Mystery Part

["Leo Horishny" <horishny@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I had the gold box go out on my 75 196ci recently.  Thanks to the list and
everyone else's horror stories:-)  I had it in mind where to
suspect my problems were and, it turned out to be true.  2 things popped up
afterwards:

a)  When I'd restarted the Scout after it sitting 4 days, there was a
definite valve knock that concerned me, so I pulled the valve cover
to see if there was anything obvious amiss, I had to wrangle with a piece of
spring steel that rested between the valve cover gasket
and the manifold and fit between the pushrods.  It was cutout to cover as
much of the upper part of the manifold around the pushrods
and extended down to just above the valve springs. (That's as concise a
description as I can make)
Well, I did notice that it was held in place by 2 holes that corresponded to
the upper 2 valve cover bolts.  When I went to put things back
together due to how thin the metal was, one of the holes was et away and the
other almost so, such that it was difficult to put back in
place properly and when I'd buttoned things up, the valve noise was gone but
it sounded like this 'shield' was getting hit.
When I took it to the local Navistar part guy that I've gotten some Scout
parts from before (Derrick Terry, Silver State Navistar), he'd never
seen anything like it, nor the old gas engine parts guy he took it to.
Another mechanic I'd spoken to during this event told me, he'd seen
something like it on some 392 engines he'd worked on.  He said it was a
device to ensure oil from the top of the manifold flowed back to
the valve springs(?)   Anyone else on the list know what I'm talking about
and if it's necessary?

b)  Since I put in the gold box I've noticed, that to my limited engine
knowledge, feels like a timing/advance problem with the Scout.  It starts
and runs fine, but when I accelerate the engine in order to shift, it starts
to hesitate and miss slightly.  I can make it quit when I back off the
throttle and when I upshift to the next gear, since then I'm lower on my
rpms.   Did I possibly tweak the distributor when I was unsucessfully
trying to remove the cap?(while I was trying to diagnose my goldbox symptoms
earlier.  I didn't realize there was another screw holding the cap in place
once you sprung the spring clips)  Should I have my timing rechecked after
replacing the goldbox?

Leo Horishny
Sun Valley, NV