Having discovered that both of the motor mount nuts were missing the Cadillac had earned a stay of execution. Early last week I purchased a new set of fasteners for only a dollar! After installing them I had expected to just start the car up and see if the “clunk” sound had gone away. Imagine my surprise when it cranked over and over and over, and over again without starting up!

I’ll spare you all of the details of troubleshooting the no start issue, but suffice to say I replaced my ignition coil, and second guessed myself countless times on the proper firing order and timing for this engine. At the end of the day, (I think) the timing was retarded by nearly a whole cylinder and one of the terminals of the coil wire was smashed.

My victory over the timing, and getting the car running was short lived though. It ran for only a few seconds before I heard the “clunk” noise I had been diagnosing, and it occurred a couple more times before I shut it down.

A new mystery has surfaced as well. I may not have already mentioned that my oil dipstick seems to be a replacement from some other vehicle, and that it seems like it was actually broken off near the end, so it doesn’t reach the oil in the crankcase. Well, in addition to that mismatch I discovered something else quite interesting while troubleshooting my timing issue. I had the motor near TDC for cylinder 1, but had gotten a bit past it, so I started to turn the engine “backward” to get it back to TDC. As I did so, I noticed that the oil dipstick seemed to be moving! Curious, I continued to turn the motor backward, and the dipstick continued to be forced out of the dipstick tube!

I’ve put off removing the motor long enough, it’s going to come out, and I’m going to do a very thorough tear down and inspection of motor. Hopefully, I’ll find the answers to all of these mysteries, and hopefully I’ll find that the motor is in good enough condition to use for a while.