57 Wagon Holiday Thrash

[mrocketscience]

Well, got a little time to tinker with the wagon this weekend. I installed the water temp and oil pressure gauges, and mounted the little Sun tach on the column. I'm waiting for the new electronic distributor to get here so I can wire up the ignition system and hook up the tach. I have an Accel Super Stock coil thats brand new, but been in the garage for 5 years so thats getting used. I scored a nice electric fan unit at Pick-a-Part for $30 that came out of a late model Lincoln, so I need to get the kit that operates it with a thermostat to turn it on and off. I'll pick up the new driveshaft this next Saturday, so we're getting real close to firing this thing off. Still needed: transmission lines to the radiator, figure out how to adapt the column shifter to the C4, gas tank repair, work out the new throttle linkage, probably a lot more stuff I haven't thought of yet... Meanwhile, a photo of the new fan, and a photo of the dash w/new gauges, and, just for fun, a photo of my Saturday night part time job ;)..

[SuperBuickGuy]

rock on

[DanStokes]

Anyone playin' an SG is OK with me! Carlos did Woodstock with one - must be OK. Good progress on the wagon.

Dan

[mrocketscience]

Hey Dan, I have a bunch of guitars, but the SG seems to be my "go to" guitar for gigs. Carlos is a little better than I am (lol), but we do several Santana tunes and it sounds great (thru a Fender Super Reverb)....

[DanStokes]

Not to hijack this thread too far, but look up Randy Garibay on Youtube. There's a vid of him playing at an awards show that'll knock your hat off! He was a better play than he looks like in the vid but I think he was dying of cancer when that was shot - he's gone now. I turn as many people as possible on to him - he was one of the Greats that no one ever heard of.

Back to car stuff -
Dan

[mrocketscience]

I ran across this really cool 57 wagon while at the March Meet. It belongs to a pin striper named Diablo. Apparently the front end was done by Bill Hines way back in the early 60's. I think it's way cool!

[mrocketscience]

Not a lot to report on my wagon... Just haven't had a lot of time. But we're getting there slowly but surely. I fabricated a new battery tray so I could get 12 volts to help me ID some of the wiring. I installed the new ignition (new distributor w/ electronic ignition and coil), and a brand new carb. Cool story about the carb. I had a Holley 600 I bought in 2006 to use on the old 312. When I pulled it off, a lot of the plating on the bowls was just flaking off in chunks... inside and out. Not good. My wife says "huh... shouldn't do that, let me get in touch with Holley". Turns out there was a recall on the carbs made in that time period. The result is, I shipped them my old carb, they shipped me a brand new one! I'm real happy with that.. Soon as I get another free weekend I'll install the electric fuel pump and relay harness, maybe see if this thing will fire up!

[mrocketscience]

Success!... Well, partially anyway. The engine fired off finally on Saturday, and I fixed the water leaks, had 60lbs of oil pressure, no oil pouring out anywhere. Thats all good, but unfortunately it seems to only run on about 4-5 cylinders so sounds REALLY bad! And it won't stay running. So, I have to diagnose whats at fault ignition wise. I'll first try a different plug wire set, and if that doesn't fix it I'm going to have to look at the distributor. I've gone over the firing order, set #1 at TDC( using the high tech coat hanger wire down the sprk plug hole method) so I'm resonably sure the timing is fairly close. I'll get a chance to mess with it a bit again next weekend so I'll see if I can sort it out.

[Russell]

Sorry to hear its not hitting on all eight, I am sure you already check, but what cam does it have? Could it have the HO/351 firing order?

[mrocketscience]

I have a Lunati Bracketmaster cam in it. I checked the cam card on Saturday, because I thought of the same thing, but checking the part number it says it's for 221-302. So, unless I got the wrong cam in the box I believe it's the correct one. I could rewire it to the 351 firing order and see what happens. Or, pull the valve covers and rotate the motor and verify that way.