My truck, a work in progress
Sunday, December 17, 2000
Part 3: Got me a motor! I take possession of the beast (12/17/00)
Wow, hard to believe a month has gone by, and until yesterday I didn't have a whole lot to show for it. Happily, though, I can report that I NOW HAVE A MOTOR AGAIN, and am a lot closer to being back on the road.
On Saturday, I met up with Tim @ DOA and had a chance to look at my block, pistons, rods, crank, and head for the first time. WOW! Beautiful stuff, as you'll see in the accompanying photos.
The block is a work of art! The pictures don't do it justice. Luckily, we were able to reuse my stock block and crank; for the sake of integrity at our planned high power output, Tim didn't want to turn the main journals more than .010", and he didn't want to bore out the cylinders more than .030" over stock. We were lucky on both counts, and were able to reuse the stock block and crank. Saved some real money there :-)
Tim's whole philosophy in building higher output engines is to let the engine fight itself as little as possible. In this case, that meant making sure that all of the cylinders were concentric to the centerline of the crank and rod journals (align bored/honed), that the deck was perfectly true and smooth, that the crank main journals were line bored for trueness, and that the rods were all balanced and phased (exactly the same length between the big end and the piston end). As a finishing touch, Tim had the block O-ringed. No more headgasket woes for this little engine :-) He used several different machine shops to accomplish this, as some excel at one operation but aren't equipped to do the others. The result is visible in the photos below, and should be evident in a big way when I get it up and running :-)
Some more info on the internals:
• The pistons are 92MM JE forged aluminum wonders, very light, at a true compression ratio of 8.5:1 with my rods, block, and head. L-i-g-h-t, and very strong, with spiral locks on the wrist pins.
• The rods are D.O.A.'s severe duty steel rods, which are virgin stock rods that have been nitrided, stress relieved, and shot peened. VERY serious hardware, well suited to life on the street.
• The crank has been hardened, and the oil holes enlarged a little and chamfered (this was done through out the block, too). The 22RTE (and R/RE?) cranks are a forged steel crank, so there's some very good parts to start with.
• For the head, we were able to reuse my LC "Pro EFI" head after all. The chambers had cracked in the narrow space between the valve seats, but the cracks were stable (we pressure tested the head to 50 psi), so we reused what I had. Tim made a pass at the head to change the flow a little, installed new bronze guides and V6 valve seals, did a valve job, and equalized seat pressure to 95 lbs. We also drilled my intake rockers to improve oil coverage on the exhaust cam lobes, as explained here.
Anyway, take a look at the pitcures below. I think they tell a pretty good story :-)
I have almost all of the other parts, and am just waiting on the flywheel, limited slip diff, and turbo header (which is being repaired, but more about that later).
I hope to get the engine installed next weekend, and maybe get it running then, too (on the stock EFI computer). After I break it in, I'll switch over to the Speed Pro unit, set up some dyno time for tuning, and see what this baby is 8really* capable of doing :-)
So maybe next month I will finally have some numbers (and driving impressions) to share. Stay tuned...
Wow, hard to believe a month has gone by, and until yesterday I didn't have a whole lot to show for it. Happily, though, I can report that I NOW HAVE A MOTOR AGAIN, and am a lot closer to being back on the road.
On Saturday, I met up with Tim @ DOA and had a chance to look at my block, pistons, rods, crank, and head for the first time. WOW! Beautiful stuff, as you'll see in the accompanying photos.
The block is a work of art! The pictures don't do it justice. Luckily, we were able to reuse my stock block and crank; for the sake of integrity at our planned high power output, Tim didn't want to turn the main journals more than .010", and he didn't want to bore out the cylinders more than .030" over stock. We were lucky on both counts, and were able to reuse the stock block and crank. Saved some real money there :-)
Tim's whole philosophy in building higher output engines is to let the engine fight itself as little as possible. In this case, that meant making sure that all of the cylinders were concentric to the centerline of the crank and rod journals (align bored/honed), that the deck was perfectly true and smooth, that the crank main journals were line bored for trueness, and that the rods were all balanced and phased (exactly the same length between the big end and the piston end). As a finishing touch, Tim had the block O-ringed. No more headgasket woes for this little engine :-) He used several different machine shops to accomplish this, as some excel at one operation but aren't equipped to do the others. The result is visible in the photos below, and should be evident in a big way when I get it up and running :-)
Some more info on the internals:
• The pistons are 92MM JE forged aluminum wonders, very light, at a true compression ratio of 8.5:1 with my rods, block, and head. L-i-g-h-t, and very strong, with spiral locks on the wrist pins.
• The rods are D.O.A.'s severe duty steel rods, which are virgin stock rods that have been nitrided, stress relieved, and shot peened. VERY serious hardware, well suited to life on the street.
• The crank has been hardened, and the oil holes enlarged a little and chamfered (this was done through out the block, too). The 22RTE (and R/RE?) cranks are a forged steel crank, so there's some very good parts to start with.
• For the head, we were able to reuse my LC "Pro EFI" head after all. The chambers had cracked in the narrow space between the valve seats, but the cracks were stable (we pressure tested the head to 50 psi), so we reused what I had. Tim made a pass at the head to change the flow a little, installed new bronze guides and V6 valve seals, did a valve job, and equalized seat pressure to 95 lbs. We also drilled my intake rockers to improve oil coverage on the exhaust cam lobes, as explained here.
Anyway, take a look at the pitcures below. I think they tell a pretty good story :-)
I have almost all of the other parts, and am just waiting on the flywheel, limited slip diff, and turbo header (which is being repaired, but more about that later).
I hope to get the engine installed next weekend, and maybe get it running then, too (on the stock EFI computer). After I break it in, I'll switch over to the Speed Pro unit, set up some dyno time for tuning, and see what this baby is 8really* capable of doing :-)
So maybe next month I will finally have some numbers (and driving impressions) to share. Stay tuned...
