Tinkering with Deerslayer

DEERSLAYER LINKS including vendor sites for parts and tools as well as sites for old truck and hot rod organizations

TINKERING WITH DEERSLAYER chronicles the day-by-day maintenance and improvements episodes for Deerslayer, a '37 Chevy farm truck hot rod.

CRUISIN' WITH DEERSLAYER Roadtrips, cruise-in's and truck show stories and tall tales.

TONY'S DUNGEON Tony Pascarella's forum entries at OldGMCtrucks.com regarding Deerslayer, particularly the 302 GMC engine build in his farmhouse basement.

DEERSLAYER MAINTENANCE Ever changing detailing, oil change, lube, etc. maintenance routines specifically developed for Deerslayer, including required tools, materials and procedures.

PROJECT NAILHEAD Chronicles the rebuild of a 1954 Buick Roadmaster 322 nailhead engine as a future replacement for Deerslayer's Jimmy 302.

37. Headache - Teardown

May 11^th 2015 On Saturday, my plan was to adjust the Jimmy's valve lash and check the valve train for sticking valves, bent pushrods and the like. Decided to do a compression check first and pulled all the plugs. Cylinder 1 was 190 psi. 2 was 195, 3 was 185, 4 was 30. 5 was 35 and 6 measured 125. In addition, air pulsed out of spark plug hole 5 when I did 4 and air with a touch of water pulsed out of 4 when I did 5. Damnation! The head is going to have to come off and I will have to rent a car again for my daily commute. Double damnation!

I soothed my depression  by busying myself with the assembly of a shiny new tool, an Eastwood 20 gallon parts washer. I filled it up with 5 gallons of "oil Eater" and 7 gallons of water.

May 13^th 2015 Changed the oil Monday nite. Could not detect much water, if any, in the oil, either when I first pulled the drain plug or in the drain pan when I pulled it out from under the truck. A few pin bubbles, less than ten, were on the surface but they soon disappeared. I am adding coolant to the radiator a bit more often and there is a trace of brown sludge in the radiator. The white smoke I saw on startup at the gas station last week was probably coolant but I haven't had any smoke on startup since. 

May 14^th 2015 Tony (Deerslayer's builder) has been giving me some help over on the OldGMCtrucks forum regarding the current Jimmy engine woes. He recommended I quit driving the truck and get the Jeep fired up.  I took his advice and put the Deerslayer in drydock when I got back to the shop last nite. Renegade, however, is still in no condition to drive as he still sits in my Boca warehouse bay and hasn't been started up in years. Instead, I made the fifteen minute walk from the shop to the Enterprise rental place this morning and picked up a Kia Rio scrubbing bubble commodity shuttle for the interim. Parts and tools are also on on the way.

June 8^th 2015 Haven't been getting spit done in the shop other than cleaning up enuf for the head gasket job. Now, I can write an entire log entry on an oil change but it's beyond the scope of my ability to find much to say about shop cleanup. Some new (to me) goodies arrived for the Nailhead Project however and I can report on that. Sometime back I snagged a set of vintage Hurst motor mounts for the nailhead engine. I then went looking for frame mounts to match and found a set of vintage Hurst Frame Adapters 1954-1964 Ford Pickup Truck. These are long enuf that they can be cut down to fit the '37 Chevy truck frame when the time comes. Today, a Hurst V8 saddle motor mount rubber biscuit set complete with washers & bolts arrived, completing the hardware needed for the front motor mounts. This plunder will now take its place on the shelf until needed.

June 11^th 2015 I've traded Wednesdays for Sundays as a day off. Yesterday, I finally started work on the Deerslayer's head gasket job after cleaning up the toilet room a bit. Did some pondering while resting from that task. That hazmat suit was hot! I decided to pull the fenders for more access to the engine, especially the manifolds.

Took the front wheels off to get at the fender fasteners and while I had the right front tire handy, took time out to plug a slow leak I've had for a long time.  That done, got myself contorted up in the wheelwells to get all the bolts undone. There are several different sizes and a few that need wrenches from both sides, real nut busters. I had to keep reminding myself that I do this because I like it. The fenders were off by early afternoon and during my cigar break, I weighed the pros and cons of removing Deerslayer's nose. I drained the radiator at this point and the coolant looked good. The cons won it. The nose stays put. Removed the hood and driver side inner fender and called it a day. I lost a machine screw and hex nut, broke two others and only drew blood once. A good day.

June 18^th 2015 Spent most of the day with Renegade's resurrection but found time to get Deerslayer's front bumper off. It's only two bolts but the bolt head was turning inside the frame rail and I couldn't get a wrench on it because Deerslayer's nose was in the way. Got a 3/4" open end wrench with angled head last week to get around this problem. The wrench head was too big to get in the frame rail. I gave up on getting the bolt out intact and uncased the sawsall. Done.

July 2^nd 2015 Some of my car buddies think I'm movin' too slow on the Deerslayer engine job so Euge Reidy and Wayne Harlow came over to the BillyBob Shop yesterday to kickstart me. I took the carb off before they arrived and tidied up the shop a bit so three guys could move around at the same time. Wayne retired as a professional mechanic and I looked to him for advice as we moved thru the process. When he worked for VW, they flew him over the globe regarding VW, Audi and Bentley problems.

When Wayne got the valve cover off, I checked on valve lash so I could set it up cold as a starting point during the assembly phase. I settled on 0.008" (both intake and exhaust for this cam are to be set to 0.005" hot). Wayne took the rocker assembly off then concentrated on the manifolds while Euge unbolted the head. I tried, unsuccessfully, to get the header separated from the exhaust pipe.

By mid-afternoon, we had the head off. I should have gotten the hoist set up for this job sooner because the boys didn't want to wait for me to set it up now. The three of us lifted the head off the engine from both sides and turned it. Then, Wayne and I carried it to the workbench. Damn thing is heavy and we were both starting to flag by the time we got there. I almost got Wayne's fingers when I set my end down too fast. We do have a blown head gasket. A whole chunk of it was missing between cylinders 4 and 5. Euge and Wayne took off and I shut down shop. I was dehydrated and asleep before sunset.

July 12^th 2015 After some minor maintenance on the Renegade yesterday morning, I pulled Deerslayer's air cleaner out of the parts cleaner soup to wipe it off and set it aside for the reassembly process down the road. That's when I found out that the environment friendly Oil Eater solution was also a paint eater. Oh well, two steps forward and one step back.

I sprayed a coat of Eastwood's Rust Encapsulator on the bottom piece which had some surface rust and a coat of self-etching primer on the top piece. Bounced around, reorganizing the shop for a couple of hours and finished off both parts  with a top coat of gloss black Duplicolor engine paint. By mid-afternoon, the shop heat was sauna like so I retreated to the comfort of the Flamingo Room.

July 16^th 2015 My plan was to clean the Jimmy block and pistons with Seafoam additive, Scotchbrite pads and hand-to-hand combat technique. I was not looking forward to it. Gato stopped in the shop for a few minutes and suggested "cookies". I had not heard this term before and followed him down to his shop to see what he was talking about. Turned out to be 2" Scotchbrite disks  with Rolok backing pad on a angle grinder air tool. Gato wanted to lend me all this stuff but I knew I already had it. Went back to my shop to hunt it down. Found the 3M 2" Grinding/Sanding/Finishing Kit with the Rolok pad I had picked up years ago when I was still working on BillyBob under the shadetree. I searched for my angle grinder for some time until the realization that it had broke years ago bubbled up to my memory surface. Ordered all this stuff at Amazon the next day at work.

Yesterday, I made the first pass over the block and pistons with my new cookie toy. Used the Seafoam additive to cut the carbon some too and Marvel Mystery oil on the cylinder walls. Took a half day and Gato's help saved me a lot of elbow grease and time. I take his borrowed tool offers from time to time. But I don't like to use up his consumables . . . Leave him without cookies, in this case.

July 27^th 2015 Over two weeks have gone by without any shop activity. In the past couple of years, I've turned "Manana" into an art form. Whenever anyone asks about the truck, my stanard answer is "Any day now". Nothing new to report yet but I thought to add some info regarding the cleaning of the piston tops and block surface. After Tony (Deerslayer's builder) read the above cleaning account, he emailed me.

Just damn! I suspected there might be a gotcha. Too late now but I'm posting this caution in the log entry and on FaceBook for the others following my tales. I guess we'll see how much I've shortened the Jimmy's life down the road. Tony also suggested that I try to vacuum out the cylinders around the pistons. Then rotate the engine a bit and wipe off any shit left by the rings . . . I did do lots of wiping, with Marvel Mystery oil during the cleaning process but it never hurts to do more and I will.

September 30^th 2015 Finally got back to the Deerslayer on my day off yesterday. Nothing exciting, just more cleanup. My intention is to give each side of the engine and most of the parts a cleaning before reassembly. Went to work on the passenger side by removing the inner fender and putting it aside, out of the way, in BillyBob's pickup bed with the  other big parts from this job.

I tidied the starter wiring a bit but you can't tell that from the pic. Tony experimented with this truck a lot before he sold it to me. At least two engines, three transmissions and a variety of engine accessory combinations. Tony, being an electrician by trade, wired everything in red and taped off connections that were no longer useful. Knowing little about 'tricity that will stick to my brain for long, I am fearful of disturbing these connections that I cannot fathom. I content myself with pruning them and organizing them into a tighter bundle with wire ties.

Next, the starter was removed. While under the truck, taking out the lower starter bolt, I discovered a ground strap from that bolt to the frame. The ground strap I installed earlier in the year is, therefore, redundant. I don't know why I didn't remember this. It isn't the first time I've had the starter out of Deerslayer and probably won't be the last.

Before retreating into the air conditioning of the Flamingo Room for the day, I finished up by fishing items out of the parts washer soup that had been there since Euge and Wayne had been over to take the head off. These are the home-fabricated carb linkage parts that Tony fabbed up to make the Carter AFB carburetor work with the Jimmy engine. I washed them off and threw them into the Eastwood Vibratory Tumbler with green cutting media and metalwash solution for a couple of hours.

Okay, this log entry is long enuf to post and at a convenient junction. The next log entry will primarily cover cleaning for reassembly. Hopefully, my new found ambition is not just flash in the pan and I'll be able to pick up the pace.

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Issued  Friday October 2, 2015

Updated  Tuesday June 19, 2018

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