308 V12 conversion begins

Neither tank would have to come out, just cutting off the corner would do the trick and that may very well be what I do. I'll make that decision once the engine is back in the car and I have some time to ponder it.

 

I can't believe it took you this long to notice

Yes, before the welding starts the trans will get stripped and bolted to the table. It's still handy to have the input shaft in place for the rough fitting though for checking stuff.

Yes, exactly.

Better yet, a water/oil heat exchanger mounted in the engine cooling line like I used on the supercharged engine. no need for long oil lines and it just replaces a section of cooling tube that I need to run any way.

This is actually your fault you know. As I recall you are the one who insisted a 400 engine was a viable alternative to the 365 SOHC.

This is one of the harder parts of the project for sure. If I didn't move the engine forward there would would need to be pretty extensive mods to the bell housing any way becasue of the can/shock interferance that prevents this engine for being mounted the way the SOHC engines went in. Also I've never been a fan of the way the input gear alignment problem was handled in the past and with the 600 hp I think I'll make instead of 400 hp the SOHC engines put out it will need to be corrected.
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Thanks.

I'm planing to leave the body as is for 3 reasons. The first is I like the way it looks, 2nd I like when people get caught off guard, and 3rd, I s*ck at body work. The only thing I'm considering is how to go from the 285 tires it has now to 315 or so....I was planning to move the wheel wells in a bit, but I think the engine is taking most of that space now. Whatever I do will be a project for another day....it will probably stay stock looking though.

 

Messing with planes is scary. If I screw something up I call have to call a tow truck, but if a plane is screwed up......

Those are nice compact coolers compared to air/oil. I never had an oil temp problem so I never messed with it but I always wondered why the in/out were right across from each other, 95% of the cooler surface is probably doing nothing configured that way. I'll bet only 1"-1.5" of the core is seeing any flow at all. I always thought the lines belong at opposite ends which would allow the entire core to work and should yet a lower pressure drop too. Or I could cut the cooler down and only leave about 3" and I'll bet it would cool just as well.

 

I'll post the numbers when I get home, but technically it's not a 400 any more I guess. It's a 443 if I use stock 85mm 348 liners, a 453 if I bore to 86mm or hopefully a 458 if I bore to 86.5mm making exactly 5.5 liters. hmmm, maybe I should rebadge it as a 456 GTS

 

Yup.

The block is distorted and will require some work to straighten things out, the crank jounals in particular.


and there is a lot to worry about with the heat effects

On the plus side:
the welding rod starts as a non-heat treatable alloy so it needs to draw a lot of stuff in from the base metal before it can suffer heat effects

it has a melting temp below the base metal which helps reduce the stress in the base metal

ferrari blocks never seem to crack so there has to be a large safety factor built in

it's a water cooler engine so the block will never see over 200F.

On the minus side:
I did a lot of welding

I probably didn't get the block pre-heated as much as I should have

I don't know for sure I'm using the best rod because I don't know the alloy for sure.

I think it'll be ok but if the worst happens and the engine comes undone I'll mount it on a stand becasue it will still look cool and install a 400/412 engine with a supercharger to get the power back up.

 

Stock is 340, so at 8-10 with no intercooler it should gain about 60% or 544. With the heads ported and better cam 400 is very reasonable as a base number making the boost number 640. My concern with adding boost is that is also adds lots of torque which is what breaks stuff. My NA engine should make 600ish hp but with around 400 ft-lb torque, certainly not more and not the 500+ ft-lb a boosted version should make. That's a big part of the reason I went the way I did......fear for the transaxle.

 

F101C010
*00488*

 

I did some more work on the transaxles tonight, this time with a wrench. I still need to clean it, but it's all torn down.

I like the way Charles (atlantaman) jigged his on an aluminum plate the will expand with the case as it's preheated. I think I can lay my hands on a chunk of 1" think aluminum jig plate which is cast and ground aluminum sheet. It's not as strong as 6061 plate, but it it doesn't wrap either. If all goes well I should be ready to weld this weekend.
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I measured the cranks the other day, the 400 crank is 10" longer than the 308....that's a lot to find room for and the 400 is taller by a good amount because of the 60 degree V instead of 90 (you remember your trig right ).

The way to go in that case is a TR or boxer drive train as Paul suggested way back in the thead. Cut out the trunk, move a cross member and turn a cople a-arm mounts and it's in.

I got thinking some more after I posted about the torque issue. I know the trans is ok with 420ft-lb because that is what the supercharged 308 engine made. I'm planning to swapt the top and bottom drop gears which will change by 23% such that the trans will spin 23% faster and receive 23% less torque. In that case 500ft-lb at the crank becomes about 400 at the trans and it works. You'd need a clutch thst can handle the full 500 ft-lbs, but the trans should to fine....but you have to switch the gears.

 

Boring night. I cleaned off the old gaskets and indicated the locations of about 1/2 the studs on the pans. I'll finish indicating tomorrow and hopefully get drilling on the jig plate....I really want to get the welding done this weekend.

 

Nope.

The hub it the engine gears is bigger than thhub in the trans gear. It also requires moving the position of the idler gear. The trans gear needs to be re-worked or replaced any way do to the offset of the longer engine so it make no difference which gear you re-work to put on there. At the engine the easiest thing to do is re-grind the shaft to accept the smaller trans gear. I haven't look very carefully at moving the idler, it might be possible to simply re-bore the hole oversize on the new centerline and sleeve it back to size. If not, well I have a welder.....

 

The day started with a broken milling machine and the broken part really wanting a milling maching to fix, but a band saw and file seem to do the trick in the end and I got it back up and running.

I got the jig plates I needed made and the case all clamped tight. Tomorrow I need to though the case in the mill and clean up where I sawed, make the new parts to weld in and if it's still a resonable hour, get it welded.....but I'm not holding out a lot of hope to get to the welding part.
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I clearly had been spending too much time with the crack pipe when I started thinking I’d be welding the trans case today.

I got 1 rail made and fitted to the case. Looking at it I decided to remove another chuck from the trans case that will no longer have a purpose. The row of studs on top is where the engine used to sit, quite a difference to where it will now be.


Maybe ready to weld by Saturday…maybe.
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