After rebuilding the carburetor I got the unit installed and successfully started the engine once again. Surprisingly the engine starts rather fast, choke or no choke. Of course its warm enough to not really need a choke but still, this thing with a couple of pumps of the pedal it'll start up quick. Also the engine runs rather smooth, not skipping or farting or anything that would be indicative of a problem. Why do I mention this? Because for whatever reason or another it sounds like the valve train isn't getting proper lubrication. Multiple lifters/valves are rattling like they're not getting oil like its supposed to. The oil pressure gauge reads around 10-15 psi. While this might be inaccurate due to the degradation of the gauges, it does show that oil is apparently making it up to the valve train. My next best guess is that the lifters are all worn out just like the head gaskets, just like the bad piston, just like most of the stuff on this engine. I did put some oil treatment shit in the oil to see if that helps but that'll mean running the engine for a while with the hope of getting the stuff circulating real good through the whole engine. If that doesn't work, I will probably change the oil to some 20w oil to see if the heavier oil will help in putting oil on top and keeping it there enough and maybe filling in any gaps in the lifters or cam bearings or any other parts of the oil system to hopefully quiet things down. Again, despite the rattling, the engine actually runs smooth. I did do several tests where I drove the car up and down the driveway just to see how things worked. There was still a matter of making sure the transmission shifted like it was supposed to and making sure the front end alignment was right enough that the car would not steer all over the place. At one point I was preparing to check the upper control arm alignment again and upon jacking up the car to get the clearance above the tire I ended up finding out that the lugnuts were not tight at all on the rim. Since these are aftermarket mag rims that use a special lugnut that incorporates a washer and these did not have said washers in place, the nuts weren't tightened down enough so the rim had play. I had to get some new lugnuts with a shorter shank for the bolt holes on the rim along with the washers. After installing these and getting things snug, I took the car for another test drive. At this point the car ran rather straight without the crazy bump steer it had prior to doing the alignment. The next order of business was the speaker panel. This is the panel that mounts in the back right behind the rear seat and right under the rear window. The old panel was made out of what amounts to cardboard and obviously deteriorated over the years to the point of being completely useless when I started really working on the car several years earlier. To make a replacement I had some old interior wall paneling leftover from our bathroom remodel project. The back side of the panel is smooth so I figured on cutting a replacement panel from this stock and installing it bottom side up. Painting it would complete the work so the thing at least has some sort of factory feel to it. First thing I had to do was cut a template from some bulk cardboard I had laying around. I took some basic measurements then drew what amounted to what the panel should look like and cut it out. Of course I erred on the side of caution, leaving excess material so I can easily remove material as necessary to ensure a nice fit of the panel. This includes drawing out and cutting the speaker holes themselves. With the template made, it was easy to draw out and then cut out the final panel on the wall paneling. After test fitting the new speaker panel in the car and with the fitting of the speakers it was time to take it outside for painting. Painting consisted of using a couple of old cans of black spray paint to cover the bare surface of the backside of the wall paneling speaker panel. I did this on the grass so there wouldn't be an imprint on the garage floor. Any paint imprints on the grass will go away over time. With the paint job done it was time for the speakers. After I installed the speakers into the panel I had to run some power runs over to the speakers so they'll get their electrical connections. This wasn't a big deal as it was just pulling out a couple of the wires from the car's radio wire hardness. These wires are color coded to be an exclusive pair for speakers. Once everything is online I turned on the radio only to have it start going on and off like it was being keyed on and off. After some basic troubleshooting I decided to pull this radio and install another spare I had. The old radio was a junkyard radio and is pretty much touch and go either way. The replacement was the radio that was in the old Chevy Tracker. Of course to my surprise when the key was turned on the damned radio stayed on but got no sound at all through it. I ended up troubleshooting and found nothing wrong. At this point I figured I may as well get ready to fetch another radio when I get the chance. Either way I did set out to do what I said I was going to do, which was build a speaker panel complete with the speakers for the car. Only thing now is getting a replacement radio, no big deal. If I can find the same media player radio then I can share the same wire hardness plug that coupled to the old radio this way I don't have to do any rewiring of power/speaker. I secured the speaker panel with strategically placed screws, holding the unit down. After getting the panel down, Looking at the setup it came out pretty good, all things considered. While waiting for an opportunity to get another radio I did run the car some more, doing more of my up and down the driveway runs and even taking the car down the gravel road a quarter mile to the mailboxes and back again. Everything acted fine, no overheating issues or anything that would really have me worried. One thing that I was a little concerned with was how the transmission shifted at certain throttle positions since this transmission uses a throttle valve (TV) cable instead of a vacuum diaphragm. It seemed a little weird how the thing shifted but that will be one of those little tweak bugs I'll work out later when I know that everything is straight with the engine and everything else. The other thing that I had to make note of is the fact that this car is loud as hell. The mufflers on the car were on the 69 Mustang when it used to have a 351W V8. These mufflers gave a good idle sound but at higher RPM's the engine was loud! Again, this is one of those minor things that will probably not be addressed in any capacity if the engine issues are ironed out and I can put this thing on the road for some endurance runs. I'm just pacing myself and not rushing anything too much as I want to not miss anything in the build, even if I ultimately have to do some other serious work like replacing lifters or even an oil pump.
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