First time ever in 30 years

rzucker

Well-known member
Yesterday I was pulling the C-brakes off of a BC 290 and yep... I dropped a stud nut :bangh. The oil was already out of the pan so I went prospecting, the nut hit the pan in a flatter area so I got my small nylon hammer and tapped around 'til I heard it bounce, then "hopped" it to the sump. Stuck the magnet in the drain and... found 4 nuts total plus an injector link. Bonus parts!:D
Just a little humor. Yes I did hear it hit the pan. We all know what happens if you don't hear that.
 

Truck Shop

Well-known member
I have to say I have been lucky, but when dropping the pan on a few to roll bearings in I have found a few 1/2 nuts in the bottom. I guess they decided to gamble
that the nuts weren't stuck in the follwers:p. Great that you had the oil drained and could hear it hit bottom. I did pull a oil pan off an old ford 600 with a Y block
292 that had seven distributor drive rods laying in the pan:eek:.

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rzucker

Well-known member
Pulled the pan on an old D8H once that had 8 bent pushrods in the bottom. Apparently they just kept adding rods as they disappeared.
 

Truck Shop

Well-known member
You never know what you will find in the bottom of an engine. A friend was working on a BBC and found someone painted F--- Y--- inside the pan.
And supposedly this engine had never been apart,:rolleyes:

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rzucker

Well-known member
You never know what you will find in the bottom of an engine. A friend was working on a BBC and found someone painted F--- Y--- inside the pan.
And supposedly this engine had never been apart,:rolleyes:

Truck Shop
I had a Chevy 396 block that somebody had stamped the same sentiment on the serial number pad.
 

rzucker

Well-known member
Follow up on the 290... Resealed the C-brakes and ran the overhead. There's a story that goes along with this engine. Three years ago it had an issue with the rear head (GMC Brigadier) since that day the thing has run like crap. It's funny, when I set the injectors the # 5 and 6 injectors had around .060 to .070 slop. Gee, I wonder where the white smoke and blubbery throttle response came from. The owner thinks he has a new truck now.
 

rzucker

Well-known member
1986, Never really checked the model number. Just ran an overhead job on it and resealed the C-brakes. Top stop injectors and A-B-C marked accessory pulley.
 

Truck Shop

Well-known member
Did you set injectors on one hole and valves on another or all on one cylinder? Sounds like who ever worked on it before didn't know their A,B,C's.

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rzucker

Well-known member
Yep, valves on one, injector on another... ABC. But no 5 lb inch torque driver. just my oily fingers.:D Done it that way for many years.
 
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Truck Shop

Well-known member
I have done them both ways on a big cam with top stops and never really noticed a difference either way as far as running smoother or more power.

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rzucker

Well-known member
I have done them both ways on a big cam with top stops and never really noticed a difference either way as far as running smoother or more power.

Truck Shop
I do recall old Carl P telling me once the torque method with the plunger bottomed out would compensate for a worn cam lobe. I've never used that method with top stops and never had an issue. Seems to me that even though the plunger would seal, it would still run rough with a bad cam lobe. The timing would be off in that hole I would think.
 

JasonG

Well-known member
I love these stories. Don't know my A,B,Cs either but here's a shot to what I've learned from you two.
 

Truck Shop

Well-known member
I love these stories. Don't know my A,B,Cs either but here's a shot to what I've learned from you two.
The character that RZ is talking about left a trail of un-sober stories behind talked about far and wide. When he was sober he was a good mechanic-Carl Prosser.

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rzucker

Well-known member
The character that RZ is talking about left a trail of un-sober stories behind talked about far and wide. When he was sober he was a good mechanic-Carl Prosser.

Truck Shop
He was most definitely a character, the first time we worked together was in the mid 80's fixing junk for Brown Brothers Feeds in Royal City. Their "drivers" tore it out faster than you could rebuild/replace it, brakes, clutches, transmissions.... It was job security big time. BBF had a guy of their own but he was swamped, so they called Carl and then they found me, at the time I was trying to get my foot in the door with a few outfits for some regular business and that worked out quite well for me.
One memory that is burned into my brain is that of Carl cleaning out an 8V92 block with an air siphon gun using GASOLINE and with a cigarette dangling from his lip:eek:. I... went to lunch at 9am that day.
Later he started calling me to do heavy work and welding for his customers, that got me even more business. We loaned tools back and forth for quite a few years, but as he got older he started to give me some of his heavy tools. I still have a batch of 1" drive sockets and odd Cat dozer type specialty wrenches from him.
The last job we worked together was a small Wabco scraper, he had taken on the job of repairing the old 5spd Fuller trans in the thing without realizing it was a strange obsolete model. I hunted all over the us for parts with zero results and most used parts were junk too:bangh. So we ended up welding stuff up and doing our own machining. That machine is still working about 100 hrs a year.
It was only about 3 months later when I got the news he went to bed and never woke up. :angel
 
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