Thought I had the valves adjusted... put the covers on today and fired her up only to be met with noise, rough running and... smoke out the exhaust. Maybe my valve seal job just didn't do the trick. But in any case, seems I need to do some more work on adjusting valves. It shouldn't be this hard! The manual says to tighten till no lateral movement without collapsing the lifter's hydraulic range. Then turn one more full turn. Of course, I didn't do it that way because the crank has to be turned to set each pair of valves to be fully closed and turning the crank is a bitch with the limited room in front. (Is that a lame excuse or what?)
One thing that will help with turning the engine is to use a remote bump switch. And one thing that will make that easier to use is to get my "Start'M Up" kit fully installed. (Started this when I pulled the old voltage regulator as a part of upgrading the generator to an alternator.) I need to pull the positive battery cable and measure for a new one in order to finish that job, so I think I will stop with the valves and turn to that before I go back to valve adjusting.
MAD Electric and Painless both make these kits and you can come up with your own by using a Ford starter solenoid and some wiring supplies. Kit contents (MAD) and wiring concept (Painless) shown above. Car Craft has a
good article that includes this kit.
Long-term thoughts though... if the engine smoking is really not solved (meaning there isn't just residual oil burning off), then I think the next plan is to invest in a few bottles of Lucas to control the oil. Supposedly this is a low-mileage engine and I think I have seen enough evidence to believe it. So I do not want to invest in an overhaul! I can't see spending $4K on an engine that is supposed to be only 27K miles.
Which brings me to another thought... if I do need to invest in an engine, considering that these cars are meant to be drivers, not show cars, what I would really want to do is put a crate engine in instead of a rebuild of the original. Of course, that means dealing with the transmission too. Adapter kit or replace with whatever bolts up natively. And if it's "replace", then one has to deal with drive-shaft and third member. Ugh.
I got a nice response from a Pontiac friend on the Pontiac '50 mailing list:
I put a 350/TH350 in my 1950 Pontiac. I had never done an engine swap before. I did a lot of reading and research before doing so to make sure I was doing it right. I had heard of poor swaps if all was not well aligned. I don't think it was all that difficult, but there were several things to consider as far as proper alignment with the rear end etc. It would also depend on how comfortable you are with doing the work yourself .....and...... how patient you are. After doing it myself on my 50 Pontiac I think it would go faster and easier the second time, because I was learning as I went. I personally would recommend doing it. It doesn't take much to make your own motor and transmission mounts if you have much mechanical sense and can take accurate measurements. The main things to keep in mind are: 1) keeping the rear end input shaft and the transmission tail shaft at the proper angle to each other. those angles/lines must be parallel 2) carburetor mounting surface level at ride height. 3) Also remember that most engines were offset to the passenger side about 1/2" from center. Once I figured out how to do those, the rest was pretty simple. ...just time consuming to get the parts and hook everything else up. But, I think it was worth the time and effort.
Good luck.
Bill
Nice!
