Rowdy burnouts and loud noises: The LSX/Subaru swap project
12-17-2018, 08:02 AM
#601
yeah solder makes a very small stress riser area so when the wire flexes it's all concentrated at that one point.
so OEM's prefer a crimp. and if they do solder (like in a ground splice pack) the whole connection is encapsulated so the stress is concentrated in area where there is no solder
but, I solder my **** and never had a problem. lineman splice, use flux, get a badass soldering pen that gets really hot 450Fº or so
so OEM's prefer a crimp. and if they do solder (like in a ground splice pack) the whole connection is encapsulated so the stress is concentrated in area where there is no solder
but, I solder my **** and never had a problem. lineman splice, use flux, get a badass soldering pen that gets really hot 450Fº or so
12-17-2018, 08:27 AM
#602
On The Tree
Yeah the lineman splices work, that's what NASA does:
But most motorsports harnesses use crimps, the easiest is stuff like these:
Get a good soldering iron, tin the tip, and keep the tip clean. And either make yourself a set of wire holders, or buy a cheap set of helping hands. When starting my harness work, I found these videos helpful. I used to hate soldering until I learned these tips.
I prefer an iron to a soldering gun, but this guy has good tips too
Save yourself a headache later chasing electrical gremlins and redo that soldered joint.
But most motorsports harnesses use crimps, the easiest is stuff like these:
Get a good soldering iron, tin the tip, and keep the tip clean. And either make yourself a set of wire holders, or buy a cheap set of helping hands. When starting my harness work, I found these videos helpful. I used to hate soldering until I learned these tips.
I prefer an iron to a soldering gun, but this guy has good tips too
Save yourself a headache later chasing electrical gremlins and redo that soldered joint.
12-26-2018, 10:06 AM
#604
This is the link to the wiring diagram I created for the body side of the car. I would greatly appreciate it if someone could take a quick glance through it to make sure I didn't make any careless mistakes.
Flowchart Maker & Online Diagram Software
Flowchart Maker & Online Diagram Software
12-29-2018, 11:46 AM
#609
This is a medley of small things done to the car with no real order so keep that in mind.
Front brake dilemma is solved. I traded some square stock meh aluminum that I couldn't even weld for a set of 04 WRX spindles/hubs. As you see they look like I dug them out of the pasture.
A bit of bead blasting later
I have brand new ball joints for them, and just need bearings and seals. I've got misalignment spacers coming from China so I can still utilize the heims from my first setup.
I disassembled my engine down to a bare block. The bearings look like they would if I just installed them. The cylinder walls are meh and I'm hoping they clean up with a few passes with the hone, if not I'll have to figure something out. In moving all my engine parts into my room I need a bit more space so my spare cold side tubing has to go. It is BNIB vibrant 3.5" diameter 6061 aluminum tubing, 18 inch straights and 5.25" CLR 90° bends. $100 picked up in New Hampshire it all retails for $198 and change.
Got a super nice trunk mat for the hatch, so now I pretty much have a truck again.
And since all three forums that I post this journal on had one qualm or another with my wiring I took that as a good sign it needs to be corrected.
I removed the soldered joints and rigged up some non-insulated crimps.
A bit of heat shrink and it cleaned up much nicer than last time.
Front brake dilemma is solved. I traded some square stock meh aluminum that I couldn't even weld for a set of 04 WRX spindles/hubs. As you see they look like I dug them out of the pasture.
A bit of bead blasting later
I have brand new ball joints for them, and just need bearings and seals. I've got misalignment spacers coming from China so I can still utilize the heims from my first setup.
I disassembled my engine down to a bare block. The bearings look like they would if I just installed them. The cylinder walls are meh and I'm hoping they clean up with a few passes with the hone, if not I'll have to figure something out. In moving all my engine parts into my room I need a bit more space so my spare cold side tubing has to go. It is BNIB vibrant 3.5" diameter 6061 aluminum tubing, 18 inch straights and 5.25" CLR 90° bends. $100 picked up in New Hampshire it all retails for $198 and change.
Got a super nice trunk mat for the hatch, so now I pretty much have a truck again.
And since all three forums that I post this journal on had one qualm or another with my wiring I took that as a good sign it needs to be corrected.
I removed the soldered joints and rigged up some non-insulated crimps.
A bit of heat shrink and it cleaned up much nicer than last time.
01-01-2019, 10:38 AM
#611
Bit more done on the long weekend. Started with pulling the axle stubs off the wrx axles for my new knuckles. I gutted the CV cages, although they are still super heavy. Thinking I might be able to cut the joint on the lathe down past the tone ring and still have it hold the bearing together.
Snapped a pic of said minty rods bearings.
And collected the necessary tools to assemble my shortblock. I had to raid my grandfather's tool box as I have yet to have the need to buy engine assembling tools although this may be changing at work.
No picture but I also purchased the remaining odds and ends to get the car running other than a clutch and flywheel. So, if anyone has a used McLeod Twin disc with good pressure plates, I'm in the market for a clutch to hold 700ish lbft.
01-13-2019, 12:15 PM
#612
Much progress was had even though it's been -9F in the garage both weekends. Last we left off I had the engine completely tore down. I was worried about the right bank of cylinders cleaning up as for whatever reason those cylinders were quite nasty after sitting for so long. Much to my surprise all 8 cylinders cleaned with less than a thousandth of material taken from each. Once the cylinders were clean I tossed in the rings and compared my gaps from the pre-cleaned bores. I was quite surprised how varied the gaps were per cylinder with how close the bores were. I hand filed the rings and opened up all the gaps. 7 of the cylinders are .026" up top and .028" bottom and one cylinder I accidentally tapered a ring and it ended up with a .027" top and .029" bottom. I don't think the extra thousandth should cause any issues but I'll know which cylinder to address if it smokes. I checked the deck with a straight edge and found both to be spot on in all directions so I took my rubber cheese wheel thing and cleaned that, the valley, and the oil pan rail while I was at it.
The engine is all good to go for when I get a gasket kit and cam/springs. I'd like to find a comprehensive kit from pan rail to throttle body o-ring but I have yet to come across one.
Since it was so cold and wiring requires a certain level of dexterity I chose to do something I could actually wear gloves to do. This meant address the rest of the fuel system. I pulled the lines out, o-ringed all the fittings and clamped everything down. The O-rings seemed to be on the thicker side for the fittings but all the fittings tightened down with ease so I'm assuming the rings seated fine.
With a bit of help from my Dad I was able to install the cell back in the car and put clamps on all the push lock fittings. For 10$ I feel like it's cheap insurance to prevent dumping fuel all over the tarmac. That 8.8 looks damn good underneath.
I received my pressure transducers from eBay and they showed up as advertised. There a generic pressure sensor with stainless Internals so safe for any fuels I could throw at it *cough methanol *cough. I'll toss the link up once I actually get some fuel through them and see how they scale in tuner studio.
I also did a little side project since I get bored after work and the car needed it anyhow.
This project took a bit longer to design as I'm still learning as a I go but better late than never right?
This month's project features a bit CAD as well as some aluminum fabrication. As some of may of seen a few of us on here are utilizing Fusion 360, an offshoot of Autodesk Inventor, to make some of our projects. The program is relatively user friendly, has a huge online database for help, and the best feature in my book, is the ability to get it for free as a "student". It's as simple as adding ".edu " in your login information, and fibbing on a few of the questions and bingo bango you have yourself 3D capable design software.
While more advanced users might go straight to the sketch feature on the program I still like to have a drawing on paper to reference for base dimensions. Pictured also are the preliminary sketches in finalized "drawing" form. I removed the dimensions as I was only printing the drawings to trace and not layout again.
After creating the two separate sketches in 2D I combined them in the program to ensure the 2 pieces would line up once they were cut. Once you have both sketches on the same workspace its relatively easy to extrude them to your desired thickness in my case .125".
The program makes it very easy to lay the drawings out so they are easy to trace. Be careful when doing it though, my program defaults to half-scale so I printed my design twice.
I tape my papers to the work piece to make it easy to center punch multiple holes. A nifty little feature in the program lets you mark centerlines of any holes and even any arcs or curves with a linear radius.
I hate cutting out aluminum but thankfully these were small enough to cut on the shear. I drilled all the holes prior to cutting the pieces so I didn't have to cut the arcs.
Look and behold as the magic of computer laid holes allow the pieces to line up precisely.
I purposely left out what I was making in the beginning in hopes of making you read through and not looking at just the pictures so for the readers I thank you and for the viewers I hope you learned as much as you could. It is a simple bracket for holding my blow off valve pressure lines to the charge pipe in hopes of keeping it off the accessory belt.
This is how they look currently
And the intended goal for the bracket
The engine is all good to go for when I get a gasket kit and cam/springs. I'd like to find a comprehensive kit from pan rail to throttle body o-ring but I have yet to come across one.
Since it was so cold and wiring requires a certain level of dexterity I chose to do something I could actually wear gloves to do. This meant address the rest of the fuel system. I pulled the lines out, o-ringed all the fittings and clamped everything down. The O-rings seemed to be on the thicker side for the fittings but all the fittings tightened down with ease so I'm assuming the rings seated fine.
With a bit of help from my Dad I was able to install the cell back in the car and put clamps on all the push lock fittings. For 10$ I feel like it's cheap insurance to prevent dumping fuel all over the tarmac. That 8.8 looks damn good underneath.
I received my pressure transducers from eBay and they showed up as advertised. There a generic pressure sensor with stainless Internals so safe for any fuels I could throw at it *cough methanol *cough. I'll toss the link up once I actually get some fuel through them and see how they scale in tuner studio.
I also did a little side project since I get bored after work and the car needed it anyhow.
This project took a bit longer to design as I'm still learning as a I go but better late than never right?
This month's project features a bit CAD as well as some aluminum fabrication. As some of may of seen a few of us on here are utilizing Fusion 360, an offshoot of Autodesk Inventor, to make some of our projects. The program is relatively user friendly, has a huge online database for help, and the best feature in my book, is the ability to get it for free as a "student". It's as simple as adding ".edu " in your login information, and fibbing on a few of the questions and bingo bango you have yourself 3D capable design software.
While more advanced users might go straight to the sketch feature on the program I still like to have a drawing on paper to reference for base dimensions. Pictured also are the preliminary sketches in finalized "drawing" form. I removed the dimensions as I was only printing the drawings to trace and not layout again.
After creating the two separate sketches in 2D I combined them in the program to ensure the 2 pieces would line up once they were cut. Once you have both sketches on the same workspace its relatively easy to extrude them to your desired thickness in my case .125".
The program makes it very easy to lay the drawings out so they are easy to trace. Be careful when doing it though, my program defaults to half-scale so I printed my design twice.
I tape my papers to the work piece to make it easy to center punch multiple holes. A nifty little feature in the program lets you mark centerlines of any holes and even any arcs or curves with a linear radius.
I hate cutting out aluminum but thankfully these were small enough to cut on the shear. I drilled all the holes prior to cutting the pieces so I didn't have to cut the arcs.
Look and behold as the magic of computer laid holes allow the pieces to line up precisely.
I purposely left out what I was making in the beginning in hopes of making you read through and not looking at just the pictures so for the readers I thank you and for the viewers I hope you learned as much as you could. It is a simple bracket for holding my blow off valve pressure lines to the charge pipe in hopes of keeping it off the accessory belt.
This is how they look currently
And the intended goal for the bracket
01-14-2019, 12:58 PM
#614
I think it would be cool to have a similar thread on LS1tech as well since it is a much more active forum.
01-17-2019, 12:22 PM
#616
While it doesn't seem like it receives the same amount of traffic as say the Forced Induction page but I would have to imagine there's more traffic than a site specifically for 1st gen Subaru's. I'll do a write up and post it and see what happens.
01-27-2019, 01:40 PM
#618
Much to my disappointment the few past weekends have been all wiring and it's associated components.
I wanted all my fuseboxes and relays to be all in one easy to access to location to make any diagnosis down the road as easy as possible. I fit an entire 8' x 2' sheet of aluminum in the hatchback to start my electrical panel.
I was originally going to place everything on the passenger foot well portion of the tunnel but there wasn't enough room so I made it fit where the glove box/airbag would be. I roughed out where the components would go with the space available.
I whipped up the bolt spacing for the individual components in Fusion so its easy enough just to tape them down, center punch your holes, and go to town.
With all the components attached I cut a hole in the center of the panel to feed all the connections through this way you won't see any wiring coming out of the panel.
I laid out my switch panel with fusion as well and drilled the necessary holes. Even though my digital dash will display all my gauges I needed the wideband gauge because the controllers inside I guess for the heater. The only things controlled by switches are the scavenge pump, lights, blinkers and the arming switch for the ignition/starter Pull in. Thankfully the ECU does everything else.
This is where the panel sits. I used rubber grommets on the mounts for the panel as well as the ECU to prevent any solid mount vibrations from shaking my circuits to death. Don't mind the wiring hanging below the panel as they all go through the firewall and I haven't decided where that pass through will be.
I also scooped a battery and box as well. There was an Everstart battery in my RS when I bought it in 2011. It lived in the car for both the 251 and the 205 and then I used it In my ranger until I sold it December 2018. For over 7 years, all of which were sub-zero winters it survived and didn't skip a beat. It even froze solid in the ranger in 2016, and then thawed and carried on kicking. So logically the decision to buy another was easy enough. Wal-Mart even had vented plastic boxes with included tie downs for 8$ so it saves me a the hours it was going to take to design one in Fusion and make it up.
At some point this week I'll Finish up the fuse panel cover and post that whole process.
I wanted all my fuseboxes and relays to be all in one easy to access to location to make any diagnosis down the road as easy as possible. I fit an entire 8' x 2' sheet of aluminum in the hatchback to start my electrical panel.
I was originally going to place everything on the passenger foot well portion of the tunnel but there wasn't enough room so I made it fit where the glove box/airbag would be. I roughed out where the components would go with the space available.
I whipped up the bolt spacing for the individual components in Fusion so its easy enough just to tape them down, center punch your holes, and go to town.
With all the components attached I cut a hole in the center of the panel to feed all the connections through this way you won't see any wiring coming out of the panel.
I laid out my switch panel with fusion as well and drilled the necessary holes. Even though my digital dash will display all my gauges I needed the wideband gauge because the controllers inside I guess for the heater. The only things controlled by switches are the scavenge pump, lights, blinkers and the arming switch for the ignition/starter Pull in. Thankfully the ECU does everything else.
This is where the panel sits. I used rubber grommets on the mounts for the panel as well as the ECU to prevent any solid mount vibrations from shaking my circuits to death. Don't mind the wiring hanging below the panel as they all go through the firewall and I haven't decided where that pass through will be.
I also scooped a battery and box as well. There was an Everstart battery in my RS when I bought it in 2011. It lived in the car for both the 251 and the 205 and then I used it In my ranger until I sold it December 2018. For over 7 years, all of which were sub-zero winters it survived and didn't skip a beat. It even froze solid in the ranger in 2016, and then thawed and carried on kicking. So logically the decision to buy another was easy enough. Wal-Mart even had vented plastic boxes with included tie downs for 8$ so it saves me a the hours it was going to take to design one in Fusion and make it up.
At some point this week I'll Finish up the fuse panel cover and post that whole process.
02-07-2019, 01:04 PM
#619
Lame update since wiring a car isn't photogenic until it is done but progress was had regardless.
Started with mounting the battery box. I wanted to mount it centrally so the rear seat area was my first thought. Alas it is as bumpy as 495 and would require a platform to be made to mount the box. Meh that seemed like a whole lot of unnecessary work since the whole idea of buying the battery box was to you know, just mount it and forget about it. That left two options the rear left and right sides of the trunk or directly in front of the cell. Thankfully it perfectly between the cell and harness bar with plenty of room to remove the lid and jump it if need be although I should just be able to jump it straight from the fusebox B+ terminal if I felt the need. The strap provided is kind of wimpy so I will be swapping it out for a ratchet strap of sorts.
I mounted the main Ignition solenoid right to the box cover so there is very little chance of feeding the ECU direct 12V by accident. The solenoid is a continuous duty 200 amp capable from an electric golf cart. After roughly tallying the load that each of my components would likely require 150 amps would be plenty but the 200 amp ones were on sale so I figured a bit more head room would be fine incase I had the desire to add more down the road.
While doing the solenoid I also wired the secondary battery ground to where the rear seatbelts used to anchor. The fusebox main power wire runs along the same path spanning the tunnel and up into the fuse panel area.
Talking of fuse panels I also knocked out a little side project to increase the car's curb appeal (clearly I have spent to much time wiring while my mother enjoyed the home network channel in the background).
Did a small side project for my RS. The fuse panel sits right where the passenger airbag was so I figured a cover would be appropriate and keep the largest portion of wiring hidden and tidy.
I started with a model in fusion. The sheet metal workspace makes sheet metal bending and cutting a breeze. Since I unfortunately do not have a industrial sized printer and it was Sunday that I started (Staples was closed, I am impatient) , I was limited to 8.5×11 so I needed all the corresponding dimensions.
With a the dimensions laid out I transferred it to 1:1 on to another sheet. It takes a lot more attention to detail to lay it out on paper with dimensions as it only takes a few times of drawing your line on the wrong side of the ruler to have the whole thing skewed my a 1/16th or more. I have done it a few times now to know to keep a mechanical pencil handy and to use the same ruler throughout the entire layout. You may still be off by a hair or too but the semantics can be altered once the piece is in sheet metal.
The hard part is done now it was as easy as tracing it out onto aluminum and cutting it out. Now since I wanted the piece to be 3D without having to weld 5 separate pieces I added bends into the drawing. There are a few different ways to bend sheet metal and since the likelihood of you guys having access to a finger brake is slim I chose to do it with a homeade press brake. Since my bends were a round number at 90 degrees I could better get away with this. If the bend required is say, 37 degrees, you will be less than fortunate. A press brake is simple, you have a die, a sheet of metal and then your radius die. The bottom die pictured below is a piece of angle iron welded to another piece of angle iron to allow it to stand by itself.
The idea is to press your sheet into the lower die using a die who's radius is the same as the bend you desire. I modeled the drawing with a .125" radius so I could utilize a simple piece of quarter inch flat stock as my upper radius die. I rounded the ended slightly on the upper die to prevent any unwanted gouging in the bend. The sheet is placed atop the die with your bend line centered in relation to both dies. Slowly press your sheet into the lower die using the aforementioned press , adjusting the sheet to center if need be. If you play your cards right it forms a uniform radius bend without having to relief cut or any of that nonsense.
When I finished the cover I quickly realized it looked pretty bland. Maybe some labels, nah. A few stickers, negative too gawdy. A personalized logo, now we are talking. Some of you may have seen my "Factory Fabrication" stickers floating around in my journal as that is what I masquerade as for any sidework I take on. A few doodles later I whipped up this:
Twin stylized F's for you guessed it, Factory fabrication. As much as I like hand drawings it was easier to pop the drawing into Fusion to make sure it was perfectly symmetrical and give me nice drill and cut lines.
I don't have a plasma table to I cut out the logo with a hand shear and then filed all the remaining material.
Which I then welded onto the cover, drilled the holes and mounted it so together. I don't like how the center weld looks so I think I am going to leave the center slot open next time.
Questions, comments, critiques are always welcome. I hadn't touched a TIG in nearly a month before this project so I wasn't entirely displeased with my welds but there's always improvement to be made.
Started with mounting the battery box. I wanted to mount it centrally so the rear seat area was my first thought. Alas it is as bumpy as 495 and would require a platform to be made to mount the box. Meh that seemed like a whole lot of unnecessary work since the whole idea of buying the battery box was to you know, just mount it and forget about it. That left two options the rear left and right sides of the trunk or directly in front of the cell. Thankfully it perfectly between the cell and harness bar with plenty of room to remove the lid and jump it if need be although I should just be able to jump it straight from the fusebox B+ terminal if I felt the need. The strap provided is kind of wimpy so I will be swapping it out for a ratchet strap of sorts.
I mounted the main Ignition solenoid right to the box cover so there is very little chance of feeding the ECU direct 12V by accident. The solenoid is a continuous duty 200 amp capable from an electric golf cart. After roughly tallying the load that each of my components would likely require 150 amps would be plenty but the 200 amp ones were on sale so I figured a bit more head room would be fine incase I had the desire to add more down the road.
While doing the solenoid I also wired the secondary battery ground to where the rear seatbelts used to anchor. The fusebox main power wire runs along the same path spanning the tunnel and up into the fuse panel area.
Talking of fuse panels I also knocked out a little side project to increase the car's curb appeal (clearly I have spent to much time wiring while my mother enjoyed the home network channel in the background).
Did a small side project for my RS. The fuse panel sits right where the passenger airbag was so I figured a cover would be appropriate and keep the largest portion of wiring hidden and tidy.
I started with a model in fusion. The sheet metal workspace makes sheet metal bending and cutting a breeze. Since I unfortunately do not have a industrial sized printer and it was Sunday that I started (Staples was closed, I am impatient) , I was limited to 8.5×11 so I needed all the corresponding dimensions.
With a the dimensions laid out I transferred it to 1:1 on to another sheet. It takes a lot more attention to detail to lay it out on paper with dimensions as it only takes a few times of drawing your line on the wrong side of the ruler to have the whole thing skewed my a 1/16th or more. I have done it a few times now to know to keep a mechanical pencil handy and to use the same ruler throughout the entire layout. You may still be off by a hair or too but the semantics can be altered once the piece is in sheet metal.
The hard part is done now it was as easy as tracing it out onto aluminum and cutting it out. Now since I wanted the piece to be 3D without having to weld 5 separate pieces I added bends into the drawing. There are a few different ways to bend sheet metal and since the likelihood of you guys having access to a finger brake is slim I chose to do it with a homeade press brake. Since my bends were a round number at 90 degrees I could better get away with this. If the bend required is say, 37 degrees, you will be less than fortunate. A press brake is simple, you have a die, a sheet of metal and then your radius die. The bottom die pictured below is a piece of angle iron welded to another piece of angle iron to allow it to stand by itself.
The idea is to press your sheet into the lower die using a die who's radius is the same as the bend you desire. I modeled the drawing with a .125" radius so I could utilize a simple piece of quarter inch flat stock as my upper radius die. I rounded the ended slightly on the upper die to prevent any unwanted gouging in the bend. The sheet is placed atop the die with your bend line centered in relation to both dies. Slowly press your sheet into the lower die using the aforementioned press , adjusting the sheet to center if need be. If you play your cards right it forms a uniform radius bend without having to relief cut or any of that nonsense.
When I finished the cover I quickly realized it looked pretty bland. Maybe some labels, nah. A few stickers, negative too gawdy. A personalized logo, now we are talking. Some of you may have seen my "Factory Fabrication" stickers floating around in my journal as that is what I masquerade as for any sidework I take on. A few doodles later I whipped up this:
Twin stylized F's for you guessed it, Factory fabrication. As much as I like hand drawings it was easier to pop the drawing into Fusion to make sure it was perfectly symmetrical and give me nice drill and cut lines.
I don't have a plasma table to I cut out the logo with a hand shear and then filed all the remaining material.
Which I then welded onto the cover, drilled the holes and mounted it so together. I don't like how the center weld looks so I think I am going to leave the center slot open next time.
Questions, comments, critiques are always welcome. I hadn't touched a TIG in nearly a month before this project so I wasn't entirely displeased with my welds but there's always improvement to be made.
02-27-2019, 09:28 AM
#620
I have been plugging away at the little jobs as of late. All the tedious little details add up quick, it seems for every item I check off I add three more.
Wiring wise the car is ready to fire up.
I ground all my switches and wired my ignition push button. The push button came with no diagram so it took a bit of experimenting with a testlight to get the LED to turn on when I wanted as well as acting as a normally open switch.
I wired the wideband in, feeding it's signal to the ECU so I can use it as a reference in the tune.
I wired the ignition arming switch and the and the ignition power solenoid as well. Both functioned well, the solenoid didn't release or do anything funky for the 10 minutes I left it activated.
I wired both pumps and the fans to there corresponding ECU triggers as well as running the wires to each component. I'll have some pictures of how the wiring is run when I finish up my retaining brackets.
I wired the scavenge pump to it's switch and ran the wires as well. It's pretty cool that it self primes, but it is a but in the noisy side. Less so than I thought that's for sure but about the same level of sound coming from the pumps.
The headlights and tail lights were next to be wired. Both were relatively simple, I have the two relays on the same switch as I would imagine the factory does it.
I'm midway through the brake lights and blinkers but as I said earlier this will come with the wiring update most likely.
My Cam, springs, and gasket set showed up last week.
While I could I installed the cam, timing set and oil pump. Thank the heavens I have a LS building book or I would have absolutely skipped shimming the oil pump drive gear.
I installed a new cam sensor and oil pressure sensor as well as both were broken at some point during my engine mockup phase. The oil pressure transducer is the same as my fuel pressure one so it should be easy uploading the information into tunerstudio.
During the week as I don't have access to the car I have been trying to do little bits that I don't physically need the car for after work for an hour a day. I was reading through a ****-storm of Facebookers to read a comment about finishing projects. "Life's not a spectator sport". That really hit home so I have been trying to do an hour a day on the car regardless of what it is. I've never really had a lack of motivation but this close to the end has really been dragging me through the mud.
Anywho, rant/. I brought my heads to work to clean them up, inspect them, and install the springs if everything checked out.
I started by pulling the valves out, there was no drags or burrs upon removal so I was quite pleased the guides were in good shape. As you can see they were quite nasty though. However long in a junkyard and 4 years in my garage will take it's toll.
I found out where my block dowels went on disassembly.
The valves were pretty grimey but not the excessive carbon build up you would expect from 100k miles of bad maintenance.
After a quick polish up they came out quite nicely. They even had a nice angle left on them, which is good because I absolutely hate grinding valves and seats. That test in school, was my worst hands on test grade I ever received. I lapped a chamber on each head to see if it had a decent pattern and was satisfied with the result to not worry about the the others. I picked the worst two sets for that reason.
An hour in boiling jet spray certainly cleans well.
Next up was the spring install. I used one of the wrap around style spring compressors as that is what I had at work but I can see why people use the rocker pedestal mounted ones on these particular heads. A quick tip for installing keepers, I like to grease the keepers front and back that why they stick right to the valve once Installed. A magnet works alright but with the wrap around compressors I find the compressor pedestal gets in the way of a magnet and can easily knock the keepers loose. Don't use too much grease or the keepers will end up getting pulled out as you move around with all the grease.
Fresh springs and all surfaces cleaned up. The heads checked straight on all planes so I took a light rubber scuff pad and cleaned the remaining gasket gunk off and called it a day.
The timing cover was also pretty gross and I don't really like painting aluminum parts so I took a wire wheel too it. I'll hit it with a buffer wheel yo knock the scratches down and then leave it alone as well.
Wiring wise the car is ready to fire up.
I ground all my switches and wired my ignition push button. The push button came with no diagram so it took a bit of experimenting with a testlight to get the LED to turn on when I wanted as well as acting as a normally open switch.
I wired the wideband in, feeding it's signal to the ECU so I can use it as a reference in the tune.
I wired the ignition arming switch and the and the ignition power solenoid as well. Both functioned well, the solenoid didn't release or do anything funky for the 10 minutes I left it activated.
I wired both pumps and the fans to there corresponding ECU triggers as well as running the wires to each component. I'll have some pictures of how the wiring is run when I finish up my retaining brackets.
I wired the scavenge pump to it's switch and ran the wires as well. It's pretty cool that it self primes, but it is a but in the noisy side. Less so than I thought that's for sure but about the same level of sound coming from the pumps.
The headlights and tail lights were next to be wired. Both were relatively simple, I have the two relays on the same switch as I would imagine the factory does it.
I'm midway through the brake lights and blinkers but as I said earlier this will come with the wiring update most likely.
My Cam, springs, and gasket set showed up last week.
While I could I installed the cam, timing set and oil pump. Thank the heavens I have a LS building book or I would have absolutely skipped shimming the oil pump drive gear.
I installed a new cam sensor and oil pressure sensor as well as both were broken at some point during my engine mockup phase. The oil pressure transducer is the same as my fuel pressure one so it should be easy uploading the information into tunerstudio.
During the week as I don't have access to the car I have been trying to do little bits that I don't physically need the car for after work for an hour a day. I was reading through a ****-storm of Facebookers to read a comment about finishing projects. "Life's not a spectator sport". That really hit home so I have been trying to do an hour a day on the car regardless of what it is. I've never really had a lack of motivation but this close to the end has really been dragging me through the mud.
Anywho, rant/. I brought my heads to work to clean them up, inspect them, and install the springs if everything checked out.
I started by pulling the valves out, there was no drags or burrs upon removal so I was quite pleased the guides were in good shape. As you can see they were quite nasty though. However long in a junkyard and 4 years in my garage will take it's toll.
I found out where my block dowels went on disassembly.
The valves were pretty grimey but not the excessive carbon build up you would expect from 100k miles of bad maintenance.
After a quick polish up they came out quite nicely. They even had a nice angle left on them, which is good because I absolutely hate grinding valves and seats. That test in school, was my worst hands on test grade I ever received. I lapped a chamber on each head to see if it had a decent pattern and was satisfied with the result to not worry about the the others. I picked the worst two sets for that reason.
An hour in boiling jet spray certainly cleans well.
Next up was the spring install. I used one of the wrap around style spring compressors as that is what I had at work but I can see why people use the rocker pedestal mounted ones on these particular heads. A quick tip for installing keepers, I like to grease the keepers front and back that why they stick right to the valve once Installed. A magnet works alright but with the wrap around compressors I find the compressor pedestal gets in the way of a magnet and can easily knock the keepers loose. Don't use too much grease or the keepers will end up getting pulled out as you move around with all the grease.
Fresh springs and all surfaces cleaned up. The heads checked straight on all planes so I took a light rubber scuff pad and cleaned the remaining gasket gunk off and called it a day.
The timing cover was also pretty gross and I don't really like painting aluminum parts so I took a wire wheel too it. I'll hit it with a buffer wheel yo knock the scratches down and then leave it alone as well.