Operation "High-Toned Son of a Bitch*" is a go

My carbon footprint is bigger than yours

A recent scratch-off windfall gave me the money to get back to work on the Toronado for the first time in two years. The interior is shot, but I don't care. I'm going to get the engine up, the powertrain serviceable and the suspension squared away. Then I'll worry about how she looks.

Here's the little bastard that started this whole mess. #7 piston, burned down through the ring lands:

The two compression rings went with the metal, and only a sliver of the third (oil scraper) ring remained. Hell of it is, even with such catastrophic damage, she'd crank up and run until I started dismantling the engine. She'd go through oil like Captain Hazelwood on the Bligh Reef but she still ran.

#8 was pitted so badly I sent her to the machine shop to bore the cylinders .030" over, increasing the engine's displacement to 461 cubic inches with the stock crank and rods. Because a fool and his money are soon parted,  I had the crank reground .010" under and fitted it up over the weekend. Oddly enough they put the Jager away long enough to give me a nice, tight rotating assembly.

Main Caps in place:

Crankshaft in, dial-gauging crankshaft end play and runout:

I don't want to bollocks this job up, so I verified the plastigage readings with a micrometer:


Here's the crankshaft in place and torqued down, now I'm waiting for the shop to press the pins into the new pistons so I can start installing them tomorrow evening:



I suck at video editing, but I ran this up on short notice:



* In Stephen King's The Dark Half, the protagonist's psychotic, straight-razor wielding alter ego drove a 1966 Olds Toronado with a bumper sticker reading "HIGH TONED SON OF A BITCH."