This will definitely be a longer post and so I recommend looking at photos 1st.
I am now in the position of doing lots of engine modifications and adjustments and I asked my friend, Mike Czmet for help. He is an old 8V71 mechanic from the 60’s and man, did I ever give him a hug for helping me. We realigned the front gears of the engine to make it a 318 eng. Like designed, and we lined up all the gears per spec. I dressed up my air horn after cleaning it and painted it blue which makes the engine look pretty to me. As I cleaned up the engine I retapped each and every hole on the outside of my engine for easier assembly of parts if needed, like my NEW Eaton power steering pump area.
Look at the photos of the front of the full engine, you will see the original hoses etc. all run all over the place and look like crap. You will see in my last photo that this is no longer a mess like this. I have replaced all fuel hoses with braided stainless coated lines and mounted brackets to de-stress the hoses from flopping all over. In the last photo I was setting up my engine for my kind of dyno testing but I did not at this time install fuel cut off valves to the fuel filters, you will see that later.
I have 2 starters, one on my engine now and one that was given to me by my Kentucky busnut friend Steve Gains that I plan to have rebuilt while I can and have a spare, like everything else I try to do. I made a (slobber tube drain) for the side of the engine that has a drain plug on the bottom that I can occasionally empty if I ever get to use this bus. That way I hope to prevent a lot of oil leaking on the ground wherever I go.
My Mechanic friend, Mike Czmet helped me tremendously on the bringing of my engine to the 318 hp spec. We ran the rack after installing new fuel injectors and the correct injectors for a 318 hp eng. I do not remember what number they were now or color on them. He was a great asset in this part of my conversion. He is so anxious to go for a ride with me and teach me how to shift etc. on our maiden runs for a while to test everything I have installed. This will be like a brand new 1973 Eagle when I am done, I Hope.
I want to take the time again to thank Clifford Allen for the gasket set he sent me for assembling all my old and new parts back to my new engine. Thanks Cliff.
You will see a couple of photos of me in my house on down time sitting with my 4 fur babies at the time of day I dedicate to family time and these guys are our babies. We had as you can see 2 great Guinea Pigs and 2 Chihuahuas and now we only have one chihuahua left, the black one named Chilly, 17 ½ years old. It sure is hard to lose your loved ones like that. I am a pussy about this stuff.
Now you get to see my engine painted all dark gray and my assembled manifold after the engine clean up was done. After this I was able to get photos off the internet posted by busnut friend Paul Lowery with his air throttle assembly. Man I have to copy that I said and I did, and now you can see his assembly and some of mine and now there are no more linkages from the front of the bus to the back that get stuck etc. and are so darn slow to react. This air throttle is the way to go, it is worth all the effort of installing. You will get a good view of how this works in my dyno test of the engine and see how quick the reaction of the engine is to the air throttle. Thanks again Paul, I am so pleased with this.
I chose to disassemble my radiator I got from Dan from Florida. I wanted to clean all the coolant tubes and get rid of any and all calcium build up from previous people using regular house water in mixing their coolants instead of distilled water. NOTE: USE ONLY “DISTILLED” WATER IN YOUR BUS OR CAR RADIATOR TO FILL WITH TO PREVENT CLOGGING OF THE RADIATOR TUBES WHICH ARE SMALL IN OPENINGS of the tubes. I have posted a photo suggestion for this if you want to clean out your radiator, go to Ace Hardware and get a sink drain snake like the one in the photo and this is nice and stiff and will clean out all those tubes as good as new and hopefully you never have to worry about overheating of your radiator as the flow will be as good as designed originally. Make sure you clean each tube fully from side to side more than once. You will have to rest the core you are working on on 4×4’s so you can see all the calcium fall out. I know this is overkill, but i turned over this core after doing the plunging of the sink snake through the cores and did it again from the opposite side. This took some time to do but my radiator is good and clean now and I am satisfied it will last some time without needing any more maintenance. I assembled the outer tanks and installed new gaskets bolted together with new stainless steel bolts torqued to spec.
Now you see the newly installed shutoffs I installed on each fuel filter. This allows you to connect a hose from a 1 gallon jug of diesel fuel using a bulb pump that when this valve is opened to the jug it will allow you to pump fuel filling up the primary filter and then when you feel the pressure of pumping getting hard to do you will know you have full fuel to the governor especially if you have experienced a loss of prime. This will get you going in a hurry and not any mess to do.
Now you can see my linkages of my new air throttle copied from Paul Lowery’s and this has got to be one of the best things for this engine that I did.
Now for the photos, enjoy.