With my finally getting the engine running and tuned for the most part, I have the added bonus of having a rod or rods knocking. It really sounds like one is knocking but regardless the case, that is something that needs to be addressed somehow. Of course, the simple way to try and address it is by changing the oil and adding some oil treatment to see if its something that can be "masked" enough to get more life out of the engine before the inevitable rebuild. I ended up using 20w oil in the engine to get enough thickness that any worn bearings should have a good thick coating of honey between them. Add to this the oil treatment which in addition to any other additives, the extra viscosity should allow any worn bearings to shush in a medium of goo that should hopefully quiet down a noisy engine, in theory anyway. Of course, the rod knock was not eliminated. Its kind of funny but I have had episodes where what was thought to be a rod knock ended up being a warped flexplate, causing the bolts on the torque converter to hit at a certain point, creating the tapping that was heard while the engine was running. Now its not to say that's what's up here, and its a shaky ground to travel on because making assumptions that the engine may be fine and its a bad flexplate or loose torque converter bolts could cause me to double work when I have to pull the engine out again to replace rod bearings after all. It really wouldn't be too much work to put the engine on an engine stand flip it over to replace the rod bearings just to eliminate that variable regardless what's going on. Hell even replacing the flexplate would probably be smart too. By replacing both of these we can eliminate these two known causes to the loud tapping that can be heard in old engines. Another thing that I ended up having to do was replace the starter on the engine. With the advancing of the timing, it didn't take much effort to get the engine into a condition where the starter binds when gas vapors are being inhaled and ignited on one or two cylinders. Even cold cranking was kind of fatigued, which told me I had a hot starter. A hot starter is one that even when it still cranks for the most part, its drawing way more current than usual and as a result isn't producing the maximum amount of torque to the engine to crank it under load, hot or cold. Upon removing the starter after trying to crank the engine cold and failing, I found the starter was rather warm, confirming what I already knew. I had spare starters of this type as the starters were the same for the 65 Mustang with the 289/C4, and the Rustang's old 351/C4/FMX powertrain. This starter was probably used for every SBF powerplant used from the middle 60s through the 80's. With that, I had spares. After a quick two mounting bolts and a small cable bolt, I had the new starter installed. Upon cranking, the fresh starter spun the engine around like a top, starting it up quickly. One more thing that I wanted to do was test drive the truck, not so much because I want to make sure the engine is fine, we know we have something else going on with the engine, but to confirm that the transmission is doing its job. Just like with the engine, it would be anticlimactic to install this shit in the Rustang only to find out the transmission is shot. So, with the engine tuned enough to run and go into gear and still idle, we hopped in and drove the truck up and down the driveway and even down the gravel road down to the main road and back, running the truck up enough to induce shifting. Because it almost seemed like I wasn't shifting, I went ahead and manually shifted from 1st to 2nd then revved up to a speed where another upshift should've occurred and shifted up to 3rd, which I felt, albeit softly. I downshifted to 2nd, feeling the soft downshift then back up to 3rd, feeling it softly again. Now whether this transmission is set up for soft shifting to make the truck more comfortable to drive or its just worn, it does shift. Once everything is removed, I might even go in the transmission to tighten up the bands on the drums inside the transmission just to be able to compensate for normal wear so when its installed in the Rustang, it will either still shift softly, or with tighter bands, have a more crisper upshifting, either of which I'll be ok with. As long as the transmission shifts, I'm happy. Worst case scenario, I'll be froggy enough to hunt down a reverse/manual valve body to install in the C6 in order to make this transmission act as a manual transmission, as I've done before with other transmissions, including the C4 that was used behind the Rustang's 351 and 200 I-6 in past years. Since I really would rather have an actual manual transmission, I will probably just focus on getting things tuned on the transmission in its current state and just make sure to have the kickdown linkage hooked up with the right hardware or with viable improvised hardware so the machine will shift like it's supposed to in all circumstances. Until I can source a T-5, I'll just roll with the pussy automatic until then. But either way, the engine will have to come out, most likely to be torn down some to replace some internal components before getting to the point where we're planting this powerplant in the Rustang.
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