After pulling the engine from the Dodge and swapping out the bad piston for one from the spare engine, I went ahead and took care of a few small things on the engine while looking at the front suspension. I had to clean up the oil pan gaskets and the surfaces where they set so I can reassemble everything. I took each of the cork gaskets and removed as much of the old gasket glue as I could then wiped the gaskets clean. Next I cleaned the surface of the block and applied some gasket glue to the block, setting the cork gaskets down so they can cure and be held in place. While the cork gaskets were curing I cleaned the two rubber ends that go at the front and back of the block to help seal the oil pan. I cleaned the oil pan surfaces as well as wiped up the shitty residue from inside the pan. With that I glued those two pieces down to the oil pan itself. While those were curing I took the time to drill out the remnants of the dipstick tube that broke off inside the block. I ended up snapping a drill bit but in the end I did get the material removed from the hole so it'll be ready for me to install a new oil dipstick tube when I get one in. From here I went ahead and applied more gasket glue in order to install the oil pan and get it all sealed up. With the engine partially put back together I went ahead and turned it back upright and got it in a staged position where I can move the crane over it to hook it up for reinstallation into the car. The next thing I turned my attention to was adjusting the front suspension since the wheels weren't at the proper alignment adjustments for the car to track properly. I went ahead and tweaked the upper control arms so hopefully the wheels will be at the right camber/caster angles for a somewhat proper alignment. The next thing I did since I really didn't do it when I initially reassembled the front end was set the torsion bar ride height by actually adjusting the bolt that applies tension to the torsion bar. Doing this puts more tension on the torsion bar so the car rides higher, much like putting a stiffer spring in a coil spring car to make it ride higher. That's the unique thing about torsion bar suspensions, they're adjustable. I did have a spare set of cylinder heads from a junk 318 that I got along with the "rebuilt" engine that appear to be in decent shape and more importantly don't have any broken exhaust manifold bolts in them. I'll check these out a little better and will probably end up using them in place of the ones that were on the engine initially. I ordered the replacement head gaskets and dipstick tube so when this stuff does come in I can get things put back together and hopefully get this car running once and for all.
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May 2023
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