The engine is running. I have quite a bit of tuning to do as right now it's idling around 1200rpm and I think it's running rich, but so far sounds good and rev's clean. I do have a few issues with the clutch though, it won't go into gear when the engine is running. I think I've narrowed it down to the pilot bearing not being centered or something as from pulling it apart once already I have the clutch disc and throwout bearing installed correctly. A video of it high idling and a few rev's. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxFKO-lmNQE
I swapped out the rear gears yesterday. Went from a 3.08 to 3.42. Drove the car around quite a bit after work today. Didn't hear any rear end noise at all, at least not over the exhaust I have the idle set pretty steady at 1000 rpm right now, I may go lower later. Driving around it's running pretty good, just working out a few lean spots in the fuel table and then I have to start working the timing table. The reduction in the vacuum shifts the whole fuel and spark table (the engine thinks it's under load with the old tune). A picture of the 3.08's, they looked good coming out. New seatbelts! They only offer the single retractor style, seems the dual retractors were a one, maybe two year deal. So these are from a late 70's 3rd Gen F-body. Mounted up nicely. This ought to work nicely. I'll do the driver's side tomorrow. The passenger side was a test run.
Thank you! Working on a short list of things before heading out to Hot Rod's DragWeek 2011 next week. Going to redo the primer coat, getting a new windshield in on Tuesday, cleaning the car out in general, have to do one last oil change before hitting the road and of course get the EFI tuning tightened up with the new combination. But so far going good now.
The count down to Drag Week is winding down fast! The car is running good. Finally looked up the route I'm going to take, and according to Google maps the round trip is going to be 3,525 miles! So likely a hundred or two more than that when all is said and done. Yeehaw! http://www.hotrod.com/2011/dragweek/
I've done quite a bit since the last update. In a two week period I put over 4,000 miles on the car. 3,822 going on Hot Rod's Drag Week and another 400 going to Elko, NV. I have the engine running pretty decently now. Idling around 900rpm, and could possibly go lower. Oil pressure has been fantastic with 10w-30 in the crank case, hot idle after lots of driving is around 20psi and cruising at 2300rpm is around 55psi. :TU: Drag Week was a blast. Because I just got the engine together and I was unsure of how the rear axles would take the drag radial's I was pretty easy on the car. Definitely got more comfortable as the week went on. Finally got my car weighed for the first time. With the gas tank full and me out of the car it weighed in at: So right at 3800lbs with me in it. Kinda heavy for an x-body, but I have all the A/C stuff on it and full interior. This is pretty much how the week went: :TU: On the HotRod.com site, there are a couple pictures of my car which I thought was cool :TU: It was cool, my first run down the drag strip matched EXACTLY my last run down a drag strip a year and a half ago. 14.7 seconds at 100.0mph ou: but then I changed out my injectors for larger ones, bolted on the drag radials and soft passed it to see where my tune was with the new injectors and ran a 14.4 @ 99.9mph. Then hot lapped it back in line with a bit of tune adjustment and knocked down a 14.00 @ 103.27mph :Brow: Next stop was at Great Bend, KS. Made some tune tweaks and had two runs at 13.5x seconds at 105.x mph :TU: Amarillo, TX track was real rough. I had zip for traction even in the upper gears, and my best was a 14.53@98.25mph. Everyone ran slower there, the DA was apparently over 5,000ft too. Next stop was Tulsa, OK. I don't remember what I ran there, the weather was not cooperating, I think it was around 13.8@105mph, but not positive. Then the last day back at Topeka, KS. I was feeling more comfortable with the car and the drag radials. I lowered the air pressure in the tires, and ran once for a 13.3@106mph, another improvement :TU: Then I figured I'd launch it harder and got back in line. My 60ft's had been a consistent 2.1 seconds all week, very easy out of the hole for traction and hoping not to break parts. On my last run of the week I dropped the clutch harder, ran the engine up to 6,000rpm, and even chirped the tires going into 2nd :3gears: but when I hit third there was a LOUD BOOOOM and the engine quit. I managed to coast the rest of the track and to the return road. I wasn't smoking and there didn't appear to be a liquid trail :TU: I got out, popped the hood, and saw the alternator belt snapped and took out the power wires to the HEI coil, not only killing the ignition, but letting a full charge of raw fuel at WOT go into the hot headers to make the BOOOOMM!!!! I jammed the wires back into the HEI connector (the wires broke), fired the engine up and hurried to the timing booth and back to the pits before I overheated. Had a nice 1.9 60ft on that run, dang! Turned out the alternator seized up ou: So another Drag Weeker drove me to the parts store, I picked up another set of belts and an alternator, got it on and back in line for another run. But it was not to be, the rains came and ended the event :ball: But I had a great time over all and that was the only problem the car gave me on the whole trip. Also I was averaging 17mpg on the trip. I think there is more in it, but I haven't maximized the tune, and from some changes I made to the tables it wasn't cutting fuel when coasting and there are usually good gains from that. Fast forward to today. I started making up a mount for a trigger wheel sensor. This bracket is probably too flimsy but I'll weld a brace on it and see how it stiffens up. I also have a couple of other design ideas floating around in my head to try. I want something simple and works. From below: From above: I hope to go live with my tach signal coming from the Crank Shaft in the next two weeks, then from there do a firmware update to MS2/extra software to gain back the fuel cut when coasting and gain an auto-target idling option as right now the car idled up when I went to lower elevation. And a gratuitous picture in line.
It's to give an rpm reading to the MegaSquirt computer, actually ever ten degree's of rotation the computer gets an update on engine speed, so pretty high resolution. The computer takes that information and does both fuel and spark control. The advantage of a crank trigger over the distributor's pickup coil (which I currently use, it's the thing the ignition module is plugged into) is the slack in the timing chain effects the timing up to 5 degrees. Realistically on my "low" horsepower application it doesn't effect much, but I hope it starts up better and will run slightly smoother after the change. At some point I hope to remove the distributor completely though and go to a coil on plug like a new engine and clean up the front of the engine some.
Ah, finally dropped the $$$$ and ordered an McLeold SFI bellhousing and a new clutch set. The current clutch has around 40,000 miles on it and though it looks like I can probably get another 20,000 out of it, I had concerns about how it was holding with the drag radials bolted on. Hopefully I never experience a catastrophic clutch/flywheel failure, but as I want to start dropping the clutch at 3,000+rpm at the line it'll be good to have.
You're probably right! At least a set of spider gears with more splines and axles. When I get this bolted on I'll be able to rev up the engine before dropping the clutch. And I may of gone overkill on the clutch for this car.....
Got the car running off the crank trigger. The timing is way stable as expected, and the tach signal cleaned up a TON. Holding the engine at a steady rpm is really easy, +/-10 rpm variance. I changed out the inputs on the MS2 board, from VR to Opto-Hall, but have heard that wasn't a necessary change and in fact may of been better off left as the VR input. So I'll likely go back to that because with these changes, if the crank trigger gets taken out, such as by the bracket coming loose or road debris, then the engine dies and I'm stuck until I get a new one, where as with the VR inputs, if that happens, I just plug the wire coming from the distributor's pickup coil into the MS2 and away I go, a one minute fix. At least until I go to 8 coil packs and ditch the distributor entirely....
Looking at my Youtube account, a history of progress =P January 2008, I installed my Centurion's engine in front of a TKO-600 and the V8 adventures in this car began. My friend video'd and edited this for me in May 2008. Around September I pulled the engine out and started rebuilding the suspension and brakes for this car while starting on the new engine building. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_CCLSwdLhU April 2009, my first install of this engine is up and running, fueled by a Q-jet and ignited by a 4-pin HEI. 10:1 cast pistons, '70 Iron heads with Stage1 valves and light grinding by me and a TA118 cam. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqMdW7D90rc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CozGE4VQC9Y September 2009, I get the car fired up with EFI. Have my IAC valve settings way out of wack, but it runs, and didn't need any help starting in the morning. Still running off the 4-pin HEI. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxJAPtx_B0g October 2009, I set up ignition timing control by converting my 4-pin HEI to a 7-pin HEI and having the MegaSquirt feed the 7-pin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLeG1TQY84M April 2010, I blew two head gaskets at Firebird in Phoenix, Arizona on the Car Craft Anti-Tour. I thought I'd holed a piston, but just turned out to be massive head gasket failure, which blew out all the oil seals in the car. Leaked like the Exxon Valdez going home, but it got me there. I save some blow by, by unplugging the fuel injector and spark plug wire to that cylinder for the drive. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K-WB6xvAMc July 2010, I figured I'd upgrade the cam to a TA290. It was a nice cam, but I think coil bind was to make it, and it's replacement short lived. It's amazing how much quicker and nicer the engine rev's now compared to then. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WzvZHFepFc May 2011, last video before pulled the engine out late June, got a full year out of it! I pulled it to swap on aluminum heads and freshen the gaskets and rings for Drag Week. Hoping for a turn around of a couple weeks, but then found a broken ring land on one piston and cracks on another. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5XgziOZIHg August 2011, got the engine running again with the Aluminum heads, higher compression pistons, and roller cam. At this point, it was having shifter issues with the transmission, but it was quickly solved later and had a successful trip on Drag Week! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxFKO-lmNQE
It's a simple cast iron pipe with end caps. I went to the hardware store, picked up a 2" diameter iron pipe 4" long and a set of caps for it. Then drilled three holes in one cap (top) and one hole in the other cap (bottom), and used a pipe tap to thread the holes. The primer pump feed (mechanical pump) feeds into the top(1), the return from the fuel pressure regulator on the fuel rail returns to the top(2) and then there is an unrestricted return line to the gas tank hooked to the top(3). Then the single feed at the bottom runs to the high pressure pump inlet. The pipe/canister holds I think around a quart of fuel, maybe a tad more? I've ran the gas tank down to less than a gallon in it with no effects on the engine running (while braking, turning, etc). I'm not having any luck digging up a picture through the firewall here at work, but I can upload one when I get home tonight.
Here is what it looks like in raw form. Crudely simple. I had it mounted where the carbon canister was for a good while. It was easy access to prove to me that this method and system worked, which it does perfectly. I have it mounted on the firewall now with far fewer rubber lines.
Look what I found! :laugh: 38 minutes in is the run my alternator seized up, snapped the belt, which then took out the HEI power wires and let a raw charge of fuel into the hot headers for a BIG BOOM! I barely made it to the return road, popped the hood fearing the worse, seeing the missing belt and the hanging wires, I jammed the wires back into the cap, fired the car up and made haste to the pits before I over heated :laugh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOw-cojsPXk&t=38m
Changed out the six body mounts on the car this morning. Took about three hours. The service manual and directions with the Energy Suspension set said to do one side at a time. It was a piece of cake really. Warning: This could make north-eastern folk cry :laugh: Had to start by removing my "rusty" battery tray =P This was under the tray, the top of one of the front mounts. This is the underside of one of the front bushings. The middle bushing. And the rear bushing. The rears were by far the most deteriorated. The new bushing set. The simple jack arraignment I used. The big jack has a length of 2x4 on the body. I used the little jack to bring the frame up or down a bit in finer movements than the big jack (namely when laying on my side). The subframe connectors I think made it so I had to jack the body up more than normal as the rear of the frame did not drop as much as I think it would of otherwise. Lifted the body up quite a bit to clear the rear frame mount. None of the bolts gave me an ounce of trouble. However it looks like the design of OE bushings trapped water in them. When I got this one out I decided I needed to go get new bolts. Then I pulled this one out of the other side! Yep, needed new bolts! At least the threads are pristine! The old bushing set. You can see the rears were definitely the most deteriorated. New front bushing. New middle bushing. New rear bushing. The immediate noticeable effects are the fact the subframe connectors are no longer touching the body. So that's good for sure. I don't know if it would of solved my tire rubbing problem up front with the wide tires since the fronts didn't look too bad. But now I have skinnier tires on there so that's a non-issue at the moment. I think now that I got these in, at some point I'll take Jeff's advice and square up the front and rear frames, though I did look at the alignment holes and it didn't seem to out of place, and once that's done I'll weld the subframe connectors in. I didn't want to weld them before knowing that the body mount bushings were shot.
