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Rebuilding
the Park Avenue
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Here's the Park - its look OK, but at this time, it had a
cooked motor
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It all started when the water
pump failed and John drove home from the OSU campus,
apparently a good portion of the way with the temperature
light on. When I checked I started it up, I could hear that a
head gasket was blown. When I checked the oil, it looked just
like a milk shake, and so I knew we had serious trouble. We
parked it and I told John he had to go buy his own car, which
he did.
I let it sit until the weather warmed up, and in the mean
time we used a couple of different parts from it to try to
fix John's '88 Park Avenue. So, probably about April we
rolled it into the garage and I took the heads off. It took a
couple of days to get it completely torn down, but in a
couple of weeks I had the heads off, and ready to go into the
shop.
Here's a shot of the heads ready to go to the shop.
Here is the engine, sans the heads, and of course intake
manifold. I put the pushrods back in place, just to keep up
with them. I eventually pushed them through the side of a
cardboard box in the same order they were in the engine.
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Here's one of the heads after it was reworked. The guys at
the shop said they had to flatten the heads, replace the
valve seals and knurl the guides. One of the valves was bad,
and when I was putting the rockers and push rods back, I saw
that one of the rocker arms and push rods were goofed up, so
I had to go to the junk yard and get replacements.
This was probably all back together about the middle of June.
In fact it was right before we went on vacation that I had it
all back together and started it up. It ran great, so I
rolled it back out of the garage and started adding water.
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I added water, and added water, and added
water. I knew something was wrong. I pulled the dip stick
out, and no oil showed on the dipstick, only water. I just
about cried. I figured the block was cracked and the thing
was a total loss. So, I drained the water out, and went on
vacation. |
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When I got back from vacation, I told Dad
about it, and he said that maybe I could seal the block up
with epoxy or something. He said to pull the oil pan off and
see where the water was coming from. So with that, I had a
new perspective and dove back into it. |
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I pulled the oil pan off, and started putting
water in the radiator. It was immediately apparent what was
up. Water poured out from behind the timing chain. I quickly
dawned on me that the leak was from the water pump, not the
block. The leak was huge, but I was relieved that the problem
wasn't in the block. This baby could be saved! |
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