Sun Dried 87 SC resurrection

[AZTurbo]

Got it home last week, and am finally getting to tear into it.



Car is a black 87 SC T1 log car that I found for $400. I missed my old charger so bad, I went looking around the local areas just out of morbid curiosity. I found this car and though "how bad could it be".

It's been sitting for 10 years, uncovered, in the Southern AZ sun. The interior plastic panels are shot, the windshield is cracked, the column is broken, has a bubbified stereo system, the factory tint on the rear glass is bubbling. The owner before the folks I bought it from had re-painted it all black, even the rims. The grandmother thought it might just be brake dust, so she cleaned the rims. Grandma's got an arm! she took off the paint, and the original clear coat underneath it all. The center caps for all the pizzas are missing tho The nose is cracked in the passenger headlight bucket, and it looks like someone hooked the nose on a curb or something, and ripped up the passenger corner pretty good.

I opened up the engine tonight, and found this:






The injector harness is mostly electrical tape. Cyl #1 appeared to have a head gasket failure to the exterior of the engine, but the fire ring was pretty beat-up too. There is some rust in the #1 cylinder, a little bit in cyl #2. Neither look to have pitted, and none of the cylinders look scored. The pistons are dirty, but nothing bad, and no signs of detonation.

The rest of the car is pretty rough as well. The body is straight enough, but the passenger seat is trashed - the hinge is busted and it stays forward. The carpet had something sticky and brown spilled a loooooooooooooong time ago, and it's congealed. The dash is OK, as is the instrument cluster. There is no center console or armrest - it had the option without. The rear glass has the defrost lines, but the connector on the passenger side is busted. The hatch struts don't work (shocking) and the tail light paint is terrible. It also has a homieriffic tow hitch installed, but it doesn't look half bad. I'm going to yank it and sell it off.

The spoiler is loose, but I've found a TC3/024 spoiler and rear lights local - I'm going to put those on, as I think they're far cooler looking.

It's an AC car, and I'm debating if I'll keep the AC or not. I can always put it back, but the condensor looks like it's seen better days - so I might yank it for now.

I'm thinking of keeping it black, if I can do the body work well enough for it. I've already scouted an A523 (very few TMs in the yards here, no chances of a 568 or a 555 ) in a shadow, so there's my shift cables, shifter, and trans. I also found a 90 TBI omni in VERY good shape, so I might just snake those axles. Then hopefully one of these cars has the brakes I need/want for the front and rear. I've also already bought a nose from a fellow member, scored a 2pc intake, a GLHS stage II (socketed) LM, some magnecor wires, and a boost and AF gauge. I'm well on my way to having this thing fire-up and hopefully run. So long as the shortblock isn't as bad as the head area is!!

[2.216VTurbo]

Yep, thats a project alright Good save tho and glad it's getting some love after 10 years in the AZ sun Judging by the look inside the valve cover you *have* to pull the pan and look around down there too before you try to fire it right?

I have a Shelby friend in Tucson, older gent with lots of experience & knowledge. You know Tom Walsh? It's been a couple years since I've talked to him tho

[AZTurbo]

Oh yeah, the bottom end is coming out for a closer look as well. My original plan was to do a quick T2 swap into this thing, have a bit of fun with a 3" exhaust and a decent IC and then take some time to rebuild the chassis while I got a new motor together. The eventual goal was to have a quick street car. Something that would run high 11's to low 12's on drag radials.

I have another short-block kicking around somewhere (minus pistons/rods) that might be a decent donor for this one.. The rub is that with the money I'll need to spend to rebuild this mess, and then port the head, intake and exhaust, I might as well entertain looking at a 2.4L swap. I've got access to quite a machine-shop, so the fabrication isn't an issue.. The LM I have is already socketed so I could hook up an emulator get a wideband and tune away until it runs like it should. Decisions decisions.

Tom Walsh, I don't believe I know him.

[Turbo224]

Looks like quite the project. Have fun and make sure to post a lot of pictures!

[moparman76_69]

Get the dash harness out of the TBI omni and use a minivan underhood harness to both replace the busted harness in the car and get use a SMEC.

[AZTurbo]

I've got the head torn down, and despite the ugly, it's not in bad shape. The cam, followers, and lifters are all toast. Good thing I wasn't going to reuse them anyhow.



The cam journals are OK - looks like someone used a bit too much gasket maker at some point. For as bad as everything on this motor looks, most all the fasteners have come loose with very little effort. I can tell it's been 'gone through' before - one of the exhaust manifold nuts was a 3/8" rather than 10mm, and a few other items have been monkied with (the EGR tube was expoxied to the SV).

Close up of cam:


Under the mess is pitted and nasty:


Also thought this was odd, an adjustable actuator arm?


Time to get out the spring compressor and see about getting this thing bead blasted. I've decided to stay 8v after doing some extensive reading - there's some port work in my future.

[AZTurbo]

Before:


After:


Now for some port work... Intake manifold gasket should be here in the morning, then out comes the dyechem and carbide burr..

[rich tideswell]

You're a brave man, washing a cylinder head in the wife's porcelain glazed kitchen sink.

[AZTurbo]

No wife, no problem

Most of it took place in the bathtub anyway, which is fiberglass... and now a lot cleaner than before.

[AZTurbo]

This doesn't bode well:


Looks to be a crack in the water opening, and from the deck surface all the way to the intake seat. Time to go hunting for a G headed motor now...

Every one of those triangular openings on the back-bottom of the head seems to have a crack at the point also. This isn't normal, is it?

[AZTurbo]

Symptoms (as reported): Car ran fine, then after being parked would not re-start. After approx 8 years of storage, repair was attempted. Attempt resulted in engine running for a few seconds at a time before ceasing function.

Findings: Upon postmortem removal of the head, head gasket on #1 cylinder was badly deteriorated and showed evidence of leakage during operation (carbon under the gasket, behind fire-ring). Head gasket was observed to show no markings indicating prior replacement. Upon removing entire engine, and further dissection, the following was found:






Removal of the oil pump confirmed diagnosis: oil contaminated with coolant was running through the engine. Combustion arrest caused by excessive coolant in the #1 cylinder followed by total failure of the #4 rod bearing seized the rotating assembly.

[AZTurbo]

New bumper!


I can make progress on at least one front, now.

[AZTurbo]

Got some seat covers in the mail today. I yanked a seat from a rampage (the only intact one) and am re-covering it to replace the busted passenger seat in the car. Then I get to re-cover the drivers seat also.

Fun times. Check the FS section for the rampage seat cover, if you need/want one!

[86seeS]

your a brave sole man if I opened a valve cover and saw that mess it would have been trashed. Speeking of trashed thats what that head is its no good

[AZTurbo]

your a brave sole man if I opened a valve cover and saw that mess it would have been trashed. Speeking of trashed thats what that head is its no good

You haven't even seen inside yet

I like a challenge. Luckily, I've already found a few heads. I think I'm going to cut-back and acid-etch that are to see if the crack really is deep or not, mostly out of curiosity.

[AZTurbo]

Just got back from the salvage yard. A city of one million people and I could only find ONE turbo motor intact that wasn't a G-head motor (I'm sticking with the swirl head and trying to avoid buying pistons).

Its a 2.5L common block - the yard is having a $99 engine special, so the price is the same for short or long block - now I have another head, intake, and exhaust manifold to hock. Anyone need/want them?

I had initially wanted to stick 2.2, but to hell with it. I want a fun street car, not a drag car, and not necessarily auto-x either. Just a fun car. The 2.5 should give me more torque/power out of boost, and spool a bigger turbo even better. Especially with the port work I'm doing on the head.

Odd thing though, when I went to yank the motor I realized there was no turbo - but instead a TBI manifold on there! Looks like the PO swapped it on and cobble-----ed the exhaust together to make an MPI car. I don't think it worked out for them, since we do have to smog our cars here, and the EGR was disconnected as a result - it would have failed the visual inspection. The inside of the motor looks good. A little sooty, probably from the lack of a turbo. It's been sitting - full of cobwebs and such. I'm going back to swipe the big brakes (KH single pins up front and solid disk rears) and digi dash from it too (already have a digi dash, but would like a spare).

[AZTurbo]

Moving heavy parts around in my little saturn is a PITA, but at least the motor fit in the trunk!


I got it stripped down and parts cleaned the last few days. The crank looks good, no internal damage. The oil pan needs replaced, between the dents and scars there's also a plastic-plugged hole near the oil drain plug. Ugh..

I've already honed the cylinders and washed the block down, but when I went to finish up the deck surface, I found some pitting around #1 that explains why the motor had a felpro head gasket in there when I pulled it apart. The stocker had probably given up in this area, and it shows the typical 'ran-for-too-long-after-failure' pitting. Time to get the deck resurfaced. While I'm at it, I might just do the crank too.





This worries me a bit:


Looks like the motor may not be original to the car, and this surface was damaged when pulled. The reason I say it may not be original to the car is that there are some other junkyard 'signatures' on it, like the spray painted initials on the back of the block.

Time to get a rebuilt kit and a handful of core plugs... then I can finish up the head and get this thing hanging in the car. Might pick up my trans and axles this week too.

[AZTurbo]

Same old story. Started to get into this project, and work picked up and now I've got a new job that is forcing me to move. Car is still in disassembled state and is now available for free in the classifieds. PM me and we'll go from there.

[RoadWarrior222]

Most of it took place in the bathtub anyway, which is fiberglass... and now a lot cleaner than before.

Yah, car part gunk is like the "disclosing stain" that dentists show you all the plaque with... it blacks up all the bits of soap scum you missed on the sink etc...