project: Park Avenue Ultra

[harofreak00]

Complete except for alt, starter, etc... I'll let you know more when I get it.

[RookieSSei]

another car.. wow man you say you cant find a job??? this is a sign start fixing and selling cars as your career . I wish I could all I can do is install cable in Voip etc..

[00Beast]

PAU is on the trailer, here at my house. Andrew will be here in a bit.

[94SilverSSEi]

Did you get the engine started?

[00Beast]

No, I'll post some pics later and describe how we did it. It wouldn't even turn over.

[PRD2BDF]

I think if you paint the rims a darker grey, maybe light gunmetal, it would go nicely with that color.

[harofreak00]

What a weekend!!!

On friday Ed showed up at my house around 4pm with his truck and trailer. The guy that delivered my engine showed up shortly after. We loaded the engine into the truck, and then started to load the car onto the trailer. About this time it started to rain. It wasn't a sprinkle. It was the first downpour of the year. I was soaked down to my underwear, gross!

After Ed got the car to his house, his dad got the truck stuck in the yard. Had to use a tractor to pull it out.

Here is the only picture I really took during the work, my hands were too dirty the rest of time.

We worked on Friday from around 7-10pm. We were both tired so we went to bed. I stayed at Ed’s house so I wouldn’t have to drive an hour home and then again in the morning. I got to sleep in his sisters bed (she wasn’t there, lol). I was up around 7am to get working on the car, but Ed got the flu and was slow going. I got a good start by myself, but eventually he made it out there. Soon after, Gordy showed up, and then a while later, Marty showed up. Gordy was working on his Aurora’s power steering line leak. Ed was as good as dead, and actually went to the ER to get checked out while we worked on cars. We had some MAJOR problems with the passenger side mount that is used on the Park Avenues. Its like the Torque Axis Mount, but completely different, and 100x harder to work on. I had to redo things so many times it wasn’t even funny. We finally got the engine into position around 7-8pm. Gordy headed home around 4:30pm, and Marty stayed almost till almost 9pm. Ed went to bed around 10pm and left me alone in the shop. After that, I lost all sense of time. I keep working and working… making sure everything was good to go. I started the car for the first time around 1am. After messing with a few vacuum lines, she purred like a kitten. It was POURING out white smoke, which kinda concerned me at first that I had bad LIM gaskets, but I remembered how much coolant/oil was sitting in the exhaust downpipe. After a few minutes the crap in the exhaust burned up and the white smoke disappeared. Here you can see some the smoke lingering in the shop.

She lives!!

So why am I getting home at 4:30am? After sweeping out the shop (I told Ed’s parents I would make everything look better than when I got there) and cleaning up everything I could find, I started tearing into the motor that came out.
The motor that was in the car was also a junk yard motor. There was some “yard paint” on the head stating it was from “AAA Auto parts”. How many miles were on it? No idea.
Now, let me run you by, step by step of all the problems I found with this engine. This could possibly be the WORST L67 FAILURE EVER.
Took off the SC and found some metal chunks hanging out in the LIM.


I noticed there was NO thermostat. That’s right, nothing. The gasket was there, but no valve.

LIM gaskets were recently changed, RTV’d corners even stayed together when I took them out.

Lifter valley looks SUPER CLEAN!


Heads come off and we see the carnage… chipped piston on cylinder 1.




Next I took the oil pan off. I literally laughed out loud when I opened it up. Metal parts came POURING out of the pan. Here we have parts of bearings, pistons, rods, plastic from the oil pan gasket, etc… This bottom end tore itself apart. The funniest part was the guy I bought it from said the last time he had it running it had a “lifter tick”. I specifically asked him if the bottom end was knocking, he said no. What a joke.


More little pieces of metal in the pan.

A view of the destroyed piston.


Noticed that the oil plunger was stuck in there flush with the gasket surface. I pushed on it with my finger and it didn’t budge.

Lastly, I found this nice crack in the block.

So, here are all the parts laid out. Eventually all the usable parts will be sold. Right now the “top end swap” is already dibbed by petraman (SC, TB, LIM, heads, fuel rail, injectors, etc…)





Its now 5am and I am hitting the sack. Ed, if you are reading this, don't call/text me until at least 11am. I need my sleeps!

[GoldenBullet]

glad to hear you got it running, that old engine was fubar'd

[00Beast]

OMG dude. I went to bed around 10. I had to go to the ER because my mom thought I had Pneumonia, since I had/have a bad cough. I helped out as best as I could, but I was dragging tail majorly. Also thanks to Gonneville for looking at his FSM's about that mount. I have a bunch of pics during, since I couldn't do much else, but I'll get those up later. Much thanks to Gordy and Marty, if you guys hadn't showed up, we'd still be trying to get that front mount on!!!

[gonzo4191]

vroom vroom

[crzydmnd72]

Thats just some incredible damage.

Hope Ed feels better soon

[Jim W]

I cannot believe how beautiful that barn is...I'm awestruck...wow.

Sounds like a great weekend of work! Kudos all around!

[RJolly87]

Wow, I LOL'd with the bottom end too. You should email the guy you bought it from with that pic, and say "You call this a lifter tick?!?" I think about the only thing good in that motor is the top end swap.

[00Beast]

I cannot believe how beautiful that barn is...I'm awestruck...wow.

Sounds like a great weekend of work! Kudos all around!

Jim, not a barn. Our shop at home.

[Jim W]

So, its your workshop cleverly disguised as a barn?

[00Beast]

That pic was taken from andrew standing in front of our shop looking away. That barn contains horses and hay in the loft.

[ohenry5]

Big meet at Ed's place. lol j/k Looks like an awesome place

[00Beast]

Big meet at Ed's place.

Henry check this link out then

viewtopic.php?f=33&t=8769

[nicklikesmilk]

Andrew, how much are you planning on selling this park avenue for? i might be interested if it's in my price range.
If i opened up the motor and saw all that fall out like that, i'd probably stare at it for about 5 minutes in awe. I have never seen anything like that ever.

[harofreak00]

I won't know until I figure out how much the rust is gonna cost to fix.

Yesterday was an experience. Shannon and I went out to Ed's to bring the car home. I had a few things to finish up on it before we could leave. I installed a new oil pressure sensor, installed the SC belt (had to remove that stupid motor mount again), changed the fuel rail (the original was leaking), and installed the splash shield. I borrowed 1.5-2 gallons of fuel from Ed's place since the PA was running really low on fuel. We started to head home (about 45 minutes). I knew I was going to stop in New Ulm to fill the tank up. Once we got on the road I wished I would have done a road test before driving it home. It was misfiring A LOT. Its gonna need some new wires/coils/ICM or something. It has new plugs in it, so that shouldn't be an issue. So, I'm driving down the road, about 5 miles from New Ulm, and I watch the oil pressure drop from 70+ to mid 30's... then the engine dies... I'm thinking crap! I just blew the new motor! There is no way I burned through 1.5-2 gallons of fuel in 15 miles!!??! Right? Well I got a ride into New Ulm, got some fuel and put it in the car. It started right up, with 70psi oil pressure. WHEWWW!!!! The combination of 40mph head winds and a misfiring engine must have made for horrible mileage conditions. I got the car home finally around 7pm. I haven't touched it since, its been raining ALL DAY.