A couple weeks after getting the car home, disaster strikes. I decide to go for a quick ride in the car. I had driven about 1 1/2 miles with no problems, when all of the sudden, WHUMP, the engine dies. Crank, crank, crank, crank...no go. I popped the hood and saw steam shooting out of the snorkel of the air filter. Uh, oh, this isn't good. I removed the top of the air filter cover and to my horror, a column of steam shot out of the carburetor, and there was water sloshing around the bottom of the air cleaner. I gulped and reached for the dipstick. I pulled it out and was greeted by a milky white goo for oil...blown head gasket. Sure enough, upon disassembly, we found the driver side head gasket had died. So, now the engine is being totally rebuilt to nearly stock specs. The only exception to this will be a .030 cylinder overbore. Dual exhaust and square Mopar exhaust tips will be added upon completion. Stay tuned for more progress.

For the machine work on the rebuild, I decided to go with Smeding Performance in Rancho Cordova, CA. They're 20 minutes away, and came highly recommended. They also have the best prices of any machine shops I talked to. Supposedly, their Computerized Machinery allows them to get consistent results much easier, and faster. Thus, a lower price. My block was magnafluxed and found to be in good shape, with no cracks. The align bore inspection revealed no problems with the Main Bearings. It was then boiled out and bored .030 over, followed by diamond honing for moly rings. Smeding is also installing new cam bearings, freeze plugs and oil gallery plugs. They're currently working on the car's cylinder heads...all new valves, springs, seals, guides, locks and hardened valve seats for running on unleaded gasoline will be installed. A Deluxe Master Rebuild Kit from Performance Auto Warehouse with stock, cast pistons will be used for the reassembly. Moly rings, and an upgrade to a Mopar Performance electronic ignition will be the only deviation from stock specs in the rebuild.

12/20/02 Finally got the cylinder heads and block back from Smeding. I was quoted three to five days turnaround time, but the work took over a month. This is really the only complaint I had about these guys. Their staff was friendly, the work appears to be of good quality. Here's a shot of one of the heads after being rebuilt by Smeding. I'm still trying to figure out why they painted the head black??? The heads came back very clean, but I still found areas of goo inside the combustion chambers, and valve bowls. I'm also a bit worried about the tiny metal balls I'm finding all over the head from the shot-peening. I hope I'm able to clean them all out. It would kill the engine to have one of those little buggers get sucked into a cylinder. Shot-peening is a cold working process in which the surface of a part is bombarded with small spherical media called shot. Each piece of shot striking the material acts as a tiny peening hammer, imparting to the surface a small indentation or dimple. In order for the dimple to be created, the surface fibers of the material must be yielded in tension. Below the surface, the fibers try to restore the surface to its original shape, thereby producing below the dimple, a hemisphere of cold-worked material highly stressed in compression. Overlapping dimples develop a uniform layer of residual compressive stress in the metal. It is well known that cracks will not initiate or propagate in a compressively stressed zone. Since nearly all fatigue and stress corrosion failures originate at the surface of a part, compressive stresses induced by shot-peening provide considerable increases in part life. The maximum compressive residual stress produced at or under the surface of a part by shot-peening is at least as great as one half the yield strength of the material being peened. Many materials will also increase in surface hardness due to the cold working effect of shot-peening.   12/28/02 Well, I've decided to polish the combustion chambers and the intake/exhaust ports and valve bowls. My main inclination to do this was because I had to take the valves out anyway to ensure all of the shot had been cleaned out, so while I'm in there, I'd might as well make the walls smooth. Many, many hours with a dremel have been spent grinding away casting lines, and making the walls smooth. I've followed this up with 200, then 400 grit aluminum oxide sandpaper. The walls and bowls are not perfectly mirror finished, but pretty close. The biggest pain is trying to reach inside the head with the dremel. The tools just aren't long enough, and when they're too long, they chatter against the work surface. I know there are special porting/polishing kits available, but I wanted to do it with the tools I have on hand. Basically, to get the "hard to reach" areas, I stuffed a 1 inch length of small vacuum hose onto the end of a flatblade screwdriver. I then used this to work small pieces of sandpaper into these areas. It's painfully boring, tedious work, but it comes out looking quite nicely. The air-fuel mixture is gonna slip right into those combustion chambers now!

Here's the block just from the machine shop. The block was hot tanked, the cylinders were bored .030" over and honed for moly rings. New freeze plugs and oil gallery plugs were installed.

Another little project I've been working on is polishing the insides of the exhaust manifolds. The stock cast manifolds have a very bumpy surface, just like the heads. This rough casting texture can inhibit, disrupt and confuse the flow of exhaust gases...particularly at the downward bends. I ground the surface smooth with a grinding stone in the Dremel, and followed up by some polishing with 220 grit sandpaper, followed by emory cloth. This upgrade in itself probably won't result in a noticeable change in performance, but every little bit helps. Here's a fantastic article on polishing/porting stock Chrysler exhaust manifolds

STATUS REPORT: 18 SEP 03 Well, I pretty much neglected the car over the summer, as the sweltering Sacramento heat prevented me from doing any major work in my 120+ degree garage. I'm a real candy-ass when it comes to handling heat, so I pretty much have been waiting for cool weather to finish the project. I have ported/polished my heads, did some detail work inside the engine bay and am ready to reassemble the engine. I also did a few other minor projects, like restoring the instrument cluster and upgrading to a solid state instrument voltage regulator. I stripped the driver's side of the engine compartment down and repainted it with the original F8 green. The area was in bad shape due to years worth of battery acid leaking. I sandblasted and repainted the headlight vacuum accumulator as well. Won't be long now! Stay tuned for more details!

STATUS REPORT: 15 FEB 04 Well, time just keeps on ticking by. Here's a semi recent picture. The engine has been assembled, and is sitting on the stand. Since this photo was taken, the engine has been painted. The only holdup now is the transmission. I bought a rebuild kit for the tranny, and am waiting for my Dad (the mechanic) to finish it up. Figured I might as well rebuild it while it's out of the car. Better safe than sorry. Dad's putting a second floor onto his house, so he's got a lot on his plate. I'm in no major hurry though. Well, sort of... In the meantime, I'm keeping busy on other projects. I'm sanding all the surface rust, and flaked paint off the underside of the hood. Will be painting it with Totally Auto's factory color paint in a spray can. This stuff is simply amazing. The area surrounding my car's battery tray was ugly and had surface rust too. I was able to sand down, prime, and paint the area with F8 Green from Totally Auto in a short amount of time. It's very difficult to tell where the factory paint ends, and the Totally Auto "rattlecan" paint begins. In the pic below, you can see the car's hood off to the left. A new insulator pad from Layson's Restorations will go on after the paint is finished, as will new turn signal indicators from Charger Specialties. Here's the Car's hood before sanding and painting. It was heavily surface-rusted and slightly pitted. The hood pad was rotting away. Prep consisted of sanding down to the metal, priming and sanding. Four coats of primer were applied and sanded to fill in the mild pits left by the rust. All of the hardware was removed and reconditioned. I used Totally Auto's F8 factory green in a spray can to paint the hood. Not bad for a garage "rattlecan" job, eh? BEFORE AFTER Click for Pictures of the Engine/Transmission Installation The definition of happiness! DAILY DRIVER: 1989 Dodge Ramcharger 5.9L LE 150 4X4. CRUISER: 1969 Dodge Charger STATUS REPORT: 01 JUL 05 Finally got my new leaf springs installed! I ordered them 7 months ago, and they've just been sitting in my garage, getting in the way. I've got to get more motivated about doing work on the car! The car sat for nearly two years without the engine. As a result, the front end rose from the missing weight, and caused the leafsprings to de-arc. Instead of having the springs re-arced, I simply replaced them. I decided to upgrade to heavier-duty Hemi/440 springs from ESPO Springs N Things. I can't speak highly enough about the folks at ESPO. They have great service, great products, and great prices. When replacing original, factory springs, it's prudent to also replace the U-Bolts, U-Bolt nuts, and of course the bushings. The U-Bolts and nuts were $16, and the bushings were like $8. You'd be silly not to replace them. At this price, it's cheap insurance. I also installed a new set of shock absorbers...might as well, since we had that area all tore apart. They're nothing fancy, just plane-jane gas shocks from Napa. That's my dear old Dad under the car, helping me out. My Dad is really great. The guy just finished an 8 hour work day as a mechanic, and he hops right in to help his son work on his car...probably the VERY LAST thing the old man wanted to do. Thanks Dad!