!@#%!@^&#%# mother *&^!@*#&^@! AGR power steering pump!!!
Ok, deep breath and rewind.
Today was actually a pretty good day for the most part. I got to the shop this morning and the first thing I did was open the radiator. It had dropped about 6", so some air had bubbled its way out. That's good, hopefully my hot condition last night was just a big bubble. I pulled the upper hose and filled it up until it wouldn't take any more, then topped off the radiator. Started her up and let her run. Temp sat right between 200 and 205 as I expected. Well, almost as I expected, as the fans never shut off, but it never got hotter either. More on that later.
I tweaked on the tune a little more, experimenting with the timing and fuel at idle. I'm no expert here, and this is where I need a real tuner to get his hands on the car. But right now she's idling around 800 rpm with a nice lope and no stumble off idle, so I'm happy enough with that. I also don't have the overly rich smell that I've always had with the car before now. I attribute that to the new O2 sensor.
After checking her over one more time, I took off for my first drive. About 5 miles, just to get a feel for her. Just so happened that Steve stopped by during lunch, so I came back and picked him up for another short drive. Things are feeling good: clutch feels great (really happy with this change), throttle is responsive, traction is likely to be a problem.
All's good.
After lunch, I went for a longer drive. I wanted to see if the coolant temp would drop with some air moving through the radiator. I also wanted to work on the tune some more. I put about 40 miles on her, and the fans never shut off. I did, however, do some tuning on the knock sensor and timing. I was able to make it ping, then dial that out by enabling the sensor and setting the sensitivity. Again, good enough for now, will do more on a dyno.
I've decided the temps aren't coming down because I don't have the oil cooler hooked up. My oil temps have always been too low, but I questioned if it was the gauge or the actual temps. Looks like it was the actual temps. Without the cooler, I'm seeing the oil temp between 200 and 220 as I would expect. I realized the reason the fans/coolant temp aren't coming down as far as I expect is because the oil is keeping the engine warmer now. So once I reinstall the cooler, that will help. I also question whether my Mocal thermostat is ever closing. I somehow doubt it now...
I came back to Eric's to take a break and check all my fluids. When I popped the hood, I noticed that my 6 rib belt now only has 4 ribs! When we started looking, we see that the snap-ring that holds the front bearing of the PS pump in place is just hanging there, and the pulley is about 1/8" too far forward. I run out to get a new belt and Eric took the pump off. When I got back, he said the pulley basically fell off when he removed the belt. I'm damned lucky that didn't happen while I was driving!
We looked hard at the AGR pump, trying to decide what to do, and we finally decided the best option was to just scrap it. The bearing won't seat down in far enough to install the snap ring, we're not sure why because the measurements say that it should. It appears that whomever assembled it thought it was ok too, but the ring must not have been seated. AGR sent me a beat up reservoir that leaked and a pump that could have sent a pulley through my hood if I had continued driving as I had planned today. Consider me pissed...
As I went to reinstall the belt, I saw the idler pulled was also destroyed as shown above. I didn't realize that pulley was just plastic. So a second trip to O'Reilly netted me the pulley which I installed on the idler arm. It's all back together now.
After we took care of that, I started on the mounts for my Accusump. Here is the monstrous and overkill clamp I bought to mount it to my sway bar tube:
And the clamp attached to the tube:
It's going to be a tighter fit in there than I realized, but it does look like it's going to fit. I may replace these clamps with the smaller version down the road, but for now, they will work. I'm probably adding 30 pounds of weight ahead of the front axle centerline, which I am not thrilled about, but it's just where it will best fit.
I'll finish that up tomorrow while Eric does a few other things. We should wrap everything up tomorrow night if we don't hit anymore snags...