An insect nearly burned down my 67 stepside.

[VetteVet]

Boy I bet I get a lot of views with this one.

I've had my share of problems with the engine in this truck. It started with when I bought it and discovered it had flat lobes on the camshaft. I got a completely rebuilt engine along with the truck, so I simply installed it in place of the bad cam engine.

Here's why the engine flat lobed the cam. At least I think so.



Notice the oil pump pickup screen is missing. It was laying in the oil pan when I took it off.

So I decide to just install the rebuilt engine and start fresh. Get it all in and add water to the radiator. It keeps going down every day for a few days, no leaks on the floor so I check the oil, aw shucks ( epithets deleted). Water in the oil and up on the lifters when I primed the oil pump.

It turns out that the block is cracked in the intake valley and it was small enough that I didn't notice it when I installed the lifters and the intake.

After due consideration, I decided to boil out the flat lobe engine and use it.
It only had 5,000 miles on it and no wear on the bores and the heads were in great shape.

Both these engines had been bored to .030 over so I swapped all the new stuff from the cracked block engine over to the flat lobe engine while taking all the necessary measuring precautions.

Fast forward to engine install and new cam wear in for 20 minutes.
I'd preset the distributor, all the valve tappets, and the timing so it was ready to go.

I decided to start the engine from the engine bay instead of in the cab, so I could monitor everything. I also jacked up the rear end so she couldn't take off on me in case the tranny linkage was adjusted wrong.

So here we go, it rolls over about twice and fires right up, speeds up to the required 2 grand, and sounds strong, pumping 75 psi oil pressure running as smooth as silk, with that nice rumbling sound that only the dual Flowmasters can make. So I'm patting myself on the back and about to feel great and I notice the water temp gauge is climbing fast.

About this same time I noticed that there was some hot red fluid boiling up out of the transmission dip stick all over the place. It made a huge mess so I let it cool down and decided that the 16 inch electric fan wasn't cutting it.

I pulled that thing off and replaced it with the original shroud, and a seven blade fan off the original engine. I wanted to be sure it would cool properly.
Now after draining and replacing the burnt trans fluid ( yeah it got that hot) I was ready for round two.

Now here's where it gets real interesting.

I top off the radiator, no leak downs this time, checked all the fluids after the fresh oil change, and hit the remote starter button. She fires right up and sounds great, temperature comes up to 180 and levels off and holds at 175 to 180, so far so good. So I figure the overheating engine caused the trans fluid to get too hot and up it comes.

WRONG!

I notice a leak under the oil pan and a small drip of oil on the floor so I investigate and the pan gasket was leaking. All the time my temperature gauge is reading 175 to 180. Got that fixed or so I thought.

So I shut it down again to replace the gasket and all off a sudden here comes the trans oil up out of the dipstick again. EXCEPT THAT this time it got on the hot exhaust pipe and HOLY HELL there are flames coming up in my engine compartment. PANIC! PANIC! PANIC!

Luckily I had the fire extinguisher handy and was able to put out the flames quickly. I singed the spark plug wires otherwise no real damage except to my underwear.

Now i'm really puzzled. What had caused the transmission fluid to boil over if it wasn't the engine overheating? I'm really thinking hard on this one and decided, if it wasn't the engine overheating then it must be the oil cooler lines plugged, or the transmission pump wasn't working.

Then it hit me.
While I was cleaning the fuel tank and re-installing the lines, I pressure checked the system for flow, and the tank bowed when I hit it with a low pressure charge. I knew the tank was not plugged so it must be a line. I was right, one of the line sections that had hung on the wall was plugged. It was brand new so how could that be?

Are you getting it yet. That's right, when I checked the line and ran a small rod through it, a bunch of dirt came out and the line cleared. AHA! it was a dirt dobber (mud wasp) that had gotten into that 3/8ths line and plugged it up.

Could it be that the transmission cooler line had suffered the same fate. I yanked them off and sure enough the output line from the transmission was plugged about three inches in.

The end result was that the transmission oil was just circulating in the trans and building up enough heat to cause it to boil over when I shut the engine down. If i'm really lucky, I didn't burn up the clutches in the trans.

So that my friends is how an insect almost burned down my truck.

What A loss that would have been.