My truck, a work in progress
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Part 13: Running again! (2-18-2004)
After several years of doing NOTHING, I finally finished twiddling parts and started the motor. I had initially mis-timed the diatributor and was off by a tooth, but once I got that corrected it roared back to life!! That first trip aropund the block was a little surreal, and I'm sure my neighbors were surprised to see the monolith in my driveway actually moving. :-)
Now that it was running I could begin breaking in the motor all over again. For the first 100 miles or so I kept the boost turned off, but this was causing some problems -- the fuel maps were optimized for much higher boost, and were pretty lean around 100 kPa (100 kilo Pascals, or about atmospheric pressure), and the motor was running lean. Ultimately, after consulting with a number of folks, I opted to use the "drive it more or less like you intend to drive it" method of breaking it in, and increased the boost back to 13 pounds or so, so I could hit the fatter parts of the fuel map. (And yes, while I could have remapped things, this seemed like the better course.)
Initial reactions: Boy, this is a lot more fun to drive with the stock flywheel and the new cam! The definitely makes more power than before, but I haven't really stuck my foot in it for more than a second ro so. I can't wait to get some more miles on it so I can open it up with more confidence, but at least it's back on the road!
After several years of doing NOTHING, I finally finished twiddling parts and started the motor. I had initially mis-timed the diatributor and was off by a tooth, but once I got that corrected it roared back to life!! That first trip aropund the block was a little surreal, and I'm sure my neighbors were surprised to see the monolith in my driveway actually moving. :-)
Now that it was running I could begin breaking in the motor all over again. For the first 100 miles or so I kept the boost turned off, but this was causing some problems -- the fuel maps were optimized for much higher boost, and were pretty lean around 100 kPa (100 kilo Pascals, or about atmospheric pressure), and the motor was running lean. Ultimately, after consulting with a number of folks, I opted to use the "drive it more or less like you intend to drive it" method of breaking it in, and increased the boost back to 13 pounds or so, so I could hit the fatter parts of the fuel map. (And yes, while I could have remapped things, this seemed like the better course.)
Initial reactions: Boy, this is a lot more fun to drive with the stock flywheel and the new cam! The definitely makes more power than before, but I haven't really stuck my foot in it for more than a second ro so. I can't wait to get some more miles on it so I can open it up with more confidence, but at least it's back on the road!
Sunday, February 08, 2004
Part 12: Long time gone...(02/08/04)
Well, it HAS been a while! Let me try and bring things up to date, as things are moving along with the truck.
Let's see, when we last left off, I had cracked a piston, blown another headgasket, and destroyed my turbo. It was not a happy time for the old truck, and it sucked away a lot of my enthusiasm for the whole project. :-(
After doing a lot of swearing, I pulled the engine and rebuilt it for the third time with with Tim's help. The truck then basically sat in my driveway for two years while I caught my breath and learned how to be the father to a wonderful little boy. Things could be worse...
Anyway, in the course of rebuilding the motor we discovered something very important: an O-ringed block requires that you use a headgasket with O-ring compatible fire rings. Yeah, it's easy to say, "No shit, Sherlock!" now, but this was not something that either of us expected to be a problem, and in fact only seemed to become a problem at higher boost levels. Live and learn...
[More background: as some of you are undoubtedly aware, most 22R/RE/RTE headgaskets have fire rings that are "Siamesed", or joined, on the deck-side. This places some extra metal webbing between the 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 cylinders on the side that faces the deck. Since we had O-ringed the deck, this extra webbing was interferring with the seal the O-rings were supposed to be providing, and instead acted like little metal ramps that wreaked all sorts of havoc. Once we finally figured out what the problem was, we were able to source a different headgasket (made by Dana Corp.) that placed the Siamesed-fire rings on the HEAD side of the gasket, leaving individual fire rings for each of the cylinders on the deck side. These allowed the O-rings tio finally seal as God and Tim intended, and the problem appears to be solved.]
Since we had the motor apart, we also:
replaced the rods with Eagle H-beam rods
reworked the head's combustion chambers to lower the compression ratio down to 8.0:1
swapped camshafts to a new, wilder custom grind that Tim cooked up
re-ported the head
replaced the aluminum flywheel with the heavier, stock steel flywheel
Finally, with much trepidation, I buttoned the motor up early February, 2004. Here are some pictures from early February:
But will it run? More to come...
Well, it HAS been a while! Let me try and bring things up to date, as things are moving along with the truck.
Let's see, when we last left off, I had cracked a piston, blown another headgasket, and destroyed my turbo. It was not a happy time for the old truck, and it sucked away a lot of my enthusiasm for the whole project. :-(
After doing a lot of swearing, I pulled the engine and rebuilt it for the third time with with Tim's help. The truck then basically sat in my driveway for two years while I caught my breath and learned how to be the father to a wonderful little boy. Things could be worse...
Anyway, in the course of rebuilding the motor we discovered something very important: an O-ringed block requires that you use a headgasket with O-ring compatible fire rings. Yeah, it's easy to say, "No shit, Sherlock!" now, but this was not something that either of us expected to be a problem, and in fact only seemed to become a problem at higher boost levels. Live and learn...
[More background: as some of you are undoubtedly aware, most 22R/RE/RTE headgaskets have fire rings that are "Siamesed", or joined, on the deck-side. This places some extra metal webbing between the 1 & 2 and 3 & 4 cylinders on the side that faces the deck. Since we had O-ringed the deck, this extra webbing was interferring with the seal the O-rings were supposed to be providing, and instead acted like little metal ramps that wreaked all sorts of havoc. Once we finally figured out what the problem was, we were able to source a different headgasket (made by Dana Corp.) that placed the Siamesed-fire rings on the HEAD side of the gasket, leaving individual fire rings for each of the cylinders on the deck side. These allowed the O-rings tio finally seal as God and Tim intended, and the problem appears to be solved.]
Since we had the motor apart, we also:
Finally, with much trepidation, I buttoned the motor up early February, 2004. Here are some pictures from early February:
But will it run? More to come...
