[DeTomaso] Of Rookie Mistakes....Goose back up and running!!! HOO HAA!!!!
steven.liebenow at att.net
steven.liebenow at att.net
Mon Aug 16 15:09:11 EDT 2010
All,
Wife and I finally had the Goose out on the road this weekend, off to the
Monterey Historic Race event, in it's first major engagement in 17-18 months!!!
Some of you have probably followed my postings over on the PI board where I laid
it all out in grueling detail.....
Last Tuesday night (the 10th) was the first firing of the new engine in the
car. Headers came back from the coater on the prev. Thursday, so spent the
weekend thrashing to get all the bits and pieces wrapped up and "off my list" of
things to do......muffler inlet pipes welded in place.....
Well, I missed one big thing. The engine fired up right away and only required
just a slight turn of the distributor to put it into "run much better mode" to
do the required valve spring break in. No cam break in required as it is a
roller cam engine based upon a 1992 5.0L block. We fixed the gas leak ( custom
new crossover tube for the Holley...the end I made leaked...), fixed the water
leak ( some sort of mysterious machining oddity in a blind threaded hole... leak
was not present when this pump was on the other engine, but manifested itself
all of a sudden here!!!), stuffed a bolt in it covered in sealer, refilled the
cooling system, and fired it up again, for a 10-15 minute warm up run, keeping
an eye on the temp gauge so that we didn't cook anything.....
Shut it down and prepared to close up the garage for the night, but took one
last look under the car and found this.....
http://home.comcast.net/~smliebenow/pictures/problem2.jpg
BP's got nothin' on me!
What's going on here.....? Quick triage and thinking back about what could be
the problem.... oil pan seal...nah....that would weep not gush..... rear main
seal....hmm, did I install one??? Yah, must have...I remembered one lying on
the work bench for the longest time.....and it isn't in my gasket set box, so
must have put it in.....maybe I put it in backwards....I do seem to remember the
guys at the shop telling me to put some sealer on the outside of it........but
nothing about orientation...... will look at it more "tomorrow".
This was killing me....so I got out of bed....went out and checked my gasket set
again...on the parts list on the Felpro packaging, there was NO rear seal
listed. This was a partial set. I did not recall purchasing a new
seal......oh, this is bad......
I went back to the pictures of this ordeal, to a week or two prior when I
installed the engine. Sure enough, in a couple of the photos I took, I could
CLEARLY see that there was a huge gap between the rear of the crank, and the
block..... BIG ASS space!!! Boy howdy, did I feel stupid!!!!
Very rookie mistake. Wednesday, I hauled butt home and undid all the work I had
just completed, to remove the trans and clutch.....wife had run down to the
local Kragens AP store and picked me up a new seal....cleaned up the oil residue
from the seal area, put a thin coating of "the Right Stuff" sealer on it, and
hammered it home!! Pesky big buggers are not any easier to install than their
smaller counterparts......
(I had built the bottom end of this engine probably two years ago at least, and
was to install the oil seal (I would still need to purchase) once I removed it
from the stand, cuz you can't get to it on the stand! But once I was ready to
swap the engine in, I encountered the cracked shock mount in the rear frame, and
this sort of derailed the whole engine swap thing... This was my first go round
with a one piece rear seal, as all prior projects have been two piece small
block or 428 type installations! I just plain forgot about it! So I have
resolved to start using a pad and pen on any parts of this project or others, to
keep notes, from the get go, and not just when things start getting hairy! )
Installed the flywheel and clutch bits, and lowered the ZF back into
place....put the nuts on to hold it in place securely, and let it rest on a 2x4
on top of the frame. Done for the night. Thursday I was able to get off of
work a tad early and about 3 hours later I was back to the point I was at some
48 hours earlier, but without the oil gusher!!! Friday I crossed off the
last couple of bits on my list, like setting the timing and tweeking the shifter
a tad, and off for it's "shakedown run" as that was all I was gonna get before
Saturday's drive to Monterrey! Left the house Sat am with a grand total of
about 6 miles on the new engine!!!
Good news is that the engine ran flawlessly. We were able to get out of the
track exodus mess when a track worker graciously allowed us to exit stage left
down to the HWY 68 exit instead of crawling through the hills to Seaside....and
then back tracking to 68, or heading north on 1 only to get stuck in 156
backup.....ugh. No backups encountered and we now have about 167 miles on the
engine! Smooth and powerful!!! New stainless exhaust mufflers from Mangusta
Int'l are throaty but mellow. Roller cam is smooth at idle, but more than
adequate to take the engine up to valve float in a tip of the toe!!! (Got a
little carried away exiting the track.....first gear!) The Holley performed
very nicely "out of the box" excepting the bigger jets I put in based upon
previous experience. 570 Street Avenger model with 66pri and 72sec jets can be
adjusted as needed later! Timing is set to about 18 initial and 34 max for now.
Can play with this on the dyno..... Throttle response is strong and the
secondary kick in is a slight tilting of the cranial extremity towards the rear
of the vehicle!!! WOW!!!! The aluminum flywheel being lighter than the cast
iron thing was something I was concerned about, but in this combo, it was NOT an
issue!!! I felt that no extra right pedal was needed to drive the car
normally! We'll see about that the first time I get stuck in bumper to
bumper.....
I still have some work to go. Clutch system started acting up a little...need
to pump the pedal just a tad and then hit it again for the pressure to build up
properly. Bled it all out again, but once it warmed up (it seemed) the problem
returned. So am thinking there is a problem with the master....
Need to install the AC compressor, deal with new electric fans and a proper
shroud...and then there is fitting the whole air cleaner thing under the
shrouds. I may just fab one up based upon a drop base air cleaner......anyone
got a stock 67 Thunderbird air cleaner handy that I can cut up????
Then there is a new issue where 4th gear likes to pop out...accelerating or
decelerating..... This is annoying. Not sure why, but what I did do, is drop
the adjustment on my trunion to reduce the angle of the dangle on the shift rod,
to make the rod appear shorter so that I could get more thread engagement in my
adjuster thingy at the rear.... I also lubed the trunion.....first time in a
long time... SO perhaps the more extreme angle and the lack of lube was holding
the shaft in gear..... I asked a couple of folks about this, and apparently
the detent in the gear shift box in the passenger compartment is something that
is desired with a -1 ZF. I helps to hold the shifter in place.....and this
detent could either be removed, or gunked up. Will look into this more as
well...in the mean time, the 3-5 shift isn't all that big a deal nor is down
shifting 5-3.......
It is good to be back on the road. Rookie mechanic or not..... I still have
plenty of work to go....and fully reserve the right to curse my own stupidity at
any time!!!!
Cheers!
Steve
More information about the DeTomaso
mailing list