1962 Mercury Monterey Project

Since I got my truck running I was finally able to go empty my used oil at the part store. The collection pan has been FULL since I drained the engine and the transmission on the Mercury - and I needed to get rid of some more in my oil pan & parts cleaning bin. The truck runs fine, but I can hear & feel the power steering pump breathing its last. It vibrates through the steering wheel and sounds like it is humming a tune as I drive. It seems to work ok for now, but there is clearly something not happy about it. More on that adventure later. Lady E came out to help. She climbed into the engine bay with a plastic pan (like you use for collecting coolant) and several scrapers and set about cleaning up the front cross member, suspension, steering box, and clutch linkages. She squatted in the hole for 2 hours and scraped and scraped and pushed grease and dirt off the car until some parts turned a new color. She discovered suspension pieces that had not seen daylight in 60 years. Her...

Now that the engine is on a stand, I can do a better job of figuring out why it won't turn. So, I took a coffee break today and opened up the bottom of the engine. The deconstruction probably took 30 minutes. I turned off the umpteen oil pan bolts and managed to lower it without spilling the sump. Actually - it looks pretty good. A lot less sludgy than I was expecting after 60 years. I did drop a wrench in there by accident - and gladly it neither splashed everywhere nor did it completely swallow the tool before I grabbed it. I had to remove the oil pump in the process. This weird thing has an oil pump outside the engine. You can see it in the upper left corner of the picture above. It seems to turn - so that is positive. I also removed the fuel pump. It is mechanical - with a lever that slides into the front cover and is pushed up and down by an eccentric wheel somewhere in there. I don't have the front cover off yet - but the pump and fuel filter came off without incident. I ...