to have to tear apart a freshly rebuilt and painted engine, but it fixed the leak.







After getting the engine running, we tried to get it into gear. Hadn't had to use the clutch yet as there is no neutral safety switch on the car. The trans now had no feeling of engaging the clutch. So we pulled the starter and bell housing inspection cover and found that the flange on the throw out bearing was sheared off. The clutch fork was likely installed incorrectly and applied pressure to the throw or bearing flange in the improper way. So we pulled the trans, replaced the bearing and had it back installed in less than 2 hours... I'm getting good at pulling transmissions unfortunately. We installed a new starter when we put it back together. The gear drive wasn't engaging consistently on the old one, but the new one fixed it.



At this point I would like to plug Inline Tube. They now sell all the little parts you need for a restoration. We got all sorts of things from them and they were very helpful.

When trying to bleed the brakes, we noticed we could not get any fluid out of the front calipers. It turns out the small cylinder below the master cylinder is a hold off valve with a button you have to depress when vacuum bleeding. Well the button on ours would not depress, so we swapped it out for another... Somehow ordered an extra in the whirlwind of ordering parts. Still no movement. So we drove down to NPD to get it exchanged. Still that one didn't work. So I went to inline tube and their's worked fine! So we finally got the brakes bled.

That was the last item on the list, the. We rehung the sheet metal. It took 2 nights, but turned out decent. It is good enough until I gets off to a body shop in the next year or two to be repainted.





So the Friday before we were supposed to leave we got the second round of tuning done on it and then took it out for a test drive. It was backfiring under light load and started over heating after a few miles. So we brought it back to the shop, parked it and changed the oil on the Firebird at 10:00 at night to take that on the trip the next morning.

The next morning I was curious, so I pulled the #1 plug and there is oil on it...

That was as far as I could get, so more diagnosis will occur this weekend.





We did have a great time with the Firebird, got almost 1000 miles on it and then it went down hill. We were cruising up I-75 having just left the Air Force Museum in Dayton and was doing a consistent 60 mph. All of a sudden there was a loud pop. So I immediately let off, gave it a couple seconds and tried to tap the exhaust lightly. That resulted in a louder pop, no engine power and a big black cloud in my rear view mirror. So we pulled over and had it towed home... Only took 3 flat beds.

[DynoDave]

The GTO looks good Fred, as does the Firebird. Sorry you're having such rotten luck.

[Lucky SOB]

Figured out the backfiring issue on the GTO!

We didn't have any compression in cylinder #1. So we pulled the valve cover and noticed the rocker on the exhaust valve was really tight compared to the other rockers - it wouldn't jiggle at all. So we loosened it up and sure enough, now we have compression and she's running great.

I'm going to cut a slot in the top of the old valve covers to adjust the valve lash on all of the rockers while it's running without splashing oil everywhere. After that we'll check the timing and dwell again now that we're running on all 8 and get some miles on it to break it in.

The same morning we also got the Firebird figured out. The timing was way off and we finally tracked it back to the distributor being the problem. Pulled it out and the shaft was very tight in the sleeve. It wasn't getting oil and appeared to be clogged with sludge from before the rebuild (engine builder never inspected it I guess). So we put a new distributor in and bam, runs great! We figure it was so tight that it jumped a tooth on the cam helical gear because you could also see the counterweights bent up.

All of the cars are operational again (including my TA which needed a new PS pump and alternator).