Another six months

Post date: September 12th, 2020

Well, it's been another six months. Just realized part of why I hadn't posted is the Google Sites changes needed several hours of messing around to get things to work, and making posts is harder. The wonders of progress.

Anyway, this happened:

My air compressor started spitting oil. Looks like I caught it really early - by pure luck! Oil was pooling on the outside of the air outlet tube (!!!) and making a mess. Everything inside the pump looked OK, rings were maybe 1/3rd worn, but one of the cylinders had some rust spots (!!!!). A quick hone, new rings and valves, and back in business. Thankfully my compressor is off-brand enough that it was affordable, but on-brand enough that parts are (somewhat) available.

While digging around for pump information I learned about motor starters and pressure switches and all that. The switch on this unit is barely rated for the motor that's one it. So, While I'm At It, I built a thing:

That's a 5hp rated motor starter, to which I added an hour meter and a power meter, plus a couple of fuses for the trigger wire that's going to a new Square D pressure switch. Surprisingly, it all works! Of course the current motor is 3hp, so the overload circuit it's very useful, but I suspect I'll be upgrading to a 5hp motor at some point, then a 5 hp pump. I found a vendor that sells "genuine" made-in-USA Baldor motors for something like 1/2 retail price, so...... What could go wrong?

I also added a little fluid cooler with -8AN fittings strapped to the belt cage and another water trap on the inlet to the tank. Water literally drips out of the air stream now. I knew an aftercooler would make a difference, but had no idea it'd be that extreme!

In other news, Shaun and I got the serpentine conversion completed. That all went together pretty easily. My fancy type 2 power steering pump leaked when parked, but the vendor took it back to do a rebuild. Seems fine now, but still whines every now and then. Don't know if I need a bigger cooler or if I just need to stop trying non-submerged pumps. I temporarily ran my previous P pump and, of course, it worked perfectly.

The main problem was the R4 compressor. It just made an absolute racket, especially at idle. I spend a LOT of time and money learning how to braze aluminum so I could make inlet and outlet mufflers. Helped a tiny bit, but it was just amazingly noisy. And this is a brand-new ACDelco compressor! Finally gave up, got a Sanden SD7, added a tube-o head, and now it's perfectly quiet. Yeah, I know waaaaay more about A/C hoses and fittings than I ever wanted to. Also convinced Shaun to buy one of the cheap-o A/C crimpers, so I've made ...... something like 8 hoses? already, with different configurations of fittings, mufflers, different compressors, etc. Also got to where I was opening the system so much that I moved the drier from out in front of the condenser (and requires pulling bumper and grills to get at it) over to the right side of the core support. Much easier to work on, and surprisingly doesn't look too bad.

The vent temps briefly got down to 47 degrees, generally run around 53 degrees, while it was in the upper 90s here. Those vent temps were really close to what I get in the Stinger! But, it always nagged me that high speed fan really didn't seem to move much air.

Started looking at that, and sure enough, my fancy fan controller was only giving the fan 10 volts on high. Looks like it has a 12 amp safety limit. So I had to make another thing:

A super ugly relay bypass! So all the wiring mods I did last year to switch to the Gen 2 Lincoln fan controller? Had to un-do so I could get the high speed signal back to throw the relay. Thankfully I left all the wires in place and put quick disconnects on most of the stuff, so only required a little bit of time lying on my back. Now the fan pulls 21 amps on high instead of 12.

While I Was At It, I went ahead and replaced the blower motor, and freshly sandblasted and painted the blower wheel. Last time I didn't have all my current setup so I wasn't able to clean it very well. I just dunked it in rust converter that time, which left it, well, messy. I'm hoping it's better balanced and quieter now.

Oh, I'm back to the quadrajet. No matter what I did, that Holley boiled at hot idle. Drilled two pump bypasses, head shield, heat spacer, bunch of different tuning configurations.... just always fell on its face after idling because all the gas boiled out of the front accelerator pump cavity. Very annoying. I'm hoping I can sell the whole Holley setup and get some of my money back.

I had R&R'd the starter so many times that I was tired of dealing with the wire connections on the solenoid - they're really quite terrible. So I got one of those big 4 gauge quick disconnect units, sliced it in half, and re-did the wiring. Now can just yank apart a quick disconnect and one weatherpack and the starter is ready to drop! I did end up creating this little wiring monstrosity:

Kim Barr finished with the heads with a valve job, I did a bit more cleaning up. Then I blueprinted the valve springs. Hobbyist valve spring pressure testing is a real mess. The setup has to be perfectly square or else you get junk readings. And perfectly square is hard to get with the junk you're working with. I found >10% variance in the springs. The other great thing is the stock shimming on the Edelbrock heads would have easily hit coil bind. There's a pretty decent chance my current setup is doing that, too (might explain a few things....). The "installed height" on their spec page is completely wrong.

The rest of the rotating assembly for the engine showed up - rods, pistons and rings. After a bunch of back-and-forth, Remmel is now making a set of 3" main cranks and will let me do an exchange. Trovato recommended I avoid spacers if possible, so now the plan is to get the 3" crank here, then get some caps (which is much easier - just normal big block caps or 4 bolt caps, but they're much more available). I do have two sets of 2.5" main bearings - one coated by Calico - but hopefully I can get some cash back out of those.

Part of the draw of the serpentine setup was using a spool mount alternator. I got a 250A unit built by US Alternators and it is simply awesome. Never misses a beat, completely solid >14V no matter what's going on. They even painted it a metallic black for me. Here it is cranking out 120A at ~700rpm idle.

There was also an extended adventure with brakes. A guy was selling a set of the Willwood D52 replacement dual piston calipers for cheap, so I snagged them. Pedal feel was terrible and braking was extremely soft. Went through gyrations with different valves, ended up completely re-plumbing the brake system (I never liked the combination valve), did a full rebuild on the calipers, even got a brake pressure tester. Still terrible. Eventually tested it with Keri hitting the brakes while I watched the calipers, and sure enough, the suckers flexed. I figured they would bite nicely early enough that I wouldn't push them all the way to flexing, but they would flex before actually stopping the car.

So, back to stock calipers. The hilarious bit is about the same time one of the Motortrend guys made a brief mention something like "You may notice we're running stock calipers. We had nice aftermarket units planned, but they just flexed too much"..... hm......

Upshot, here's my new valving setup, and it's ready for 4 wheel discs.

Oh, I also pulled my super fancy tachometer because it was bouncing all over the place. It was a multiple bounce, like the cylinder select switch was faulty. Sent it in, asked them to also replace the face with a through-lit face. They said they couldn't reproduce the problem and set it back........ I went ahead and put an LED in it. It's much easier to read, but now that gauge is a sharp white while the others are incandescent yellow. At least that LED works with the dimmer. There's a moderate chance I try to mount one or two more bulbs in the back of that gauge, but it would be extremely easy to destroy it. The gauge is crimped shut from the front, so can't take it apart.

Oh, what does a redneck mechanic like me do when you want better valves?

Chuck 'em up in a drill press! I polished the back sides then put a little radius on the bottom edge. I also had Kim back-cut the intake valves. Amazing how much of a difference such a subtle change can make. I triple checked all the stems and went through something like 8 valves with Edelbrock trying to get consistent stem sizes.

More recently I threw in the towel and gave the car to Exhaust Authority to fix the tail pipes. He tucked up the mufflers a bit, cut apart and re-patched the tails together. It all fits well and seals, but I'd say it's a B- job.

The car has been slightly pulling to the right for a while. I had to wait until the car was in decent shape and Firestone was back to normal hours. Got an alignment and they realized their rack was busted - the balls in the turntables had all broken or fallen out. So that alignment didn't come out very good. Took it back the next week and he got it set up much better, but still pulls. His thought is it's either a bad tire or a dragging brake.

SO, I decided to rebuild the calipers. I actually can't remember where I got these from. I *think* this was one of those complete stock brake kits (spindle, shield, bracket, etc etc etc), but not sure. Anyway, the pistons and seals looked OK but replaced them anyway. Then, when installing the right side caliper, noticed that I had to bang the thing into place. I think that bracket is bent and pushing the caliper sideways. I should have gone straight to that - I tried putting the stock wheels back on to rule out tires, but the right side wheel rubbed on the bracket - on a 100% stock setup that worked just fine two years ago!! Crazy, man. Thankfully I found a set of new brackets for $30. You can spend $100 for exactly the same parts with a different sticker on them if you prefer.

Let's end on a down note. Last time I said the 200-4r was acting a bit strange? Well, it got worse. Finally realized I had no 2nd gear. What controls 2nd on a 200-4r?

That's Not Good. Band is completely burned up and took the drum with it. The builder offered their $500 lifetime refresh.

So, While I'm At It, I started digging into this trans and what they did (and did not) put into it, especially considering the new engine being built. I'll likely get some more upgraded hard parts and try to build it myself.

I know, I swore to myself in 2001 that I would never try to assemble a transmission again. Well, I'm older and wiser now, and clutch spring compressors are waaaaay cheaper than they were then.