Bad day on the dyno...

[carbuff]

Quoting from the movie classic "Frankenstein":

It's alive!

It was another long day in Eric's shop today. It's amazing how we pulled the transmission out in about 45 minutes last night yet it took us about 5 hours to put it back in today. That's what happens when you are meticulous and want it done right though!

I mentioned yesterday that we had a leak in the PS pump reservoir. So first thing I switched the reservoir from my old pump to the new pump. I put everything back together and filled up the system, then started working on the transmission. A few minutes later, Eric noticed we had a drip under the car. Danged if the assembly wasn't leaking again! GRRR!

So we took it back off the car, disassembled it again, and started checking the reservoir for leaks. While it looked a bit questionable around the edge seam, it certainly didn't look like it should be leaking the way it was. We decided that it must be the o-ring between the pump and the reservoir. So Eric sealed the edge with some black RTV and we replaced the o-ring again, then reassembled and reinstalled. That also meant that the AN fitting I overnighted from Summit on Thursday was no longer needed. Sigh...

We next moved back to the throwout bearing / slave cylinder. I spent last night trying to decide whether to use the new GM unit I purchased or to stick with the Hydramax which I already had with our fix. Eric and I discussed it for a while, and we decided to stick with our fix. We have no reason to doubt it will work just fine, and it saaved us some time of modifying the new GM slave hydraulic fittings.

One concern that I'd had with the Hydramax yesterday was that it felt really soft. We thought we had done a good job of bleeding the unit by pushing fluid up from the bottom. We determined that maybe we hadn't really gotten all of the air out. So before installing everything, we turned the transmission on its side to get the AN fittings pointing upwards and bled the unit with a MitiVac. We felt like we were able to get it filled pretty well.

So then back under the car we went. We lifted the unit up, and it just slid right in flush to the bellhousing. I don't think either of us have had one go in so smoothly. Finally a break Then we started the fun process of installing my crossmember / torque arm mount. This is one hefty unit that combines the JRS torque arm crossmember with Eric's added transmission mount. The dang thing weighs about 25 pounds and takes 20 bolts to completely install it (I'm not kidding). Alone it takes 30 minutes or so to get in.

Wiring connectors attached, drive shaft installed, Redline fluid pumped into the T56 again (aside, I'm sick and tired of wearing all of the smelly fluids this car takes!), and exhaust reinstalled. At this point we pumped fluid back up through the clutch slave cylinder into the master cylinder and reservoir. After we got it full, I hopped in the car and Eric did a normal bleed procedure. We hoped that between the 2 we got all the air out. Based on where we started and where we ended, it felt a lot better.

Another aside. I want to give props to Steve, the owner at Monster Clutch. I emailed him about 9:00 tonight to ask a question about my slave travel, and he replied in about 5 minutes. He's been really helpful to be through this process of selection and installation.

So now we have everything bolted back together, fluids all reinstalled, it's time to try and fire her up again. I get in and turn the switch. Spin, spin, spin. No fire, but at least things sound ok. It took a few more seconds of spinning before I got any oil pressure, but that's the joy of starting an LS for the first time. Finally, I touched the gas pedal and got a short fire for about 1 second. Pressure jumped which was good, but she died quickly. Time to jump into the tune.

I added a lot of fuel during starting, as we weren't smelling anything at all. The next time I tried, she lit right up. Woo hoo!!! We let her run for a couple of minutes, varied the speed up and down between 1500 and 2000 rpm while watching the Holley gauge screen to make sure things looked ok. Everything looks good, up until it starts to get a little hot. That's my fault. Apparently I have screwed up something in my wiring when I installed a relay for my Accusump, so the Holley cannot control the fans correctly at the moment. One is trying to run all the time, and the other not at all. So it got up to running temp, then as it climbed I shut it down around 215.

We lifted the car up, and everything looks good, except we left the radiator cap off while running and burped some DexCool out (another nasty fluid). We cleaned that up but didn't find any other leaks or problems. So we dropped her back down and started her up again. It was harder to start this time, but she's running. Same as before, I ran her until the temps got high and shut her down. No leaks.

We did this a third time, but the engine was pretty hot already when I tried to start it. I say tried, because it really didn't want to start. I definitely have some tuning work to do, but I'm surprised it's proving so much harder since I didn't change anything in the tune related to this.

By now it was about 7:30, and we were beat, so we called it a night. Tomorrow I'm going to try and mostly take a break, but I do want to get a few little things done which I need to do... I'll do one more heat cycle, then change the oil and filter as speced by TSP. I need to fix my electrical problems if I can (at least diagnose it, as I may have to order some relay socket pins), and work on my tune some more. If I get those all done then I'll drop the hood on and take her out for the first drive. I'm hopeful I can do that as I need to drive it as much as I can on Monday to break in the engine and clutch. Tuesday and part of Wednesday it's going to rain here, so that would be a good time to do the Accusump install and finish up things like charging the AC and bleeding the brakes. I'm still planning to hit the road Thursday morning if at all possible to get to Fort Worth for GG next weekend. The one thing I'm not sure I'll have time to do is to get a tune done before that trip. I may just have to rely on setting the correct target AFR and let the Holley do its thing. (I'll set a conservative ignition map to be safe)

Just a couple of pictures for today. Here is our fixed stud for the clutch slave:



And a shot before buttoning it all back up (note the loose belt):



One more thing I forgot that I did today was to add some rack spacers to my rack and pinion to hopefully solve my rubbing problem. I already had 2 in there, so I added a third and have about 1/2" of clearance now:



Time for some sleep!

[Che70velle]

Bryan, great to hear. I can sense the excitement in your writing. Hope you get some drive time before the GG event. Keep us posted.

[waynieZ]

Nice progress, glad it went well for you. That fix on the slave cylinder came out great.

[GregWeld]

On your start programming -- look for a "start RPMS" -- Might be called something different in the Holley program... Sometimes they can be set too high.

[carbuff]

Short update tonight, I'm beat... I planned to spend 2, maybe 3 hours working today, and stopped at 9.

Things I did today:

• Adjusted the tune, adding fuel during start and reducing the timing advance. Starts much better now.
• After above starting and heat cycling, changed the oil to the second round of break-in.
• Corrected a wiring problem on my Accusump enable control (not fun to tear into my harness when my wiring was so nicely run the first time)
• During the re-wire, found a blown fuse on my fan circuit, explaining why only 1 fan was running
• Reassembled the console
• Installed the hood (thanx Gerno!)
• Checked and topped off all the fluids.
• Charged the low battery

That doesn't seem like enough, but oh well. The wiring took a couple of hours alone. I was all set to drive her home tonight from Eric's, but unfortunately she's overheating. I thought before that was due to the one fan being dead and the other having the radiator air flow blocked, but that's not the case. Steve suggested I may have trapped air which is likely the case, so I'll pull the upper hose tomorrow and fill through there. Hopefully that's all it is.

I also found that the Holley was pulling timing because my Air Temp sensor wasn't connected, which was causing it to idle rough. I disabled that for now, and my idle is much better.

The clutch feels good as I backed out of the shop and ran through the parking lot a bit before she got hot. I'm happy with our fix and decision to stick with the Hydramax.

Tomorrow, diagnose and fix the engine temp problem and go for a drive. Then drive some more, and some more, and then some more. I also need to make some phone calls to arrange tuning and b!tch to AGR about their pump reservoir...

Hopefully tomorrow will be the driving day!

[Ron in SoCal]

B - I know you can easily pull 'em, but be careful on a tight AutoX with that many spacers due to reduced steering angle. I'm pretty sure first and second gens use the same length rack, but I could be wrong. I had to go to zero and use my sway bar as a steering stop (yeah I did that). You have a diff sway bar, so that 'approach' won't work in your case. Hope this helps and congrats on the progress.

[carbuff]

Ron,

Previously, my lower control arms have been acting as my steering limiters, and I have a rub mark on each wheel to show for it. Unfortunately the LCA's are wider than they probably need to be in this critical clearance area which is why I'm trying to limit the travel at the rack. I'll definitely be paying attention to any differences though, and I'll remove them if I need to. I already had 2 on each side and was rubbing, so I didn't add a lot more limitation.

I wish I had more clearance here, as I would consider a step up in front tire/wheel size. Those 275's look so small. I'm sure I could fit a 285 or 295 on my wheel and still be ok, but there isn't one available in the Falken line.

[carbuff]

!@#%!@^&#%# 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...

[glassman]

Whats the solution for the AGR pump? Different brand? same dims?

Watchin you go thru all this bs (and i've been watching your build for what 3+years now?) and it makes me feel better, cause i though i was the only one where sometimes it feels like nothing can go right. But when you think about the thousands of parts on our rides, it only takes ONE for something to go awrie!!!!!! Then the odds dont seem like too much....

Good luck bud!!! FRom sunny ca

[waynieZ]

Glad to hear you caught the belt and pump before it did any major damage.