hmm, any truck with A/C should have the electric condenser fan. That's what i hacked and used. May have to use a plumb-in thermostatic control then.

 

May have come with it and someone removed it before I ever bought it. Don't know why anyone would have. I don't see any signs of one being removed tho (unused harnesses, empty bracket locations, etc.)

Got all the engine accessories on last night. I need to pick up a couple new sensors and I should be good to go.

 

I have a question: There's a threaded hole that goes into the block that's just to the left of the distributor. I searched thru all my nuts/bolts/parts bags of stuff I removed, but I can't for the life of me find out what went there. I've been scanning thru the shop manual too, but I haven't found it yet. I assume its either a temperature sensor of some sort or maybe for a bracket, but can't find any verification anywhere. Can someone look back there and snap a pic for me and/or let me know what it is?

 

oil pres sender

 

Ahh, that's it. Thank you sir. Should have a bunch more buttoned up tonight. Injectors should be here by this weekend. Hopefully Monday I'll have the motor back in the truck and can start fabbing up a bracket for the electric fan.

 

one side is a Z bracket, one is a straight bracket. The fluid containers up top hold it the rest of the way. Some grinding is required to make it clear the bottes, but when done, it looks fairly OEM.

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Any update?

 

Wedding planning and work = overdue update:

Replaced the upper ball joints and tie rods. Truck is sitting on the ground again! Got the fan fabbed in place but good lord is it squeezed in a tight space with the 318 block behind it. I should have sawed off the extension on the crank that the clutch fan goes into. Would've been plenty of room then. Anyhow, just waiting on an electrical connector for the fan to come in so I can wire it up and run a switch to inside the cab. I'm just gonna run a manual switch to the high speed setting until I care to do up a relay system that taps into the t-stat & a/c switch.

I've got 3 grounds I can't figure out where they go. I labelled every hose, connector and ground but somehow missed these ones. Two are coming from the upper passenger side, mounted to the rain tray. One I believe came off the back of the block. I'll have to snag a good camera & take pictures when I get home (phone camera is messed up). See if you guys can help me a bit. After I get those few figured out I just gotta top off all the fluids and I'm ready to go.


Two questions:

1. I did prime the oil pump, but didn't prime the whole engine all the way (i.e. priming until oil made its way up to the valvetrain). Rookie mistake of my first engine build. Now I read somewhere that the first start up should still be ok - that the assembly lube would do the job for the first few seconds until the pump gets oil to the top of the engine. What say you guys? I'd hate to have to pull the distributor out, and possibly the engine or rain tray to fit a heavy duty drill in there to fully prime the engine. Then get the distributor lined up again. But I'd hate even more to spin a rod bearing because the engine wasn't "properly" primed before start up.

2. Breaking in the engine. I should be able to do this on the stock tune, no? Then once the engine is broken in, hook up the SCT tune and start driving it like I stole it. Do I need the new tune installed before start up and during the break in or am I good to start her up and take it easy until I finally receive the SCT I ordered?

 

Make sure yours is one with 2 speeds. Mine had 3 wires but 2 are internally connected so it's really only 1 speed. Can use an ohmeter to figure it out. Either 2 of the 3 are connected or the aren't. Also, don't power both together. Cut off the low speed when you turn high speed on.

To prime the motor the rest of the way, just pull the PCM relay and hold the starter over. Will do less damage than waiting for it to prime at idle.

That said, it's better to prime the motor right before starting it, not a few days before. All that oil runs back down into the pan. On the camaro, we prime ours on the engine stand to 110 PSI when we first built each motor, and whenever starting, we hold the starter until it hits 75PSI, then turn ignition on. Takes about 15 seconds at 400 cranking RPM (high speed starter on 16 volts).

Should be able to start it on the stock tune. It might be a little lean though, but the O2's may tell the PCM to fix that.

 

:sigh: got everything buttoned up tonight. Checked all grounds, harnesses/connectors, fan setup, plugs, injectors, nuts/bolts... Nothing seems to be out of place. Turned te motor over to "prime" the engine. Plugged everything back in to start the engine & it won't start. We could smell fuel, even pulled the fuel supply to verify as we turned it over. We checked spark & everything is good. I'm pretty confident I timed the engine right. It's pretty straightforward when following the factory service manual. Tngine turns over nicely but the damn thing won't fire up.

Any ideas? Something I'm missing?