Andy H

That shit will bring you down for sure 😞

Sounds like you need to grab a beer And find a air-conditioned space to hang out in😄

I know and it's so funny you see these discussions about electric fans be or not to be but if you do the math an electric can never move as much air. And the blades half way in to the shroud if possible. Yeah you know I think we all get that feeling sometimes when we don't make much progress or it doesn't move as fast as we think it should sometimes life gets in the way in one way or the other. Just keep picking away at it I guess.

Next the ac hoses, the way i had the low side hose from the compressor didn't work out,it was to short to be able to rotate the compressor freely to be able to adjust the belt so after a few back and forth my friend suggested way don't you kick the hose forward and then let it loop back to make it longer That only took two trips to the ac hose store to exchange fittings before i found some that worked and I liked, so after fitting the hose I took then back to get crimped and i figured that would be included when you buy the fittings WRONG that was another $100 so I think the hoses ended up about $300. So the car has a STV valve on the evaporator and the diaphragm was toast so I got a upgrade kit that basically eliminates it and turns it in to a cycling clutch system. You basically remove all the guts and install a stainless disc with a new gasket. Got it all wired up for the compressor, hooked up my gauges and sucked it down for an hour but didn't have time to charge it so it sat for a whole week with the gauges hooked up so next weekend I checked and it still held a vacuum. Vacuumed for another hour and put in to cans of R134 for now and it blows cold , the low side is only 10 psi so when it gets warmer outside I will have to recheck and probably put in some more.

Ok, time to get back and write an update. The A/C thing turned in to quite a project. First found a belt-that worked good ( thank you Amazon for Free returns) but then it was too close to the radiator hose so I had to go down to the local Napa store and was able to find one that was curved differently and with with my universal/ adjustable thermostat housing that I had to rotate more to the straight forward position I got that to work but that put the hose to close to the cooling fan blade🙄 so I found this spacer at the auto parts store that o really didn't like but iy kind of worked. Decided I didn't like the fan spacer so I bribed the machine shop guy at work with some pastries so he made a nicer one but I had to drill the bolt holes which worked out ok.

Mine sits outside under a cover and they only last about a year, have not tried one of the more expensive ones but they are several times the cost of the cheaper ones on Amazon so for now I just keep buying new ones. The sun in the warmer climates seems to be the biggest problem.

Hi😄 yeah you know life happened and that Christmas thing and and. I have been thinking I need to update on the progress not that it's that much but anyway, I Will get to it soon.

Like Kiwi says and if you really want to find where the problem is ( could be more then one) you need to break your voltmeter out and do some voltage drop tests, if you aren't familiar with how to do this check with your local utube school, easier then to try to explain it here. 😁Good luck and let us know how it goes. Ohh yes just for reference my new internal powermaster alternator puts out almost 14.5v.

Nice and clean installation, like your routing of the temp gauge Sensor.

😆 its all bits and pieces,so just a matter of plugging away I guess, unfortunately life gets in the way sometimes and we don't make as much progress as fast as we would like. The distributor vacuum is kind of asking what engine oil should I use you will get a gizillion different answers, i believe there is two schools on this so i think whatever works for you. I believe if you use manifold vacuum and you set the idle and then connect vacuum the idle probly goes up, this works good if your cam is not to big and the vacuum is stable if not the idle may fluctuate. I think most cars had ported vacuums and that is what I prefer, but no right or wrong. Keep plugging away, I wich i could get done with all the house and family honey does so i can get back to my car.😄

So you are running manifold vacuum to the distributor instead of ported?

Looking good. Are you blocking off the preheat ports? I had to get thicker valve cover gaskets so the rockers wouldn't hit, keep an eye out for that. I assume you have to make new bracket for throttle cable? No wait you don't have a cable?

Found this picture from when I did mine, looks pretty close to your's

Are you going to use the Pontiac method and just torque down the nuts against the stop on the rocker stud? in that case i would suggest that you check that you don't get to much preload on the lifters before you bolt the intake back on. with the "crushed" nuts you could adjust the valves kind of like a sbc but in theory they could also bottom out before you get enough preload so i think again double checking would be a good idea On Pontiac with adjustable valve train is this the type of nut that is being used? I have used these rockers on a Ford 351C and a Chevy BB in the past but i used poly locks on both, they can be reused over and over vs the crushed nuts that looses its tension after so many times. Good luck with your skin problem, its good to stay on top of these problems.

So my engine is mix and match kind of deal. The heads are stock 68 or 69 428 small valve heads so the guide plates are stock Pontiac and came with the heads and the studs are pressed in with a step for none adjustable valves but that's why I used polylocks to make it adjustable , think I'm running about half a turn preload. I picked these heads for the size combustion chamber to get the compression where I wanted it. What year are your heads? I thought all heads after 64 had guide plates? And don't know if anybody else answered your question but yes you can replace the lifter's without removing the heads just the intake

Got the A/C hoses mocked up now just have to mark them and take them back to get crimped. Now the hose with regular clamps only is gone. Getting two belts today to see which one will fit. Still need to get the STV valve delete kit,after that I can charge it up.

What a bummer 😞, I would recommend that you make them adjustable especially since you are changing to none stock rockers and was the heads milled during rebuild? I just got polylock nuts, they dont have any treads at the bottom and goes over the step on the ticket stud. I also had to cut the top of the rocker stud that did not have any treads on my heads so that the nutts would clear the valvecover.

Yes I know , relays wasn't used much back then, I got one more for ignition ( coil, choke and p/s pump) tucked up under the fender next to the brake master. Did you see the big master relay connected to the battery cable? That's a bistable relay so it has dual coils and stays in the last position that you put it with out applying any power to the coils.

Still working on wiring and trying to make everything work,had to take the ignition lock apart and clean the contacts, I also cleaned the heater fan switch since it came apart by itself when I took the connector off so we will see if it works haven't tested it yet. Decided that it would be a good idea to install a new condenser before I put the rest of the front end stuff on so I got a kit from Vintage Air also bought a bracket and newer style compressor at the same time. They have a newer style ac hoses that are a bit more slim so i think i will se if i can get those to work, there is a local place here that should have those, the idea is also to install a STV valve update kit also to make it a cycling system, going to be interesting to see how this work with the stock evaporator and inside stuff. Got some gauges, some odd brand that I never heard about before but they where pretty reasonable. I wanted gauges that looked like these but most of them have a red needle and thought this looked more period correct. Also some gauges hs there range "off" like the temp having 240f straight up and the voltage should have 12-14v straight up so we'll have to see how they work.

Nice welder, that's what I call a b-day gift ( happy birthday) just get some scrap's and start practicing, you got this. Mig is ok but i have been playing with tig witch is another whole story. You should keep that wife 😀

Interesting story, I had never seen this engine before and it was just something I ran across. It just happens that a friend of mine just finished putting a Ford SOHC engine together so I figured this would be the Pontiac equivalent kind of.

Ran across an interesting article https://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/mckellars-masterpiece-the-pontiac-overhead-cam-421-v8/

So my friend has a 1960 Bonneville with a 389 and has problems with rocker arm lubrication. Does it work to just replace the rocker arms with one with the lube hole like the låter ones?

A little bit late but finally got some time sitting here watching all you amazing pictures, what a great trip . Power tour is definitely on my bucket list but I wich they could run it a little bit closer to the west coast.😆 Thank you for the story and great pictures.

Was not sure if if it's s better place to post this here but here it goes. So I'm Sweden taking care of some not so fun family stuff but we are staying with an old friend and today we went for a drive in his Bonneville. He got a 1960 and he is the second owner ( there was a dealer involved also I'm not sure if that counts) the car came from Texas where the original owner lived when he passed away. Originally the car was purchased in Hollywood and the owner lived in various places in Orange county only a few miles away from where I live. He has lots of documentation and one of the papers was about an accident in 1964 when the car was rear-ended and the funny part is that the lady that hit the car lived about one block away from my house, the world is small sometimes.