The Adventures of 42137: A Shipwright's Tale

I picked up the new air conditioning hoses today. When I dropped off the hoses to replicate the hose guy said that he wasn't sure if he had the big diameter fittings and he might have to re-use mine. When I picked them up it turns out he had all of the correct fittings new. The one thing that is different is both hoses are standard hoses. One of the OEM hoses is a special thin wall hose. Hose Guy said it is used in places where there isn't enough room for the regular thick wall hose. At first I was concerned, but there isn't anyplace that tight. The hose is smaller than the fittings on the end so it will fit through the small openings and there is plenty of room in the sill. Hopefully I can pull them this weekend and everything will fit ok. I also had the two other AC hoses remade as well. There are two short hoses in the front compartment, they might as well match the long hoses.

I also got some stuff powder coated by a friend of a friend. It looks pretty good.
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The top half is as it came on the car and the bottom half is Rustoleum "Brilliant Blue." I'd say that seems to be the correct color for the hose clamps. I need to get a finer point brush to get in around the screw and do a better job repainting the rest.

I also spent about 10 minutes trying to pull in the new AC lines in today. I tried feeding from the front and pulling from the back. The opening right in front of the fuel tank is small, obscured and tight. I tried for a few minutes but ran out of time. I'm going to try to pull the other direction tomorrow, I think that will be easier.
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Exhaust gas sample ports and piping: I know the no one with an injected car uses them. I know that they are a source of exhaust leaks. I know most people just weld them closed. Despite that, I'm trying to make them useable on this car. The originals were rusted away and even the header threads were in bad shape. I'm going to try re-threading them and using a Swagelok adapter to allow a tube to be attached. I can make up the tubes to approximate the original tube setup. I might just put NPT plugs in the holes for now and to keep the engine bay cleaner.

I made a tapping block to fit tightly over the sample boss - 18mm o.d. for those who are curious. (I bought a $11 18mm drill bit on ebay. It is not even Harbor Freight quality. I think it might cut pine, I know it does absolutely nothing to steel. I wound up cutting the i.d. on the lathe.) The other side of the block accepted the drill bit so I would go in the boss square. I drilled all eight bosses. I them bored out the tapping block to hold the tap fairly tight to keep it in line with the hole. The tap I selected is 1/4" NPT. Those threads are tapered and so is the tap, so the block doesn't hold as tightly as I wished, but it is pretty good. I still have a bit more tapping to go. When I've got all this worked out I can finally have the headers ceramic coated.
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Things have been moving slowly. For one, I broke off the tap in one of the sniffer bungs. I'm still not sure if I hit bottom and broke it or if I galled it in place and broke it, but it is broken off in the hole and man was it stuck! I tried turning it back out with various tools with no luck. I ground a slot in the top with a dremel wheel and tried a screwdriver but the tap shattered pieces off instead of coming out. I whacked it with a drift and hammer and got nothing. I finally bought some Tap-X. It is a chemical acid that eats high-carbon steel but not stainless and aluminum and stuff. It says that it will dissolve the tap overnight. After the first night it looked rusty. I re-applied for many more nights and it made an impressive bubbly rust stew and the tap was looking thinner and abused, but it was still completely stuck. After a week I gave up. I got a diamond bit in the Dremel and started turning the whole tap to a fine dust. It probably took a solid hour of going at it but I wore my way through two of the four webs and the remaining pieces popped out. What a pain.

Here are some pictures of the Tap-X process. I don't think I recommend it.
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The smog pump mounts are rubber and mine were shot. I got the part numbers but none of the usual suspects seem to have them. I made replacements out of some soft plastic scrap I have - maybe Delrin? Hopefully the increased hardness of the plastic doesn't mean smog pump noises are amplified by the mount and stuff, but I'm not sure how often the belt will "fall off" anyway.
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This is the third time I've shift shaft seals on a 308, and so far this is the easiest. Big advantage having the gear box out of the car and no engine on it! I got Verell's (just one "r") quad rings and one of his Delrin bushings. I was smart and I engraved a little indicator on exactly where the shift selector goes on the shaft before undoing the pinch bolt. The old seals pop right out, the new seal pop right in with a little fussing.

I had a hard time getting the shaft back in. The is one time where being out of the car was more difficult. The harder I pushed the shaft the more I just scooted the gearbox across the floor. I finally resorted to grinding just a hair more chamfer on the shaft. And as soon as I did I realized my mistake. I ground off my selector engraving mark. D'Oh! But it made all the difference in getting the shaft back in. But now I can't tighten the pinch bolts until after the whole thing is back in the car.

Next time I will make the mark on the other side of the selector.

Pressing the bushings out and in with the right sized sockets is easy.

After the pictures were taken I took the whole thing out to the driveway and used degreaser and the power washer yet again to try to get it clean. It is much better but not perfect. I still have a little time with wire brushes to get all the crud off.
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Scraping all of the gaskets off the bottom the gearbox is easier when you can just flip the gear box over and not have all bits falling back down onto your head, hair and eyeballs! Only downside is that those bits want to fall into the gearbox instead.

With the gearbox cleaned up I am finally ready to mate the engine and transmission! I did a practice run lowering the engine onto the transmission and it went well. I ran a hefty line of Locktite 518 along the joint and put it all together. I don't usually put this much sealant anywhere, but a leak here would be just horrible. I thought I'd rather deal with extra goo than a leak here.

There are two "hidden" nuts that hold the two together. One of them is a little scary - the nut sits right over two meshing transmission gears. If that thing comes loose there will be a major catastrophe. That nut got a new lock washer and some blue Locktite. (Sorry, that picture is upside down. I can't seem to flip it over.)

Now this is progress!
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Smog pump looks better in pictures than in person. It could be repainted really. I just cleaned it up. I did take it apart and re-grease the insides, made sure the vanes are free. It has a big bearing inside that I greased up as good as I could. Basically I lubed the crap out of it and put it back together. No pictures though. It is just like the air horn pump but with only two vanes and 10 times bigger.

 

Darn, I've searched my photos file for my old GT4 and I can't find a picture of the firewall. I think it was just as shiny, and that was a series 1 GT4, so you can't use age then! But I don't have photo proof, so I guess I have to give you the age....excuse.

(It's actually my birthday so I've been using the age excuse a lot the last little while.)

 

Now that the engine and gearbox are mated the next part is this intermediate plate. And it has a big gasket. I used Hondabond and sealed around the cavities that have fluids and I also sealed the tops of the cavities that don't have anything in them. I left the sides and bottoms of those cavities without sealant. The gasket should keep it all sealed, but if it were to leak at least it should leak back out instead of being trapped in there like before. Maybe?

The intermediate plate is sandwiched between the block and the bell housing casting. It doesn't have bolts of its own, it is squeezed in place when the bell housing is in place. To get the Hondabond set I made up some tubing as spacers to take up the extra room on the studs so I could squeeze the plate in place without putting the bell housing on yet.
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I cleaned up the flywheel and put it on the crank. I triple checked that each bolt was torqued to spec (approx65 ft/lbs.). I used a silver Sharpie and tried to neatly fill the engraving for all of timing marks but it didn't quite come out like I hoped. In any case they are very much more visible than usual.

The clutch disk and flywheel surface look less than stellar. If this was any other car where the clutch is trapped between the engine and transmission I'd certainly replace them. Getting to them in this car is so relatively easy that I'm saving that project (and purch$e) for another day. They are certainly good enough for many thousands of more miles.
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I didn't. That sounds like a great idea! I'll see what I can do, but it might be hard now as things have progressed.

 

I turned a clutch centering tool to line up the clutch plate. You know how the ones sold in stores have a long handle, often with a ring? That didn't occur to me either. When I got it all together that nubbin was down inside the center of the pressure plate. I took a drywall screw and screwed it into the end and grabbed it with vise grips to pull it out. Still quicker than going to the auto parts store to see if they have one, but still, I could have made it any length. It should have been longer!

Worked anyway.
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Here's something that got me. When putting the bellhousing back on there's a trick or two. For one there's a spacer that goes on the tranny input shaft and that spacer is trapped inside the bellhousing cavity unless you take the big bearing out. So this spacer is rattling around inside that cavity. I try for a minute to remove the bearing but then I realize I can fish the spacer in place as I put the bellhousing on, so That's what I do. First the circlip goes on the shaft. The trapped spacer goes against this circlip and slide everything all the way in. I had new O-rings from Ricambi for this and I used a little more of the Locktite 518 sealant just for good measure. And the bottom gear didn't fit right. It stuck out too much. That seemed wrong. I surely would have noticed if that gear wasn't in line with the others. I checked my photos and from my GT4 files I have a picture of the drop gears and they are completely in line, just as I'd expect. You can't turn the gear around - for one it sticks out the other side instead, but it also rubs the case, so that's wrong. By this time my sealant is probably ruined anyway so I pull it apart, clean it up and try to figure out what the heck.

Finally the parts drawing gives it up and I check to be sure. That spacer trapped in the casting cavity? It is directional - it has a relief on one side that rides on the circlip. Get it backwards, as I must have done, and the bearing becomes too wide and nothing lines up. New sealant, line the spacer up, push it together and...perfect. Gears all line up in a row. It would be easy to leave the spacer off completely if you don't know it is in there and that would be bad, but getting it backwards is worse.

(Third pic is the gears lined up wrong, fourth pic is gears in right!)
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OK, so now that the gears are good the cover can go on. More of the 518 and torqued to spec.

Really that's the bulk of it back together. I have just a few more small bits - spark plugs and one bank of wires. And I have some small welding jobs for the smog stuff. And the headers need to visit Jet Hot. But it is close!
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I'm making new air injection rails. The old rails just have too many problems to fix. And they are plain steel so they will continue to rust and fall apart even if I could get it all to work and be air tight.

The new rail is 1/2" stainless tubing. I drilled holes in it for 1/4" tubing to feed each cylinder. I need my welding guy to weld in the short tubes and to seal off the end. I drilled out the old rail to hold the new tubes in exactly the right spacing. I'll use a Swagelok fitting to adapt the tubing to the 1/2" NPT of the check valve. I've pre-polished all the tubes, but I'm sure it will need to be touched up after welding.

To mate this new rail to the head I modified the air injection ports to accept a modified Swagelok adapter. This adapter seals the 1/4" tube from the rail with a nut and ferrules. When the air port is welded to the adapter this will all bolt together and do the job of the original air rail. And it won't leak!

I also need to have that EGR pipe that broke off the exhaust system welded back on.

So the welding guy is my next stop.
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