You know how to tell if an la small block mopar has oil?
Nature of the beast.
You know how to tell if an la small block mopar has oil?
Nature of the beast.
In reply to Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) :
Oh, I know. But it wasn't leaking for months! That's probably a first, and it was too good to last.
slantsix said:Then I consider myself lucky:
Greg
That's a beautiful rig! Love it!
In reply to Tony Sestito :
Thanks! Just had it out over the weekend... not a daily driver.
Greg
Fellow GRM'er Barefootskater posted up this poor, poor Ramcharger for parts requests a while back:
This was what appears to be a highly optioned, largely rust free, 440-POWERED Ramcharger that someone cut up to use as a mobile cement mixer. As sad as that is, I needed the bumper brackets for the Power Wagon, and I've wanted a set of optional bumperettes since I bought the truck, so we struck a deal.
He threw in a speedometer that I may use for parts or add to my broken 1972-80 Dodge D-Series speedometer collection (surprise surprise: the needle broke).
After some slight tweaks to one of the brackets, I cleaned them up and slathered some paint on them.
I'm hoping to install these over the weekend. They are in great shape, unlike the slag-welded ones currently on the truck.
And speaking of speedometers...
I did try advancing the odo to match my current mileage. I used a drill on reverse hooked up to a spare speedometer cable I have. I used a clamp to hold the trigger down. This worked for about 5 minutes until the drill shredded the cable end. Oh well... it looks like I'll either have to crack it open and try CAREFULLY manually adjusting it, or I'll just use it as-is. At least this time, I have another one I can use for parts. Just need to keep that damn needle in one piece this time.
Uh oh..
My ramcharger is a somewhat optioned factory 440 model. Passes most stuff 'cept the gas station.
Good find on the parts though.
The Carllisle PA chrysler show if it gets put on will be coming up in about a month. Every year there are more and more truck parts in the swap.
This year of course could be different.
Greg
Today, I tackled the bumper brackets.
After cleaning and painting the "new" ones, they looked factory fresh!
And as a refresher, this is why those are getting replaced:
My nose is twitching just looking at those boogers! The random bolt welded to the rest of the bracket is some all-star, hall-of-shame hackery right there. And remember, this truck had a heavy plow frame on it when I bought it on these very brackets! Nightmare-inducing.
There were at least 7 different sized nuts and bolts holding them on, including some random Metric bits, so I had to get all-new hardware.
New brackets bolted on nicely. The part that they bolt to is in great shape and still had some of the factory paint hidden under 41 years of sludge.
The bumper itself is not in the best of shape. It's rust free, but it had all sorts of grossness stuck to it that didn't want to come off. After trying a variety of chemicals, I had to use a combination of steel wool, a wire wheel on a drill, and even fine grit sandpaper to get it to look somewhat presentable.
The bumperettes/bumper guards/70's things had some mystery goop on them, but they cleaned up easily.
And just as a reminder, we have gone from this:
Then this:
To this:
I never noticed it before because the brackets were all sorts of messed up and loose, but the bumper is slightly tweaked. I adjusted it as much as I could, but this is the best I could get out of it. I'm still very, very happy with how it turned out. The bumper is on there solidly, and another questionable backwoods Wire Nut Bandit "fix" has been repaired. And most importantly, it looks almost identical to the truck on the cover of that repair guide from the early 80's! Sweet!
I just put a gauge cluster on eBay yesterday, hadn't checked in on this thread in awhile. I think it was in my old silver series and I have no idea why I took it out. May have been in a warlock I parted though. Do you need one still?
That welding is nice.
Keep them as wall hangers.
Greg
In reply to chandler :
I just bought one last week. Hopefully, I can get this one in there without breaking yet another speedo needle. Thanks though!
After replacing the fuel pump, the truck has been acting strange. Sometimes, it runs stronger than it ever has, and then it decides mid-drive to have tip-in issues paired with an extremely low idle, and when it does this, it seems to be dumping fuel at an alarming rate. I've gone through nearly 17 gallons of fuel in 100 miles.
So, what could be wrong? Stuck float? Bad tune? Something else? I'll start by adjusting the idle circuit. This carb was rebuilt back in 2017 and installed/tuned at that time, but the truck at that time had tons of exhaust leaks, poor fuel delivery, and leaky fuel bits in a few different places. My theory is that it's dumping fuel because it was tuned while a good portion of the fuel was not making it all the way to the carb, and it was tuned to compensate for that. I'm hoping it just needs some screws adjusted and we'll be good to go. I've made it this far without having to touch the carb, so I still consider that a win.
BTW, anyone have a cheap LA 318/360 4bbl intake kicking around? I do happen to gave an Edelbrock 1406 that would be a great upgrade for the ol' Carter BBD.
After messing with the carb tonight, I am pretty sure we are dealing with a stuck float.
I checked the idle circuit, and of course it was completely wrong. I set that to a point where it was happy, and it worked for a few minutes, and the bog city. Idle dropped, dumping fuel, etc.
So, I got out the Float Fixer 5000 (the blunt end of my screwdriver) and smacked the carb a few times, and waddayaknow, idle comes back up and it starts running better. I tossed a can of Berryman B12 at it, along with a fresh tank of fuel, and drove it around for about a half hour. Toward the end of the drive, it idled down a little, but not as much as before, so I think it's still a little sticky.
Plan now is to either rebuild the BBD that was recently rebuilt, or find a 4bbl intake and rebuild that Edelbrock instead. Edelbrock would be a nice upgrade if I can pull it off.
Check the float needle. My 75 Dart had a 318 LA and or got stuck a few times.
A carter bbd is about as simple as a rock. Rebuild it and hit the easy button.
While I have yet to pull the trigger on a full carb rebuild, I did go over the engine bay looking around for anything that's disconnected or missing related to carb or vacuum things. And I did notice a major port on the carb that goes to the vacuum canister wide open; the hose was disconnected. I connected it and it seems to help (well, duh). I've driven it a couple times since and it seems to run fine. I'll keep an eye on this, though.
Another side effect: since it runs better, I'm noticing that the brakes are a little weak. When I did the fronts last year, I could only get them to bleed so much, and they take a couple pumps to really bite sometimes. Now that I have an air bleeder, I'm going to check the whole system. That's up next.
Today after work, I decided to take a look at those brakes.
I took one look at the back brakes and got scared.
After seeing that bleeder looking like that, I decided to try doing the fronts. About a year ago, I did the brakes and they have never felt right. With the air bleeder, it makes short work of getting the air out of the system. While I was checking the reservoir, I noticed that the rear circuit was low.
Huh?
Oh boy, that explains a lot.
This is the rear rubber line that splits to the rear wheels. The driver's side was weeping out fluid. Noting that the line itself was not original, I decided to carefully remove it and see what was going on.
Good to know that the brake warning light actually works!
See this? that's a normal double flare. Note how it's formed in a fashion that will seal to the inside of a wheel cylinder or junction block.
This, however, is a Wire Nut Bandit flare. You just cut the line, smash the end with a rock to mushroom it out, and just jam it back in there with some rusty ferrule you found in the woods.
So, uhh, that's not going to work. The line itself looked a little on the crusty side, so I opted to just fab up a new one. I had some 3/16" line and ferrules left over from doing the lines on my old Dakota, so I made the line, and broke my 3/16" flare adapter in the process. Yay.
Doesn't look pretty (fluid is from the previous leakage) but it works. I ran out of time tonight, but I'll attempt a rear bleed tomorrow. The pedal already feels 1000% better than before, so that's a win!
I busted out laughing when i saw that 'flare'. Nice fix!!
I went out to bleed the rear drums today, but something wasn't right. No matter what I did, I was getting air in the lines. So I looked at that rear brake hose again, and yup. it's leaking.
Cue the Price is Right "you lose" horn.
I have one on order, so that will need to be replaced. No one locally stocks it. Good news is that both bleeders in the wheel cylinders freed up as they should, so hopefully I'll be able to get things working by the weekend.
EDIT: I removed the line to inspect the brass block. Glad I ordered another line.
That's not ideal!
That rear brake hose showed up today, and I picked up some new rear axle lines, so I tackled the job after work.
The new line looks like it should. I still can't believe that it showed up that fast! I know some people have issues with Rock Auto, but I've had better luck with them over the years than the local places. The new lines are NiCopp, which is a first for me. That's all the parts store had in stock with 'Merican fittings, so fancy lines it is!
The line clip for the rubber line broke (of course), so a quick rummage through the Magic Hardware Bucket and I found a new one. Yay!
All the lines installed easily, and they look great. And best of all, NO MORE LEAKS. At least, no more brake fluid leaks. It is an old Mopar, after all.
Then came the fun part.
After using my air powered bleeder for an hour, I could not get any brake pressure at all. I thought of gravity bleeding, but I've never had success doing that, so I had to call in the big guns: the wife. She helped me bleed the system, and tons of air came out. After that, the pedal felt a lot better but it still has long travel. The good news is that the truck stops better than it ever did. Still not perfect, but that's ok, because it actually stops.
And yeah, you can't say you worked on a 40+ year old Mopar for 3 days straight without having the driveway stains to prove it! 
I see a pressure washing session in the very near future.
I am not always a fan of the air bleeders either.. I wonder of the turbulence of the fluid and air actually aerates the fluid?
I wonder how they do it in large scale at the car assembly plants?
My 77 Truck has Great Brakes... My 77 Ramcharger not so much.. and I could never figure out why,
But Stopping straight and safe is good!
Greg
Nice work Tony! Looks great
X2 on the air bleeders. Never could get the hang of them. Not sure why.
Lucky being from down south my lines are all in good shape still, but I did replace the leaky rear wheel cylinders. Brakes are definitely good, but not amazing, guess its just a design thing.
The air bleeder saved the day on my Mazda 3. I couldn't get it to get any sort of pedal feel after replacing two calipers until I used it. Gravity bleeding and old fashioned "pump and hold" bleeding didn't work. On this truck, it just didn't work. It's probably too old for for that kind of thing.
All of the lines in the front of this truck are original and in great shape. I attribute that to them being coated in motor oil and various fluids for 40+ years. I took a look over everything else and the front-to-back line has been replaced, probably in the past decade. It wasn't leaking so I left that alone.
In other news, I took it for a longer drive yesterday. Brakes are still working, which is good. They could be better, but they are better than they were when I started. Carb was still a little wonky when it was cold but it got better as I drove. I also noticed the truck still has its EGR valve:
Since I "deleted" the "Direct Exhaust Injection" (the heat tube that goes into the air cleaner), would ditching the EGR help? I haven't had a car that I've had to worry about an EGR valve doing anything in many, many years.
Usually the ports below the egr are totally filled with scum or carbon crud on the MoPar LA engines.
Either pull the heads and intake to thoroughly clean or run tig wire brazing rod / coat hanger through there while shop vacing all the crud away.
Having a clean exhasust crossover under there helps with cold run driveability and carb warmup and emissions etc.
If you need the egr for visual but dont care if it functions then just make a new gasket with no gas passages. Works well.
Greg
When the pandemic started, the state of Massachusetts announced that cars that were due for inspection in April would be extended to July. Well, it's July now, so it's time for that. Last week, when I was running an errand, the non-functioning speedometer in the truck decided to start doing things. But of course, there was a problem: the speedo needle would rest at about 36mph when it zeroed out. Since I bought yet another cluster recently, I decided to spend my July 4th evening out by the fire pit swapping cluster parts so the inspection station doesn't give me a hard time.
I had 3 parts speedometers, so I decided to carefully disassemble one of them to pull the odometer and get it "close enough" to the one that was in the truck.
There are three places where things can go extremely wrong: You can break the needle, you can destroy the clip that holds the odometer in, and you can misalign the fingers/tangs that make the odometer do its thing. The odometer gear is pressed on, and I broke another odometer trying to pry one off, so I opted to spin the numbers the best I could to get them close. It's within a reasonable mileage, and I didn't turn it back. Again, the speedo that came in the truck was not original, so who knows what the actual mileage really is. I just want it working to calculate fuel mileage and most importantly, I want the speedo to work.
I didn't take a pic, but you can see it in the big pic on the lower right, but I discovered that a small "Tupperware" food container was the perfect size to hold the good speedometer while I worked on it. The needle doesn't touch the sides or the bottom, so it didn't snap off this time!
Back together...
And in the truck. And I'm happy to report that everything does work! The speedo is a little bouncy, but it reads "close enough" and works ok. Odometer works as it should. While I was in there, I swapped in a different coolant temp gauge, because the old one quit working. The only thing left to do gauge-related is swap in the voltmeter to replace the ammeter. That's going to take some wiring, so I left that for another day.
While I was out testing the speedometer and the gauges, I stopped in at my usual photo spot to grab a shot on America's Birthday:
A damn fine looking rig if I do say so myself! I posted this on social media last night, and fellow GRM'er and friend SyntheticBlinkerFluid decided to do this:
That's getting framed.
The funny part is how close my truck looks to this one on the cover of this old repair manual I picked up last summer:
That one has the disc hubcaps, but I prefer the dog dishes. If I ever come across a set of those, you know I'm bringing it to a dirt road to replicate that shot.
Next on the agenda: getting an inspection sticker and swapping in the voltmeter.
Got the truck inspected today.
Passed with flying colors! Even the parking brake worked. I've never tried it, so that was a surprise.
Spent a good portion of the day doing "truck stuff", and put about 40 miles on it, blasting down country roads most of the time (it's natural habitat). Man, I still love this thing, warts and all. The looks people give you when you drive it around are priceless.
It did what I'll call "the carb thing" a couple times, but like most IT issues (I work in IT for my main gig), turning it off and turning it on again fixed it. I'm wondering if it's related to a vacuum leak that's not constant; I know there's a vacuum booster on the truck; something to think about. I also need to address the newly leaking oil, as it's starting to marinate the undercarriage again, including the exhaust crossover pipe.
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