308 V12 conversion begins

I don't have any money. The budget for this project is what ever I get selling off the old engine and various parts I have laying around. I paid $4000 for the running but tired 400i engine and another $4k for the TR heads. There are several salvage yards that deal in ferrari parts.

 

I got a few hours in on the welding this evening. All 18 of the stud holes that need to move are now filled is! Those stud holes were a bugger. I also now have 5 of the cylinder bores welded up so they can be machined to accept the 348 liners....a couple more hours and the welding will be done.

I'm going to try to slide the rest of the welding in sometime this week so i can get on to some rough machining next weekend. I don't want to take any finish cuts on the decks in particular until I now I'm done welding.

 

I'll post some tonight. Yesterday Lana was ebaying and I was ready for a drink - welding is hot work!

I wasn't sure the tig torch was going to hang in there, it's a little charred. It’s a bugger getting the weld to want to flow into the bottom of the stud holes, it takes about 5 minutes with 350 amps (the torch rated limit) to get it hot enough in there. I have to hold the torch outside the cylinder hole by the cable/hose to keep from frying my hand, the ceramic gas cup starts to melt and sag from the heat, you can smell the torch housing starting to burn, the torch cooling water starts getting hot enough to burn me, then the weld starts to flow, I weld my way out of the corner and the rest goes fine.

 

Here are the pics form yesterday's work. 7 more bores to weld up then on the the mill. I'm also welding the outside row of coolant holes a bit to get them away from the bore so they won't break through when I open up the bores for the 348 liners and to make the shapes/positions match the TR heads better. I haven't decide what to do about the oil returns yet, I may need to weld those in too.
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Thanks. My 7 month old son now looks at the basement door when you say Papa's coming

 

I'm trying to over build, but it's not always easy to tell. I'll cut the decks a couple thousands proud so I can see what I’ve got. I also don’t have the 348 liners yet so I don’t know what to do there - I’m just guessing at this point, but I will probably clean things up a little so I can get good measurements and it will give me some new reference surfaces so I know where I am if I need to weld more.

I don’t know about the stress relief or peening, I need to do some more reading over the next week or so. I’m not at all familiar with the vibratory stress relief Steve suggest and no one I know is familiar with it so I need to do some research.

Peening I’m sure is a good idea in general, but I have a couple problems here I’m not exactly sure how to handle. 1st is how much is the right amount? Too much will cause cracking. 2nd is how much will it help anyway? Normally peening processes are a surface treatment and I have to get 3/8” to over an inch deep where the threads are for it to help any. Some peening would probably help with stress relief, but again I don’t know how much to do or how much it would help….I need to do some research.

The default answer will be I do nothing, but I think they are both good suggestions and I want to try to find enough information to make a proper decision.

 

Thanks. I never heard/saw those adds, but I like it

 

Yes, final cuts are the last step after all the welding and any peening or stress relief operation.

I will do the rough cuts and get the heads on then move on to mating the engine to the trans in case there is any welding there. After everything is done, then the finish machining starts.

 

I got a chance to do some quick reading on vibratory stress relief today. It’s not ASME (American society of mechanical engineers) accepted yet but appears quite common in several industries, particularly for tooling. There are quite a few papers on the subject, but I haven’t tracked any down yet. It appears it can be effective but there are also some places making some pretty wild claims.

I found a place the makes machines for it in Philly, I’ll give them a call and see it they also do treating. I really don’t want to ship the block all the way to CA and back and then ship it again for final machining. I guess once I get it fit to the car I could ship it to the stress relief place and have them ship it to whatever shop I decide to use to do the decks and line bore.

 

ahhh to live in Arkansas.....

Heck why waste the jb weld on a simple job like this? I could have just sawed the studs off clean and just wrapper a couple rolls of duct-tape around the engine to hold the heads down

 

A little brute force in the form of a collet tool holder (thanks sean) and a 3 ft pipe with some help from the oxy-acetylene removed the last stud! The torch was key, I should have started there. I had to hold the torch in one hand and turn the pipe with the other becasue if I set the torch down, it cooled enough to make the collet slip....but it's out now.
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I didn't feel like actually working tonight, so I just looked at stuff for a few minutes instead. The timing cover looks like I’m going to need to narrow it a bit to look right with these heads. I need to add a flange to the heads to seal to the timing cover, but I thought I’d get away with a basically stock timing cover…oh well, another thing on the list.

I’m ¾ thinking I’ll finish the timing cover and valve covers in a semi-gloss bare aluminum and put a wrinkle red air box on top so it looks very similar to the OEM QV engine….and tell people it’s the rare 1984 only v12 option. Red valve covers are nice too but then I’d have to do something else with the air box…maybe carbon-fiber would look good, but not very OEM for 1984.

I'll try and do some actual work tomorrow so I can get a little closer to needing a color decision
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A little more welding done. 7 cylinders finished and 3 more 1/2 way. 2-3 hours left it looks like.

 

This is the part of the project where it looks it’s worst, but it looks worse than it is. The beauty of the design of an engine is that most stuff doesn’t actually have to be all that precise. The bores have to be round and to size, but machines are good at round holes so that’s pretty easy to get right and since the 348 liners are bigger diameter than the 400 liners (in most places) there is matal to cut to make then round. If the bore position is off a full mm in any direction it wouldn’t be ideal, but the engine would still run just fine, it's not all that important, but I'll be able to get them within a couple thousandths of an inch without all effort at all.

You’re right that most of the cylinder is no longer a cylinder, but the bottom inch or so is untouched and right where ferari put it. I can either bold the block flat on the machine and tip the head to 30 degrees or I can trip the block to 30 degrees. It’s an easier and stronger set-up to tip the machine, but then I have to trig all the y direction movements when I start drilling the stud and pin holes. Anyway, after I pick a set-up I’ll indicate the crank journals parallel. Then I just need to put a dial indicator in the spindle and center up on what’s left of the bore, throw in the boring head and cut the hole round again. I’ll record the location of all the bore centers and use that information to decide where to drill the head studs and pin holes.

I’m planning to use the 348 liners, which are bigger than the 400 liners so I have metal to remove and that will make the clean-up much easier. Cutting metal out is easy, putting it back is a pain. The problem at the moment is that I don’t actually have the liners so I have no idea what size to cut anything. For now I’m just going to cut off the heavy weld and get back close to the original 400 size at the bottom and QV liner (I have those) size up top. I want to do the finish liner bores after the block is final decked anyway so I know how deep to cut the holes.

There is a solid day of rough machining I think (which probably means 2 days), but I should have the heads on the block this weekend and be on to the timing chain and cover issues. At that point is will start to look a lot more like there is any hope of it ever running again.