falconvan

Got it! Not as easy as is sounds, I was getting frustrated. Had to call in a rocket scientist.

They told me at work I had too much OT this week so I took a comp day and got some more done. I'm hoping for a test fire sometime next week.

OK, I had a new fuel pump diaphram in a box so I thought I'd change it. How do you get this thing connected to the arm to put it back together????

Great start for a project and you sure cant beat the price!

That's a serious bummer, sorry you had to find out the hard way. I saw this one on Craigslist in Springfield, Mo. Looks like the guy is ready to deal if you want to start with one that needs a drivetrain. http://springfield.craigslist.org/cto/2664009310.html

Cass, everything looked really good inside this thing so I imagine any issues were related to carb, ignition, timing, etc. Someone rebuilt it and apparantly not too long ago. Thanks again, you saved me a lot of $$$

Very interesting; the motor was complete right down to the plug wires when I got it so i'm going to figure it didn't have one. There's no bolt holes for it so that's how it must be.

Got a few more things put together. It took a lot of time on the manifolds this week; I had four broken bolts in the intake, one in the exhaust, and the heat riser was stuck closed. So after getting all that straight I finally got it put together. Also got the rear shocks on and the issue with the shift linkage and master cylinder worked out. Next is get the brakes bled and adjusted, plus finish putting the rest of the motor back together. Should be putting a front clip back on before too long.

I noticed another difference in these two 218s I'm working with. The one I removed had a balancer on the front pulley that looks like its held onto the pulley with 5 bolts. The engine I installed has the front pulley with no balancer but only two bolt holes across from each other. Can someone shed some light on that?

Good idea, I'll do that.

I agree, Greg. No one will be able to say they couldn't see them.

On a 48 Dodge I had I used a stadard GM 3 wire alt and got a wire harness with a diode built in from Speedway. Very easy to hook up. The harness was $14 and the alt was a $35 remanufactured unit from Advance. Worked great and still came out cheaper than a 1 wire. Plus it charged at low RPM.

Ok, thanks to help from several of you the head is on and the clutch linkage is squared away. The shift linkage was a nightmare. No matter how I adjusted it it would not hit all the gears. Finally after looking at the other trans several times I found that the upper shift arm was 3/4" longer than on the trans I put in the car. Taking this arm off while the trans is in the car is tough; you can just get three fingers and a wrench in between the floorboard and the nut that holds on the arm. Flipping the wrench gives you about 1/4 turn per flip. But after swapping it, all gears are where they should be. On another note my super slick homebuilt master cylinder bracket ended up right where one of the shift rods needed to be so I have to do some alterations if I want brakes AND gears. Also, I know some of you wont like this but I really don't like the look of the stock tail lights so I'm going with these. There from a 59 Catalina and are a little big but I like them.

Nice, Cass! Where did you get your conversion kit?

You are a lifesaver, thanks!

Ok, I got a strange one here. I pulled the original motor and trans on the 49 in one piece. The bellhousing and trans had a ton of road tar on them that was darn near impossible to get off. No biggie, I'll just use the bellhousing and three speed from the other motor when I install it; eveything looks exactly the same. Now the motor/trans is in the car and it is all the same EXCEPT this bellhousing does not have the two holes behind the starter for the clutch pivot to bolt on. ?????? Where else would it bolt to? They were both identical engines with identical three speed transmissions. I sure dont want to pull the whole works out again if I can avoid it. Somebody save me...

The Permatex copper spray worked great, guys. Head is on and I hope to test fire in the next few weeks. I have to find a machine shop to fix my exhaust manifold; all the bolts that connect it to the intake at the heat riser were broke off. There sure are a lot of headbolts on this thing; they probably never blew head gaskets.

Great, Tim. Thank you.

LOL! No, Mo, I didn't mean you. The guy's name was Tony David. Sounds like a game show host.

That right, Tim. The bank didn't seem interested in the info I had on the guy. After some checking I found out that my only recourse was to take it to my local postmaster, which I did, and report the guy for mail fraud. It probably did absolutely nothing as I'm sure the guy used a phony name. I did get to send a "You didn't get me, you SOB" email which felt pretty good. I think this goes on everyday with thousands of big dollar scams going through so they're probably don't have the resources to pursue the little fish.

I bought a Fel-pro gasket set to put my 218 together. The head gasket is composite on one side and metal on the other. The instructions say to use a sealer on the metal side but no indication what type. Has anyone used this gasket and what did you use? Also, does it go metal side to the block? What about sealer on the headbolt threads?

Looks like the engine had been bored; .060 on the piston tops when I cleaned them off. Everything inside this thing was really clean. It doesn't look like it's been together very long. Got it all painted up and installed today. I decided on a non-standard color. It's Caterpillar Beige.

Is there such a thing for these old mopar 3 speeds? I've never seen one but I'm curious myself.