While the brake debacle has still not been fully resolved on the Monte Carlo there were a couple of other things that I wanted to address on the car. One is the idea that the engine had been acting like it was out of time again. When I go to start the thing warm it'll sometimes want to give that binding crank, which happens when the thing is either too retarded or advanced in timing. Also when the engine decelerates from a high rpm, such as when driving down the highway, I'll hear some sputtering from the exhaust. Now I did learn later on that when there are major exhaust leaks downstream yet still close to the engine, this sputtering will happen, from what I'm guessing is air making its way into the exhaust system right at the hot zones in the exhaust near the headers where unburned gases still present can ignite, versus a more or less sealed exhaust system where these conditions are not created.
Barring that. I had to mess with the timing on this car once before for the same reasons. When I advanced the timing the engine actually ran better, for a good while. Then when I had started driving the thing again after the summer weather started to go away, I suddenly started getting this same goofy engine action once again. When I checked the dizzy I found that the thing spontaneously walked back, like the retaining bolt and clip wasn't really holding the dizzy down as tight as I thought and normal engine rotation made the whole unit walk back some. Well when I advanced the thing back where I had it and drove the car again the thing still had this same goofy attitude. I played with the timing going back and forth, until I found myself even advancing the thing up to a point where the dizzy couldn't advance anymore due to the vacuum diaphragm hitting the side of the intake manifold. It was like the thing wouldn't really respond regardless of timing. Now before you say, "didn't you use a timing light?", the answer is no because this engine, having been a fuel injected vortec variant from a 99 year truck, the timing cover did not come with a timing gauge as the engine was not intended to have its timing adjusted. Because of this, you have to time this thing by ear. The only other option at this point is to pull the distributor and reseat it and set timing from scratch. For all of you old school car guys, you already know what I'm talking about. In order to set timing on a distributor, you first pull the #1 spark plug out, then have someone bump the starter while you hold your finger over the spark plug hole on the engine. They keep bumping the starter until the piston in #1 cylinder hits top dead center (TDC) where both the intake and exhaust valves are closed and the piston is in its compression stroke. When the piston hits TDC, the pressure will push your finger off the spark plug hole. At this point you then take your distributor, sans cap, and carefully seat the body into the hole, rotating the rotor slightly to allow for the oil pump drive shaft to seat itself into the bottom of the distributor shaft and the whole unit to seat firmly on the top of the intake manifold or engine block (depending on the engine). Afterward you can install the retaining clip and bolt but don't tighten as you'll need to still turn the dizzy afterwards. You then make note of where the rotor is pointing by making a mark somewhere outside of the distributor so when you put the cap on you'll know where the rotor is pointing. Making note of rotor rotation, you try to turn the dizzy so one of the plug sockets on the cap is right on the TDC mark you made. You wanna make sure there's a somewhat equal amount of travel room on either side so you can tweak the dizzy in either direction as needed. Once you've established which plug socket is at that mark, this is your #1 cylinder/plug. You can plug the spark plug wire up to this point. Then with the firing order established you can plug the remaining wires to their respective plug sockets around the distributor cap until you cover every plug. At this point you should be able to crank the engine and the engine should either start immediately, or start and run kind of funny, until you tweak the dizzy to advance or retard the timing to which the engine will respond accordingly. In my case, I wanted to move the rotor to try and advance the thing a little bit to I can have the spot where the thing was working at set at a point that was more retarded so I can b able to advance the engine timing more. When I did get the thing seated with the rotor advanced, it was apparently too much. I ended up having to reseat the distributor again where it should've been, then retarding the thing as far as it would go then moving #1 plug over one socket so I can have that equal amount of play in either direction that I was seeking. With that I was able to get the engine to start up. I tweaked the timing until the engine ran at an idle rpm that was reasonable after the choke was opened up some. I shut the car down and cranked it again and didn't get the binding cranking that I got before, plus the engine seemed to run a little smoother. Hopefully at this point the damn thing is alright so I can move on to some other shit on this car and get this thing to a place where I can actually drive it without worrying about shit for a good while.
The next thing that I've been looking at with the Monte was removing the meat grinder cooling fan and installing an electric fan in its place, which of course, would remove the meat grinder, and it would delete the fan shroud, which takes up room at the front of the engine. When it comes to doing things like changing water pumps or fan belts, that shroud gets to be a royal pain in the ass. Not to mention the idea that you gotta be careful when the engine's running as you don't wanna lose any digits, or accidentally drop a tool and have it get flung back by the fan into some shit, or into the radiator or into your face. There are plenty of pros to deleting the belt driven fan. Another is the horsepower drop from having the engine turn this thing as its almost like a prop driven airplane engine. The few amps used to drive an electric fan does not equate to the several HP used to drive the fan from the engine, lot of resistance there.
I pulled a dual fan assembly from the 2002 Grand Prix that I'm currently parting out as this assembly matches the dimensions of the Monte's radiator. I wanted to see if it would be possible to mate this fan to the radiator with minimal modifications. I figured I'd have to make something, whether its a couple of brackets or add studs to bolt the fan assembly to the radiator support structure. Of course if it turns out that too much will have to be done then I will abort the mission to use the Grand Prix fan and look for another alternative, even if it means going for an aftermarket performance electric fan. This may very well be the case too as I do plan on getting a 3-core radiator for the car, so any modifications I make have to be relatively minimal as I can't do something permanent that will end up having to be reversed because the 3 core rad is different in some way from the stock rad. Well, I pulled the fan from the water pump hub and removed the fan shroud, both halves, so I can open up the space. The top half of the shroud also supports the radiator from the top, so if I delete the shroud, I will either have to fabricate some alternative mounting bracket for the top of the radiator, or butcher the top half of the shroud to just keep the radiator retaining section and omit the the rest of the shroud body. Anyhoo, I went to test fit the GP fan assembly in place and it appears that it would take some effort to fit the fan in place. It could be done but what will end up happening is the fan won't be flush against the back of the radiator so the air movement won't be optimized like with the shroud. Also with the brackets I'd have to make, I'd probably end up having to re-do shit when I put the 3-core rad in place as well. So now at this point I'm debating on whether to do a little more fast research to see what's out there for a fair cost when it comes to aftermarket electric fans as well as hitting the junkyards to see what's out there that might fit my application up to just putting shit back together and possibly just taking advantage of one of the combo kits I've seen on Ebay for 3-core radiators with associated cooling fans where all I have to do is just install the shit and hook everything up. We'll have to see on that part. I could do like I did on the Mustang and just omit the shroud but I will still need the top half to hold the rad down. I may just install the top half with the fan and just roll with that until I make a final decision and get the associated hardware to go along with that decision. The last thing that I did was add a new air cleaner to the carburetor. The old air cleaner was a 14" unit that didn't clear the distributor and was actually not seated on the carburetor neck properly. I ended up ordering another aftermarket air cleaner but this time a 10" unit, which fit just right, clearing the distributor cap and seating on the carburetor neck properly. With that there's still the brake issue that has to be resolved. I ended up ordering a master cylinder to try since its the next thing in line as far as major components in the braking system that can cause the problems that I'm having. There's also the proportioning valve, but that's a component that I'm having second thoughts about replacing as its in a shitty spot and I had to do some more research on this braking system to see if there's something I'm missing. Sometimes you have a hunch about something and you do good to wait before making kneejerk decisions that will end up being a waste of time and money.
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