Vlad's rides thread

[vlad01]

Last thing I have here is these universal hangers by Invidia.

My hanger fitment never was great on this car, too angled and too short for the factory height.

So I am going to try bend the peg straight and as a result it will be even longer center distances. I calculated around 45 to 50mm. Stock is about 40mm.

These are one of the few universal mounts that has 10mm peg holes, not only that, but is also multi hole with sensible sizes in the centers.

All others I found were 34 ish mm or 57mm, weird inch to metric nonsense specs that fit mostly nothing. Most were also 12 or 15mm peg sizes too, hardly any were 10mm

These are 35, 40, 45 and 50. All common distances and plenty of in between.
The thickness is 25mm, Holden use 35mm but 25 is plenty thick enough and gives a little wiggle room for adjustment sideways.

Also mentioned in the other thread about pipe beading, which still no luck finding anyone that can do it, I have my sample piping cut and bent up to my liking for PS cooling lines out of the old auto ones, of course I want them in 3/8 or 10mm, these 5/16 are too small for the PS return.

Idea is these barbs on the side of the engine that is well enough away from the headers, runs a hose from the PS return, to a front mount cooler, back to these lines on the block, the other then feeds back into the PS pump res. So this makes routing hoses short and direct to the res and rack, and same at the front of the car.

Since my car had a big ass auto fluid cooler and brackets bolted to the rad support, I might as well reuse some of this hardware and layout, of course I would need to change the cooler to something smaller, but also from 5/16 in/out to 3/8. PWR have such units off the shelf. The auto one that I removed was also PWR, so most of the work is already done.

[vlad01]

New idea with the exhaust support die, from mortar? (spelling?) this time.

Haven't checked if it's cured or not yet. Hope it doesn't just crumble like the resin and grain idea. This was heaps easier to work with I might add, not sure why I didn't think of it first. Seems obvious.

Idea is to fill the tube with sand and have a few goes with a rectangular block of steel and the press to try form some nice clean indentation flats.

The T5 retainers are apparently ready, they were support to call me last week on the pricing. They have made a small batch of 5 to start with.

I'll update on the outcome.

[vlad01]

T5 retainers are ready!

Just note that I have not made my way there to pick one up put aside for me, so I have not been able to double check fitment into the gearbox with shims, bearings and seals yet. So hopefully there are no oversights but there always could be.

I'll update that once I have my unit in hand and do a mockup and check over it.

https://crdengineering.com.au/product/h ... -retainer/



Also the mortar support for indenting header pipes didn't work, too piss weak and crumbled immediately. I don't understand how they get away from selling premixed cement products that never work. Years ago I used the premixed concrete bags for structural posts for a fence for a chook yard.

The concrete was so weak it was like sand that had just dried out.

So I might try getting raw cement powder and adding a heap to the mortar to make it a lot harder and stronger.

interestingly the pipe off cuts I got from my mechanic are of the straight section aluminium coated pipes and they are very hard and springy! Even pack hard with sand inside it was springy and the whole thing bent before I even managed to get a dent formed in it, even then it was only 1mm deep while the rest just flatten and curved out of shape. Massive pain to work with that stuff.

I am sure the tubes for the headers are soft, the back section I cut off certainly was, and one home made header off my nephew's 4runner with the buick in it indented pretty nicely just as is with a caliper piston as the tool in the press, so I think it should work once I get the concrete/mortar situation sorted.

[vlad01]

If you are interested in grabbing the retainers, I would hold off. After test fitting my one, I found the seal bore was too big and the seals just drop in with almost their own weight which is obviously bad! They need to be tight to the point that a good portion of body weight needed to push them, that is what the OEM ones are like.

So the small run of them will need to be sleeved to the right diameter. So my unit is going to be posted back to them with one of my OEM retainers so they can double check the measurements. I think they bored them to the industry standard of 44.5mm, but looking at seal catalogs, there are different bore tolerances for different type of seal constructions for the same "sized" seal. The OEM seal is on the tight side it seems.

The bearing bore is also 0.4mm deeper than the OEM one, but nothing the right combo of shims won't sort. Bummed that this happened . I could tell the guy was annoyed about this, but I did provide a sample seal and parts to double check all of this.

One other thing is the OEM had two cutouts for the fluid/oil, but they milled just the bottom one as they said their other ones only have this as that is standard on other boxes, I feel like having both will be better as it appears to be a BW/Tremec implementation for increased oil pumping paths for the bearings in the front and pocket of the input shaft. I suggested they should do both but feel like they won't bother, but if you feel like adding the top one, a mill can easily do so, I might as well when I get a few other stuff milled at my other engineering shop I use in Airport West.

Otherwise the workmanship is excellent!

I assume this will be corrected in the next batch, I will try to make sure they do as I feel like that is standard practice for any good engineer, actually more like a compulsion

Also I redid the exhaust pressing mold from mortar and added cement powder, some 1/3 ratio, so ridiculously strong mixture.

It just worked for this test piece with the mentioned much harder and springier pipe. So the mold did manage to hold up and not allow the pipe to distort or curve out of shape at all, but it still split during the pressing.

I did a quick test on the actual Pacemaker off cut I had, and as suspected, it's much softer than my test pieces, so I am confident it will work.

The last pic shows the first atempt and how that failed to do much other than to distort the pipe, and the 2nd successful one.

[vlad01]

So I have rigged up the Y pipe as the first cab of the ranks, adding a long flat spot where it comes close to a support rail on the drivers side.

Stupid how Pacemaker sell two different part numbers for manual and auto, and both are the same to suit auto clearances, and a compromise in manual. There is a canyon of space for that pipe to move towards the gearbox, but it's so close to the rail it makes no sense, until you have seen it with the auto installed. The auto is fat as a pig in comparison to the manual box.

Working from the Y pipe to the headers in logical order so I can check the clearances as do the next one.

Btw, I pack the pipe section with just regular construction sand, shove a rag to where I want the sand to start, fill and pack as I go, then cap it off where I want to end with another rag. Worked well on the tests.


When I formed the mold, I set a block of steel level with a precision level and then once the cement was poured and packed, the pipe was tweaked to be the same level. So that when in the press it will reduce and hopefully eliminate the press from cocking sideways or the flat spot not where I want it or uneven in depth along the length.

To stop the mold from splitting outward, I have clamped wood blocks to make the sides nice and parallel and flat while it sets over a few days, so I can then also clamp them evenly while pressing to hopefully control the and prevent the mold from splitting down the length.

[vlad01]

Well I forgot to update the results. It worked great and the concrete held up right to the finish where it breaks away without collapsing or bending the pipe.

Much better for clearance now! Can't even touch when I fully push it against the floor. It hits elsewhere on the other side before it touches. Where previously, this was the limiting spot by far. So the Y pipe is all done and ready for coating at some point when funds allow.

Just yesterday I got the header main section done and it came up mint!

Just the small rear piece left to do but I need a longer 1 inch wide steel block to do that one. I'll get a scrap bit from the engineer/machine shop next time I go there.

I have about 16mm of clearance to the PS rack now, more than the max travel of the engine mount by a few or half dozen mm.

[vlad01]

When it came to the time, the buyers of the VR all fell through the moment I asked them to come up and have a look being all ready and all, typical...

Regardless, I got my engine to keep and thankfully the timing cover suffered zero corrosion damage unlike the thermostat housing and area, but I know the reason which I'll get to in a bit.

The thermostat housing was repaired and all new coolant last spring iirc, and I made sure to circulate the coolant every so often.

But I saw the same reaction of the metal and hydroxide gel forming from the metal eating away. The KC thermostat housing are just crap alloy, likely no addatives for hardness and corrosion resistance and likely close to pure aluminum which just dissolves easily. The metal is super soft and warps straight away and needs thick washer so the torque spec can be reached without the bolt heads sinking into the metal like play dough.

Here is proof that the metal is reacting regardless of coolant quality or concentration.

Note the glob of aluminum hydroxide gel (most likely) that formed in short order.

A few pages back is the pics of the allow eaten away on all the cars that had the KC housing.

So now I have to get a genuine good one for the VP S and change that again as it will cause damage to the manifold too as collateral.


Also, funny now VR/VS brought back a design from the VN that was obviously not the best idea that VP changed and fixed.

These spacers as part of the air chutes for the rad, well they really chewed into the sides of the rad pretty bad even though the rad and all of what I did was only 9-10k old. Dirt and dust gets stuck between the tight gap and the vibration of the car does the work of eating away at both parts. I suspect this would make the radiator leak after some time. Dumb idea to have those spacers that you can't remove without removing the whole air chute. VP had only the chute and no such spacers.

Luckily the metal is decently thick, so only maybe 1/4 - 1/3 deep. So it will be fine. Might keep it as a spare, or might sell, not sure yet.

Box and engine out.

I found issues with the box I never new as I had it rebuilt by someone else.


Evidence of corrosion damage in the previous life and the teeth have fissures. So no good.

I found a shaft in Sydney thats on the way. The guy who works on them often, only had the one out of 9 shafts that was a pass. Getting very hard to get now in good nick.

Interestingly he has a old guy cut and splice the V6 ones he gets into custom ones for VK era T5 conversions with a different tooth count.

So if I ever need one again, I can buy a brand new 23t Mustang one for cheap and get it extended to the V6 spec using one of my ones with a good spigot.

[vlad01]

Also, the spigot bush just fell out. Turns out it flogged out the OD of the bush. Crank bore was totally unaffected. Just slight darkening from the bronze bush turning into like a grease like black substance.

The bush freely spun on the spigot. Not sure with certainly why this had happened and so bad in such a short period.

I suspect that the later genuine bushes were too small on the ID which all of them I have used are tight to the point the input shaft binds up until you hand work the shaft to loosen the bush up or use the car in gear but with the clutch pressed in to do it for you. But this might be where it welds initially and spins the bush, which then relaxes the crush and frees the spigot once again.

All other cars I have done a lot longer in the past never had such issues, and I recall no binding whatsoever, only from about 2014 onward for certain was this binding a thing with the genuine bushes.

The aftermarket ones don't press in anywhere near as tight into the bore, but they are def on the loose side for the ID, probably a good thing for less drag.

I am thinking I can go back to aftermarket, and since they are dry, not pre oiled. I can use a high temp retaining compound, knock it in with a smear of it, let set for a day, then oil in situ. So that the outer layer is properly bonded into the surface layer and that way the oil then can't interfere.

Loctite 620 is the ideal stuff. The performance curves go well beyond 200c.

The best solution would be a longer bush as the bore can accommodate nearly 30mm of bush, the length is only 15ish mm behind the bush's flange.
That with a compound would def not allow it to come out in a hurry with a longer custom bush.

But I think the dry install with the compound on the off the shelf looser ID aftermarket bush should fix that issue anyway.

Apparently, the recommended oil for sintered bushes is turbine oil. Anyone got some? It's a high temp stable paraffin based oil. Used in turbine engines for aircraft. Pretty cheap at about 30s bucks for a liter surprisingly. I thought it would be 100s like most aircraft/aerospace stuff.

Also, this boot perished bad! With bugger all time and Ks too. The shitbox has the same boot, one the car a little less time wise but the amount of Ks and heat, it was still soft and supple.

This might be a result of gear oil, this is the only box where I left gear oil in it. The shitbox ran ATF since we installed it when included putting that boot on. Actually, the boot may date back to the Vacationer, but I am not 100% on that. I know I had to get a boot for the Vacationer's T5 swap and I think this shifter was given to this car when we got a box for it as I went with a billet shifter on the box from the Vacationer that went into the red VP. Was so long ago I may be wrong.

But either way, very surprising to see this. I am sure I got all the boots at the same time from the same seller in the US, I bought a bunch of them in one lot I am pretty sure.

[Charlescrown]

Your certainly taking on a few engineering challenges with this car. I was trying to fathom out the exhaust pipes set in concrete and what a great idea to be able to press a flat on one side without crushing the pipe. I would have just used a bit of heat and a hammer.

[vlad01]

Thanks! I certainly wanted to tackle ideas and find the solutions for the little things that annoyed me over the decades and more recent ones that came to light as I become more observant with the little details. I wanted to do it all right from the start while I can, but the thing is, I had to force myself to learn and come up with good engineering solutions myself as I learned no one does stuff like this anymore.

A point in case with the front retainer, the little details missed and overlooked by the professional, basically making it unusable at this stage. So I have to have it modified and repaired to correct those things.


All this stuff I am coming up with and learning will be something I'll thank myself later with as each car I own and turn into a project, or even just fix and maintain will greatly benefit from all this.



One of the next items I am going to try take into my control next is to get a simple multi piece die to use in a press or maybe by hand to form the ends of the hard line pipes I was asking about in another dedicated thread. Not happy with what is on offer or available off the self and not happy with the price of the tools to make barbs/beads less than the OEM standard.

I already have a design in my head, but need a machinist to whip out a few basic bits to make it happen, hopefully it works well, I'll only find out if I try