Time for a quick update on the Cadillac. Last time you read about the caddy, I shared my discovery that it had the rather desirable “Switch Pitch” variation of the Turbo 400 transmission. As such, I decided it was best to have it examined before I put the car back together. I took it over to Alphonso’s Transmission in Goleta, hoping that it just needed to be cleaned up, and perhaps have a few smaller parts repaired or replaced. Unfortunately, this was not to be. As he started dismantling the transmission he very quickly discovered that the main forward band was broken, the forward drum was burnt, and the 2/3 clutch pack was nearly worn down to the steel. So, the only real choice at that point was to go ahead and rebuild the transmission completely.

Now, I’m totally stoked that the trans was rebuilt, and Alphonso has been building these things for longer than I’ve been alive, and did a spectacular job. I also have a brand new variable pitch torque converter. All for the (quite reasonable) price of $1100. Problem is, I only had $600 to spend, which I was hoping would be enough to get the trans repaired, and buy a few small parts I needed to get the car back together. Instead, I had to borrow the rest of the money from our savings. This means for the next 3 months I’ll be paying our savings back from the caddy’s fund, at which point we’re expecting our new son Tate! So as you can imagine I’m not going to have the time, nor the presence of mind to be working on the caddy for a while after that, and I won’t have any money to spend on it until then.

As a result, I’m trying to do little things on the caddy until Tate is born that don’t cost me anything. So I’m tearing the motor down a bit further, and trying to clean it up. I popped the timing cover off to check the timing chain/gears. Turns out this is yet another part which is going to need replaced! The chain is SUPER loose, like enough that I almost feel like I could cause it to skip a tooth with the slack. Also, apparently in the late 60′s it was all the rage to install and market “silent” timing gears. I had the same get-up on my 1967 Ford Thunderbird. It’s essentially a hard plastic cam gear for the timing set, which is supposed to reduce the normal timing set noise. I seriously don’t get this, since the other noises that these machines make more than drown out any noise that the timing set might make. But, I digress.. The point is that the hard plastic cam gear is also showing signs of stress, with hairline cracks forming down the middle of each tooth. It’ll definitely have to be replaced.

I had hoped that I could just throw the engine back together without buying a whole lot more parts for it, and as such had sorta planned not to inspect it too thoroughly. With events unfolding as they have, I think I am going to go ahead and check all the rest of the clearances and see what else (if anything) may need replaced. Depending on how things turn out, I may or may not stick with this motor. As I’ve stated before, the 429 is a low production motor and the parts are surprisingly hard to find, as well as expensive. If I find that it needs more than bearings (a cam, or some machine work for instance) I may simply sell this motor to someone who’s working on a numbers matching restoration and buy a 472/500 to put in it’s place. The good news is that my 429 is in generally good shape, and certainly does not need a lot of work, so it should have some reasonable value to someone who’s looking for original parts.

So that’s where we stand. I had hoped to have her all back together and be driving ‘er by now, but it looks like I’m going to be taking my time even a bit more, and being even a bit more methodical. I can’t wait to experience that finely crafted and tuned transmission!

Well there she is, the source of my clunk! And, the way it’s sitting in there explains why the engine wouldn’t turn past TDC as well since that thing woulda been right in the way. So far as I can tell it’s a small(ish) washer that got folded in half. You can see a few more shots of it over in my Flickr set. What remains a bit of a mystery is how it got there. I’m guessing it entered through the intake, and it’s possible it was sitting on top of the throttle blades of the carb. Tough to say if it was there when I got it, or if I managed to drop it there while I was working.

All in all, there doesn’t seem to be much (maybe any?) damage from the whole debacle. The you can see both the cylinder wall and the combustion chamber for that cylinder, and they both appear unharmed! Remember back when I described that one of the cylinders had a spark plug that had 0 gap and appeared damaged? Yup, you guessed it, that plug came from this cylinder. Makes sense, all of the steel for the cylinder wall, piston, and head are harder than the washer would have been, and the spark plug would have been a softer metal as well. Soft enough to sustain some damage from that thing flinging around in the cylinder. This also explains why it seemed fairly inconsistent, when that cylinder was not on it’s power stroke the washer would have happily just moved up and down the cylinder wall in place. Then when there was ignition in that cylinder, the pressure probably sent it flying around!

I also made another discovery while I was working. The bolt on the front of the crank that I’d been using to turn the motor over, doesn’t actually belong there! The balancer is simply pressed onto the crank with no big bolt to hold it on like you find on many other motors. It’s becoming more and more apparent to me that one or more people who’ve worked on this thing haven’t been terribly methodical, and clearly didn’t have a service manual to reference. In spite of that, the motor appears to be fairly low mileage and it quite good condition.

The plan now is to do some more inspection and measure things to see if they match the tolerances set out in the service manual. If everything checks out, I think I may just put her all back together and run her. Going to keep my fingers crossed that everything is as tight as it appears to be so I can get some miles outta this thing!

I got the engine out of the Caddy this weekend! The first lesson I learned is that I should have either removed all of the pulleys and water pump, or removed the front clip of the car. I had a TON of trouble getting the motor out past the radiator core support! In fact, I wound up yanking the water pump off while the motor was in limbo just to buy myself a few more inches of clearance.

Once it was finally out, and safely on an engine stand, I started my investigation and search for the source of my “clunk” sound. First, I yanked the intake manifold and the cover for the lifter valley. I found nothing particularly interesting there, certainly no obvious foreign object which would account for the noise I’ve been hearing. So, I tipped the thing over and started pulling out oil pan bolts and upon removing the pan I was greeted with what you see on the left. Now I expected to find chunks of oil dipstick in the engine, since I’d previously reported that the dipstick appeared broken. What I did not expect though was that the dipstick would be so completely mismatched! The photo on the right shows the engraving of “Ford” on the dipstick. Apparently the previous owner just decided to toss whatever dipstick he had handy into the tube, and call it a day.

Not knowing what the original design of the Cadillac dipstick is, I can’t be sure, but it feels like this is a bit of a poor design. If the dipstick is straight, and goes down the dipstick tube straight, it appears as though it’ll run right smack dab into the rotating assembly as you can see on the left.

As satisfied as I was with my discovery, I realized pretty quickly that this couldn’t be the source of the “clunk” I was chasing down. The bits of dipstick were simply too small and light weight to account for the sound I was experiencing. Plus, when I pulled the oil pan off, all of the bits were sitting right inside the oil pickup which means they were likely “stuck” there by suction from the oil pump any time the engine was running. So I kept inspecting, looking for any other foreign object big enough to account for what I’d heard.

After several minutes of looking around with a flashlight, I figured I’d start turning the motor and seeing if anything seemed out of place. I pulled all the plugs so that compression wasn’t an issue, and started turning the motor over. It turned nice and easy until it neared top dead center (TDC), where it halted and I couldn’t seem to continue turning it no matter how much (reasonable) force I applied. Perplexed, I went ahead and turned the engine the opposite direction. Again it turned smoothly until I had reached a full rotation in the opposite direction and it again stopped dead in it’s tracks. Hrrmnnn..

So that’s the current mystery, the engine doesn’t seem to turn over freely any more now that I’ve pulled it out, and turned it upside down! I knew it couldn’t be piston to valve contact, since it’s a hydraulic lifter motor and almost all of the lifters had lost pressure allowing all the valves to stay closed. So, more likely it’s piston to head contact. I didn’t notice any obvious signs of bent connecting rods or loose connecting rod caps so the cause isn’t readily apparent. Next step will be to yank the heads off and see if there is any obvious damage which might indicate which cylinder is causing the problem. The title to this post may be a bit premature, but I don’t suspect I’m going to find anything minor. Stay tuned as I continue to tear it down to find the problem!

Having discovered that both of the motor mount nuts were missing the Cadillac had earned a stay of execution. Early last week I purchased a new set of fasteners for only a dollar! After installing them I had expected to just start the car up and see if the “clunk” sound had gone away. Imagine my surprise when it cranked over and over and over, and over again without starting up!

I’ll spare you all of the details of troubleshooting the no start issue, but suffice to say I replaced my ignition coil, and second guessed myself countless times on the proper firing order and timing for this engine. At the end of the day, (I think) the timing was retarded by nearly a whole cylinder and one of the terminals of the coil wire was smashed.

My victory over the timing, and getting the car running was short lived though. It ran for only a few seconds before I heard the “clunk” noise I had been diagnosing, and it occurred a couple more times before I shut it down.

A new mystery has surfaced as well. I may not have already mentioned that my oil dipstick seems to be a replacement from some other vehicle, and that it seems like it was actually broken off near the end, so it doesn’t reach the oil in the crankcase. Well, in addition to that mismatch I discovered something else quite interesting while troubleshooting my timing issue. I had the motor near TDC for cylinder 1, but had gotten a bit past it, so I started to turn the engine “backward” to get it back to TDC. As I did so, I noticed that the oil dipstick seemed to be moving! Curious, I continued to turn the motor backward, and the dipstick continued to be forced out of the dipstick tube!

I’ve put off removing the motor long enough, it’s going to come out, and I’m going to do a very thorough tear down and inspection of motor. Hopefully, I’ll find the answers to all of these mysteries, and hopefully I’ll find that the motor is in good enough condition to use for a while.