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I have mentioned before that Andy’s and my dirtiest 1965 Clark Cortez overhaul job was removing the underseal from the inside of our motorhome — and I still maintain that is true, but there is another job that made me question if there was a new contender because the work we did here does rank as the number one dirtiest mechanical job thus far. This was changing our oil, oil pump, oil pick-up pipe, and oil filter, along with cleaning our oil pan; and truthfully, a simple oil change would have sufficed … if it were not for our old oil pan gaskets failing, which caused oil to leak out and build up.
In order to start our work though, we needed to fire up our Dodge V8 to get the oil hot … but, per usual, our Cortez’s engine refused to turn over.
This meant Andy and I could be found whispering sweet nothings into our Cortez’s dashboard, again. When that did not work, Andy’s frustration mounted — understandably too as he recently rebuilt our carburetor.
“Okay, I’m pretty tired of this,” he huffed from the driver’s seat as I peeked into his window from outside where again and again he turned the key without success.
In case you were wondering, this is how 75% of our Cortez overhaul comes to be — We arrive at the farm ready and raring to work, but our rectangular relic rules otherwise.
Sometimes fate intervenes in positive ways, which is what happened this July day when our Cortez decided (after too many prolonged minutes) to fire up.
With our engine roaring, we waited fifteen minutes for the oil to heat up before Andy drained it.
Then it was time for me to remove the numerous bolts holding our oil pan in place.
With the pan out, Andy put his efforts under our engine, removing the oil filter first …
After that, he removed our oil pan gaskets and oil pick-up pipe.
It was here we saw the dangerous condition of our pipe — Lumps of oil, carbon, and dirt had completely clogged the mesh and channels.
With a pick-up pipe blocked this severely, oil would not have been able to get into our engine, which would have equated to major engine problems. To better illustrate how the pick-up pipe should have looked, here is our new one beside our old one …
The three dimples has a thick layer of sediment built up over them.
The mesh should not have any sediment build up on it.
Turns out, this job was more than worth it — It was one of our best improvements thus far.
While Andy replaced our clogged pipe, I grabbed a tarp, the oil pan, and a scraper, hesitating none in the dirtiest part of our oil work — cleaning the oil pan.
To do that, I needed to scrape about two inches worth of hardened oil, carbon, and dirt from the lowest part inside of the pan.
Thanks to our friends at SuperClean, our aggressive cleaner-degreasers broke down the muck so that I soon had a shiny silver oil pan.
Flipping the oil pan over, the next half needed to be cleaned …
so that after I was done, Andy took over to sand, primer, and paint it …
By now, I somehow managed to dip my hair into the dropped oil and smear oil on my face, shoulders, arms, back, and legs.
The good news though is we took a pause to let our oil-pan paint dry overnight (and to get me showered) so we returned the next day to finish our job …
First, Andy installed our new pick-up pipe.
Next, we placed new gaskets on our beautiful oil pan and bolted it back in place …
Then it was oil time: We splashed a bit of oil into our new oil filter before installing it so that it was time to fill our engine again with oil again.
We chose Valvoline’s VR1 Racing Oil because it has a high zinc content, making it ideal for our vintage V8. With five bottles drained, we were ready to start our steel beast.
“Should it start up nicely?” I asked Andy. At this point, I needed to determine where my expectations should lay in advance — Should I set the bar high and anticipate our hard work would pay off … or should I keep lowering the bar because (in our Cortez’s case) hard work does not guarantee results. (Just so you know, I am commonly the low-Cortez bar type of person but, hey, I like to be surprised.)
“It might sound a bit ropey for a second because all the oil has drained completely out so … ” and his sentence faded, leaving me with little hope that this key-turn would be any different than the many key-turns before when our Cortez struggled to come to life.
Yet, the key was turned, the ignition clicked, and …
after one small sputter, our steel beast’s motor roared louder and stronger than ever before.
Running out again and slipping back under our V8, Andy and I did a quick leak check. Here, he found one small oil leak at the oil pan, which was quickly combatted by tightening the bolt a bit more. I also found a fuel leak, though we rectified this after by installing a new fuel line.
Our biggest problem though came in the form of very loud gunshot-sounding backfires.
“BAAANG!” our Cortez boomed, and I about had a heart attack not expecting it, though the truth is I should by now because our steel beast has been slowly slipping more and more flatulence from her rear. She is an elderly lass, after all, but I do confess I have a hard time forgiving her because her gas accumulations are so explosive sounding.
Still, despite my plea to get her help in this department, Andy has other plans to tackle a different, more-needed mechanical job, but that’s our next story …
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