1970 Torino And Fairlane Builds

I have found that heavy dried and stuck oil and grease deposits can be removed much easier if you have time to allow for soaking. fill a spray bottle with diesel fuel and just spray/ dampen the deposits every time you pass by for a few days. The deposits often soften so that they can be pressure washed away first try. Allow to dry then spray with purple power to finish removing any oily residue.

 

Here's hoping it frees up. I know it turned 30 years ago when I put it in my Dad's shop.

 

That’s genius, I’ll try that out!

 

To be honest I kind of figured she’d be stuck having been stored in this climate. I’m still optimistic it’ll free up and run. If not she’ll be in line for a rebuild, which also isn’t a bad plan. Just not in the budget in the immediate future. One way or another I’m sure these parts will help further these projects and I’m thankful to have them.

 

Well she’s stuck, but for reasons that baffle me. The heads are off. The distributor is off. There’s one cylinder that’s rusty. But the rust is loose at the piston. This is one I’ve not seen. There’s a bit of surface rust at the top of the lifter, and same for the crank counterweights. So everything is soaking now. The good news is the exhaust manifolds came off super easy and the cylinders don’t look terrible aside from the one hole. The heads look killer, carbon buildup aside, without any falling exhaust valve seats.
Lots of sludge, check out the valve cover buildup.

 

Yuck. More sludge than I expected in that. Glad it looks like a viable motor. Curious that'it's still stuck.

 

Must have had Quaker state 30 wt non detergent oil used in it. I remember seeing an old v-8 buick motor that when the valve covers were removed you could only see the sludge looking like the valve cover had moulded it, the valve train was completely covered and invisible. But it was still running and the owner said it didn't use any oil.

 

Ya it actually looks pretty ok inside. There’s some vertical scoring in a few cylinders but this was certainly a viable motor. As far as why it’s stuck? I’m stumped. Never seen one like this. Maybe piston to crank? I have everything soaking in pb blaster though. So hopefully she’ll be unstuck soon. Then the question is do I reassemble and install in the car until rebuild time? Or put it on ice for a few years and look for another viable motor to install?

 

I should mention I priced out what it’ll run to rebuild with the usual regular parts. Aftermarket cam and lifters, hyper pistons, rebuild kit, and $800 for block work at the machine shop and it’s looking like around $2k. Plus headers and another Holley. That’s just not in the budget at this time unfortunately. That said I’ll probably clean it up, reseal and install for now. Assuming it frees up without screwing anything up.

 

Here’s a riddle. What’s black and now turns over?


The Cleveland!!!

Well sort of.

I finally had enough and started popping pistons out. And this is what I found.

If something looks off here, aside from the obvious cleanliness issues, you’re right. Those rods shouldn’t be straight up, or standing up on their own. Every single wrist pin was rust seized. They’ll sort of move if you whack them but they’re all stuck. This made removal particularly interesting. I got 5 pistons out without moving the crank but the last three were still stuck and the crank still wouldn’t turn until I popped the caps loose and popped the pains down a bit. Then the crank would just turn enough to get them out. They’re all out now and she turns freely.
The condition otherwise is actually pretty good. I’ll check cylinder taper but outside of the one pretty rust hole, they’re alright looking. The crank journals look really good save one with sludge plugged oil holes and some slight discoloration, but nothing that won’t polish out. Those wrist pins are a bummer but otherwise it just needs a really good cleaning. If I can find a good used engine for the car, that would be great but freshening this is certainly a possibility I think now.
Here’s the worst rusty hole and another more indicative of the rest.

 

That's bizarre. I've never seen that on an otherwise un-seized engine. With all eight sticking, I can see why it wouldn't turn over.

 

That’s wild, right? I wonder if I’d given them more time soaking before popping them out, if those wrist pins would have freed up? Who knows. I think the machine shop will love me when they press these pins off to change pistons though

 

Well I have a car update.
Jeff has slowly been tinkering with the Fairlane on and off over the past few months. I’ll get interior pictures later but he dyed some door cards and a bench seat to match and replaced the distributor with an electronic version. But the mc 2100 continued to be a pain with a seemingly very sticky (new) needle and seat. Well he got sick of it so ordered an Edelbrock performer intake. I picked the car up a few weekends ago to continue the work. With the nicer weather I love working outside in front of the barn so this weekend I worked on swapping the intake and carbs. He had a very nice very lightly used 670 Holley street avenger but wanted to run a 600 single feed Holley. So we traded for the single feed off my 67 f100.
I started with ensuring the 600 was dialed before removing from the f100. Then swapped the 670 on the 67 which as usual, required some reconfiguring, particularly with the feed line changing from single inlet to dual inlet with fuel log.
The Fairlane 302 intake and troublesome 2100 came off. I picked up some new silver zinc grade 5 bolts to bolt the new intake on. This went well until one broke while torquing it. So the intake came back off and a reverse drill bit for the broke part out, hit it with a tap, and got it all back together.
After that it was just a bunch of details. Configuring intake fittings, plugging unused holes, rebuilding the throttle cable bracket, installed a new 160 thermostat and cutting down the fuel line to move the filter over.
After figuring out my brand new Holley needle and seat was bad I just ran that all the way in and tuned the rest of the carb up.
100% improvement. She fires right up, idles great, and after a quick test drive, she runs down the road really nice!
On the to do list is a few pretty small things. Paint the bottom of the floor boards, install the Speedo cable, weld up the shift lever, replace the trans output seal, find the battery draw and fix a power steering leak. Then she’ll be ready for some road miles!

 

Well today’s mission after work was to fix the transmission leaks. The Rockauto parts ended up coming in overnight so I dropped the fmx pan to replace the gasket, filler, output seal and installed the Speedo cable with gear clip and o ring today.
So far that’s another leak crossed off the list and the fmx seems happier than ever. It honestly just drives like an old man car, not fast or sport, but rolls right along.

 

Well first trip to town was a success. A few improvements are in order but this Fairlane is a super good cruiser. To give a picture, coming off my hill is a 1,100 ft elevation drop in about 3 miles. It’s about 9 miles from my house to my son’s moms including another 3 miles of highway and the rest county and city roads.
The drive was great. She needs a bit of cleanup on the alignment. She needs disc front brakes and probably a brake booster instead of the current manual 4 wheel drums. But she motors right along. With the secondaries open it gets along pretty good. Not fast by any means but despite the 3.00 gears, it gets to highway speed pretty quickly. Otherwise she seems very happy cruising at 65-70. I didn’t try faster with a 55mph speed limit. But with a few bugs worked out and I’d drive this car anywhere. Climbing back up the hill with 70 something degree temps was smooth with the 302 not working too hard and engine temp stayed steady. The infrared gun confirmed 160 at the thermostat area.

 

Well we got a ton of little things done to the Fairlane yesterday and today. The charge harness was junk so I swapped it, the voltage regulator and chrome alternator with one we’d removed from Anna’s Falcon a few years ago. Now it charges at 13.7v instead of 17 and that also fixed the nasty dead short. From yesterday to today she lost a tenth of a volt.
I also reconfigured the throttle bracket to brace it and lower the return spring hole to alleviate a binding issue. And welded the shifter lever I made to the old shift arm.
We drove about 35 minutes to Jeff’s house and back yesterday and today after a bit more carb tweaking Jeff drove the car home to begin daily driving. This certainly isn’t the end of the story though. The rear valance still needs a replacement painted and installed as well as a rear bumper. And I imagine power disc brakes are on the way, and possibly rebuilding the leaky power steering control valve. But Jeff intends to drive it to work tomorrow which makes me very happy.
The big news though is we picked up the donor engine and trans for the gold Torino. It’s a bullnose Ford 2wd pickup with I believe a 1980 351w and small block c6 trans. The Holley 600 4 barrel needs attention so I’ll get a few needle and seats and fresh gaskets in it. The plan is to get that dialed before removal, which hopefully is in the next few weekends. The engine was rebuilt by our late engine builder friend with just under 23k on since it was installed in 06. And Of course the c6 is a leaker so I’ll reseal it before install in the Torino. And of course repaint the engine and hopefully never see that horrid green again, hahaha.
Here’s the donor truck. Pictures are of course after a few gallons of purple power and a few hours of pressure washing.

 

On a side note I needed to move the Falcon the other day and dang it, you were right. The pump won’t draw fuel anymore. Even prefilling the fuel bowl, no draw. Grrr.

In other news, I got into the Windsor carb. I had an extra few blue bowl gaskets so I changed that, the fuel rail o rings and pulled the needle and seat and hit the o rings and needle rubber with some carb clean and air, then dabbed some Vaseline on to help recondition the rubber because I’m being cheap. After resetting the float she actually runs really well. Fired right up and idles smooth. Next step honestly though is to pull the carb and blow it apart and give it a proper clean.

 

that's a good looking work truck
too bad it's loosing it's heart and soul

 

Ya I agree. The thought now is pull the heart and sit in the truck for a bit. We have a lead on as 400m and I have a spare big block pattern c6 to bring her back. Problem is I’m up to my neck in projects. But we can put it on ice for a bit and see where it goes. It’s just nice enough I don’t feel great about taking it’s engine and scraping it.

 

Well I suppose is time for an update.
The gold Torino is getting closer to ready for its new heart. I pressure washed and degreased the heck out of the engine bay a few weeks ago and reinstalled the gross but original white bench seat. We’ve been working on other projects for awhile so the engine/trans pull hasn’t been a big priority but today the front sump oil pump pickup and pan gasket came in. Unfortunately we’re slated to be repainting half of this 97 k1500 but I may have time to start unhooking things and some time in the next week that Windsor will be out. Then I can drag the bull nose up top and bring the Torino down for engine bay painting and start the fitting process.
In other news I grabbed a 70 Torino gt 9” that popped up on marketplace yesterday. It is crusty as hell but I have very nice drum brake backing plates, cables and drums ready to swap on. The current 8” is 2.79 open. This is 3.00 open (?). Spinning the yolk spins both axles the same direction but that could be rusty crusty spider gears. I’m hoping to be able to run that. I will have a 3.50 geared 28 spline equalock diff coming out of the f100 in the next few weeks I could install if need but I’d prefer to keep the highway gears until I can get an overdrive trans installed.
Pics are after persuading the drums off with a bfh.