Issues & advice on selling price.

That is exactly what I would do... If you really like the car that much, swap the engines and keep driving it. You can always put a bigger, badder 302 in later. And I'll bet you'd be really glad at that point in time that you decided to do what it takes to keep it. Then again, I am the most stubborn person you will ever meet. Just look at my wrecked, half stripped '74 Grabber I'm still sitting on almost a year later, refuseing to cut it up... I will have a totally ridiculous amount of money in that car before it's over. Most people would have scrapped the car a long time ago... so take what I say with a grain of salt.

 

I belive ticking is an understatement I made when I was hopeful for the thing. It's a thud, and it's all the time, much faster under load.

4 and 5 are beyond my skills, or I'd taken a stab at it. At this point I just don't know what to do, and even if I did know what to do I wouldn't have the capability of doing it.

Thanks, though.

Steve

 

Why is it out of your skills?
Its fairly simple... if you can work a torque wrench, a ratchet and wrench you can do this repair. It seems alot harder than it actually is.
I'd feel comfortable doing this project alone, and I havent had the experience all alone very many times.

 

How close are you to member Don Graham? I know he's in Az somewhere, bet he would be glad to give a listen to your engine and give you some realtime info, hard to diagnose a problem sometimes without actually hearing it, as others have said, may just be something simple. I'd contact Don and see what he thinks, you might be able to save the Comet cheaply.

 

To begin with I'm not allowed to work on my car in my apartment complex. Besides that I can usually find an hour or two a day where there's no security/maintenance guys around to do it -- and then on top of that pulling the valve covers off my engine is as deep as I've ever been.

He's actually very far away. Further than I'm willing to try to drive this and far enough that I'm sure it'd be a HUGE inconvenience on his part.