The Break Down of a '69 Pontiac OHC inline six

Concurrently I'm re-working the wiring because this isn't cool, lol


I removed the dash and pulled essentially all the non-stock or radio related wiring out of the car. Same with under the hood.



Drilling out some existing holes in the firewall I'm adding multi-pin duetsch connectors. I'm about ready to finalize my pinout on them, but being held up on trying to decide if I'm going to add an Input/Output (IO) board under the hood or not. If I do, then I'll likely reduce the number of wires going through the firewall by 6+ wires as the sensors will be brought into the megasquirt via the CAN bus with the EGT box.




Testing out the little white IO board with the Megasquirt. If it works as I expect, I'll install it in the same box as the CAN EGT under the hood and run in the same CAN loop. As a reminder, my 4L60e controller also runs on the CAN bus.


Another little project I'm dabbling in is modernizing the hood tach. The stock innards are junk. I found this $15 "boat" tach on e-bay and preliminary tests show it may work well. I would like a faster refresh rate, but all in all would get the job done. I would also like to put a few indicator lights in the hood tach as well. Such as a shift light, a "check engine" or "Safety" light that would come on if the engine was leaning out, over heating, losing oil pressure, etc. Maybe a green light to indicate if I hit my boost target or such as well. I think the hood tach is original and the housing has seen better days. I've covered a big part of it with epoxy and re-enforced the screw stands. I'll post up some pictures after I've sanded down the epoxy I just dumped all over it.




A short video bench testing the tach. I think I'm going to cut some tin or thin plastic sheet to block most the screen outside the rpm gauge.


I'm also starting on installing the screen behind the dash. FINALLY going to clean that up!

 

Poking away at smaller details. Since I'm more certain on using an external input/output (IO) box I've be re-viewing my wiring plan. Still making headway on sorting out the wiring cleanup.

Updating the firmware on the Megasquirt EFI, and testing out connecting external modules. The 4L60e has been connected via CAN bus for years, now adding the EGT box and a small IO board. Got them all connected up on the software side.



I've pulled the dash out, and finally getting around to putting a touchscreen behind the dash trim.

 

Just about done with the ECU to firewall wiring. Next up is finishing up the dash wiring and cleaning up the engine bay in prep for installing the new engine.







The loom is just stuff I had on hand, but plan on changing it out before it goes back into the car.


Another side project besides the digital hood tach is possibly installing 3 LED gauges next to the headlight switch. I still have to sort out the mounting since the dash slopes back so aggressively.

Here its just showing dummy numbers of RPM, AFR and an uncalibrated sensor, but thinking of having oil pressure, MAP/Boost and AFR.


A video of them running. At this point they were all set to just show RPM.


A crappy rendering of what I'm thinking. And still have the touch screen in place of the clock delete panel.

 

Got my webber intake manifold back with the injector bungs installed for intake manifold #4! The runner length of the Marshall intake is a little short and the fuel rail interferes with the thermostat housing, so I've been contemplating converting a Weber intake manifold over to EFI and have made progress on that.

The original concept mock up. I had the Weber intake on hand when making the header so I knew it would clear.


This would be essentially like the Marshall intake, except with longer runners.


But I'd like to add a little volume to the intake manifold and bring the air in at a 45º angle so #1 doesn't get by-passed as badly on airflow.


But now some actual progress. I found someone local to me to give it a go at putting some EFI bungs into the intake.


The fuel rail still needs to be cut down and fittings added to the ends.


Someone on Facebook commented about it would be interesting to use a cam housing as plenum and it looks like a funny DOHC engine, haha.




I should be able to experiment with different plenum volumes and shapes. I'm going to start with one out of steel that I can weld together, but will eventually have an aluminum made up.

 

Been doing other engine related work as well. I wanted to go back to a conventional flow cooling system, still electric, though so I removed the pump shaft and impeller. I want to put a metal core plug in the pump eventually, but for now an expansion plug does the job. One issue with the current EFI manifolds I have is the fuel rail interferes with the stock water outlet, so I cut some plate steel and hose barb to make one that will work with my current manifold. This will remove the two 1" water lines going to the head around the turbo and not require special core plugs.


Put a couple of 1/8th ports in the exhaust before and after the turbo to measure exhaust back pressure. Talking with folks that measure it they recommended expansion blocks to dampen the exhaust pulses before the pressure sensor. So with some scrap metal I put these boxes together with some steel wool in them. Pretty crude, but some black paint and they'll disappear into the engine bay. I'll run some steel brake line from the exhaust to the boxes.


I also made the external oil pump pick up line. It should tuck nice around the motor and frame mounts, but if I find when I get it in the car that its in the way, I'll run some 90º fittings over the top of the motor mount. This was done for a couple of reasons, one is with the windage tray I added a spacer so the pickup would of had to been extended downwards, two the baffles I put in the oil pan to keep the oil in the sump would of been further complicated working around the pickup, three the main studs didn't have provisions for the pickup tube bracket. It also allowed for a larger pick up to the pump.




I also drilled a hole in the belt cover to accommodate the fitting to the block's oil main galley. I wanted to be sure it would comfortably clear the balancer, which it does.


And lastly I was tired of buring my hand or arm reaching down around the turbo exhaust to check the oil. Since I needed to extend the oil dipstick anyways, I decided to raise the dip stick tube as well as add an o-ringed dipstick to control oil. The first picture is the before, with the stock dipstick tube.


Raised up for easy reach.


I added a pull down spring just to be sure it doesn't go anywhere. It blocks the old water inlet port so its good I'm moving away from that configuration.

 

Engine is in the car! I've been hung up on the routing and mounting of the external lash adjuster oil feed line and regulator. Decided to skip it for now and get the project moving forward. Worse case I'll zip tie it in place until I come up with a cleaner solution but it has had me stonewalled for awhile now.


Had to lay it over on its side for transport from the garage to the backyard, but no harm in doing that. Looks a little like German engineering on it side, lol


Thread the needle trailer.




No issues setting it into place. I was happy to see the oil pickup line fits as expected.






The nice thing about a crank trigger and EFI is once the wheel and sensor are bolted on, I know the timing is dead on accurate like it was when I removed it. Making the engine fire right up. Of course I'll double check it, but I do expect it to be spot on. For the cam trigger set up, I rotate the engine so the sensor is about 3 teeth (~30º) before the missing tooth, then line up the cam trigger. So the cam trigger hits first, indicating #1 is on the compression stroke, then the missing tooth. I use these Cherry/ZF hall effect sensors everywhere. As crank and wheel speed sensors on my Skylark, crank sensor on the Firebird, and now cam sensor and soon wheel speed sensor. Crank is the only critical need, so if it dies I can swap in one of the other ones.




Started putting some of the other stuff back in. I need to wait for better/warmer weather to re-paint the turbo hotside then re-wrap it. In the mean time I'll be getting the coolant plumbing re-worked and finish up the electrical.

 

When I was lining up the cam sensor last week, I didn't like the resistance I got rotating the oil pump to drop in the distributor so this weekend I pulled the accessory housing.

I don't know if its the cold or what, but the pump was not happy. I swapped out gears and end plate with no change. Soon as the bolts were tightened, the gears would bind up.



I ended up removing some material from the bottom of the original gears until they spun freely when lubed up. I'll loosely call this blue-printed, lol I cleaned out the whole assembly, re-lubed and put it back together. My assumption is that someone surfaced the pump housing and took too much material off. I'm happy to report it was easy to remove and re-install the oil pickup line.



I also made an aluminum cap for the cam sensor. I'll probably fill all the holes in the housing with JB weld and paint the body black, then put a red Pontiac arrowhead and the engine firing order on the cap.





My old cam sensor setup had a rough time. I used a plexiglass plate to hold the sensor on top, but eventually the engine heat got to the plastic and it cracked, multiple times. In the end, after 10+ years of service it was being held together by duct tape and zipties

How it started...


How it ended....