1969 Chevelle 540 Garage Build

[badolds]

Do not run it anymore!! do you have a Fram oil filter? Drain the oil and cut the oil filter open to see what is going on in your engine. Make sure you have a bypass in your oil filter adaptor that will open if your filter gets plugged. I have seen Fram oil filters plug up many times. Freshly built engines can have lots of debris in the filter.

Dan

[ekmxryda]

Glad you are able to hold on to the Chevelle, its going to be sweet when its done!
Have you sorted out the oil pressure drop yet?
I would drain the oil and pull the filter to look for any blockage. Sometimes assembly lube can get in the sending unit.

Good luck

[69chevelle540]

Turned out i had my speedo wires and the oil pressure wires crossed on the dakota digital box. Swapped them and i have a nice 60psi oil pressure. That was a close one.

[badolds]

Thank goodness its not something you have to dig into. Good deal.

Dan

[69chevelle540]

Ok so I was able to get the car moving under its own power this weekend and ive come across an issue. The motor has pressure, has good fuel pressure, ive checked the float level in the carb, and it is idling funky. when i take the belt off it fires right up and runs strong. put the belt back on and its slow starting and does a really weird progressive idle sound that i cant really describe so ive put a short video below of it in the driveway. You can here it about every 3-4 seconds and last a few seconds. ive been told to check the tightness of the pulleys, ive been told to check the MSD is getting good power, ive been told the carb could be gunked up due to sitting for over a year. If it was carb related i would think it wouldnt run well even if i took off the belt but it runs good without it. i have not checked the pullys and how tight they are.... would this be a common issue? im wondering if its timing, but again if fires right up without the belts. any thoughts??

[69chevelle540]

Been doing some research and it looks like I need to disconnect the one wire alternator wires and start up the engine and see if that is the issue. I may have some wiring issues with the MSD and i want to say ive wired my power wire for the msd to the alternator charging wire that goes back to the battery. This i want to say was a bad idea and now that i think about it is more then likely why im getting the slow start (alternator is powering the MSD and is not spinning right away at crank up. thus not giving the msd ignition box enough juice. then when it does start its not getting the correct amount of voltage to operator properly. Hope i didnt F anything up and i can still fix this issue.

[ElCamino400]

Nice build !, I had the same thing happen on my motor (BB chevy), had the motor rebuilt, fired it up in the chassis and broke it in. Everything was good, ran perfect.
Had a health issue and the car sat for a couple years, in that time the assembly lube solidified in the bottom of the pan. When I restarted it I did not drain the original breakin oil,
Big mistake, the assy lube clogged the pump pick up screen, so there was a dry start condition and the damage was done , after the motor got to temp everything seemed fine for
awhile till I started seeing signs of rough idle. (timing issues) Pulled the motor, found a big hole in my pickup screen and a bunch of assy. lube stuck to the screen.
Cooked my cam and rear main journal... Hopefully this is not the case with your motor..

[69chevelle540]

I really hope thats not the case.

[ElCamino400]

I hope not too, I chased the problem for probably 6 months off and on, cleaned the carb, changed the plugs (which made it run worse ?), finally I pulled the cam and it had a flat
lobe (flat tappet/hyd cam). Figured that I didn't breakin the cam properly, so swapped out the cam and bingo motor ran great...Till the rear main seal started leaking !. That's
when I pulled the motor and pan, should have just done that from the get go.

.. and I tried the old doing burnouts and revving the crap out of the motor...surprisingly that did nothing to fix the problem..Ha.ha

Good luck, you will get it sorted out..

[badolds]

Go back to basics and check everything its really not that big of a deal. First check your alternator with a voltmeter, Crank the car and check the voltage at the battery at idle it may be low. Flash the engine above 3000 rpm, just a bump. check voltage again at idle should now be around 13-14 volts. The alternator wont start charging until it gets rpm the first time. Replace all 8 spark plugs next, any different? I suspect your carb is gunked up, still no big deal its only four nuts and a throttle cable. Now pull off the float bowls again four bolts. You will be able to see any varnish or debris that's in the float bowls. If you don't have the colored non stick gaskets you will have to scrape the float bowl and metering block gaskets off. If it is gunked up you will need to have it rebuilt or do it yourself. Once again its not that big of a job to clean a carburetor, hit google youtube etc. If all that is spotless then its time to pull the plugs and do a simple cranking compression test on all cylinders if one is lower than the others your problem is on that hole. How is the valve lash? Cut the oil filter open any metal in there? How old is the gas?

[69chevelle540]

Go back to basics and check everything its really not that big of a deal. First check your alternator with a voltmeter, Crank the car and check the voltage at the battery at idle it may be low. Flash the engine above 3000 rpm, just a bump. check voltage again at idle should now be around 13-14 volts. The alternator wont start charging until it gets rpm the first time. Replace all 8 spark plugs next, any different? I suspect your carb is gunked up, still no big deal its only four nuts and a throttle cable. Now pull off the float bowls again four bolts. You will be able to see any varnish or debris that's in the float bowls. If you don't have the colored non stick gaskets you will have to scrape the float bowl and metering block gaskets off. If it is gunked up you will need to have it rebuilt or do it yourself. Once again its not that big of a job to clean a carburetor, hit google youtube etc. If all that is spotless then its time to pull the plugs and do a simple cranking compression test on all cylinders if one is lower than the others your problem is on that hole. How is the valve lash? Cut the oil filter open any metal in there? How old is the gas?

Turned out to be idle mix screws on the carb were not correct and the floats needed adjustment. Fires right up now and sounds good.

[badolds]

Turned out to be idle mix screws on the carb were not correct and the floats needed adjustment. Fires right up now and sounds good.

GOOD NEWS!!!! glad you don't have to dig into it.

Dan

[69chevelle540]

Think i got her dialed in. The car needs to be dyno tuned and she will be ready to rock and roll.

[Steve Chryssos]

Sounds really pissed off. Nice work.

[ElCamino400]

Happy to see that the motor is o.k.


Sounds Tough.....what are the cam specs ?

[69chevelle540]

Happy to see that the motor is o.k.


Sounds Tough.....what are the cam specs ?

Well i drove it yesterday and my oil pressure is dropping when the motor is heated up. It still has the break in oil from the builder so im thinkin of changing it out to some Driven Oil 15 w50. It started to sputter and died on my at a red light and i watched the pressure drop to low 30's psi then it died. Hopefully some thicker oil will do the trick. its HOT here in houston.

[ElCamino400]

You may want to drop the pan..

[badolds]

Well i drove it yesterday and my oil pressure is dropping when the motor is heated up. It still has the break in oil from the builder so im thinkin of changing it out to some Driven Oil 15 w50. It started to sputter and died on my at a red light and i watched the pressure drop to low 30's psi then it died. Hopefully some thicker oil will do the trick. its HOT here in houston.

30 psi on a hot engine is not low in my opinion