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So now that I have the S3 running nicely (thanks to help from members on this forum) I have just put the 79 into the garage and got it in the air. Drained a nasty milkshake out of the sump and radiator. I have removed the radiator and a few other bits and pulled the top belt covers and noticed that the old girl has steel cam gears in absolutely excellent condition. They are of course the square tooth. Should I retain the square tooth or upgrade to the high torque design? I'm not planning on making the engine any faster, just a nice stock driver.
I'd only update if I had to, meaning unless I couldn't source for a worn crank sprocket, which is NLA. Then I'd be required to update to the HTD setup.
Ok. Thanks guys. Nice caramel mix drained out. Surprisingly the car runs butter smooth. No...I didn't run it for long at all. Hopefully head gasket between oil and water jackets???
I upgraded my '79 to round tooth, but only because I wanted to be able to use PorKen's cam timing adjustment setup. And that only because I have a 4.5 bottom end with a euro S top end, so I thought some room for adjustment might be needed. Even then, I have never adjusted the cam timing away from standard. So, it is possible, but II would suggest staying with the square tooth.
I cannot tell for sure if there is oil in that coolant or not. Might just be a rusty impeller. I had grim looking coolant come out of my truck (which I bought with bent valves), but it turned out the PO thought that maybe putting a bunch of dirt in the coolant would fix the head gasket leak!
That mix in the pic came out of the sump. And the same basic crap, only thinner came out of the radiator. The thing that gets me is the car runs so good. At idle it was super smooth. I'm taking the radiator to get it pressure tested. I might be lucky and it's a failed internal oil cooler.
All the plugs are a nice sooty black colour. I noticed when I took the oil cooler hoses off, the top hose actually had coolant in it. About 200ml drained out. I'm really hoping the radiator has failed.
I went through that with my 87.. PO had just replaced the radiator. When I got it home, I was freaked out by a milky oily sludge in top of reservoir, but it turned out that was left from when the cooler had failed before radiator replacement. If you do need to clean out the coolant system - use dishwasher powder to get the oil out, as its non-foaming.
So some progress made at the back end. Something tells me the bearings etc are going to be shot. The second pic is the CV from the drivers side (rhd) and that grease had the consistency of modellers clay. In fact I rolled into a ball and then made a stick man. Should've taken a pic of him.
Got the rear suspension carrier back from blasting and powder coating. The guy sanded it smooth to remove any scratches and put a nice clear coat on it as well.
08-26-2018, 09:56 AM
Work Begins On The 79 (pics)
