Dodge 360-3 restoration

[Oz]

The videos are an excellent addition!

[Mlw]

So yesterday was the big day. the engine is out. It actually was a breeze compared to the preparations with (solid rusted) bolts in places that are ALWAYS 1/1000s of an inch to narrow to put your wrench on with ease. I really sometimes think that Betsy is actually really hating me for putting her back to life. 

But I got everything loose breaking only one bold for the bumper I actually didn't need to remove as it connected the bumper to the brackets  W%  O well, mistakes will be made.

The biggest worry for me  was to separate the engine from the transmission, and here REALLY is a lesson to be learned for everybody.

I disconnected a lot of tails of outboard engines to renew the seal of the distributor, and boy are you into trouble if you just don't have the magic fingers that puts everything just right so you just put the tale back on the engine with ease. I just don't have those, so i guess you can understand my worry hear as you can hold the tail of an outboard under 100 HP in your hands without force. This is however not the case with the engine and transmission in my beloved Betsy.

Then you get advise from experts. Now don't get me wrong, I appreciate every bit of information given but the problem with experts is that they have dozens of experiences with different engines and transmissions and they are going to warn you for every problem they ever found.

So I did the right thing, went on youtube, Just put "how to remove a 727 transmission from a Dodge 360 and there we go:

Basic How to Remove 727 transmission 1980 Dodge D150 2WD *Drag Truck

Mopar TF727 360 Removal

The BIG advantage: You see for yourself how it's done, but most importantly, You can compare parts with yours and when things look the same you'll pretty safe you can work the same way.


The only thing I did different: I drained the transmission oil in advance to avoid the mess showed in the second video, because when I would have done the same, I would have had BIG problems because of environment rules in the Netherlands.

Put an oil drain pan under the transmission pan and loosen the bolts. What I did was loosen the bolts on the engine side just enough so the transmission pan can move freely and the bolts at the back as far as possible. Keep the one of the bolts in the middle of both sides tight to remove last. The bolts at the sides you can remove.  Open the last bolts on both sides the same way as the others and now pry the pan loose on the back side where the bolts are loosened the most. Doing it this way Will give you a controlled flow of the transmission oil on just one side and not all over the place 

Changing the fluid/filter on a Torqueflite A727 Transmission

Now draining the oilpan showed me something I really wasn't happy about. If you were looking for gold and found this in your goldpan you would jump and land on the moon, but in this case...


So would love an experts opinion on this. I don't know what happened with this transmission but I do know that the transmission oilpan was pretty clean compared to the video underneath, and the filter was pretty new. Also the previous idiot has shown he was in here because of the big blobs of liquid sealant everywhere.

So another issue to fix, but that's for later.

I went on and remove the bolts that keep the transmission to the engine and after that it went pretty smoothly.

You need to support your transmission because else it will fall down to the floor probably damaging the tailend of your transmission or breaking off things. I did that by replacing the oilpan with just a few bolts to keep it in place, support the complete bottom of the oilpan with two wooden beams and then keeping it in place with a jack.

Then removed the engine with a engine jack lift and this actually was the only part i needed help with.

There just really isn't a good place where you can support the back of your engine so it will buckle when you use the brackets for the alternator and power steering for lifting the engine out.

So first i freed the transmission from the engine by letting a second person move the engine jack stand forward. while supporting the back myself by hand. But warning, I removed the heads and the intake manifold remembering they were allready very heavy, so be prepared that the block is extremely heavy, so I removed the engine in steps setting the engine on its oilpan in between. with the following results.



Now I said I would place one more video. For everybody who would like to know how the inside of the A727 transmission looks like:

727 Transmission Tear Down - What's Inside The Legend?

[Mlw]

TEASER:

[Mlw]

Thanks for confirming I'm not the only one thinking it is a bit odd, guys 

[Eyez Open]

Chrysler has always been a bit of a weird duck, with that being said they have made some outstanding engines. From a slant 6 to a 426 hemi..but still a odd duck.

[Oz]

Engineering designs... I swear they did a lot of things knowing the headaches they would cause.... and laughed.

[Mlw]

And the other head is off. Clearly the engine was running way to rich, but what do you expect if NOTHING is torqued to spec with some bolts so loose you could almost remove them by hand while others were so tight that I'm still amazed I didn't snap them off. Intake/exhaust manifold or the heads, all the same, as seen in the pictures and yes the heads were lifted by the previous idiot as i found 2 used head gaskets under the bottom of one of the top cabinets.




I'm really amazed the engine was running so well and started so easy, but I allready thought the idle screws were open really wide (3.5 turns) and standing at the exhaust outlet really wasn't fun. It just has been way to long that I was in the neighborhood of a carburated V8 


But not only the previous idiot give me headaches but Chrysler as well. First you bolt your heads to spec, then you hang a alternator on the head which need to be driven by a belt under pretty high tension. Does anybody know if there are known problems with that?

[Oz]

Looks great!

[Mlw]

Clearly video's are not popular here so let's do it like this then... 

Taking the manifold off showed that the previous idiot just can't stop to amaze me and can't even be called a hillbilly anymore. I'm pretty convinced now that the first owner took pretty good care of it and the second idiot completely ruined the poor thing because after all I found allready this is what i found when i took the intake manifold off. The idiot ruined the gasket (which is normal) and RE-USED it!!!




So when I took it off I could just lift it off the intake (boy this thing is HEAVY!!!) without sticking.
I thought all the blow-by sounds I heard was from a loose exhaust manifold and a muffler that's completely rotted, but clearly not!

At least now i also understand why there was smoke coming from the Crankcase inlet air cleaner and why I couldn't get my idle to my complete satisfaction.

But to get back to the earlier mentioned contradictive saying "every disadvantage has it advantages" the engine actually doesn't look to bad, and the camshaft looked very good without scorns and the  lifters were moving like they were soaked in butter of which i was worrying about by looking at the state of the heads as seen in the pictures earlier.



I also took the driver side head off but I forgot to take pictures of the cylinders, but I probably found the reason why cylinder 5 was low on compression.



Now the stuff I'm using to clean you can probably get for free. In my case it's diesel with petrol in it, and then more petrol then diesel. We get it from garages who cleared out the fueltank because the tank was filled up with the wrong fuel source. With prices of engine cleaners going up to $10,= per litre in Europe, I´LL TAKE IT. It's not going as easy with real cleaners but it works. Here in the Netherlands they are glad you want it as they have to pay a contamination fee to get rid of it. I just flush it thru the toilet when I'm done   (just kidding of course ). No, as a civilian you can dump it for free as long as the amounts are not to high.

Fill up your oil drain pan with 20 litres of the stuff let it soak and then prepare to put an incredible amount of elbow grease into it and scrub away.

[Mlw]

well, as you sometimes can make things clearer by making video's and I didn't want to make CWVRV to go over their MB's I thought of a way that I could still post video's here.

As I have an account on Rumble.com I decided to make a channel for Betsy and post my video's there, sharing the links here.

Here are the video's of removing the intake manifold.

Enjoy.

Dodge 360 restoration Part 1 removing the intake manifold

Dodge 360 restoration part 1,2 some forgotten information

Dodge 360 restoration part 2 Intake Manifold off.

[Mlw]

Well, as I allready told I was planning to dig into it, It's time to bite the bullet and dig into the old 360.

After I cleaned the carburetor and finally got the engine idling as a 40 year old engine (still have the problem with the accelerator pump needle) I gave it a motorflush and some new oil.

Problem is that the oil again is completely contaminated and pitch black altough the engine hasn't been running for more than an hour. The story goes the former idiot had the RV in his possession for 25 years (poor thing)  and as it tells me that it has about 58000 miles on it I guess Betsy didn't get an oil change once,but just refills as she leaked oil like you wouldn't believe. The oilfilter was very old and quite the challenge to remove. There were also lumps in the flow when I changed the oil but as all flowed pretty easy I wasn't to concerned.

But now the new oil is pitch black again I also started to notice the engine is developing what we in the Netherlands call a "Diesel tick" (sounding like a diesel). as you can clearly hear in the last part of the video as the revving goes down to idle

waking up the beast on a cold winter morning

It useally means problems in the valve area, and sure enough, this is what I found opening the valve covers.










Starting up the engine showed plenty of oil on the drivers side rocker arms, but low on the passenger side rocker arms, so this needs to be taking care of.

I will post the progress here on the forum. in the meantime If anybody thinking doing the same to his/her 360, Here is an excellent explanation how to tear your engine apart en put it back together again: Just Mopar Joe