Transmission & Spark Wires

Today was a productive day.  Mr. Mechanic and I installed the front pulley, adjusted the valves, filled the motor with 30 weight oil, and primed the oil pump.  The latter involves turning the oil pump with a hand drill, but this is kind of challenging because the rod that drives the oil pump is at the bottom of the distributor hole, about 6 inches inside the engine:

The top of the oil pump shaft is in the middle.  The gear at the bottom is the distributor drive gear.

Reaching that shaft requires a 1/4 inch deep socket and a long socket extension. We didn't have one.  Time for a road trip to Ace hardware!  Mr. Mechanic installed a simple oil pressure gauge on the side of the engine, put the new socket on a long extension (I taped the socket to the extension... didn't want to inadvertently drop it into the engine!) then turned the oil pump with an electric drill.  It took maybe 30 seconds to fill the oil filter and the lower galleries before we finally got oil pressure.  We kept it up until we saw a steady flow of oil from the rocker arm oil returns at the top of the engine.  This step was necessary, otherwise the top of the engine would have been starved for oil when we first started it up.

After that, we took the engine off the stand and put it on a "cradle",  a very simple set of braces that lets the engine sit on the ground.  Here's what it looks like:

The engine cradle allows the transmission to be bolted to the back of the engine.

Mr. Mechanic then bolted the flex plate to the crank shaft, in preparation for installing the transmission.

Following instructions of the transmission guy, I poured one quart of "Dextron II" transmission fluid into the torque converter, greased up the shaft, and carefully assembled it onto the transmission shaft.  #1 Son and I then used the engine hoist to maneuver the transmission onto the back of the engine, carefully aligning the pins and then bolting them together.  We had to check frequently that the torque converter was still able to move freely, and not cocked or jammed.  Once it was assembled, here's what it looked like.

A freshly rebuilt Ford-o-Matic on a freshly rebuilt 292 y-block!

This Ford-o-Matic is air cooled, and doesn't need cooling lines to the radiator.  It just makes the floor hot, instead.

We still weren't done, because the flex plate had to be bolted to the torque converter.  This was more challenging, and I'm glad that Mr. Mechanic was there to fish the bolts into position through the narrow holes around the transmission.

Later in the evening, I decided to install the distributor and spark plug wires on my own.  I had to start by finding Top Dead Center (on #1 cylinder).  Luckily, Mr. Mechanic showed me how to do that when we set the valves.  Turn the crank until the valves on cylinder #6 are in overlap, then look for the timing mark on the front pulley.

In  a 4-stroke engine,  each cylinder reaches TDC twice before the spark plug fires... "overlap" is that brief period of time when the intake and exhaust valves are both open.  It happens when the piston is near TDC between the exhaust and intake stroke.  For ignition timing, I need #1 cylinder to be at TDC between compression and power stroke, with both valves closed.  That happens at the same time that #6 is at TDC in overlap.

I then installed the distributor.  It wasn't quite as simple as bolting something on.  I had to first orient the distributor rotor to the #1 cylinder position:

I marked #1 cylinder position on the cap based on the stock Ford distributor, which I won't be using on this engine.  I then marked that position on the housing.

I then aligned the rotor with the mark on the housing.

Then carefully insert it in the distributor hole, meshing with the drive gear on the camshaft (remember the distributor drive gear?).  But, the distributor won't go in all the way at once.

Note how the rotor is about 15 degrees off the mark.  I meant to do that - no really!

The distributor is partially engaged.  Need to turn the engine over to get it to engage fully

The bottom of the distributor shaft has a 1/4 inch socket to engage the oil pump drive shaft (remember the oil pump drive shaft?), and the engine must be turned over to turn the distributor and engage this shaft.   The gears are also helical, so the orientation of the distributor rotor will be different once it's fully engaged.  So, I had to guess where the gears would end up, and move the rotor ahead a few degrees to compensate.  Here's how it turned out:

At TDC for #1.  This looks pretty good.

Distributor fully seated and clamped

With the cap on.  I marked #1 for my own convenience.  I would need that later.

Next I wanted to install the new spark plug wires.  Simple, you would think... just plug them in!  But wait, they aren't marked.  Which one is which?  There are also clamps to hold them... how do I assemble them?  How do I dress the wires?  Luckily, I still have the old wires, which are pretty gnarly and soaked in oil:

I carefully checked the length of each new wire against each old wire, and sorted them out as best I could.  Of course, they weren't perfect.  I put them in place, dressed them up, then taped the clamps in place and took them off again in order to install the clamps.  This has to be done in a bench vise.

Note the tape on each wire.  I needed to keep track of which cylinder was which.

Ready for installing the metal clamps.  Oh, the thick "heat shield" tubes on the wires had to go... they serve no purpose, and get in the way of the clamps.

Here's what they look like installed.  Note that I cheated and numbered the wires... on both ends.  I don't like getting confused about which is which!

Note that I also installed the throttle and kick-down linkage.

That's all for today.  I feel good about this, and I'm starting to believe that I may be able to fire this engine up next week!  That would be a major milestone... this engine hasn't run since 1972.  We have both come a long way since then.