'89 Stepside "Way Cool Jr."

[Erik the Awful]

I used WCJr to haul my son's '94 home because it won't start. There's something goofy with his electrical system, and I'm thinking it's the ignition switch. We met at 6pm, drove to the truck, and he realized he'd left his keys at home. Doh! So we drove back to his place, got the keys, and got back to the truck around 7:15. It took us half an hour to get the truck on the trailer with the dinky Harbor Freight winch, but that little turd did it.

Everything was running fine. It was 98* outside and the engine was running nicely at 194* (it usually runs 184-188, but we were towing). Then I spotted the temp gauge climbing to 206*. I've had to top off the radiator a few times lately, and I realized it'd been a minute since I topped it off.

I whipped into the Chick-Fil-A parking lot and my son and I got a late dinner. We each ordered a large water on the side. We ate, walked back to the truck, fired it up, and put the water in the radiator with the engine running.

And it bubbled.

I'd used the thin sheet gaskets when I put the engine together. The block wasn't decked and the math says they bring the quench distance down to .053". Ugh. If I go with better gaskets my quench is worse!

I have another engine on the stand that needs some final reassembly. I'm trying to decide if I want to:

a) Replace the head gaskets on WCJr with another set of thin gaskets.
b) Replace the head gaskets with normal gaskets and deal with bad quench.
c) Swap in my mild engine and go through the hot engine again.

I'm inclined to do "B" because the factory engines ran just fine with bad quench.

 

[0xDEADBEEF]

That sucks. How's the oil look?

 

[FLGS400]

I would go with B... and try to get the other engine together for back-up. That's just me though.

 

[Erik the Awful]

WCJr's driving fine and it's not using a ton of water yet, so for now we're still driving it and keeping it topped off with water. Come winter time I don't want to run straight water - we do get freezing temps here. So I have a deadline for getting it done.

I have no idea how the oil looks. It's due for its first serious oil change since the first oil change after the engine went together. Yeah, it's taken a few years to get enough miles to justify it. One of my goals during this maintenance is to get the dipstick tweaked around the headers well enough that I can reliably get the dipstick in and out. Right now it's difficult to get the dipstick back in, and I don't want to break it off. Headers are terrible for dipstick routing.

We gave my wife's Prius to my daughter last night, so we're down to my Mustang and WCJr for transportation. If I can fix my son's truck, I can give that back to him and get my wife's old Chrysler back.

It's hotter than a devil's fart this week. I'm more inclined to fix my son's truck at the moment because that should be a quicker job. It's also still parked on the trailer in front of the shop. But I can't even get the truck in the shop because I was in the middle of reorganizing the shop when all this started.

 

[Erik the Awful]

I got my $150 350 pretty much assembled today. I discovered that I only had one spare valve cover gasket. O'Reilly wants $40 for a pair. Screw that.

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I'm terrible at carpentry, right up until I realize the sound system in one of my vehicles sucks. Then I turn into some kind of amateur genius.

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Yup, Roscoe's getting that groovy box with an Infinity sub I built a couple months ago, and WCJr's getting this little turd. It's a bit smaller than I wanted, but it's sized to fit between the Cadillac seats. I'll have to remove the factory tool box behind the seats, but since I don't have the factory tools, I think that's a minor inconvenience. It's 12" wide, 16" tall, and should fit behind the console. I was thinking of either covering it in black cloth to hide the sub, or just painting the thing black. The sub should be hidden by the console and seats.

The amp is a dinky MTX that was orphaned in the trunk of my daughter's Ford Focus when we bought it. I already have four crappy Pyle 4x6s in the factory locations, and I have this crappy subwoofer that I bought for our race car's removable sound system. We have a history of blaring Hatsune Miku in the paddock. Fortunately one of my teammates stepped up with a 2000w system to make that more annoying, so I retired this sub to actual car audio work.

What the hell? I just noticed that screw missing on the front. Gonna go out right now and throw one in that hole.

Earworm warning.

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[454cid]

I got my $150 350 pretty much assembled today. I discovered that I only had one spare valve cover gasket. O'Reilly wants $40 for a pair. Screw that.

Yeah, somehow valve cover gaskets have gotten a bit expensive. I don't remember what engine I was looking for, but I do recall being surprised on the price. When I did the gaskets on my 454 I used Felpro's that I had purchased many years ago, but I had also picked up some Mahle gaskets that Rockauto had on clearance, for next time.

Earworm warning.

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Sound like some sort of ultra remix/sample of Snow's Informer.

 

[Erik the Awful]

The subwoofer is stained, varnished, and tucked behind the center console. It's not terribly obvious from the outside. All five speakers are Pyle's cheapest, so it doesn't sound good, but the sub definitely helps. The wood is what was left over after I built the nice speaker box for Roscoe, so I have a grand total of about $160 in this stereo. A Kenwood KMM-BT332U for $80, four Pyle 4x6s for $40, a Pyle 10" sub for $40, and an MTX amp pulled out of the Focus before I sold it.

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After I got that done I wired in the 7-pin / 4-pin trailer plug. I have the brake controller wire and 12v+ run up to the front, but they aren't hooked in yet.

 

[454cid]

What are those seats out of? They don't look GM to me.

 

[Erik the Awful]

Mid '90s Cadillac, specifically a '95 STS if I remember right.

 

[Erik the Awful]

...and the water pump's leaking now.