Here it is up and running. The camera as usual picks up the pump noise much more than you can actually hear it. [video=youtube;8uFm6k9f4qg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uFm6k9f4qg[/video]
Did a few minor things yesterday. I replaced the broken/sun cooked vacuum/boost gauge mounted to the A-pillar with a new one and plumb'd it in to the crankcase to better watch the crankcase vacuum or pressure. I've yet to see pressure on it, but I haven't watched it much near WOT either. Now I will. I tried looking for a crankcase vacuum leak, but wasn't successful in finding one. I did see the driver's side valve cover is still leaking oil at the rear, so I will find some time to pull the valve covers and RTV them on the head side of the gasket too. Did some WOT tuning from 2,000 to 3,500rpm. It started at going right to 10.5 AFR and now have it at 12.5 AFR and it sounds much happier there too. From there I've extrapolated and pulled a bunch of fuel out from the rest of the table and will run a few more tests today or tomorrow. Just inching my way leaner. I'm leaving the ignition timing at 32 at WOT unless I get some track or dyno time to say otherwise. The folks dyno'ing aluminum headed 455's say on average the engine makes peak power between 32 and 34, and usually minimal gain in that range. I plugged the electric cut outs in long enough to open them all the way up so I could clean them. There was a fair amount of exhaust crud built up around the seals so with a bit of gentle scraping with a screw driver and green scotch brite, the seal surface and the butterfly cleaned up nicely. I may re-install them after work today.
Since I reassembled my Mustang's 289, it's had a steady drip from the rear of the oil pan too. I actually ran some UV dye through it and found some valve cover and sending unit leaks, but the drip is still there. So, tomorrow, I'm pulling the pan and doing the rear main seal; I have a feeling I did the same thing you did. Luckily, getting the pan off is easy in an early Mustang without pulling the motor. Of course, it's no fun lying under a dripping engine either. My car seems as cursed as yours over the last three years. Is your car a family member's car, too? Mine was my mom's back in college, so it's a family member.
I had practically indestructible reliability out of the car from 2002 to 2013, then just a curse of a time since. I'm hoping to be over that hill and back on track of solid reliability (crossing my fingers!). It was my Grandma's car! She bought it used in 1979 and she drove it until the early 90's when the 231 V6 started eating lifters. I got the car in 1996, at which point my Dad and I changed the lifters out again, then a few months later it blew a head gasket, then had decent reliability until I bought my first '69 Firebird in 2000. At that time we did a garage rebuild (no machine work), but it got new rings, bearings, gaskets and a new NAPA replacement cam. It then shattered the stock TH200, so I put a 200-4r in it since I had put a 700-4r in my Firebird and liked the overdrive. The Firebird got totaled in 2002 (guy ran a red light), and I was back in the Skylark for a couple years until I bought the Centurion. Then when I moved in 2005 to the land of actual snow and winter I started driving the Skylark a lot more regularly since the heater worked a lot better (still the V6). In 2008 I started the 455/TKO-600 conversion, which didn't go well, but in February 2009 I was driving it as my primary car again (455/TKO-600). Then I took it down in the fall through the winter to upgrade/replace all the suspension and brake pieces (4-wheel discs, 8.5" rear axle, all new steering components). Then from 2009 to 2013, with the exception of blowing the head gaskets once, I've had great reliability out of it between scheduled "winter" upgrades. Then 2013 everything just fell apart from a reliability stand point. I had three different break downs, each unrelated to the other, between here and Denver, just a mere 800 miles (but the a/c was working great!). I'm hoping I'm over that hill. I have no further major upgrade plans for the car (just cosmetic stuff now) so hopefully it stays together for at least another 50,000 miles, if not 100,000.
Sounds so familiar...mine went south in 2012 after years of almost turn-key reliability. I started driving mine in '94, and I drove it probably 70,000 miles from that point to '06 when I tore it apart for a ton of bodywork. Then it was out of commission for four years, and in 2012 a trail of awful luck hit and I'm still working my way through it. Almost everything driveline related seems to have a ghost in it. Good luck with yours! I hope this is it for you for a while. It's awful refixing the same crap again.
With the exception of the second clutch pressure plate issue this last spring (it appears I did not torque the bolts on assembly...), most the issues have been one off deals at least. Good luck with yours as well! I've likely got over 150,000 miles on the car since 1996 as I have around 90,000 miles on the car since the 455 swap in 2009, so its particularly painful that it's been fighting me the last two years.
Yesterday I decided to finally tackle the wobbly steering column issue many GM's get when four mounting bolts in the tilt column come loose, and while I was in there figured I'd change the lock cylinder as well since I could remove the key when it was on. I did this same task on the Centurion about a year ago and going from a wobbly steering wheel to a solid one is pretty nice (duh!). It took longer than I wanted it to because a few differences in setup from the Centurion's column had me scratching my head some, and I must of re-pulled it apart six times thinking there was a problem with the install of the sector gear before I figured out the column shifter had moved causing the sector gear not to rotate back to locked. Lesson learned. And my handy dandy pin pulling tool. I had used one like this on the Centurion, but the bolt snapped when I tried to use it this time. So I went to the hardware store and bought some stainless steel hardware and remembered to grease the threads before starting again.
Took the car out for a nice trip to the Lehman caves, about 65 miles from here. No hiccups and smooth sailing. About 40 miles each way lacked cellphone service so it's a good thing it didn't have any issues [video=youtube;JSuKN7CtoFI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSuKN7CtoFI[/video] Oh yeah, and the new seals for the exhaust cuts showed up today!
Look at those clouds! Beautiful! Can you ship some over here to southern California, along with maybe a couple of dew drops?
I do have to say, once you get clear of the CA mountains the clouds definitely change characteristics. I forgot about the picture of the car at the destination
The check off list is getting smaller. I got the transmission and diff fluid levels checked. Still chasing where the crankcase vacuum leak is, but its non-critical. Getting the A/C up and running is the only "big" thing left on the list, hopefully get it sealed up and vacuumed down today.
Got some things done today. Spent part of the morning going over the firewall looking for places hot air has been getting through in an effort to cool down the inside of the car some. Used some duct tape liberally around some OE seals that are falling apart as well as duct taped down the shifter boot. I really should just screw it down.... but for now duct tape will keep the hot air from flowing in. A few places where I've got wires going through the firewall I gave a small squirt of Right Stuff to fill in the gaps between the wires. Even with the bit of reflective bubble insulation on the floors it still gets pretty warm though. I really need some carpet. The new seals for the exhaust cutouts came in the mail a week ago. Out with the old and in with the new. I did not expect them to be cut to fit, but I managed and so far they are sealing up :TU: Got the drag radials mounted up on some Buick rims, ready for Drag Week. I replaced some o-rings and vacuumed down the A/C system today and put about 50psi of freon in the system and ran it a bit then let it sit for an hour and it was still holding so I finished charging the system. As tested it only got down to about 50F out the vent, but I had minimal air flow sitting in the barn, and the engine temp was holding steady at 199F. I'm leaving a thermometer in the vent for a while to see if it does better going down the road. With the system running the low side was charged up to 28 psi and the high side up to 224 psi. With the engine off the system equalized to just over 85psi, which should be fine. I'm not entirely sure how my elevation plays into the readings, as everything I read only brings up elevation when pulling the vacuum. The temperature was about right. Was maybe 85F out today, and in the barn was a bit cooler.
Got some more small things done. Finally installed the seat covers I got a while ago. The seats are pretty beat, and the cloth material was getting tougher to clean. I wanted to get a light or medium blue cover, but grey was a close as I could find. Overall I'm pretty happy with how it came out. Might still adjust it a bit here or there but not bad. I forgot to take a true before picture. With some sun and heat they should smooth out some. Some minor unseen things are some adjustments I made to the EFI tune. It wasn't starting reliably when I had the A/C turned on, so set the IAC valve to be a bit more open along with turning on the closed loop fueling control that I had disabled when I had to re-tune for the cam change. I didn't have an indicator light up on the dash when I was datalogging to an SD card in the megasquirt, so I corrected that situation so I know for sure it's logging. Then I made some minor changes to the daily driving dash cluster and some significant changes to the "race" cluster. I moved the MPH readout to the left side and put the MPG read out in with the tach and AFR gauge. Moved the ignition timing readout to an easier spot to read and the blank area above it actually has hidden indicators, one of which is the datalogging indicator. The camera kind of white-washes the white faced "race" cluster. I made changes to the colors things change when needed. I "had" a lot of reds pop up for things, but now I've narrowed red warnings to 6,000rpm or greater, engine sync failure, and injector duty cycle over 90%. Everything else essentially lights up green early on and if some thing is off, it'll dim out, but those things are non-critical things. Fortunately, if I find something "annoying" or need to make an adjustment, it's fairly simple and quick. While poking around with the settings, I think I may hook the 2-step wire back up to the clutch pedal and try some 2-step and flat shift features in mega squirt again. I last tried it in 2011, but I just didn't have a great handle on the settings and would just light up the tires when I dumped the clutch. I don't plan on just dumping the clutch this year, but would probably allow for a more consistent launch from the rpm and throttle position side. Though with the digital cluster I'll be able to hit the exact same throttle position more reliably without the 2-step assistance. I also want to setup an external shift light as well just in case there is a hiccup with the screen mid-run I won't necessarily need to shift by sound or abort the run.
Ran into a slight hiccup yesterday morning heading to work when I figured I'd drop a gear and run up some rpm when it suddenly the engine cut out like a rev limiter does and then came back on around 4,200rpm. All the gauges checked out as normal when I looked down at them, including oil pressure, so it had me scratching my head thinking "what rev limiting feature did I accidentally turn on?" but I did not have my lap top with me to really check out the settings until I'd get home from work. So on the way home from work I figured I'd try and repeat the problem, but this time I turned the SD card datalogging on and tried it in a lower gear so I wouldn't need to run up the mph and sure enough, just over 4,500rpm the tach dropped to almost zero and came back online around 4,000rpm. Successfully repeated and recorded. Get home and review the log, shows right at 4,700rpm the megasquirt lost track of the crankshaft position (loss sync error: tooth count) so it killed spark and fuel, designated rpm at 200 until it figured out where the crankshaft was in its rotation, then at 4,200rpm, and resumed normal engine operation. So it wasn't a rev limiter setting... Went and checked under the hood and looked at the crank trigger, and sure enough, I had it adjusted almost a 1/4" from the trigger wheel, when it should be closer to a 1/16th of an inch!! Tightened up the clearance and this morning checked it two more times at highway speed and ran through the first three gears to just short of 6,000rpm nice and cleanly, so back to business as usual :TU: **The reason the sensor was so far out is I've been chasing a small oil leak at the front of the engine, and as part of the checking I thought perhaps the source could be the timing cover seal, which may also solve why I'm unable to pull high crank case vacuum if it was damaged. So I pulled the balancer/crank pulley off to check it, which required removing the crank sensor. Sadly the area between the seal and where I'm seeing oil was quite clean and dry, so it wasn't the seal, and I recall re-installing the sensor and a tooth not being lined up with it so just set it conservatively wide, but didn't think I was as far off as I was. And sadly, my oil leak is either oil pan, oil pan bolt or most likely the oil pump itself =/
Got a ton of stuff done yesterday. RTV'd the valve cover gaskets down, they had been weeping out the back. Replaced the front wheel bearings, just because I've had a bad run of front wheel bearings going out on me the last few years, lol. Greased all the zerk fittings on the car. Changed the oil and filter, put heavier oil in than I normally do. Then last night I bought a trailer that was for sale locally. It's a little bigger than I wanted (4'x8') but the price was right. Its a tilt back with LED lights all the way around. It has a 7-pin connector, so I upgraded the Skylark to a 7-pin so the reverse lights on the trailer work. Now I have trailer work to do, d'oh! Namely securing down the tires and canopy as at the moment that is all I intend to really have on the trailer. With the tires out of the trunk, that alone will make it easier to pack. A Buick with a trailer hitch and seven pin connector :laugh:
Pretty much just have to wash the car and pack a few tools and spare parts and I'll be ready to hit the road. Plan is to leave town after work on Wednesday and make it to Salt Lake City. From there it's 20 hours to Drag Week registration/tech on Sunday, so a fairly leisurely drive to be there on Saturday afternoon. Then afterwards drive I-70 through the mountains on the way home.
Thanks! Yeah I decided that unloading ALL this from the trunk everyday, then reloading it again after running gets a bit tiresome, though I've gotten pretty good at it! Plus I'll have a few other uses for the trailer at other times. My suitcase and ice chest were in the back seat. (2012) Two drag radials hiding in there. (2012) See! (2012)
Washed the car up today for it's voyage east. I switched the oil pressure and crank case vacuum/pressure gauges so the oil pressure gauge is on the A-pillar and easier to see. I decided to wire up the 2-step and flat shift in the Megasquirt, but without spending some real time with it I don't particularly care for all the noise it makes on the two-step. When I had an MSD 6-AL2 on there with a 2-step, I got it to purr really nicely with the gas pedal to the floor and sitting at 3,000rpm, but with two minutes of playing with the MegaSquirt's settings it still made a racket so I'll just leave it off for now. Also decided to throw together a two stage shift light using a yellow/orange and red LED. Cut apart a piece of PVC pipe, painted it black, drilled a couple holes and wired up the two lights to the MegaSquirt. For testing and the video I set the first light to come on at 1,200rpm and the second one at 1,800rpm, but currently have them set at 5,400rpm and 5,800rpm. I'll adjust them as necessary based on my actual reaction time on the track. But I think with the yellow/orange light coming on it'll get me ready for the actual shift. This will also be handy if my digital dash screen has a hiccup for some reason, I can still run watching the oil pressure gauge and using the shift lights. [video=youtube;3DybLnGYSIU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DybLnGYSIU[/video] And the engine is hosed off and ready to rock
In classic Drag Week prep style, apparently hosing my engine off for this picture toasted my throttle position sensor. It started acting a bit buggy after hosing the engine off, which it has done for years but usually when it drys out it goes back to normal, however this time it completely shorted out registering no voltage output change with throttle movement when tested with the voltmeter. NAPA has ones that will for but have to order for $32, but of course they have one on the shelf for $55. I ordered the same Edelbrock one off Amazon for $32 and it should be here Wednesday, the day I leave.... I disabled the TPS stuff and did a quick tune for accel enrichment based on the MAP signal, but as expected it is quite laggy with really fast throttle changes, but for normal and minorly spirited driving it works fine. If the sensor doesn't show up on time, I'll find a parts store along the way that hopefully will have the $32 variant on the shelf, but I'm crossing my fingers that its not a repeat of the rear main seal fiasco.... I measured out the volume of my trailer and got 78 cubic feet (4.5x8x2 +6cf box on the tongue) , far below the max 142 cubic feet specified in the rules. Basically less than 2ft tall as opposed to 4ft tall on the u-haul trailer. So good to go there :thumbs: I bolted down a box I had sitting in the barn for additional small things storage. I have steel cable strap running through the tires to lock them to the trailer, plus the straps to keep them from moving. I'm going to throw an ice chest back there too for lunch supplies, etc. The trunk is mighty empty looking with only two tool boxes and a few quarts of oil. I'm bringing a spare drag radial this year because a rule change that requires only race tires for the track, and I want to limit risk if I have one get damaged or cut during the drives. I need to put the center caps back on from having the wheels re-balanced on Friday, otherwise, just need to pack some clothes, an ice chest, install a TPS and good to go.
