<VV> Back On 5

Geoffrey A Johnson geoffj@unm.edu
Sat, 5 Jun 2004 00:29:12 -0600 (MDT)


I got to experience another great adventure in the world of 
old vehicle ownership today.  Holed  a piston in my yellow 63 
Coupe.  The misadventure of the day.  Thought we would take the car out 
to Flagstaff to participate in (or at least watch) the autocross happening 
out there.
Loaded up and left at 6:30pm.  Nice drive until we got to Gallup NM when 
we lost power
and the engine died and would not restart.  Let it sit and did a few
diagnostics.  #4 Cylinder is dead, 0 compression.  Popped the valve cover,
looked OK.  Stared down the spark plug hole.  That does not look right...
a hole in the piston about the size of a quarter.  So we dissabled the
cylinder by removing the rockers and push rods and drove it home on the
remaining 5.  Anyway I now have a fun and interesting project ahead of
me...  Not to bad I guess as I have been really unhappy with that engine,
and have been making plans to work it over.  I guess I have the excuse
now.  Trying to decide if I want to put a new piston in whats there, and 
at the same time swap out the 102 heads (currently with .052 gaskets) for 
a 
set of 
milled step 80's (thinking that will prvide a nice CR, while at the same 
time properly setting the quench gap), or 
re-ringing  a good healthy 66 95 motor I have that we had been running in 
our 
Corsa, and throw that in there for a while... Decisions Decisions...


Geoff Johnson
63 Monza Cp
66 Corsa Cp
62 Buick Special Cnvt
Albuquerque NM