Vlad's rides thread

[vlad01]

Decided to run a long term experiment as mentioned. Given these are at a "room temp", if you can even call cold Kyneton a temperature
So it probably will take several weeks to months to see the effects going by the info on the net. They use accelerated tests at high/er temps to show the long term effects within a reasonable short time, normally pressurized and at 100C.
None the less, here it is and I'll keep an eye on it over time. Nothing obvious yet.

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I also moved my engines to my place, and while I did that I pulled the last KC housing off the VR engine which I literally lapped and refit with new gasket and coolant after I did the S by a few months I am pretty sure. So it's has a little less time on it.

Wow!

And as you can see, nothing happened to the manifold side, just the metal on the KC part. Bit short on cash at the moment, so I will change out to the purple on the shitbox in the next few weeks, hopefully nothing bad has happened by then. I do feel like this problem happens over many months to a year or two before it gets bad to need replacing, so a few weeks should be ok, fingers crossed.

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I also bought another taillight for the shitbox, the VN ones as that's all that has been available for about 10 years now. They leak out of the box and this one was no exception.

I used 2k clear and a flex agent to make it more rubbery to not crack with movements on the joints, but it all poured straight though as if I had a coin sized hole somewhere.
i ended up having to use all my JB weld while it was still wet with the 2K, (what an F'in mess and nightmare!) and plug the entire side that just poured through the 2K.

After some time, and even some of the housing melting inside and making the 2K go black from the dissolved plastic and who knows, and even most of the lenses cracked from the solvent, I had after some 4 hours of cluster fuckery, I got this ugly looking heap of shit "brand new" tail light. And after a day or two it rained and I was genuinely shocked that it was totally water proof To be sure I went in full blast with the garden hose at all angles I could conger and not a drop leaked in, but I got a heap of water past the boot seal on the same side, so I adjusted the boot a little and tried to bend up the boot seal area up a tad, now I have had no leaks anywhere in the car, first time since ownership!

There were multiple leaks throughout the car and slowly one by one I got rid of them. I am sure in total there was at least 10 if not more. Never had a car with so many. I normally only have the tail lights and the rear quarters to deal with on all my other cars past and present. But I had leaks in most seams, the door seals, the front windscreen wasn't installed right and had a gap in the sealant, rear quarter glass twice!, tail lights at least 4-5 times over the 7-8 years, boot seal once before, driver door glass, fuel filler body seam, spare wheel well, beaver panel seams, rear quarter seams, garnish seals, and rear windscreen was not far off from leaking and was caught in time.

I heard that Rares are developing VP taillights, so if that does come to fruition, I hope they are made decent like the no name brand ones with the logo AP on them were from 10+ years ago.

I had a few of those then, and they never leaked under their own accord.

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[vlad01]

Also, as mentioned a couple of posts back.

The silicone gaskets do recover to a point over time when removed from the coolant.

Initial pic.

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Same section now. This was the worst bit by far, it still has some gelatinous areas, so I think it's permanent. But other areas have returned to what feels the same as the areas not affected, like in the middle intake port on the left bank.

Plastic obviously can't recover

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Here are the other coolant ports after being left out for a few weeks, the o rings are almost back to their original size and position, the plastic shows how much they were pushing out when they were at the most swollen point.
Quite interesting I think, and the basis for further testing and research.

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[Charlescrown]

I remember many years ago where the V6 was getting oil into the cooling system and a student said it's the valley gasket and we do them all the time. I thought he was BS but after seeing the gasket and outcome of replacing it yes he was right. I never did find out why they were failing but it looks like your on the money with the coolant being used. You would have thought that with the age of that engine GM would have sorted it years ago but it's all to do with money nothing more.

[vlad01]

Moved my spare engines home. The measurements I did last year for the bench/shelving worked out well! Like a glove.

Just have my spare block, crank, T5 and NOS heads to jam in there on the right.

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I gave the flywheel a good clean, started to rust at the farm and was wet with moisture despite being on a tall stand with the bellhousing installed to protect it.
After the clean, I painted the whole flywheel and as much as the back side as I could reach with a brush in some quality cavity wax.

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This garage being attached and modern insulation standards (house is 1 year old this month), so I have had no issues with moisture at all so far, even with a spare aquarium running in there letting off some moisture.
Temp and humidity are way better and magnitudes more stable than the old shed at the farm. Sheds are really bad for cars and anything alike, even with best efforts to preserve them. The only fix is a new environment that is much better, or if you are loaded and can afford, a climate controlled room constructed within the shed with refrigerator panels. This is a common thing for commercial printer rooms where temp, dust and humidity all must be controlled for the multi 100k to million+ $ printers that was part of my old job. Normal factories were not good enough alone to keep that sort of equipment, so most clients had these refrigerator panel rooms built within the factory. I really wanted one for the cars, but I never had that much spare cash.

Moving to town was the better option for me at least and I am so happy that I no longer have to deal with the moisture and condensation bs ever again. But that still doesn't stop me for being overly cautious and practice good preservation measures, just in case.

[vlad01]

I remember many years ago where the V6 was getting oil into the cooling system and a student said it's the valley gasket and we do them all the time. I thought he was BS but after seeing the gasket and outcome of replacing it yes he was right. I never did find out why they were failing but it looks like your on the money with the coolant being used. You would have thought that with the age of that engine GM would have sorted it years ago but it's all to do with money nothing more.

You would think so, and even with the aftermarket lube companies still sticking to dubious chemistry makes me go huh?
I am only a hobbyist, and have limited expertise and access to data and scientific research that all the companies have decades worth, you would think that all lube companies wouldn't be doomed to repeat the same mistake that was Dexcool, but hey, here we are!

[vlad01]

While the engine crane was off the white car doing engine deliveries at home, I got that front bar back on quick smart.

Looks like a complete car now, at least visually.

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Cooler tucked in there nicely, not too exposed to over cool the PS fluid, but should be plenty enough for those high rpm long duration conditions.

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I got the spigot bush installed. I masked up the crank and seal to prevent grit from the scotchbrite I used to clean the inside of the crank housing. Cleaned it with solvent until the micro cloth no longer showed any stains.

I used loctite 620. High strength and high temp retainer. Ideal for this.

Lucky I got to this now, as the expiry was coming up in August. I got this a year ago, thinking I'll get to it soon, but all the drama with the flywheel and clutch and then the bellhousing delayed it massively. But it was in date, so I know it's all good.
It looked like it needed mixing, so that's why I checked the date on it, and yeah that made sense to the look of it.

Specs for it are in this link >
https://next.henkel-adhesives.com/us/en ... 53472.html

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The bush I used is the aftermarket one, two benefits over genuine. 1. it's ID tolerance is a little larger, so it accepts the input shaft freely, where as all the genuine ones from the last 10 years I have used were way too tight and basically were an interference fit, not a clearance fit. This is likely a contributor to having a few of them come out of the crank in service and get chewed up. 2. They are dry which means they will bond with the loctite much much better as they are completely porous, so some of the loctite will bond into the surface, not just on top as with the pre-oiled ones. Also oil doesn't allow loctite to stick that well in itself. The dryness also means you can infuse them with whatever oil you like, not that any oil will do, still crucial to use the right oil.

All specs on the net call for AeroShell turbine oil of a certain type or an ISO 22 hydraulic oil, non detergent paraffin based oils to my understanding, the later is almost universally used as it is readily available in most places.

Penrite sell it as an air tool oil. On the front label, ISO 22. Perfect!


But one issue, if it gets installed dry, then how do you oil it properly.

Couple of methods are used to correctly oil sintered bronze bushes, in the factory, the pre-oiled ones are usually done by vacuum degassing under oil immersion from what I could fine and other methods are hydraulically forced though and in.

Google kept coming up with this method on this link.

https://www.filmkorn.org/lubricate-sint ... y/?lang=en


So I decided to do the same with this contraption I made for less than 10 bucks.

The vac/oil chamber is a "25" mm PVC pumping end cap which has an ID of around 33.xx mm, the protruding part of the crank that hold the bush is 32.00mm. I found in the same plumbing section of the local hardware a rubber washer with 32mm ID.

I went to the animal feed supply shop and got two 10ml syringes. 10ml seemed ideal to get a strong vac without having to fight a larger piston, and it was large enough to act as a res/expelled air holding chamber, at least a reasonable volume I thought.

The one on the bottom allows me to get extra vac as the chamber overall was rather large, and the one above acted as extra oil supply as the bush pushed out air and drew in oil. Having both drawn was able to pull a better vac. I balanced the top and bottom to make sure I had enough oil on the one above, I prefilled that one half full and kept the bottom one fully in before drawing the pistons.

I drilled holds in the piston or plunger shafts, so I can toss a nail or in my case some drill bits thought to hold the vac over a long period of time.

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The link to the DIY method of oiling them, kinda implies that this should be done in one shot, but as my volume of oil and bush size exceeded the two syringes, I had to do it a few times until no more vac was being lost (due to the air coming out of the bushes) and until the bush was no longer bubbling. I could hear it and see bubbles floating into the top syringe, the placement was deliberate for this self filling and bleeding action for where the highest and lowest points I expected to be.

After around 4 goes and top up of oil twice, I was happy all the air was out and left it under the vac for an hour or two. Once I came back, I released the vac from the bottom syringe so the excess oil flowed up with no air pockets that could be re-drawn into the bush. Then I released the top carefully and let that sit with the left over oil so that if any more soak up happened overnight, there was that extra res of oil it could draw from.

After doing all of this and needing a few goes and top ups, I saw that you can take as many shots at it as you feel the need, once a vac is created, even if oil has already entered, the pressure of the remaining air will always find a way out or force out a new path amongst the oil in the pores and refills with oil anyway, so there is no mistakes doing it more than once or releasing with some of the air still below the bush level. It will all come out with top ups and repeat vacuums as long at the last ones are 100% full of oil so the vac is strong and no more air can reenter the bushing.

I have left it in the oil as is since last night, I will empty the left over and toss it, wipe up the mess and it will be good to go!

[vlad01]

And finally today, I got my bellhousing back from the rear fly cut.

I also had the top right block (from the flywheel POV) bolt hole enlarged to 13mm from 12.5ish, so that this bolt no longer binds to the top side of the hole.
This is becasue the offset dowels moved the bellhousing enough to allow it to bind.


Fingers crossed that the machining has corrected the error, or at least within spec! Bit nervous about that final measure.

This is the last major hurdle to getting a move on. You can just make out remnants of the 0 point on the top area and that looks even from left to right along there, which shows they machined it correct in my eyes.

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[vlad01]

Fitted up the bellhousing and the up/down error was completely zeroed out A small error appeared now left to right, but is just within spec, so I just sent it! Spec is 2 thou, or around 0.0508mm. I had it just under 0.05, like 0.0408 or something. Either way, much much better than the factory by a country mile and in spec.

So the flywheel went on. Not the easiest with the space available and the 73 deg torque angle required, quite a few needed me to carefully remove and reposition the breaker bar to finish off the angle, most I could get was around 50-60 deg, just short of the 73. Some were as little as 30 before I needed to take another bite to continue, got there in the end.

FYI it's 18-22Nm then another 73 deg.

And the bush also oiled up nicely with the method I used.

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I used an eyeliner brush with a small amount of nickel anti-seize, applied it, then used a soft cloth to wipe the brush clean, go over the splines again, clean brush and repeat to evenly remove the excess until I had basically just a thin staining of the anti-seize, so there was basically no grease carrier left, only a thin layer of mainly nickel dust/paste. This will ensure no clutch dust sticks to it as it's eventually a dry lube applied in this manner, and with stuff all grease/oil components left, it won't have anything to age and harden up in a way that can make the splines sticky and tarry which makes the disk not relax back from the flywheel properly. Just enough to make the metal or metal not cold weld or corrosion weld, but not too much that the grease ages with heat and time that it becomes a resin glue like substance sticking the splines.



I have noticed all clutches I have installed with the included grease, even small amounts, after 6 months, a year or so, the clutch won't properly disengage in a way that indicates the disk is slightly dragging on the flywheel and the issue temporally goes away or improves with a lot of heat, suggesting the resin/tar like old grease softens enough to allow the splines to freely move, when it cools down it solidifies again. On one or two I installed dry many years ago never had this issue and always shifted well and I could select R without it indefinitely grinding.

With that done, the clutch went in. I spent extra time making sure the splines were lined up really good. I use an old input shaft rather than the shit plastic tool they come with. With the next tool I made it would going to be more important that normal.

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I then made this tool. Basically an alignment stud that aligned the box to the housing so that the input shaft wasn't doing the work.

I made it longer even when installed that it wouldn't allow any of the spines or spigot to engage until the box was engaged with the alignment studs. I made sure they were also not too long that the box's casting wouldn't allow me to remove them after I was done.

I also cut some slots for Philips or flat driver to make it easier to remove later in case any of the thread was going to bind against the holes, making it too hard with the fingers to remove.

I checked it all against a spare box I have.

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[vlad01]

Was good on the length against the two locations that allowed enough room to extract them later.

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Installed length was good against the input splines, just longer for the reason explained. I marked it with a marker for the ideal install depth as it's hard to judge visually.

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Finished up installing the housing, dust cover and fork, cable and its cover.

Then the box just went in, no fight, no accidental cocking or dropping the box (which is royally bad for the disk and especially the bush, which inspired me to make these in the first place).

Was the easiest installation I ever did from this point.

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[vlad01]

Box was in, and the tail shaft was a shit fight for a while, the splines were binding ever so slightly that I couldn't get past the first 1cm or so, I cleaned it a few times and ended up using the smallest bit of anti-seize on the eyeliner, wiped off as much as I could as this wouldn't be good contamination to have in the fluid. It then started to move on then suddenly flew in like on rails, and then it was all free and moved easily. Must have just been a slight bur or distortion right at the tips of both parts, once it go past those areas, it was completely fine.

The Yoke is brand new, so it will need to bed in I imagine. All good though.

So this is where it's at currently. I didn't have my trans mount bolts with me, they were at home in storage. (never actually had any with this donor, I had re-plated genuine ones stashed, so I used those).


Out of cash at the moment, so have to wait until payday before I get some fluid, leads, spark plugs and I will try to order some rares fuel pump plugs so I can harvest the terminals from the kit to use to fix my VSS patch loom plug, they use the same terminals as the fuel pump sender plug, and this is literally the only source I found for the correct terminal. So 60 bucks needed plus postage just to get 4 terminals


The clutch cable spacer rings worked great, even with those, it was only just enough adjustment to get the right spot.

This cable felt sluggish compared to the previous one, and I think trying to get some grease into it might have been a mistake, the previous one, I just lightly lubed the ends that extended, mainly for the rubber boot, but on this one, I thought I would be smart and dribble some of the liquid from wheel bearing grease down the guts to help get more into the whole lot, but it feels slow, but after several cycles it does feel less raspy and sticky, so maybe it will improve and settle as it wears in. Kinda annoying given how nice the basically un-lubed one in the shitbox feels.