Off my rocker

The transmission had to wait a little longer than expected and in fact I took a day's vacation to get it finished. Popped on the linkages and refilled with fluid and started her up. Moved it through the gears to get the fluid circulated and checked and adjusted the level as necessary. Easy Peasy. Let's hope the garage floor appreciates it.

Then on to the much needed valve job. I'd plugged in my vacuum gauge and it was holding at around 17" but was flickering much like scenario #3 on this site. However the description isn't correct (it's not a high powered engine). A valve job on a slant 6 needs the engine fully warmed up and is done while it's running. I popped off the rocker cover to reveal this gunky mess. 

 

However closer inspection showed that #4 intake valve rocker had jumped off the pushrod! No wonder it was sounding a bit tappety and lacked power from a standing start. It was a small miracle that it was idling at all!

 

 

Loosened off the adjuster and reinstalled the pushrod and set about adjusting the valves. 0.010" for intake and 0.020" for exhaust. Feels weird at first putting a wrench on a moving rocker but after a while it becomes pretty easy. Several trips down the rocker shaft checking and adjusting and rechecking each one and it's now much quieter. A new rocker cover gasket and we are back in business and the annoying hesistation from a standing start has all but disappeared. Need to replace the vacuum hoses to the PCV/ carb and the choke pull off but it's running MUCH better.

More leaks

The weather here has been typical for the time of year, hot, sunny and humid in the morning with daily afternoon thunderstorms. Due to this, I've not driven the Dart for weeks. Mrs P had to "press" it into action the other week when her car was in the shop being repaired and she needed something to drop the kids at school with.

The fuel line mod has improved hot starting (according to Mrs P) although I need to get the electric choke adjusted as it hardly does anything  on a cold start at present.

The tranmission has been leaking for a while and where it has sat in the garage for nearly 3 months a large puddle has formed under it. Decided I needed to fix it and spotted that it was leaking from the shift shaft seal. There are 3 options to fix it this

1. get a $45 tool that's designed to pull out the old seal and push in the new one from above with everything still in place. Sounds easy but access above is severely limited.
2. drop the transmission pan, remove the valve body and punch out the seal from below and press a new one with a long bolt and several large washers
3. pay someone else to do it.

I went with option 2 despite never having opened up a gearbox in my life. Ordered a new seal and quality Wix transmission filter and got a new rigid style transmission pan gasket from the Chrysler dealer. Apparently this new part is for a 96 Dodge Ram but it fits a '67 904 transmission just perfectly.

Here's a couple of shots of the valve body with the pan and filter removed.

At this point I was seriously thinking that option 3 may have been the wiser route as it's a really messy job in cramped conditions. Typically most of the "action" was on the driver's side, hidden behind the exhaust pipe, transmission cooler lines and neutral safety switch wire. My wrist/forearm look like they've seen some Demi Lovato action (and not the eating disorder either).

It's nearly all back together, just need to connect up the gear shift and kickdown linkages (the really fiddly part) and refill with fluid but that can wait til the weekend.