cjames

We have one like this at work, and I find myself using it more than I use any of our other welders. Alot of the welding we do is not something you can bring back to the shop and do on the bench. They are light, portable, and tough too, its been dropped from over 10feet (that I know of), we use it in the freezer (-40 degrees), its been soaked with water more times than I can count, and it keeps on ticking. http://www.millerwelds.com/products/tig/maxstar_150_sth/ If I ever upgrade my welder at home, I'll buy one like that. At 14lbs, you can carry it anywhere, and it runs on 110VAC. No, I dont work for Miller, but I love these little inverters for stick and TIG.

I like to TIG stainless at around 15 CFH on the argon flow meter. More if theres a breeze or something. I purged the pipe with argon too for most of the welds on that system. The way I have my regulator set up, I can just crack the little valve after the flowmeter for the purge line. Like I said, that Century arc machine runs TIG very, very nice. It holds a very steady arc, and as long as I remember to turn my air compressor off it doesn't fluctuate power at all. I'm guessing I was welding at around 45-50 amps for that .065" tube. As long as you dont have huge holes to fill, 1/16" 316 filler rod is good. With that machine, I cant weld aluminum, which I have to take to work and use something with high freq. Any DC arc welder can be used as a power supply for TIG welding, just purchase the torch, hose and cable, a regulator and an argon cylinder. Remember, you TIG with the electrode negative. Some nicer TIG machines have gas solenoids, remote amp control, high freq, among many other features, but really you can get by without all that.

I was hoping it wouldn't come up, but OK. My welder is a POS Century 230/140 amp AC/DC arc welder. It runs stick pretty well, and it's actually a great power supply for TIG welding. I have a 200A air cooled TIG torch, argon cylinder and flow meter. I simply clamp the stinger onto the TIG lead. I got alot of it used, and MAYBE have $300 in the whole setup, including the cylinder. The amp control on the welder sucks, I adjust it to where it welds good, don't need no fancy digital readout to tell me where its set. I've never really found a need for MIG, I can arc or tig weld most anything, probably with better results. Bottom line, you dont need alot of fancy and expensive stuff to make good welds. (not to say I wouldn't like to have a new Thermal Arc inverter)

From my personal experience, I can tell you that a rat rod is easy to do. A rattle can paint job is HARD to do with gloss paint, thus flat black, and its cheap. What else does dad or uncle, or the neighbor have in the garage, hmm, red! Cool, now I can paint the wheels. Hell, I need a shifter, this car didnt come with a floor shift, cut a hole. ok, piece of pipe, some trinket from the junk box that will thread on, a little welding with no idea what I was doing, and I could change gears!! I need a 4bbl carb, the one I found in the JY for $3 doesnt fit, but an adapter can be made with materials found in dads garage. cool! (I think it was something off an old tractor). Cherry bombs were $9, the V8 engine (that replaced the worthless 6cyl) had thrown a rod, and I patched the block with JB weld and replaced the ONE bad piston and rod, cleaned the cyl up with a file, and reused all the gaskets, including the head gaskets. It ran like a raped ape, I was 16, and had about $50 in the whole project. I didnt realize till years later that I built a ratrod ford falcon. A tire burner it was indeed, and I was the envy of my friends, till it blew up and I did it all over again. Things are different now, I'd never think of doing some of the things I did then, but I still like rat rods.

Thanks for the compliments. I should say that although this is my first exhaust system, but I'm no stranger to welding pipe. I work in the engineering dept at a food plant, so I do quite a bit of fabricating and welding, including a little pipe... I will admit that fitting the exhaust was a little more challenging than running process piping at work thats level and square, with plenty of room to work. My TIG welder isnt near as nice as the one at work either. I'll work on a sound clip.

I think you'd be better off teeing into the heater hose connections to get proper natural convection through the block. They are right near where you mounted the heater too. Make sure you plumb it so the inlet of the heater is on the hose coming from the discharge of the water pump. If it gets warm enough, the engine thermostat will open, but I wouldn't think there'd be much benefit to heating up the radiator. Wouldnt work for me, my electric fan would come on and try to cool down the engine that I heated up...

Ive thought of a few variations to this also. If the pot, or resistor of choice were wired in parallel with a normally closed switch in the stock wiring, some different things could be achieved. A switch placed somewhere on the throttle linkage could activate the resistor circuit only at a certain throttle position (like WOT). Or for the turbo crowd, a pressure switch that opened at a certain boost level would enrich the mixture only on boost. With the switch closed, the signal would chose the path of least resistance, and go straight from the water temp sensor, through the switch, to the ecu. When it is opened, the signal to the ecu would have no other path than through the pot or resistor. When I get the turbo engine built and installed, I'll try this if I need more fuel on boost. If anyone else has done this, I'd love to hear the results, but I see no reason why it wouldn't work. I'd include a drawing if I knew how to post one.

Check the link to Atlanticz that Noddle posted a few threads up, it details what wires and what sensor you need to play with.

My ex seemed to think that if she set the thermostat on the furnace to 80 it would make the house warm up faster. (no offense to anyone else that may feel that way)

I dont think that the oil drain back is much of an issue. The advantage would come from having the oil in the sump already warm, therefore much easier to pump. Other advantages to keeping an engine a constant temprature include reduced wear from prolonged idling for warm up, and reduced heating and cooling cycles. Heating and cooling cycles are very hard on internal components, alot of the wear that we see on bearings, rings, cylinders and pistons comes from expansion and contraction of parts during warm up. The other big advantage is that by keeping an engine at temprature, keeps condensation and moisture inside the block to a minimum. Oil will absorb moisture. I honestly dont see that this would have much of an effect on the Florida car, but in theory we could all benefit by keeping our engines warm. It's a little more important on large engines, where a little water in the oil or condensation in the engine could rust a crankshaft, waste a bearing, and cost a few hundred grand for an overhaul.

A 110VAC tank style block heater would keep your little engine very close to operating temp. We used these on diesel engines 10 times the size of an L series Nissan, and kept them at or around 160F. I'm not sure that running a 2000 watt heater all the time would be worth it though... http://www.kimhotstart.com/kimhotstart/uploads/documents/catalog/sb-sl_pages.pdf

It's by no means quiet, but it's not so loud that it wakes the neighbors. It occasionally sets off car alarms (kinda fun) and it has a rather irritating "ring" at 2500rpm ('bout 63mph in 5th gear). When I get the other engine built, the turbo should break up the resonance, and quiet things down a little. I'm happy with it, but it's not the muffler I'd buy if I were sticking to an NA engine.

7 gauges, and 3 holes to put them in... where are you gonna mount the other 4? I like the Pro-comp, liquid filled mechanical, full sweep. Ive used them before and they are very nice gauges. Electric is convienent for temp gauges, and obviously for fuel level.

Looks like the hole you drilled went crooked on you. I'm guessing those studs are welded in? I'd go from the back side and grind off that head, then see what youre up against. It might just fall out.

Thanks for all the positive comments! EMWHYR0HEN, I am in the process of building a turbo engine, read the first sentence in my post its ok, I get distracted by pictures too. JSM, the wood drive on ramps are totally custom, built 'em all by myself too, yep . Without them, the car sits too low to get the jack under... the tricky part is remembering to put the wood back under the wheels when lowering it off the stands... Not that I've ever done that

I have a set of 5 of them, 2 of which are holding up the parts car. I'd prefer to sell them as a set, but I might be talked into parting with one... PM me

Ok, so I got tired of sitting on my hands waiting on parts and machine shops. I was hoping to have the turbo engine at least long blocked by now... oh well. I decided to go ahead and get the exhaust built, at least most of it. The new 3" system now connects to the stock NA downpipe, at the flange where the resonator used to go. When the new engine is in, I'll cut off the flange, and build a new downpipe to connect to the system. I used 3"x.065" 304 SS tubing. Its a little heavy, but the tube and fittings came from the scrap bin at work, and it welds real nice. I think the .065" should hold up for many years.... The muff is a Magnaflow 3"x3", I think the case is 4"x14". I was a little worried that it may be too loud on the NA engine, but really it's not bad. This is my first attempt at fabricating exhaust. I welcome comments and criticisms.

Heres a nice shot, after a recent bit of snow... Revolution Wheels, 15x7, 0 offset, 225/50 Toyo's that barely clear the struts. I can take some better pics if anyone cares for a better view. They had a hard time balancing the Toyos this last time, but it never was a problem with the Yokos I used to run, hmmm.

if it were me, and I had it apart doing other work, Id replace them. I dont know what other work youre doing to the head, but a weak (or broken) spring can screw up all the good work you did in addition to all kinds of other bad stuff. I personally wouldn't reuse "old" valve springs regardless what they measure. L series heads arent cheap to build, Valve springs are cheap compaired to the rest of the parts, and way cheaper than a dropped valve... I think I paid less than $100 for the last set of springs I ordered.

Bringing up an old thread but..... I just installed a set of "diamond cut" reflector lamps, with clear lenses in my '76. They came with a parts car I bought. These dont look like the $5 ebay ones, they seem to be good quality, but no manufacture stamp anywhere on them. Both my Hellas had cracked lenses, and being the cheap b'tard that I am..... Anyway, they have the blue looking bulbs, I think they are 90/110W. The look bright as $hit when looking at them, but on the road they are awfull, the beam is not direct, and theres stray light going everywhere, cant see a thing. I'm going to try them with a good set of silverstar bulbs before I toss them in the recycle bin. The blue bulbs are junk, even at the higher wattage. I do have relays and updated wiring BTW. IMO, the Hella H4's, with reflector lenses, loaded with 65/90W bulbs is the best light you can get short of HID, and they dont blind oncoming traffic even with the high watt bulbs. Never had a problem with LEO's running that setup either. The diamond cut reflectors sure look cool tho.... Other than the Hellas, and Autopal,anyone know of another good H4 lamp housing?

I got a cool new Z "hoodie" sweatshirt from MSA. The last thing I expected from my parents...

Thanks John, now that you mention it, I remember hearing of Zy-glo at some point in my life, forgot all about it. Makes me wonder if the ebay seller has his procedures confused, or if hes full of beans, or worse.

I ran across an ebay seller that advertised a L series cylinder head that was hot tanked and magnafluxed. Now I suppose that depending on the chemicals used, you could hot tank aluminum. Just not with traditional sodium hydroxide hottank chems... Ive personally never tried to magnaflux an aluminum part. Is it possible? Ive been thinking about this all day, and its bugging me. Im not convinced that it would work, at least not in the same manner that we mag cast iron or steel. What am I missing? Is there a different procedure that Im not famillar with?

My donor 81 5spd made an awfull growl after I instaled it. but only in 1, 2, 3, 5, and rev. We all thought it was countershaft bearings. I ordered a bearing and seal kit from drivetrain.com for $83. After dissasembly, it turns out that the mainshaft bearing was the worst offender. I took it apart at the shop last night after work, took about an hour being carefull and orginized. Im gonna guess that after cleaning, polishing some damage to the reverse gears, and re-assembly, Ill probably have another 2 hours into it. This is the first manual trans Ive ever had apart. I wouldnt attempt to do the job without access to a good press, and some misc pullers. We had to use heat to get the overdrive gear beraing race off the mainshaft. The rest of it came easy. I thought about finding a JY tranny, and scrapping this one, but after new seals and bearings, and doing a good inspection, I know what Ive got, instead of haveing yet another mystery tranny.

ok, one more, heres a neat link. http://www.ior.com.au/ecflist.html