[DeTomaso] Of Rookie Mistakes....Goose back up and running!!! HOO HAA!!!!

Tue Aug 17 05:10:57 EDT 2010

Incredible job Steve.
Congrats!

Mad Dawg Antenucci 
Team Pantera Racing 
The 1st & still the only vintage race team in open road racing 
www.teampanteraracing.com

--- On Mon, 8/16/10, steven.liebenow at att.net <steven.liebenow at att.net> wrote:

From: steven.liebenow at att.net <steven.liebenow at att.net>
Subject: [DeTomaso] Of Rookie Mistakes....Goose back up and running!!! HOO HAA!!!!
To: "mailing list detomaso" <detomaso at realbig.com>
Date: Monday, August 16, 2010, 12:09 PM

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

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