AkRev

Back at it, got the worst rust repair down now. Got the general shape down well. Few ball hammer marks that I am in the process of working out. Drivers side engine bay has all rust removed and holes patched.

Here is a easy way to test slack in the driveline and compare it to others. http://forums.hybridz.org/topic/117909-total-driveline-slack-can-you-help/ In general an engine should be smooth, to hold a car at 30 mph still requires a good amount of energy. If the engine has difficulties holding a steady speed, I would check to make sure that the engine is not running lean under light throttle conditions. Other thing I would look into, is with a car with that much power, I would suggest getting a progressive throttle. I can tell you that it does make a big difference to be able to drive a car on the street with a progressive style of throttle. Good luck.

Got a few moments to try and patch a few trouble spots. Before. After. Got everything smoothed down using a 60 grit flap disk. Got one small high spot that I will have to work a little due to overheating. Pleased with how it turned out. Going to keep going then go back and lead it.

More tear down. Got the lower core support removed today. Here is a picture of all of the spot welds that I had to drill out, and two that I missed. As soon as I cut the last spot weld, the front of the car relaxed and spread out about a 1/4" over two feet. After I removed the lower core support, I decided that I needed to trim a little more off for the radiator. By doing so, this will allow me to remake the mount for the radiator. I will move the radiator forward 2-1/2" and down about 3-1/2" In measuring everything, it looks like I will be able to mount up to a 4-1/2" thick core for an intercooler, or a 3" core so that I would be able to run a condenser. I am leaning toward not installing a.c. in the car. Here is a small idea of where I am planning to mount the radiator. Looking for feed back with peoples experience with how close to mount the intercooler to the radiator. I am assuming about 1" would be enough to keep heat saturation down on a road car.

Lol, got 4 really quickly, 5th one took me a bit. Good fun.

Good news, when you squirt oil in the cylinders, you are testing the rings. The oil runs down to the rings and this is an old school way to test the rings. So if you are not getting a noticeable change when you squirt oil down, that leaves your valves or head gasket. Based on the fact that two and four seem unaffected by the lower number of three, it is less likely that a head gasket is the cause. This would leave valves as your most likely suspect. So, the question right now, is it worth pulling the head and getting some valve work? If that is worth it to you, how much of the "wile you are at it bug" will you be influenced by? To me, those numbers are not at the point that you "Need" to take care of it, Yes a warm engine will give you a better idea of what you are dealing with. If you are thinking about not getting the work done, before you do go down that road, get a warm cylinder compression test done first. If it was me, I would crack it open and do some work, but I always like peace of mind; and I am good friends with the "wile you are at it bug." Good Luck

I am going to relate this to a recent experience that I had at my home. To me this is like me flushing the toilet at my house and when it backs up, I do not blame it on the pipe size. Yes, a small pipe will cause my toilet to back up, if it can not flow the water when I flush, it will not flush and it will overflow. Instead, I will get the snake and clean the blockage (in my recent case, it was a box of non disposable wipes that my youngest thought would be fun to flush down the toilet when no one was looking.) Yes a small gauge wire will cause symptoms that have been described. But I trust the standards of AWG and Brown and Sharpe. To me I would believe that wires that have been exposed to almost half a century of heat cycles and then been forced around as someone replaces a pump are more likely to be the problem. As I said before, cars are still produced with fuel pumps that use an 18 gauge wire (see Chevy and Nissan for examples.) A good quality wire well work great, I know. As I said before, I run that pump with an 18 gauge wire.

Forgot to answer Ed's question on here for those that are wondering. I pulled from multiple areas, the most telling was comparing high firewall drivers side to the frame rail on the passenger side at the core support. Then comparing that to the complementary measurement from the passenger side fire wall. To confirm (and since my front windshield was out) I also measured from upper drivers side of the windshield area to the strut tower on the passenger side and so on. Over all, I took tons of measurements to confirm. All of the measurements showed that going high on the drivers side to low passenger side would give me a shorter measurements. The most telling measurement was from the upper windshield to the strut towers. I would get about 5/8" difference. At the moment, the windshield to struts are giving dead even measurements. There is about an 1/8" to 1/16" when I pull from the firewall to the frame rail at the cross member. Correct me if I am wrong, but my main focus is to get the suspension in line. I figure that the body panels can absorb any slight differences as long as the differences are only vertical due to the size of the mounting holes. Horizontal measurements are consistent and do appear that when I reassemble the hood and fenders that I will be able to keep a constant even panel gap around the hood.

I would be lying if I said that I did not entertain that thought a little on Friday when I pulled the measurements. It was a 1/2" inch off square. I pulled out my 8 foot level to confirm, for some reason the passenger side was high by about an inch. To be honest though, I have yet to hit a problem on the car that I feel like I can not handle. Plus, the car does have a lot of sentimental value. I do have some good news. I got the car to square back up. After I pulled the upper half of the core support, the car "relaxed" and started pulling different measurements, it was only a 1/4" off at that point. With a few bricks, ratchets, two 2x4s, and a jack, l was able to get the car within an 1/16" in measurements.(high firewall drivers side to low cross-member passenger side and the opposite pull starting high firewall on the passenger side.) This method is something I am not proud of, but it worked... somehow. For those that are wondering, I pulled off the most back woods frame pull. I supported all parts of the car by getting the car off of jack stands and placing it on bricks on the ground, shimmed to keep the car from rocking and strapped down the car. Then put a scissor jack on the passenger side frame rail (this was the "high" side.) On top of the jack I had two 2x4s in a T shape, a few indentations in the ceiling drywall and a few adjustments of bricks and shims, my car started pulling good measurements. I do not recommend doing this over a real professional with a frame puller. I did this so I can at least move on, it is still not perfect, and after I patch everything, I will still take it to a professional friend that has a frame puller. Now its time for me to make my wife Mother's day breakfast.

This is where I you decide that have a vision, or I am just plain crazy. Possibly I am both. Ran into a few issues this past week that I decided needed to be taken care of. The one that upset me the most, the car was off square. I thought about getting the framed pulled... but then found the next problem. rust was way worse than I thought by the driver's side core support area. It has a patch panel, and POR-15 holding it (along with about 20 layers of paint to cover it.) Finally, one thing that has always bothered me is the tightness between my thick aluminum radiator and the engine, to the point that my fan shroud really was not that effective. On to the carnage; Drilling out the spot welds. Passenger side removed, lots of spot welds at fun angles. Now for the ugly side. If you look you can see the patch I was talking about in the last picture. Almost time to break out the welder. My stopping point for the weekend.

Based on that, I would replace the wire to the pump. That is about the cheapest most effective thing you can do at this point. (unless your fuel pump is under warranty) Please, make sure you also replace the ground wire as well.

Not trying to start a pissing match. Just trying to help the OP. But to add to my case, my car burned and forced me to rewire the whole car from scratch. I run the same 044 pump, with 18 gauge wire, with a pre-filter, on a longer 2+2, and ran it in Houston, Texas with no problems. I am not saying that his wire is not the problem, just the fact that it is 18 gauge does not mean you should point to that as its only problem. Old wire is more of a suspect than the size. Please note, these pumps do fail if mounted vertically, and do not like to be mounted higher than the bottom of the gas tank, as Johnc pointed out. Still, the one thing that sticks out to me is the problem with stop and go traffic. I understand that it could be a lack of air movement that could cool the pump, but there is a part of me that still wonders about the condition of the pressure regulator and return line. Have you tested line pressure?

I like your XXR choice. Seem to fit the body very well. Do have to ask about the wire mesh headlight. Got a picture from the front? Reminds me of the old Corvette style.

Few things. First, 18 gauge wire is not the problem. If it was, they would not use that small of wire to wire cars from the factory. Second, Followup questions; How old is the pump? How many hours have you ran the pump? how is the condition of the return line? Things to think about, if you are using stock wires, these are now very old and brittle. Movement will ruin copper strands inside the wire and will make 18 gauge wire to act like a much smaller wire. Side effect of this would be heat in the wire. You noted that your car shut off in stop and go traffic, I have experience with killing a good fuel pump because my return line was too small (or clogged). This will cause the pump to work harder and create extra heat.

Congrats!

Do not know if this is the one you are referring to. http://forums.hybridz.org/topic/44769-aerodynamics-tip-front-air-dam-mod/ Good Luck

It has been bad weather for the past bit, so I have turned my attention to cleaning up the engine bay. Got a $5 spot weld remover from Harbor Freight and started removing the spot welds around the brackets in the engine bay. Next up, working on the core support and more blasting.

Did not notice any comments about temp sensor, are you going to use the CHTS?

Understood. This is more what I meant by bench testing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z12HPGaw25k (personally I like to pull the coil and plug and lay them across grounded metal so they can spark. (And its fun to take time lapse pictures ) Not testing them with out the plugs in there. I am trying to think about a way to test the coils. I can think of two ways, the first is if you have a temperature reader and can read the temps of the coils ( the bad one should be hotter in running conditions.) The other one is to hook up ground and power to the coil, and see if you can get any grounding signal from the trigger pin. When do your new coils come in?

Still going through stuff to find the pictures from Jeff, I sent you the one that I had that is not on his build. One thing I remembered looking back at things, was when you put in the higher amp fuse for the coils. This was when you had the settings on "going high." I do not know if your coil got damaged in the process, but I have a hard time understanding why you had triggers triggering when they should not have been. To be honest, wiring seem the most likely. I would unplug the connectors and first test for continuity between sets on pin #2. One other possibility is that one of the coils went bad heated up and damaged wiring in the coil. Could also explain the blown fuse. Any way you could pull the coils and "bench" test them with megasquirt?

Use the contact adhesive.

Thanks Tamo3, I must admit, I was drooling over your rims the other day. Those things look amazing. Got small pockets of work done. Pulled the gas tank. And I also spend a few minutes every day blasting away. The POR-15 has been challenging to get off to say the least, but it is coming off! Tested out blasting off some of the undercoating. It did not work as well as I though it would. Going to hit it with a putty knife and a heat gun and I will report how that goes. I know my progress has been going slow, but things will pick up a bit here shortly.

No worries, Sorry also if I came off bad too, I was trying to be funny and its hard to come off through text. All I can do to help is make a few points, Block, F54 is hard to bore out big(but possible), I have seen more have luck with the N block, Also I would o-ring it. Crank, I have no idea the limit for the crank. Hopefully someone else can chime in on this. Seems like you have a plan for the rods and pistons. Head, Lots of debates about this part, do you have one already to start with? these are non crossflow heads, and they do take some experience to flow right and efficiently. Look into upgrading the bolts, shaving, and cam spacing/shimming to meet your needs. Intake, noted about the custom build, you looking into short or long runners? <- that makes a big difference. How are you planing to back up this power, Clutch, halfshafts, transmission, Body stiffing and so on. There is lots of good information on Hybridz, Sometimes it is hard to find using the search feature on the website. However, Google site search is always your friend. Good Luck PS, I know this list is very incomplete... but I am hungry, and my caring to hunger ratio is low. Also, got some pics of the base car? Also, are you planing to use this car for promotion of your shop?

If I was an evil man, I would enjoy starting threads like this all just to watch the reactions. But on a serious note, money is always the main limiting factor. Besides that, your posts are coming off a little stuck up. (I am not trying to be a jerk, just calling it how I see it.) You list off some good things your first post, but it looks like you are missing the experience that comes from doing this type of work. Ringing the block, Head work, upgrading the head bolts and so on. If you want to do it, go for it, I will support you as much as I can. If you want to get others to support you, Do your homework, study, and do not compare apples to oranges. Comments like "Honestly, compared to what I'm used to, 700whp is rather low." will probably get people annoyed at you. If you are just after a numbers game just so you can say you have 700hp, I would bet that you will not enjoy your car as much (be so hard to drive the thing.) Also, I will say that most of these 1000hp cars are (more than likely) much heaver than the Z's unibody. One last point I will toss out there, if your dad is in this business, talk with him! I love when my kids come to me asking questions that I can answer until they get bored of me.

The first picture looks like a Supra LSD.