Been taking some time in the evenings to get the engine torn down and things that need it tossed into the ultrasonic tank.
Lots of crust down low, not much up top.
This engine never gave me an oil light, or so much as a low-oil rattle.
Pulled the oil pump cover off and it didn't look too bad, honestly. Going to toss a new Melling pump and pick-up on it though, while I'm in there. The harmonic balancer needs to be replaced and going to toss a new timing set on it, since I have it all apart.
Pulled the ECU harness out to do the modifications for the MS swap.
I took out all of the EGR and other mostly-non-working emissions stuff. Pulled the wires out of the ECU connector and fixed up a couple of things.
The harness is now ready to go back into the car.
I'll do the final wrapping, etc. once I get things in their final spots. I need to splice in the TPS harness to replace the non-OEM connector I used to get the car running, and make the connections to the injector harness. This is just going to be batch-fired, as I can use the 2 injector triggers I have and they ran the trucks this way, so it'll work. I didn't want to run 6 new injector triggers, for pretty much no gain. The fan control is getting slightly altered. The LO-speed is still controlled by the stock AC relay, but the HI-speed will now be triggered by the MS unit, and not the temp switch I installed originally. I'm going to retain the WOT cut-out for the compressor, and can trigger that in the MS unit as well.
Speaking of the MegaSquirt ECU. I guess I haven't talked about it in this thread (I think I did in my old, lost FEP thread)
What I'm using is a OLD MS1 V2.2 board unit. The same thing I have had in the TBird, for 20-ish years.
What I'm using to connect it to the factory harness is the almost as ancient adapter board by Scott Hall that I've had sitting on a bookshelf forever (and I almost sold it too). I was able to find the BOM for the components and de-soldered a connector from a junk EEC-IV ECU and put it all together.
Then with a short harness, you can connect it to the MS unit and all of the needed connections are made.
Kept me from going down the rabbit-hole to a more custom install with the harness, etc. I've done it. Didn't need to do it here.
Once I get things cleaned up a bit more, parts will start going back on the engine.
I also got a bunch of stuff to get the new Y-pipe made. I may, or may not, have purchased a bunch of stuff to be able to attempt TIG welding stainless with my welder...
Yeah, that's not gonna happen here. I have other creeping projects I need to keep a handle on.
The only creep that has been added is redoing the Y-pipe. I did a quick patch up to get the car on the road, but now I need to change the f langes to accommodate the larger outlets on the factory headers vs the manifolds. I can't cobble bigger f langes onto this and feel good about it.
I'm also going to make a new dual tip, to mimic what they came with originally, as I just did the single when I built the rest of the exhaust. No duals on this car.
While I have the rocker arms pulled for the valve seal replacement, I'm going to do a leakdown test, just to get a general idea of engine fitness. It ran well enough and didn't show any signs of problems, so it's more for informational purposes.
This is honestly the first time I've had any help getting any help getting a drivetrain pulled/installed. I was in a bind. Luckily she hadn't left to run errands yet. :p Yeah, full time job. 2 young kids (8 and 6). Trying to get back in shape after the hip surgery, etc. She supports my mania, but I do have A LOT of projects currently cooking. This doesn't even count the house projects that I'm peppering in.
I like to keep moving, but it's getting a bit more rough as I'm closing in on 60.
The front main isn't any better, Eric. If the PS hadn't given up on me, I'd probably still be driving it around, like I was. Time to get it fixed now, though.
Got this done today It wasn't playing nice on the hoist, so I conned my wife into being a second set of hands to get it out without damaging anything.
As I mentioned, the seals on this engine are merely suggestions.
There is nothing open here. That is oil actively draining from the oil pan or rear main seal
Messy, messy.
The engine is on the stand and hopefully I can get the powerwasher out tomorrow and clear off the crud from the engine and transmission and start getting things taken care of.
Switched to using an HP Tuner instead of the SCT, as I wanted more control over things. Have that all set up and moving forward.
Otherwise, just been basically chasing down some trouble codes and sorting out the bits of wiring I hadn't done at the bulkhead connector yet.
One of the things I needed to do was sort out the fuel pump and tank, and get it close-ish to being mounted. Before mounting a tank, I needed to prep the floorpan, as I was going to seal things up a bit, because this car was going to get driven on the regular.
I grabbed a case of this stuff It's a wax-based encapsulator/sealer. I'll be doing the entire underside of the car with it, but just got the rear cleaned up so far.
The closer stuff was still a bit wet when the pic was taken, but you can see that it dries to kind of a satin finish.
Next was to get the new fuel pump installed. I'm using a Deatschwerks DW200 (similar to a Walbro 255hp), that I needed to modify the hanger to get it mounted. Before finalizing things, I wanted to check to make sure things were in the proper spots. (You can see the test spacer I made up in this shot (green))
When I was happy with how it all was, I reprinted my spacer out of some PEKK material, which is gasoline resistant. Modded the pick-up tube and installed the correct submersible fuel hose.
Next project is to drop the valve body out of the 6R80 to replace a faulty lead frame (Shift position sensor), as a few of the DTCs are pointing that direction.
Sorry to see this. you might want to consider making a mold yourself:
That actually gives me ideas for the reverse light lenses for the LTD wagon that are impossible to find. Not sure if any of the ones I have are good enough for "masters" though.
OK, so I did wind up parking the car for a few weeks and dealt with other things.
This weekend I began tearing into it to do the refresh. This includes: - Resealing the engine. (All seals are merely suggestions at this point) - Valve seals - Motor mounts - Factory headers - Trans seals - Fix PS leak (turns out to be a bad pump) - Port injection set-up install with MegaSquirt ECU - Rear disc brakes (S197s) - A couple other fiddly bits
This is where we're starting
Everything up top disconnected, and after removing the belt was when I found the bad PS pump. The pulley moved in/out but about 1/8" or so.
Also, a little project I'm working on for the intake
The replacement radiator showed up at the end of the week, and I finally got time to install it today.
It was a drop-in replacement for the stock one. The only issue was either it's a touch shorter than the stock radiator, or my mounting pads are a little compressed. I needed to add a little bit more to each of the upper and lower isolators to get the hold-downs to "hold down".
The only oddity is that these don't use the same caps as the originals. They use one for a Subaru. The included one with the radiator has sub-par reviews, so I'm picking up a replacement to swap it out.Looks like a Stant 10333 is the crossover.
Seems good so far in the heat cycle to fill things up and test the fan.
