Hi all. Never really look at this section, which is great. Been wanting to show some of the progress with my 67 but didn't think it belonged in the general help section. My first Ranchero was a 78 stuffed with the guts from a 79. Rancheros have been in my wife's family for a few decades. Her dad had an original 63, a 79 which when it died in an accident had its guts put into a bare 78, which eventually I bought from him. The 78 ran like a champ for many years until I had to park it because I couldn't afford the gas. Over the years it deteriorated to the point that it just wasn't worth fixing up and I sold it to a pick-n-pull lot. Because the car I was driving around this time giving me more and more issues my wife and I decided to buy another classic car. I looked at a lot of different classic cars but just kept coming back to Rancheros. The 67 has always been my favorite model year, but I couldn't find one in my price range. My friend found a decent 67 out in San Diego that looked interesting. We drove out to look at it and decided to buy it. It drove pretty well for a stock 44 year old car. The brakes needed an overhaul and some other things that I listed in my original posting in the General Help section a year or so ago. After driving the girl for a few months, and on my birthday, it decided to start giving me problems. First was a severe loss of power that I attributed to it needing a tune up. Next it stopped charging so I swapped the alternator. Then there was a nasty valve noise. That was really the end of the 289. I later discovered that one of the valve seals broke and peices were sucked into some of the oil channels, killing the oil pump and preventing oil from getting to the heads. I've since taken possession of a 302 out of a 71 ranchero. It was a mess, but ran and had a head rebuilt not too long before I pick it up. I decided to do a light rebuild on the engine and convert it over to a 90's EFI system. Due to money and a lack of time it has pretty much sat in the same condition for the last year; in pieces all over my garage.
With the lack of funds and time the 67 has just been sitting in my drive way getting calcified by our hard water spraying sprinklers. Well my daily driver needs to go into the shop for some work and so I will need another car to drive while its out. With that I decided it was time for a mad rush on getting the 67 running again. Doing the EFI conversion has been a mixed bag. There are a lot of articles around the net that give general info, but the devil(s) are in the details. I'll dive into a tech article once the engine and everything are running properly that tries to fill in some of those gaps for others that might want to try a conversion. That being said, over the last 2 weekends I have taken the engine from the second to last photo below to the last. Just a few more little things to finish cleaning and painting before I put the engine in the car (Upper intake manifold, accessory mounts, and engine bay). Also bought a new battery tray to replace the completely corroded and pretty much non-existent original tray. The 67 was a fun car to drive and I've really missed, even as fun as my 06 mustang is. Really excited to get her running again.
Thanks guys. Hoping to get it running in a couple of weeks. Going to Vegas next week for a work event, but I am hoping everything will go back in the engine bay the weekend I get back. If things go well, which happens ever so often, I'm hoping to have it running that week after. More pictures will follow.
Yup. Swapping both at the same time has been fairly daunting. I had tossed around the idea of putting the old intake and carb on the engine first so I could make sure it ran properly before doing the EFI stuff, but then figured I have a bunch of very knowledgeable friend who'd be able to figure out anything that went wrong at instal. One of those times I really wish I had an engine test stand. Engine wont be going in the bay this weekend. Still have some things to fix in the bay before I finish painting it. Also all of my friends seem to have loaned out their cherry pickers so I can't even get it in there if I wanted to.
Well putting the engine into the 67 has been delayed for a couple of reasons. First thing is that my friend with the cherry picker hasn't been available to bring it over. Next thing is that I discovered that the 302's pulley system differs a bit from the 289 so I need to get a new water pump pulley before I can really do the final assembly. At the same time though I am also doing the 3G alternator upgrade as well as the Lincoln Mark VII fan conversion, though that may not work due to the size of the fan shroud versus the radiator. In the meantime though I have been working on some other areas of the car that have needed attention. I fixed the rusting battery apron panel, patched a rusted area between the cowl and windshield trim. Once that was finished I painted the engine bay. Kind of looks funny with the nicely painted engine bay and the grungy looking rest of the body. This weekend I am going to try and get to doing an undercoat on the car, run the new fuel line and mount the new electric pump, fix some of the rusted bed sections, and remove some of the trim in preparation for painting the body.
Got sick of my friends flaking on me so I went ahead and bought a used cherry picker off of craigs list for $75. Figure once I put the engine in the car, get it running, and maybe put the 289 on the engine stand I'll put the cherry picker back on craigs list. Would keep it but its not fully collapsible and there isn't much room in my garage as it is. Need to do a few little things before I can put the engine in, that I'll take care of tomorrow morning. Looking like Sunday we'll be putting the engine in. Still have some stuff to do before I am able to turn the ignition, but getting the engine installed has been my biggest hurdle so far. Bought and installed some new motor mounts last night. No one around here stocks the transmission mount so I ordered one off of Summit. Finally got around to pulling the pulley wheel off the old alternator and the new 3G alternator for doing the 3G upgrade. 3G alternator had my head scratching trying to figure out how to loosen the pulley bolt. Can't even remember how many screw drivers I bent trying to seize the alternator. Actually even broke my breaker bar (the connecting bolt at the elbow). Read it was easy with an impact wrench. Never used one, but there was one in the air tool set I got for Christmas. Broke it out and got to trying it out. Went like butter. Now I just have to finish cleaning off the housing and mounting brackets before painting everything. Cleaned out the garage over the last few days in preparation for pulling the engine out of there. Was also trying to find all of the bolts by friend that helped me pull the motor out, threw all over the place when we pulled everything out. Think I found most of them. Will be going to the hardware store in the morning to grab any that are missing. Will post some photos when the engine is in.
Yeah, I had been debating buying a cherry picker for awhile. Tried a couple of times to get one from craig's list but always got beat out by other people. Had to get a few more bolts before I put the engine, which I got today. Engine will go in tomorrow morning.
Well, after a ton of trial and error I was finally able to get the engine in. I still need to bolt up the transmission, but after the day I've had, it was time to quit for the day. I'll upload some picture when I get to work tomorrow (since half of the pictures are on my friend's phone). To start off the day I kept trying to get the flexplate and spacer to line up to the crank shaft when it dawned on me that the spacer was upside down (yeah, been one of those days). Got that bolted up and put the Torque Converter in the transmission. That went in easily with the few good clunks its supposed to. We swung the engine over the bay and began lining it all up. Took some adjustment of the transmission and even of how high we had the jack stands under the car, but we got it sitting in the engine bay properly. Then the issue became getting the mount holes to line up. Well that took a few hours to figure out that it was an issue with the drivers side mount just refusing to line up right. I never knew 1/4 of an inch could be so annoying. BY this point all my helps had left so I was sitting there trying to figure it all out. It occurred to me that there might have been some excess rubber on the mounts which could be causing the issue. Of course this meant pulling the engine back out. Yay. Well I pulled it out enough to have easy access to the mounts so I could remove them and guess what, the front area of the mount had about 1/4 inch of excess rubber on the frame side. I checked the passenger side to make sure it wasn't supposed to be there and I was correct. Took a razor and trimmed it up. Put it back on the engine and put it back in place. Most of it lined up right away. The back of the driver's side took a lot of jiggling to get it all the way through, but it eventually went it. Hopefully I wont have to pull it out any time soon. Originally I thought I might have a hood clearance issue with the EFI system, but now that the engine is in there I know it wont be a problem. Like I said, I'll put some pics up tomorrow. Need to relaxing time now.
A few more pics from this weekend. You can see the alignment issues I was having with the motor mount, the excess rubber on the mount, and what it looked like after I trimmed it. Lastly its the engine sitting in the bay connected to the mounts and all bolted up.
Got some new seats today. Looked at the entire pick n pull lot to see what I though would look decent in the 67 and was in good condition. Not too surprisingly there were only a hand full of options in the whole lot. I went by the lot last week and found a set of early 90's cadillac deville seats, but was by myself and driving my mustang so I wasn't about to try and stuff them in there. Went with a buddy and his SUV today. There was a buick that had some ok seats and a really nice console design, but had some issues with one side and the console was pretty jacked up. There was a pretty good Mercury (basically a nicer Taurus) but I felt it was a little too plain. Stumbled on the 98 Cadillac STS which had the same style of seats the member tomH sed and figured I'd try to take them out. I thought ahead and brought my jump starter battery so I could move the motors to help get the seats out. Would have been much more difficult otherwise. By this point I know my friend and I were both suffering from heat exhaustion, so it took a lot longer than it should have. Was hoping to get to bolting up the transmission today, but after the pick n pull it just wasn't going to happen. Hoping to get it done a little later in the week. In the picture here you can see a lot of the things that still need to be finished. I went about going through the wire harnesses (efi setup I bought actually came with 2 complete harnesses) yesterday so those are now spread across the garage. I still have the 3G alternator housing on the ground waiting to be cleaned/painted. The spool of fuel line is sitting in the background there too. Box in the background with new Sway bar end links, strut rod bushings, 3G alternator kit, and electric fan kit. Going to try and do a few of the things tomorrow.
Paid a whole $37 and some change for the set. Would have been an extra $22 bucks for the seat belts but I convinced them that the seatbelts were built into the seats. Killer deal yes. Asked them how much the seats were last time I was there and was really the reason I went back to get them. Seats aren't high on my list, but what a killer deal. With using my jumper battery I was able to verify that all the motor functions worked. They're missing the button tops for the switches, but that's fine. If I can't find replacements I'll just live with it or make some new ones. One of the Buick's I saw had a similar set but weren't in as good of condition. Even the headrest height is motorized. Need to find a wiring diagram still, or try to figure out it by hand. If you go looking for some, bring a battery so you can move them and check the motors. At least in the STS the original battery location is under the rear seat. Took lots of head scratching looking at the engine bay.
Wiring diagrams http://www.revbase.com/BBBMotor/Wd/DownloadPdf?id=94e410d8-f13a-468c-9e1b-2629bdd13805 http://www.revbase.com/BBBMotor/Wd/DownloadPdf?id=903e4e8e-4b9c-4063-a04c-644d2261000e http://www.revbase.com/BBBMotor/Wd/DownloadPdf?id=ceb17244-bc27-4943-9845-88973baa9c75 http://www.revbase.com/BBBMotor/Wd/DownloadPdf?id=4d4ac3b2-67b9-4840-b683-d5d2d9e07a67
