The Great Rolling Dyno engine rebuild

[510rob]

fun stuff!

[bertvorgon]

Morning World,

My heart is pounding right now, in 20 minutes I am off to get my car and drive back to the garage.

Going to clean the interior, as I cannot get at it once in the garage, and then give it a good wash and wipe down on the outside.

Looking forward to see how the wide band is at part throttle on cruise, and then hopefully 1 blast with the secondary now that I richened it up.

Keep yah posted......

[gooned]

Hope it went well Mr. Bert?

[bertvorgon]

"Open the pod bay door, HAL! HAL? HAL?

I would have understood if my son in law Brody, had changed the lock and re-programmed the garage door opener. He has had 7 months of full use of his garage with my car gone. Kids bikes, mower, family stuff, all able to just hit the floor where they lay.

So grateful to have my space!!!!!!

Hitting Specialty my plan was to crawl into the back seat area, to clean the windows and polish out my Lexan side windows, the haze from the shop really affected the Lexan. I vacuumed the floors and basically gave the interior a wipe down.

Again, I was so nervous. I rolled the car outside and washed the 7 months of dust off, giving it a good wipe down and dry. I hoped the 27 KM drive back to the garage would dry the rest of the moisture out of the car.

Andy came out when I was ready to fire the car and upon seeing me push the clutch in to start said that is a NO, NO!!! The roadster clutch really loads the engine's thrust bearing on a cold start up, before oil pressure really hits, so I won't be doing that any more. Plus, not to bring idle up to 2,000 till the oild pressure starts to build. It does take a few seconds with the huge leak that the turbo bearing actually creates.

WHAM, it lit off right away, cycling the warm up to 200F, fans on, down to 180, fans off, did that a few times. We left the oil cooler taped up, as it was such a cool morning, 7 when I left.

Andy asked me not to beat on it on the drive home, worried about that old Avgas and the methanol spray is turned off.

I rolled onto 99 with a nice brisk but easy shot of low boost, sure feels more torquey now. I nervously watched the gauges, oil pressure good, fuel maybe a bit high, A/F was good at the highway cruise, low 12's, perfect. Car sure felt darty on the old, cold 048's and the super worn and grooved pavement on that section of 99.

After 5 km or so I started to feel more comfortable, nice and snug in the bucket seat and vital signs all good. I just motored along at 107 KMH, with the odd roll on to watch the A/F gauge.

Approaching my final turn off to 8th from 99, traffic was thin enough and far enough ahead I gave it 1 shot of secondary, to see how my jet change was...WHAM....*$@ kmh and A/F in the 11's...good! With fresh fuel and methanol running, will then do a HARD pull in 5th and depending on WHERE it is in the 11's, I may just increase size a hair bigger to be in the top 10's, low 11's. Car felt good though.

I was careful in the 8th avenue G-Circle, old, cold tires and still not sure of how boost will hit in lower gears with revs up... TBC. Boost is only at 12 and I want to hopefully get back to 14 PSI.

My son was at the garage to help me back in, so hard to get it close to the passenger side concrete wall, do not want to hit a flare. It's not easy doing that with the full race clutch and a slight incline in the floor of the garage. We did the last bit of fine tuning by just pushing the car around a tad.

Car cover is on, light bulb in engine bay, exhaust pipe plugged and battery maintainer on. I have a list of small things to do over the winter and Andy wants me to fire car up every 2 -3 weeks, which is a bit onerous but he wants the cylinders to stay oiled. In the spring we will address the carb issue at idle, I have no idea how this has come about.

So....BIBBITY.. BIBBITY...."That's all folks!"

[ostaylor]

Looking great Keith. Congrats on the completion of the rebuild and getting it back to bed safely.

[bertvorgon]

Morning World!

Thanks Owen, so glad to get it back,as nerve wracking as it was. In the past, I headed to Knox Mountain twice with a fresh engine, sweating the whole way that something might go wrong.

Once it did when we had first installed the spray bar, tons of oil in the valve cover. On the Hope/Princeton, on a twisty section, my self and a friend in his Mustang ran into a guy with a souped up car. Away we went racing through the twisty's. In a few miles, at the top of the Similkameen mine hill, my oil pressure light came on...AAHHHHH!! Quickly pull off in the truck brake check. Other friends on the way with us stopped, one with a flashlight.

Holy Mother of God, my engine compartment is FILLED with oil!!!! The catch can is over flowing and the ENTIRE right side of the engine bay is dripping oil!!!!! We wiped as much as we could and continued on to Kelowna, topping up the oil with some regular oil that one of the people in our convoy had. I stayed at the speed limit after that and kept the revs down.

I spent 2 hours in a car wash in Kelowna the next morning, using 4 cans of engine shampoo. To this day that side of my car will NEVER rust.

We determined that the increase of volume of oil from the sway bar, just overwhelmed the ability to drain?????..but.....by just dropping the oil level in the comp pan....I have no issues with g-force. Andy had run into that in a couple of other motors that did that. We think when the oil level is right up, that it "walls" up during very hard and sustained cornering and can block that big drain hole in the back corner of the block..who knows for sure but that is what I do now. Never had a problem since.

At least the engine(s) got broken in on the drive up.

[RONSLYCHUK]

Congrats Keith, must feel good to be all done.
Have a Merry Christmas!