Starting a Major on a 1975 GT4

I’m starting a 30K major, with the goal of springtime road trips—since the missus will be along relaibitlity is the watchword. Many others have been down this path, but I found the photos posted on the site really helpful when planning the job, so perhaps some of these will be helpful too. Of course, Birdman's great post is my guide although a couple of things are proving to be different between his 1977 308 GTB and my 1975 GT4.
I’m really clumsy and I’m working in a tiny garage so I pad everything up. These are seven dollar moving blankets from Harbor Freight cut to the arch and then clipped in place with 3/4 inch pipe insulation. Works ok, although it pulls apart when you climb on top a lot. I also put a piece of padded plywood on the rear trunk, knowing I’ll climb on it.
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Thanks Peter, I know what you mean--springtime is more to stop me from going to far down the "while I have it open" path. Without this site I wouldn't even try.
Without the fender liner I can see what I’m dealing with. Oil all over, rotted air conditioning mounts and adjuster at max, and something ugly dribbling from the water-pump bleed hole. You can also see that grease has spun out of the rear tensioner bearing, so there must have been some in there.
Air conditioning belt tensioner and alternator removed. Note that on my car the alternator bolt pointed toward the engine, so it was easy to remove. Since the alternator actually drained oil I think I will send it out for rebuild.
Unlike Bridman’s experience, I ended up removing all of these studs on the front cover before I could move the AC pump out of the way. Here’s a shot of the top of the pump so I can keep track of the shims. (I’ve drained the fuel and removed the vapor lines.) On a GT4 (at least mine) the AC lines go over the top of a frame tube, so I used the mounting bolts for the vapor recovery can (also previously removed) and hug the pump with clothes hanger wire. I put a couple of vacuum caps over the pumps studs to reduce the likelihood of them punching through the tank.
The last shot is looking up at the upper AC pump bracket. Other than the two at the top of the pump there were no other shims on the brackets. (I hope.) Note the red overspray—the car was green coming from the factory.
I’ll remove the covers tomorrow. The rear cover won’t come out without the air-cleaner snout out of the way and I want to take that apart when I’m wide awake.
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I haven’t taken the tanks out, and I had just decided to let the front to rear heater and vacuum hoses go for now. I plan to re-vamp the rear suspension bushings, brakes etc. as the next big project, and I thought it would be easier to get the tanks out with the suspension off. Now I wonder...
I wish I had seen the e-clips. I scribed mine, but that will be a PITA.
Anyway, looks like I have enough to do. The picture with the air cleaner housing off is not too discouraging. Doesn’t look like any big miss-fires and soot in the chokes. The plugs were uniformly rich except 6, which was wet. Since I hadn’t done a real plug-pull and the spark-plug boot was torn on 6, so I figured “fix spark before fooling with fuel.” I’m thinking I will just replace the idle needle o-rings, clean the carbs externally and give it a pass for now. Car ran OK before with a slight miss, which I think now was 6.
With the air horn off I could get the rear cover off. (The studs came out, but I can’t imagine how to get that cover off if they hadn’t. I noticed on Birdman’s pictures his rear cover was fastened with bolts.) Just looking at these pictures it looks like cam and cam drive seals at least, and maybe crank seal. I’m still a little puzzled by the black goop from the water pump. I have a new pump from Superperfomance, I hope that does the trick. I also don’t like the white RTV all over.
Next: Initial clean-up and then measure the valve clearances.
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Before I cracked the seal I wanted to clean some gunk of the engine. I made a portable parts bath from a cheap sump pump form Harbor Freight, a parts washer brush and a PC power supply. Lying in a puddle with a 12v hack is more comforting than my first version, which used a 110v AC pump. Yes, that's a tube sock filter for the pump.
I used the proper Aviation Simple Green which can be bought pretty reasonably from Amazon. The whole lash up worked just OK, well on the frame and side of the engine, not so much on the top end. I put a 32 quart pan under the bucket but I still lost about a third in an hour.
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With things a little cleaner I pulled the Disti’s and the valve covers. I was pleased to see only a little oil in the front distributor. I have a Pertronix kit so will only worry about one set of advance mechanism but I will put everything back with points, get the car running and then make that change.
With the rear valve cover off I noticed the pocket around the head-bolt closest to the crank doesn’t drain into the sump and a big glop of black crude oil had accumulated there. That’s the problem with garage queens, they never get shaken enough to get everything circulated.
The cam seals were coated with white RTV, and fell out of their pockets immediately. When they are replaced, what’s best: you thread the seals on the cams, past the seal surface and leave them hanging just behind the pulleys (like the picture, but w/o the RTV), seal up the valve covers and then put Loctite on them and press them in, or do you assemble with the seals in place?
If you assemble them and then put the covers on is it best to put Loctite on the bottom half set them in their “pockets” then put a little on top? Searching the other posts, Verrel recommends Loctite 515 or 518, but I can’t figure out when to seat the seals since these are anaerobically setting adhesives.
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Cam marks lined up perfectly. All of the clearances are right on the top of the range, the intakes would fit a .010 inch, but not a .011. The exhausts were all .013 or .014. I plan to pull the cams to replace the seals instead of removing the drive pulley’s so I’ll measure the shims, but none need more than a couple of thousands. (Thanks again to RobertGarven for his posts.)
A trick I use when checking the clearances is that once I get Cyl. 1 to TDC, I put a straw in the spark plug hole of the next valve in the firing order, mark the height of the straw compared to the top of the spark plug well (red arrow) and then move the crank a quarter turn to line up for the next measurement . Once the crank is on the TDC mark a put a second mark on the straw (black arrow, TDC). Doing this makes me feel better that I’m measuring the right valve at the right height as I progress through the firing order.
By the way, the attached is my checklist when I started, although some things were done out of order. I’ll revise at the end and re-post.
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I noticed that the #10 cam cap (Intake, rear, far left) is on backwards. All of the other caps have numbers stamped on the outside of the cap and on the rail that mates to the cam cover as you can see for #9. #10 has the number stamped on the rail, but the cap has the number on the inside, as pictured. Since the car ran fine before, do I rotate the cap back to where it was from the factory, or leave it where it is. I’m half-done taking the belts off, and the cams come out next. I’ll send a picture of the wear pattern, but any thoughts?
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I have records of attempts to seal the cams, and I sure the gaskets were replaced, along with a lot of white sealant goop.

I'm adjusting the valves so the cams were on their way out anyway.

Good idea about the un-torque spec. I was also considering using some fine-guage plasiguage to see what clearances look like with the cap in both directions. The manual seems to indicate that the clearance is .053-.083 mm, green plastiguage has a .025-.076 range. Anyone had experience with using plastiguage for this? The rogue cap is at the end of the cam, so a bore guage might be possible, too.

 

I pulled the #10 cap, which was rotated vs. stock. (The number 10 stamped on the cap faced in toward the spark plugs, unlike all the other caps which had matching numbers on the cap and the head.)
The first picture shows the cap “flopped” down. So the shiny witness mark on the bottom of the cap shows that the clearances are too tight at the top of the journal. I placed two pieces of Plastigauge on the cam and re-torqued the caps. The second picture show that the clearance is.001 or smaller—the Plastigauge just flattens out past its range.
I cleaned the cap, added new Plastigauge, flipped the cap around to so the number aligned like the other caps and re-torqued the cap. The third picture seems to indicate that the clearance with the cap in the correctly numbered orientation stays about .002, which is in tolerance.
OK, fchatters, what do you think? Use gray Scotchbright on the cap and cam, turn it to the way Enzo numbered it (and where the clearances look closest) and hope for the best? Take the cam out, torque the cap in place and use a brake cylinder hone to rough the surface and help make it a little rounder?
How should it be done properl
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