No problem Ericjon262 the offer remains on the table if you ever decide to come to Quebec (Canada) Just to send me a message it will be a pleasure to meet you. Claude
Originally posted by ericjon262: no need to apologize, I actually have a wedding to attend in upstate new york next summer, (june)
quote
Originally posted by claude dalpe:
No problem Ericjon262 the offer remains on the table if you ever decide to come to Quebec (Canada) Just to send me a message it will be a pleasure to meet you. Claude
Considering that ericjon262 will already be traveling far from his home, we could also go meet him in New York state.
The idea is good Patrick it would give us a nice ride in fiero. On the other hand Ericjon262 will be in New York for a wedding We should see if he thinks he has time for us We'll see what he thinks
almost done with the new sending unit, have a few hiccups to sort out though...
I made the top flange, and inner bolt ring.
originally, I intended on leaving the bottom plate flat, but I wanted to make sure it seals up tight, so I made these bungs for the bulkhead fitting, they house and O-ring which makes a nice, tight seal
I welded the flange on, you'll notice there's four non-counter sunk holes, regular allen head bolts go in those four positions, they'll secure the inner ring to the tank, so that the sending unit can be removed without dropping the ring.
I cut the inner ring in half to permit easier installation.
I needed a way to connect two pumps to one outlet, the pump outlet is 8mm, with a bulge on the end, since 8mm and 5/16 are pretty much the same size, I ordered some stainless 5/16" tubing and used my flare tool with a ISO bubble flare die installed, and partially bubbled the tube
Then I made this block to actually connect it to the outlet with a AN to NPT adapter.
I wasn't too wild with how that was starting to look, so I scrapped it, and remade a similar fitting out of a -8 steel hose end.
it's not perfect, but it's pretty good, I'll install the bubble flares pictured above in it, and it'll be a nice part.
That does bring up the biggest SNAFU. I really need to model more details in my drawings, as currently, the level sender and the pump discharges occupy the same space. I'll remake the level bracket to put it on the other side.
I plasma cut the rest of the parts
and assembled the unit
here is is pictured, minus the second pump, which should be here tonight.
and now the picture to make fiero oweners everywhere cringe:
when I get home from work, I'll start working on opening the hole up and prepping the tank for the new sending unit. hopefully I can have the tank ready to go in by friday.
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.
Texas Pit hot sauce and almonds!!!... I thought I was weird! Now we have something in common!!
the almonds were mine, the Texas Pete was someone else's at work. Personally, I prefer Chipotle Tabasco.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I started fitting tubes to the sending unit, I did my best to bend the tubes down flat to the tank, but I can't seem to make the required radius, and the tubes are sticking up way higher than I think is acceptable to actually fit in the vehicle, so I decided to see what I can make happen with the 2nd revision. I won't end up using the Ballenger tank pass through, instead, I'll install the racetronix connector instead, the ballenger is nice, but it's just too much work to make it actually fit under the car.
Racetronix claims each terminal of their connector can handle 14 amps continuous, and 20 intermittent.
Quantum Fuel Systems claims their 340 LPH draws 12.8 amps at 60 PSI,
I can ground the pumps to the pump hanger, and the hanger to the chassis, then use one pin for each pump, and one for the level sender, which leaves one pin empty I got the parts cut for the pump hangers earlier, and over the weekend, I'm going to try and get the top made, it will use the same 20x115mm bolt pattern as the last design, so I'll be able to reuse the inside rings. I ordered some stainless steel solder flux that I'll use to fit the tubes to the sender, and I'm working on a simple adapter to attach the pump discharges in a more streamlined manner than the flex hoses.
I started working on that design, then realized it wasn't going to work out quite as well as I hoped, so I revised it a little further.
now, the tubes will have a little more room to fit.
While the top itself is taller, the tubes will be much lower, and should fit the car way better.
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.
originally, I planned on making the bolt ring stay inside the tank and not weld on the tank, I found that making a weld on ring was easier, and probably a better bet. I made the weld on ring, as well as some nickel acetate, after the ring was finished, I dunked it in the acetate, applied a small current, and nickel plated the bare steel to hopefully keep it from rusting.
I opened the hole up in the top of the tank, and welded it in. The hole was about 135mm
The new top hat fully machined
I soldered in the pump discharge tube, and a ground stud that goes all the way through.
I cut the rest of the parts on the plasma cutter.
After that, I installed the return, and the all thread that would actually hold the pumps in place, and test fit everything.
The into the nickel with the top hat, I wasnt' worried about the tubes or all thread, because the tubes are stainless, and the all thread was zinc plated, so both of those should fair ok from a corrosion standpoint without the nickel plating.
Then I bent the tubes to fit the car.
I soldered the tubes in, wired everything up, and installed it on the tank. what's left? I have compression fittings for the tubes to adapt them to the rest of the fuel system, I also need to made some blocks to go between the tank and the tubes to adequately support them and not stress the solder joints. I'm planning on moving the flexfuel sensor to be closer to the tank/fuel filter, and not on the fuel rail, as well as installing a set of stainless LX9 fuel rails.
Some notes about the nickel plating, I learned about this through a few youtube videos, Turbo_V6 zinc plated a trigger wheel, while looking for a few other videos on zinc, I found nickel was also doable.
My results were hit and miss, some parts turned out great, others not so much, I think my acetate may be contaminated with zinc, as some of my parts came out with a very dark finish, and the zinc plated all thread that was exposed to the acetate also turned black. if there's a next time for this, I'll do a few things slightly different:
1. insulate parts that don't need plating, this should help focus the plating on that parts that need it 2. attempt to arrange the anode(s) in such a manner that they present themselves to the entire part, or the largest surface area of the part. 3. increase the number of anodes, so that they surround the part and and more of the part is equidistant to a anode, 4. install a pump to circulate the acetate, and maybe a small filter to prevent solids that come off the anodes from getting to the part to be plated. 5. get a parts tumbler to polish small parts prior to plating, I suspect some of my parts may have had surface contaminants which caused discoloration. 6. acid dip parts prior to plating, which should further help with stripping contaminants.
I'm confident my parts are now corrosion resistant, as can be seen in one of the pictures of the top hat after soldering in the ground stud and the pump discharge pipe, the flux used to solder the parts in cause the steel to rust very quickly, while soldering in the tubes on the outside of the sender, the top hat did not rust.
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.
Very nice, I have a rebar cage in a bin I use for electrolysis to remove rust, but I have never tried to do it the other way around and plate something. I did find with removing rust that an evenly spaced rebar cage around the perimeter of the bin worked much better than when I first attempted it with a chunk of metal in a single spot. I have a very similar power supply as yours at my work. For my electrolysis power supply I used an old computer power supply I found in the scrap bin at work which works great at 18v and for free.
For my bus build, I have been incredibly impressed with the zinc-aluminum coated fasteners from McMaster. These are what I had bought to secure the bus frame to the frame rails. McMaster looks like it is now calling this a Zinc Flake coating. These bolts have been on the bus for about 6 months now with 0 sign of any corrosion whatsoever. Possibly a coating you could replicate. Allegedly tested for 1000 hours without corrosion in salt water, but I believe it. My rear most mount was not fully welded up and it filled with water for over a month, there was a nut and end of a bolt submerged the entire time. When I pulled the bolt out to drain it and weld it up, it still looked brand new.
Project Binky from Bad Obsession Motor Sports re-plated all their fasteners for the entire car, they had a multi-stage plating setup if you were interested in checking out what they used. Is on the youtubes.
How are your fuel lines running on top of the tank attached to the sender? Soldered?
[This message has been edited by zkhennings (edited 01-02-2023).]
Very nice, I have a rebar cage in a bin I use for electrolysis to remove rust, but I have never tried to do it the other way around and plate something. I did find with removing rust that an evenly spaced rebar cage around the perimeter of the bin worked much better than when I first attempted it with a chunk of metal in a single spot. I have a very similar power supply as yours at my work. For my electrolysis power supply I used an old computer power supply I found in the scrap bin at work which works great at 18v and for free.
For my bus build, I have been incredibly impressed with the zinc-aluminum coated fasteners from McMaster. These are what I had bought to secure the bus frame to the frame rails. McMaster looks like it is now calling this a Zinc Flake coating. These bolts have been on the bus for about 6 months now with 0 sign of any corrosion whatsoever. Possibly a coating you could replicate. Allegedly tested for 1000 hours without corrosion in salt water, but I believe it. My rear most mount was not fully welded up and it filled with water for over a month, there was a nut and end of a bolt submerged the entire time. When I pulled the bolt out to drain it and weld it up, it still looked brand new.
Project Binky from Bad Obsession Motor Sports re-plated all their fasteners for the entire car, they had a multi-stage plating setup if you were interested in checking out what they used. Is on the youtubes.
How are your fuel lines running on top of the tank attached to the sender? Soldered?
if I plate anything else this big, I'll probably build a cage, and some "shades" to help focus the current to the spots that need it. from what I've read, higher voltage and current doesn't necessarily work better for plating, from what I understand, you want just enough current to cause the bubbles to break away from the part.
those are neat bolts, I didn't see metric sizes, but I also didn't look terribly long yet.
The lines in the top of the tank are silver soldered in, I used a very aggressive acid flux, to get it to bind to the stainless tubes and flow out.
Project Binky! that is an incredible build, I never would have thought I would have followed a mini build that intensely once I found it. I might go back and rewatch those episodes, they used a commercial kit IIRC.
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.
The top O ring was pinched somehow... I can't really say how I let this fly when I put this together last, to say I'm disappointed in myself is an understatement... this definitely explains the MASSIVE fuel leak that occurred when topping the tank off.
outside of that, the sender didn't have any apparent leaks like I thought might have ocurred. I was hoping to find the PTFE tube between the pump in the sender having a small crack or something obvious, then I looked a bit further down and saw the sock, which was nasty looking. I pulled it off the pump, and found it appeared to be getting sucked into the pump, I imagine this would restrict flow, and cause the lean condition I was experiencing.
I did make a extremely simple, yet effective fuel filter mount, it's a simple "T" shape, with slots that mimic the factory fuel filter mount, and some split hose to protect the aluminum housing from the steel. the filter is secured to it with two hose clamps. dirt simple. I did have to bend it to clear the heater tubes, but you bet the idea. I might remake it with two sets of arms, and then curve it around the filter to better support it, or I might just leave it be because it works.
New fitting came in, so I installed it, and put about 5 gallons of fuel in the car, then plugged in the connector for one of the two pumps. key on, and yep, you guessed it, I forgot to tighten one of the harder fittings to get to and sprayed fuel all over... DOH. I tightened the fitting, and retested, no leaks that I can see!
at this point the car was still on jack stands and very much nose down, so I wasn't expecting the fuel gauge to read accurately, so I lowered the car off the stands...
ERG. I see one of three possible scenarios
1. the float is somehow stuck down, and maybe filling the tank the rest of the way will unseat it. 2. I accidently hooked up the wrong wire from the sender. 3. the new sender doesn't work.
I know the only other wire from the bulkhead connector is in the loom, and I can pull it out and hook it to the gauge with minimal effort, I think this is the smartest first step
The next step would be to drop the tank, if the float is stuck, I'd rather not drop it with a full tank, or have to guess how much fuel is in it until it's empty.
I did plug in the other pump, primed it, and then started the car, it fired right up as expected,
I should really start considering installing one of the stainless fuel rails I have in the garage, and updating the line routing to something more suitable to than what's already there, but that's another project, for another day, for now, I'm using most of the pre existing lines to get things running again.
In other unrelated news, this is what death to a Fiero looks like:
don't forget to check your blower resistors folks.
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.
where to start.... I've been driving the car significantly more for the past couple of weeks, the new fuel system made quite a difference. I also played with the boost controller a little bit, and found that the car is quite capable of blowing the tires of at will in first or second, and occasionally get hairy in 3rd. I'd like to make a pass at the track, and see if I can beat my PB of 12.749, I think with the recent timing additions, and boost control changes, it wouldn't be impossible, as the car pulls significantly harder.
on the other side of the coin, the junkyard engine I threw in last year has been living on borrowed time, so I started looking at my options.
1, get an LZ9 and go big. I could adapt the VCT to my MS3 with one wire, but I would, at a minimum need new engine mounts, and a new hotside to the turbo. 2. build the LX9 in the garage, with most of the parts I already have.
I would still like to put an LZ9 in the car, but, I don't want the car off the road for that long, so I made the decision to build my other LX9 from the ground up. The LX9, and the parts I have for it, are not without their fair share of issues.
Being overbored, it will need most likely need headgaskets with a bigger bore, I'm told the cometic gaskets I have aren't a great idea, and the stock replacement gaskets don't look much better at a glance. I also looked at the idea of using LZx gaskets for it, unfortunately, the coolant passages don't line up very well, and they're a WAY bigger bore. I plan to contact Cometic tomorrow to discuss options, I'd rather not do a custom gasket, but I'd also rather not have sealing issues with a stock replacement gasket.
the block went to the machine shop, and was bored and honed for my pistons.
now, the windage tray... I have a set of eagle H beam rods for the engine, the big ends of the rods are larger than the LX9 rods, and therefore, hit the stock LX9 windage tray, which means if I want to run a windage tray, I need to make one. the stock windage tray was fixed to the engine via studs on top of the main bearing cap bolts, I have ARP studs for the bottom end, which do not have these same studs, because they're studs, not bolt, which means I need a way to secure a tray to the engine.
the first, and easiest answer, would be to sandwich the tray between the main bearing cap, and the nuts for the studs, I'm hesitant to do that, because it could affect the overall clamp load of the fastener, which could lead to issues down the road. the other idea I had, was to swap the small head 12 point flange nuts for big head 6 point nuts, and then use the remaining stud that protrudes above the top of the nut, and the 12 point nuts to secure the tray in place. I called ARP and ran the idea by them, and they seemed to think the idea should be just fine, so that's what I plan to do. I've also picked up some screen material commonly used in windage trays that I plan to employ, and I am also going to try and integrate a crank scraper into the tray as well,
on the subject of oil control, I deleted the piston oil squirter for cylinder 5-6 (the LX9 only has them on 5 and 6) I did this by tapping the hole 1/4 NPT and installing a plug tightly with copious amounts of red locktite. I'd rather the oil go to the bearings than to the bottom of two pistons.
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.
I assembled the short block, minus the cam, which I obviously don't have. I really don't want to end up in the situation I did a few years ago, and have to cut valve reliefs in the pistons again, so picking the cam needs to be done very carefully, and a ton of measurements taken. tonight, I determined my method for checking piston to valve clearance without the cam, or even a head on the engine, this took a ton of figuring, so I'd like to run it by everyone and make sure my head is on right.
The comp master lobe catalog lists duration at 3 points, in crankshaft degrees.
.006" (advertised duration) .050" and .200" these figures are all based on lift of the tappet. I drew two circles in CAD, and then added lines for each duration event, the durations were divided by two to get camshaft degrees. then I extended the lines by their respective tappet lifts and came up with a drawing that looked like this:
after that, I added two additional lines, one for TDC, and one for 10 degrees BTDC for each lobe. I assumed the points between each duration step were linear, which may not be true, but looking at the drawings, the points are fairly close together and look quite a bit like I would expect a cam lobe to look like. I think this is an adequate assumption for what I'm doing here. thoughts?
at the intersections of the TDC and 10 BTDC lines, I placed points, and measured the distance between them, in the case of this lobe, the points were
.045" and .105" of tappet lift .072" and .168" of theoretical valve lift
and for the other lobe
.073" and .147" of tappet lift .117" and .236" of theoretical valve lift
the next step, which I'll probably do tomorrow, will be to install a degree wheel on the engine, and measure how far the pistons are in the hole at each point, and, how deep each valve is recessed into the head. if the combined depth is less than the above measurements, with a safety factor, then I'll go ahead and order a cam with these lobes ground and send it. alternatively, if the exhaust valves end up too close, I can also advance the cam some if need be to gain more clearance as my timing set has more than one keyway cut into it. I could also get a cam with less duration too, but what's the fun in that?
it's also worth mentioning that these are all static tappet lift measurements, and being a hydraulic cam, the lifter may absorb some of that duration and increase clearance. That being said, I have no intention on using that assumption at all in this situation, I would rather assume the valve is open more than it ever actually would be.
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.
Very well done Eric! This is a very useful tool I use to do all my figuring out. Fill in your short block parameters and it will give you the piston distance from TDC at every crank degree. https://lmengines.com/pages...-velocity-calculator
Very well done Eric! This is a very useful tool I use to do all my figuring out. Fill in your short block parameters and it will give you the piston distance from TDC at every crank degree. https://lmengines.com/pages...-velocity-calculator
that's a helpful calculator, thanks!
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.
I've been crunching numbers for the past 24 hours, and everything shows interference, so I did a quick check of a cam i ran with these pistons and came up with this:
which suggests a cam, that ran with these pistons, would have had piston to valve clearance problems... but that math doesn't add up, or does it? I ran this cam with two separate engines, one was assembled by a machine shop, one was assembled by your's truly. the one assembled by the machine shop ran these pistons and rods, in fact, even the same block, and didn't have PTV interference, the other engine, that I assembled, had PTV interference, on the intake, exactly as my model suggests I should, so lets consider piston design, as one engine had stock pistons, one had custom pistons...
ok, so the answer is easy, custom pistons had different clearance than stock right? right??? well, about that, the PTV clearance on a 60V6 is on the outside edge of the crown of the piston, which, between both pistons is more or less identical.
so, how the hell does this work? one piston hits, the other doesn't??? WTF? in comes the timing sets, the engine I cut valve reliefs in, used a stock timing set, with only one keyway, only allowing the cam to be installed straight up, the engine with the custom pistons, had a double roller timing set, which had keyways to advance or retard the cam 3, or 6 degrees.
advancing the cam 3 degrees nets about 0.006" clearance, add the head gasket, and you're still way into the danger zone, but it should clear, and being on the opening ramp of the cam lobe, I suspect this is where peak rocker and pushrod deflection would have occured, as well as some takeup in the lifter...
advancing 6 degrees gets the clearance to a whopping 0.0192" again, plus the head gasket, but clearance does exist.
in both scenarios, exhaust valve clearance is lower than it should be, but it has clearance.
now what? in simulation, modifying a cam grind for valve clearance absolutely guts the engine, killing power at almost every point in the curve, note, both engines have the same cam lobes, with altered LSA and ICL.
for reference, in simulation, that's over 45 hp thrown away at 6500 RPM, boost controller or not, that's an unacceptable compromise to make. this leaves me back where I was a few years ago... Custom pistons? hell no, that's not in the budget for this engine, if I buy a set of custom pistons they'll be for an LZ9. so that leaves cutting reliefs... my biggest concern, is that the the pistons are coated, how will locally removing the coating affect the rest of the piston and coating? at this point, I'm probably going to just cut the reliefs and let it ride. since I'm going to cut reliefs, I guess it's time to again, re evaluate my cam choices, since I'll be cutting in more PTV clearance. the above listed profile is a 216/226 @.050, 110 ICL 107 LSA, it seems to be a pretty hot grind based on simulation, not giving much up down low, and carrying way out up top. but again, since I need to cut clearance, I need to re evaluate what I want out of the cam.
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.
I made some basic progress on the windage tray, this plate is intended to be the foundation for the windage tray, and the crank scraper
some notes. in the pre prototype phases, I noticed the one of the main studs near the oil pump wouldn't have enough room to mount the tray under without significant modification to the pump,
So the offending interference was omitted and the hanging ledge will be reinforced so that it doesn't move. (green circle) the initial prototype, didn't quite fit perfect, mainly, the rods didn't have enough clearance in the red circled areas. the yellow circles highlight relief cuts, which will make it easier to bend those tabs towards the crankshaft about 45 degrees, this angled portion will serve as the mount for the crank scraper.
The blue arrows represent the other PITA that I'll have to carefully work around, the main caps on the 60V6 bolt to the oil pan, and therefore, the oil pan is narrower in those areas. currently, the overall width of the tray foundation is narrower than the main caps, so there will be clearance between the pan and the scraper/tray, although I have yet to measure how much.
the crank scraper will be on the front side of the engine, and should aid in collecting the vast majority of the drainage from the top end, as well as provide for a baffle to block the turbo oil drain from getting onto the crank, although I don't think it would ever make its way up there,
I went through several iterations in cad, I swapped bending individual tabs, for bending the whole forward side.
overall, I'm pretty happy with the results, there's one spot near the crank snout that's causing the oil pan not to sit flat so far.
I went ahead and made some edits to the drawing so this spot would no longer be a problem, however, I'll probably just cut it with an angle grinder or something if I need to make further adjustments, unless there's a reason I need to cut another.
I should mention there is no longer any interference and the crank rotates freely, now. the crank scraper will be mounted to the top of the tray, in this picture, the ruler is a stand in for what will most likely be a thin piece of stainless.
here's a crappy paint drawing of what I'm slowly working towards. the light blue is the turbo oil drain, the red, the crank scraper, the green, the windage tray, and the purple is a baffle that I might add. if I add the baffle, it will be perforated, as well as angled towards the oil pump pickup, since the sump is short front to back, this baffle should help prevent oil from flowing up the rear wall of the sump, and towards the crankshaft, under hard acceleration. but still allow for oil to drain back to the sump. I wouldn't mind adding a second crank scraper on the rear side of the engine, but unfortunately, there's almost no way to package that.
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.
well, I did it... I finally ordered a cam, after countless hours of modeling cams, both in CAD, and on desktop dyno, and comparing real world dyno results, I decided upon this:
Duration at .006"--------------266/282 Duration at .050"--------------216/230 Duration at .200"--------------141/152 Lobe lift ----------------------.354"/.355" valve lift with 1.6 rocker --.566"/.568"
In simulation of a naturally aspirated 3500, this cam has about a 12% hp gain peak on my current cam, and matches or beats it all the way down to 3000 RPM. WOT-Tech doesn't think I'll have piston to valve clearance issues, I'm very confident I will, but I won't make the cuts until after I have the cam, and can bolt a head to the block and verify clearance.
The valvetrain in the car sounds like total death... I've been driving it to work and tuning as much as I can, and am making faster headway now that I've made a few changes to my process, and have notice the cell changes tightening up, but, I think the valvetrain's current state is causing VE to be less stable, and contributing to changes in the tune that probably shouldn't actually exist. I believe the issues within the valvetrain are directly related to the metal particles in the oil. last year, I replaced the lifters because of how noisy they were, which is when I found the metal. Those lifter sat in the garage for a while, and then when I was working on the Gran Damn, I disassembled those lifters, and the lifters from the Gran Damn to clean them, and found that not one of the lifters removed from the Fiero would actually come apart, this leads me to believe the lifters in the car are probably sticking as well. I've also found that if I take it up to 6500 RPM, they clatter alot for a bit after that, which is unfortunate, because I really want to hammer on it, but I also don't want to hear all of that behind my head, so hopefully, in about 2 weeks, I'll have the cam, and head gaskets, and can have the windage tray wrapped up and be ready to get the engine swapped out, and see what it can really do.
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.
I've been diligently working on the crank scrapers,I really wanted to make the dual scrapers work, but the more I tried, the more they fought, and upon closer inspection, the leading scraper wouldn't be very effective due to it extending at a tangent angle to the crank, and not radially, like the trailing scraper. even though the leading scraper would be more effective for oil control, it's reduced effectiveness due to it's angle, and packaging challenges have lead me to go ahead and decide to omit it.
In the meantime, I began trimming the windage screen, the material is pretty simple, and neat. hold it one way, and you can easily see through it, hold it the other, and it's quite obscured.
kinda hard to tell in the pictures, but it's still cool stuff.
here's a shot of the initial trimming of the screen
I'll need to trim it to fit in the oil pan, the areas where the pan bolts to the main caps will interfere, as the walls of the pan are angled towards the main cap. I intend to cut back the screen near the scraper, to provide an area for the oil to drain off of the scraper.
I'll probably also trim back the front edge of the screen to allow oil draining down the front of the block to go straight to the pan instead of on top of the tray, obviously it still needs a ton of trimming just to fit, but the general shape is correct.
one of the details I still need to address is the dipstick, I'll need to put a hole in the screen to allow the tube to pass through, not a big deal, but I don't want to do it until the screen is permanently attached to the engine so the location is spot on.
I'm now on the 3rd iteration of the scraper/windage tray mount, since the leading scraper was removed, I decided to add tabs to secure the screen to the base, along with a tab off of the rear main bearing cap. the tabs will be bent up towards the main bearing caps.
installed on the engine, prior to bending, it fits pretty good considering my measurements weren't hyper accurate. as dumb as it sounds, I don't plan on that being the actual scraper, I plan to pick up a thinner piece of polished stainless for the job, and carefully trimming it to fit the crank. then mounting it to the parts seen here.
after bending, some clearance was required so the scraper wouldn't hit the crank.
some minor details, this tab is a little too far from the screen, I'll need to make a new one about 15mm longer.
the front side of the windage also hits the oil pan, I made it slightly too long, in this case, I'll just trim it until the oil pan fits. the screen will be mounted to the scraper by the coupling nuts visible in the pictures, however, I only had 4, so I'll have to pick up at least two more, along with hardware to mount the screen over the front edge. I also made the decision that I'm going to go ahead and cut the screen so that it ends at the edges of the main caps, at the mounting tabs, which should provide a drain path for any oil thrown off of the crankshaft between the side of the oil pan, and the screen, instead of trapping it between the crank and the screen.
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.
That looks awesome Eric! When It comes to clearances I always leave .060 to account to metal growth knowing aluminum grows faster and greater than steel. It looks like it will the job it was designed for.
I notice some spark knock the other day, I picked up a set of colder plugs and threw them in, but I haven't had a chance to retest yet because the junkyard accelerator position sensor went out, a new one should be here sometime next week.
I haven't made a ton of progress on the new engine, but I did get the rest of the valve reliefs cut for the new cam, I'm going to recheck and make sure I have ample clearance, hopefully I'll be good to go ahead and bolt heads to it and can focus on other things.
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.
Went to cars and coffee the other day, they took a picture of my car, it looked ok considering how dirty it actually was.
I drove the Fiero every day that my blue truck was down for repairs, it did well, but I still have a ton of stuff I would like to do, including install the line lock I bought 5 years ago... originally I was planning on installing it like this on the combination valve with a simple sheet metal bracket:
there's 2 problems with that idea,
1: if I get rid of the combination valve, I need to re-evaluate the line lock mount.
2: There isn't alot of real estate there, so I came up with another solution, that I may even be able to bring to market, I came up with a new bracket, I'm pretty happy with it.
This prototype was 10 ga steel, I'll probably make a final part out of something thinner. I may even do a production run of them, as it should fit literally dozens of other cars that aren't fieros.
I also have a couple background projects I'm working on as they come together, I'll post them.
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.
[This message has been edited by ericjon262 (edited 11-23-2023).]
A few months back, I bought a brake bias adjuster that I would like to install on the car when I install the line lock, not sure when that will be though. I was planning on buying a Quaife, but when I was sent an ad for an OBX for $175 shipped, I decided I would give it a go, a buddy has one, and is running it in his DD Fiero with a 3.9 swap, and he seems to like it quite a bit, and claims it made a marked improvement on how the car drove.
I bought mine from one of my least favorite places, wal-mart.
This site has some details about the frequent failure of the preload washers in the units from the factory.
There are nine M8 allen head bolts holding the two halves of the differential together, remove them, and you can split the case. Where the 10th bolt would go, there is a dowel pin.
I elected to flip mine before splitting, as this orientation is a little more stable.
The insides had a thick shipping oil on them. and quire frankly, it was dirty, if you buy one of these, at a minimum, take it apart and clean it.
I wiped it out with a rag and brake parts cleaner, and it blackened the rag, with what appears to me to be machine shop dust.
at this point, nothing holds the remaining parts together, if you flipped it over, everything would fall out. some noteworthy things, there are two sets of gears a left set, and a right set, these two sets of gears are cut opposite one another, but are otherwise capable of being interchanged. I do not have an answer as to what would happen if you swapped left for right, if anything, but I elected to keep then in the original places.
here's one of the preload washers, they were extremely dirty.
other significant findings outside of just being dirty, some of the gear teeth had what appeared to be weld spatter on them, it was pretty hard to get a picture of it, but here's the best one I could get.
these raised defects would eventually get tracked to the other gear teeth, and cause excessive wear, and possibly noise. it could also cause premature failure of bearings and gears in the transmission due to excessive where products in the oil.
for those that do not know, "tracking" is when a gear tooth defect is transferred to teeth that contact the defected tooth, eventually, it leads to all the teeth having the same defect, or a trace of the defect. in some instances, the defect won't get transferred to every tooth, due to the gear ratio not allowing every tooth to be contacted. this is why gear ratios are rarely evenly numbered IE 2:1, 3:1, 5:1 and instead are usually very odd numbers like 2.73:1, or 4.10:1.
here's an example of defects being tracked onto other teeth.
I very carefully filed/polished down the defects, there were a few, as well as deburred some openings in the case, after that, I loosely reassembled it, filled it with WD40, and put it back in it's box. I plan to get a washer kit for it, even though they didn't look bad, and I might spring for some ARP bolts for it, that said, I also don't have a transmission ready to receive it yet either.
For reference, this piece of pig mat was clean before I started... notice the metal bits? you really want to clean this thing prior to install.
overall? IDK, if I ever upgrade to an F40, I'll probably just spring for a Quaife, the gears in this thing look a little iffy, but maybe it's a non issue. If anyone has any questions about it before I put it in, feel free to ask.
I still need to finish the windage tray, I remember 15 years ago the machine shop that was putting together my engine said the stock one wouldn't work, I don't know why, so I went to the junkyard today and found a couple of windage tray, one of the great things about working on an engine nobody cars about, is that you can sometimes find them sitting on the ground and it's easy to get parts off, today, there were three sitting on the ground, two LZx engines, and one LX9. The LX9 was completely taken apart, down to a bare block, I looked all over, and didn't see the windage tray, on a whim, I opened the trunk of the car next to it, and there it was!
Then I pulled an LZx windage tray, the engine was pulled an upside down already, 5 minutes later, I have the tray!
I took them both home, and found why the shop who assembled the engine years ago "couldn't make it work", the stock windage tray attached via studs in the stock main cap bolts, these studs are smaller than the bolts. the studs, are the same diameter and don't fit through the holes in the tray... the LZx tray however, has the same setup, but the nuts for the tray are captured on the tray, and if you punch the washers that capture the off the tray, the tray slides right over the main studs, however, the LZx tray isn't a full length tray like the LX9 tray. in the picture below, you can see the tray doesn't cover the rear two cylinders, the oil pump also occupies this space to some degree.
I'm considering getting another tray cutting the front portion off, and welding it on where cylinders 5 and 6 go, but I'm not 100% set on that plan.
I like the LZx tray design better than the LX9 design, even if it's not a full length pan, the tray is louvered in several location for each pair of cylinders, unlike the earlier designs, which only have 1 louver per pair. I'm also giving some serious thought to further baffling the pan, the stock pan has almost no baffles, and there have been several people who have documented problems, or reduced oil pressure in high G cornering, will my car need all of that? good question, I hope to make it handle quite well under all conditions eventually, but for now, it would probably be overkill.
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.
I haven't done much to the car, I've been extremely busy remodeling a house.
I mapped out the oil galleries in my LX9 to the best of my ability, from what I can see, we have the following flowpath
starting at the oil pump, oil flows up through a diagonal cut in the rear main bearing cap to a hole in the block,
note the welding rod:
this diagonal gallery continues until it reaches the edge of the block where it intersects a gallery going to the oil filter, the following plug is where that gallery is drilled.
this gallery is where the oil pressure sending unit typically resides. on the side of the block on the way to the oil filter. note, this port is not filtered, personally, I would not use it for a turbo oil feed.
oil enters the filter boss on the rear side, goes through the filter and then through the center of the filter to the inside of the engine.
note the oil filter bypass, this provides oil in the event the filter is clogged, typically, these are plugged in racing applications. not pictured, is another port that oil can be drawn from on the front, top side of the oil filter boss. this is filtered and more suitable for a turbo oil feed.
following the oil filter outlet into the block, it intersects the main oil gallery, this gallery is what makes the later 60V6 have "priority main oiling". oil is fed to this gallery, and then to the top of each main bearing, and the bottom of each cam bearing, on earlier engines the oil would be fed through the cam bearings.
from what I understand, the front cam bearing position has a groove cut into it 360 degrees, this groove intersects both the main oil gallery, and the 2 lifter oil galleries, and provides oil to the two lifter galleries here:
and here:
Something noteworthy, is that these two galleries are NOT symetrical, the left hand gallery passes along the side of the lifters, and allows for even distribution of oil to each lifter. the right hand oil gallery more or less goes right through the center of the lifter bores, for the most part, this doesn't matter, the lifters are undercut in the mid section in an area I call the "oil band", which allows oil to pass around the lifter body to each set of lifters. this can be seen in the following pictures.
left bank, note the drilled passage removes material from the outboard side of the lifter bores,
and the right bank
the right bank goes all the way to the back of the block, and leaves an open passage to the oil pump drive/distributor socket. After this, the oil drains back to the pan from all the places.
now to the things I'm going to call "progress"
here's a picture of the Johnson retrofit SBC lifter, next to a 60V6 lifter, note the oil hole, and roller axle are in the same place, that's good news because if the oil hole was too high, it could potentially exit the lifter bore, and the lifter would be without oil.
the other thing of note, is that the oil band on the lifter is also higher, this isn't good, because now, on the right bank, it potentially restricts flow through the gallery. you can also see the oil band is shallower on the Johnson lifter.
here, you see a stock lifter at approximately peak lift on my cam, you can clearly see the lower part of the oil band, low in the gallery hole.
Here you can see the Johnson lifter, on the same lobe, at the same lift. The bottom of the oil band is very high in the gallery hole. this is less than ideal...
I dug around yesterday and was able to find a 27/32" collet at work, this is just every so slightly larger than the lifter body, but it did tighten down and run true, the collet offered vastly superior repeatability, and ease of work compared to dialing in a chuck for each setup.
I turned body down to extend the oil band approximately .150" which matches the stock lifter.
next was to make fairing blocks so I could bolt the shorter Crower link bars onto the lifters. This took several iterations before I had something I thought would work.
I let the material hang off the edge of the key stock so I could verify thickness.
then drilled the round stock, bolted it down, rough cut everything before going back and programming a square pocket cut, and a circle pocket, to cut the stock down to 0.120", with a .0625" counter bore.
after cutting all the pockets, I ran the circle pocket program again, with a chamfer bit to break the edge. then I ran a square profile around the perimeter to cut out the individual parts.
I followed that up with the chamfer bit again.
Theoretically, the parts are now finished...
but wait there's more...
For some reason, I was obsessed about maintaining very tight (read too tight) tolerances on these. Clearance hole spec for a 10-32 screw is 0.190", but a 10-32 screw passes through a .1875" hole, so I drilled them .1875". The heads are .3125" so I made the counterbores .318" I'm guessing you can see where this is going... yes, those numbers can work fine together, but damn, there was no reason for it, and, I knew this already, but a drill bit, especially a smallish one, can move off center slightly as it makes it's way through material, couple that with tolerances that are too close, and the bolt heads don't sit flat in the counterbores...
here, you can see the screw hole either isn't round, or, isn't perfectly centered on the bolt head.
ERG.... I spent several hours holding these blocks in one hand, and an endmill in the other trimming them by hand to make the clearance I needed, but now, they're done. I have enough material to do another run of them, and I might, so that I have spares in the even I need them, but I'll apply several lessons learned.
1. use sensible tolerances...
2. the material is being bolted to a fixture, if the holes after the holes are drilled, take the material off and deburr the other end of the holes while the material is still easy to hole, then bolt it on and make the parts.
3. drill through the smallest amount of material required to limit the possibility of the drill walking.
4. I could have avoided the concentricity issues, when cutting a circle pocket, this mill starts at the center of the circle, I could have plunged the 0.1875" endmill all the way through prior to milling the pocket and it would have had perfect concentricity.
5. build an engine that people care about, and you can just buy parts for it.
================================================
I've also been looking into options to improve oil control, but I don't think I'm ready to talk about that yet.
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.
Hey Eric! In one of my post somewhere Will asked me if I knew what you were doing with the lifters and I had no clue what he was talking about. Now I can see you are trying to upgrade to Johnson's. Why are you upgrading to different lifter? What was the problem with the stock ones??
Johnson's are fairly well renowned for being very high quality, and with my larger cam and springs I wanted the best lifter I could put in it.
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.
