Positive Pressure Induction System

+2

 

Bertocchi, I'd REALLY APPRECIATE your help with this if you could break free.

Frenchman & his dad came over Sunday AM. We ended up spending all morning getting the belts on & timed against the marks. Biggest problem was that I couldn't use binder clips to hold the belts on the belt drive gears. The drive gear wall is much thicker than the OEM walls. I finally came up with an assortment of clamps that worked. Will post pix. Then went thru the usual problems of finding a usable pair of cam gear & cam holes to pin. Must say that the new tools really helped there.

Of course I also discovered a few minor problems with the new tools. Specificly the pins need to be short enough so that they can be inserted when directly under one of the T handles on the cam gear bolt tool. Also the pins should probably be made from hex stock so that a wrench can be used to turn them when they bind up (my nice knurling got chewed up when I put pliars on them).

I also believe I've got the dial indicator mounting sorted out to my satisfaction. I made a thread converter out of steel hex stock, so I can mount the indicator arm on either a cam cap, or cam cover stud. I haven't had a chance to try the setup on the front bank, but am optimistic it will work there also. Will take a couple of pix when I get a chance.

Pizzaman, I meant to coordinate with you, but it slipped thru the cracks. My apologies.

 

I don't have a good estimate as it's been a couple of years since I had to completely re-time a set of cam gears. I just remember it being long & frustrating.

A data point: Once I had the belts on, initially tensioned, & the tensioner locked down, I could slip a gear off of the cam move it 1 or 2 teeth and slip it back on again. If it looked likke a pair of holes aligned, I could then verify alignment by tightening the gear with the threaded tool to ensure it wasn't 'cocked' by the belt tension (it usually was), then slipping the pin in. It was quick to loosen the pulley & try again if the hole was still off.

Compare this to having to use a wrench to tighten & loosen cam gear center bolt, & fighting with that small, easy to drop pin to check for alignment. I believe these tools probably cut that portion of time in half or more.

At this point I've just re-timed the cams against the cam cap marks to give me starting points for dialing them in with the indicator. I'm also interested in seeing how well the marks on the cams match the results with the dial indicator. Again, if I have to tweak a cam's position by a degree or 2, the new tools will come in handy. (Of course if i'm that close, I could even more easily make the adjustment with the SMG2 adjustable cam gears). My inclination is to continue re-pinning until I'm either happy with the timing, or too frustrated to continue & break down & use the cam gears.

 

I neglected this project for awhile because I hurt my knee just before last Thanksgiving , it developed very painful arthritis that kept me from climbing around the car from November until about a month ago. It's finally gotten better enough so I can get around reasonably well. Thus so I"m back on the project. Sure would be nice to have my car on the road some this driving season!

I have to relocate the oil filter & the associated oil temp switch & pressure sensors that mounted to the filter housing because the air filter & throttle body had to go where the oil fulter usually mounted. The new filter mount will be either on the rear bulkhead, or else under the coolant reservoir where the OEM oil cooler is currently mounted. I'm not sure if I can keep the OEM oil cooler as I haven't been able to get the OEM oil lines to come off & suspect I"ll end up stripping out the threads. Anyone know why the OEM oil lines are so tight into the oil cooler? Did they put loctite on the threads?

In order to relocate the oil temp switch & pressure sensor, I machined a sensor mounting rail out of a piece Aeroquip fuel rail extrusion. As you can see in the pictures it mounts to the oil filter remote mount with an AN-12 female fitting. Took about 6 hours to machine it as I was designing while I worked.

A big chunk of the time was spent turning the 1/2 NPT tap for the blue male & female AN-12 fittings with a 14mm combination wrench. NPT threads are tapered, so unlike straight threads where the tap is only forming 4 - 5 threads at any time, a NPT tap is cutting ALL threads deeper as the tap advances. Thus the more threads you cut, the harder the tap gets to turn! After about 8 threads It was all I could do to turn it about 1/4 turn, then back it up to break the chips loose.

DON'T FOS IT, USE A BIG...
Finally I got smart & grabbed a 1/2" socket that fit the tap & let me use a 1/2' breaker bar to turn it. It's amazing how doubling your lever's length reduces the force you have to apply

The sensors aren't in the prettiest condition, but they work so won't replace them. Maybe I will try out Eastwood's golden cad to freshen them up after I've got this beast running.

I'm going to have to return the filter mount. I ordered a Right Hand inlet filter mount assuming that the inlet would be to the right with the mounting bracket towards the viewer. Apparently System 1 assumes the viewer is looking at the logo. So I have to get their left hand filter mount(sigh)...

Since the sensor rail has AN fittings, I also have the option of mounting it to the AN fitting that replaced the filter mount, or anywhere along the oil line between the filter & the engine inlet. However, most likely I'll stay with hanging it off of the filter mount.
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I need to do several things that require pulling the passenger side fuel tank:

1. Replace the front header.

2. Replace ALL fuel lines with Dave Helms high-tech lines.

3. Replace long A/C lines

HEADER CRACKS:
The front header has had cracks in the collector re-welded a couple of t imes & has developed them again(sigh). Awhile back I got lucky & bought a Euro front header that has been ceramic coated inside & out. Hopefully this will prevent it from cracking. I'd already had my easier to remove rear header ceramic coated by Jet-Hot & it's holding up just fine.

I believe all my fuel lines were replaced in the mid 1990s based on markings on some of them.

FAILED FUEL LINE:
I replaced the line between the driver's side tank & the fuel pump back in Oct. of '03 with Gates highest rated fuel line (IIRC Gates white stripe). See:
http://www.ferrarichat.com/discus/messages/112/323118.html

At that time the fuel line I removed looked to be in good condition so I figured the new Gates hose was going to be good for another 15-20 years. NOT SO!! Last winter i noticed that the hose looked really bad on the outside, lots of cracking/checking. I tried flexing the hose by hand & to my dismay it started very slowly weeping gas!!! I put a cup under it to catch the drip until I could deal with it. When I came back to the job the next morning it had stopped weeping.

Heck of a surprise to find a 8 year old premium fuel line leaking. Convinced me that Dave Helms concerns are real!!! Needless to say I've been VERY careful to avoid disturbing that hose until I could empty the gas tanks.

I came up with a painless way to empty the fuel tanks. I'd already pulled the CIS system as part of this project. I pressed a swivel nut barb fitting onto one end of about 12' of 6mm ID Cohline fuel line. Then screwed the swivel nut onto the hard fuel line that was formerly the input line do the fuel distributor. Put the other end of the Cohline into an empty 5 gallon gas container located OUTSIDE of the garage. I then connected the battery, turned the ignition switch ON (not START), & jumpered the pins of the blue CIS safety cut-off connector.

It only took a couple of minuites to fill the 5 gallon container. After about a gallon flowed into a 2nd container air with fuel droplets started spitting out of the Cohline indicating that the fuel pump was sucking air. I quickly pulled the jumper out of the blue connector to shut the fuel pump down.

I'm real tempted to put a capped-off T fitting in the fuel line so that I can hook up the Cohline & pump gas out for the snow blower during salt season.

A/C HARD LINES:
I'm going to replace the two long A/C refrigerant lines with some that are unlikely to require pulling the gas tank again to deal with a leak. I'm going to make them with foam insulated 1/2" ID foam jacketed bendable copper HVAC line except for short ( 1/2 to 2/3 meter long sections of barrier line on each end. The jacketed copper line section thru the inaccessable parts of the car should never leak, & the barrier line can be easily replaced if necessary.