[james008]

New rod bearings are in.

I'm used to waiting 4-8 weeks for SD parts, and there's usually few to no options. I had 134 different options for Chevy rod bearings from one store, and I picked them up the same day. The amount of options and availability of Chevy parts is nice compared to what I'm used to.

Mains are gonna be a job for later. Decided they were going in the too hard basket with having to drop the rear cap, oil pump and replacing the rear main seal with the crank in place.

Once I finish resealing the sump and timing cover I'll give it an oil flush and hope for the best I guess.

 

[james008]

Also, that same shop that I bought the bearings from has a few options for cams under $200.

Which I can't understand. How the fcuk can a cam that's capable of 7000rpm+ be manufactured, machined, balanced, imported, and sold with all appropriate taxes and profit margins for under $200?

I dunno. But I'm about to find out.

At that price, I might buy a couple of different options...

 

[james008]

Sump and timing cover are resealed. Maybe.
The sump gasket is 4 pieces of cork and rubber that are apparently supposed to the stuck to the block with RTV.
That seemed a bit dumb. It's much easier to clean old gaskets and RTV off a removable sump than it is to clean the bottom of the block, and bearing caps, with the engine in the car.
So I stuck everything to the sump. Will it work? I dunno.

Also strange that cork gaskets still exist in the 21st century. Rubber and rubberised plastics are not exactly new or cutting edge materials. And they actually work.
To be fair, I could have purchased a 1 piece Fel Pro rubber gasket for about $70. But an entire engine gasket and seal kit, also Fel Pro, cost like $95. So i bought that instead because I also needed other gaskets.

 

[james008]

Anyway... I've started mocking up the new accessory drive.
The old accessory sat too close to the radiator to allow a fan and shroud to be fitted. Which, in the interest of not overheating every 10 minutes, I decided would be beneficial.
The crank pulley was nearly 6" long, the water pump pulley had an adapter/spacer because it's not a chevy unit, and i have no idea what the alternator or power steering pump or their brackets are from. But there were a lot of brackets and spacers.

I've so far bought a short water pump, instead of the old long water pump, "pressed" (beat with a big hammer) the pulley flange down to fit the existing spacer and pulley, because an offset pulley to suit a Chev wouldn't work, and bought a crank pulley to suit a long water pump accessory drive because that will work best for me.

I'm trying to reuse the alternator, power steering pump and as many brackets as I can, because I do not want to spend the money to buy a bracket kit, new alternator, new power steering pump and lines. I'm way too cheap for that lol.
As a result, the accessories will be creatively mounted.
The alternator seems to work best about here

It clears the valve cover, leaves enough room for wiring, and gives a decent amount of adjustment on the slider bracket.
I don't love the bracket being spaced so far out from the aluminium manifold it's bolted to. But between what I mentioned previously and my cylinder heads being an early style that lack bosses for accessory mounts, I don't have too many options.
If the alternator ends up there I'll need a new top thermostat housing, which is no biggie, I needed one anyway, it'll just mean different routing for the top rad hose.

 

[james008]

If the engine was 2" further back, which it absolutely fking could be, it'd solve all my issues and I wouldn't need to do any of this.

 

[geeyoutoo]

If the engine was 2" further back, which it absolutely fking could be, it'd solve all my issues and I wouldn't need to do any of this.

Well! There you go, another project .

 

[rgren2]

How thick is a clutch. 🤔😉

 

[mistyv6]

you can always put a brace from the water pump bolt to the alt bolt

 

[james008]

Well I finally stopped procrastinating and finished the alternator and power steering brackets.

I ended up running the alternator in the front water pump pulley groove, and the power steer in the back one. That allowed the alternator to sit a bit lower and it put the adjustment bracket at a better angle.
It does mean that the wiring connector on the alternator sits close to the valve cover, but it doesn't contact and i beat the valve cover with a hammer to give it some more clearance to make myself feel better.
The bottom alternator bracket is made of 5mm steel, with a couple of gussets to prevent it from flexing.
And i did end up running a brace for the adjuster bracket bolt since its threaded into aluminium.

The power steering bracket is spaced out from the water pump a fair bit. At the moment I have 8 little spacers stacked behind the top bolt lol. I'll get a sleeve or something for that later.
There's a 5mm brace running from the back of the pump down to the bottom of the block which helped stop the pump from moving around.
It sits very close the lip of the valve cover. But it should be fine.
Because of there the pump sits, I've had to reverse the pulley, which will mean I'll have to knock the pulley forward when I install/adjust the belt, but that's not a big deal.

It all looks a bit hacked together, but thats mainly because it is.
But if it works, I don't care.

 

[james008]

I painted the brackets. Then promptly scratched half of it off. I was too impatient to wait for it to cure before i refitted them.
The water pump gaskets and a few bolts got RTV because apparently thats the done thing with Chevys, since gaskets don't do their job or something.

I threw some new oil and a filter at the engine.
And found another leak.

Replaced that rocker cover gasket. With another healthy dose of RTV. Again, because apparently thats how you make gaskets actually function as gaskets?

Then gave it a test fire to make sure nothing had gone catastrophically wrong.
But I mainly started it because it still has no exhaust and i wanted to see how loud it is, and wtf else do you do with an engine with no exhaust system if not try and blow your ear drums out?

With the new oil and filter the MK oil pressure gauge topped out at 6 kg/cm2, which is just over 85psi. Even for new, cold oil that is extremely high.
I'll try and verify that, and look into the oil pump relief valve if necessary.

 

[james008]

I looked into the high oil pressure stuff. Didn't find a consistent answer about relief pressure. Maybe it changed based on year or application. I dunno.
So I've decided to ignore it. The oil that I've put in is only there to flush out the remaining glitter anyway, so i guess I'll try running a slightly thinner oil than the cocktail that i dumped into it.

Anyway, i now have a late BA/BF falcon fan.
It required a fair bit more hacking than the AU fans, but it fits. And it means i can use the existing radiator.

The width is about right, but I needed to trim a fair bit off the top and bottom, which has weakened it significantly, hence the broken bottom corner.
I glued it back together and reinforced it with a bit of cut up coat hanger lol.

Once the glue has dried, it'll be strengthened with a plastic brace, and the ally angle I use to mount the fan to the radiator.

But the BA fan works with the angled lower radiator barb which the AU fans would not, they would require a straight outlet. And while ebay radiators are cheap and have lower outlets that woud work with the AU fans that fit better, there's a steering box right behind the radiator. So it'd be tough to get a lower radiator hose that has a tight enough bend to bend to avoid the steering box, let alone meet up with the chev water pump.
So this will do for now. At least until the radiator core starts to leak due to the beaten up fins and cores, or the bolts that have been through it.

 

[james008]

The BA fan is fitted to the rad.
The BA/BF shroud is more fragile than the AU unit, so i riveted steel braces and rivnuts to the top and bottom of the shroud to spread the load of the pretty rudimentary brackets.

The bolts are offset because I wanted to use as many holes in the radiator as possible, and have the brackets as vertical as possible.

Overall fitment is decent. I might need to seal up the bottom of the shroud where the radiator frame had been conveniently cut, but the top and sides sit on seams, so they should be fine.

The BA/BF fan is slightly shallower than the AU fans/shroud as well, which has given me a good amount space between the pulleys and fan.

There's roughly 45-50mm clearance now. Enough room to change the belts without removing the fan.

Apparently a big block is only 40mm longer than a small block too.
So if I ever decide that id like to convert my drivetrain to metallic dust, I've left that door ajar.

 

[james008]

Cooling system, heater hoses and throttle cable routing are mocked up.
The top hose is a bottom hose from a VN-VS commodore. I had to cut a bit off both sides, then heat the hose and shove it over the head of my big hammer to make the 38mm hose fit the 44mm barb of the MK radiator, plus shove a screwdriver in there to make room for the thermo fan controller wire.

The bottom hose is from an XD-XF Falcon cut to suit. Using the BA/BF fan allowed me to use existing radiator, which has an angled lower outlet. Whereas the radiators i was looking at had a straight outlet which would have suited the AU fans, but would have punched the lower rad hose straight into the steering box.

The top thermostat housing is a generic swivel thingo, but it has an o-ring seal on the swivel bit, so hopefully it'll seal and the outer flange is just a plate to hold itin place. Its the third hosuing I've bought because i was doubtful about their ability to seal lol.

I'll just need to make a bracket to keep the upper heater hose off the rocker cover and alternator wiring.

 

[james008]

Well it still runs. Cooling system hasn't leaked yet, but it hasn't been pressurised yet. That'll be the next test once I run wiring to the fan.

Either I forgot how bad the engine runs, or somethings happened.
Idle is extremely rough, and was set at under 650rpm. I've bought that up to about 750rpm, but its still rough. Response off idle is alright and the engine smooths out a bit with higher RPM.
Spark plugs still look good, plug leads are brand new, removing the air cleaner didn't make a difference, and from what I can see all the vacuum lines seem okay.
The LPG setup is all Impco, the mixer is a 425 model. Once I figure out which screw is idle mixture one, I guess I'll start there?
I should probably check timing too, once I get a timing light, haven't needed one for over a decade lol.

If anyone knows anything about LPG tuning.... I'm all ears...

 

[james008]

It runs better...ish. Kinda.
I found the idle screw, and played with that a bit.
I ended up winding it out 5.75 turns, making it significantly richer, warm idle is now 800-850rpm and that has helped smooth the engine out a bit and stopped the engine backfiring when stabbing the throttle a few times in a row.

But considering it did idle before, that seems an excessive amount richer, which is concerning because I'll need to pass an emissions test...
Timing might play a part there, apparently LPG wants more advance at low RPM and less at high RPM/full throttle than petrol.

I would have thought the distributor advance springs were changed and timing set when the LPG was put on. But the workmanship on this thing has been dubious at best so far, so who knows...

 

[james008]

The cooling system may still need work too.
I set the fan controller to come on just under 2/3rd on the MK gauge, which should be 90-95°C. With the fan running it maintains temp, but it doesn't bring it down, and the fan runs continuously.

I bypassed the resistor on the BA/BF fan, so it should be running at full speed all the time, as there are only 2 wires running to the fan. Fan speed would have been controlled via the resistor connected to the 3rd pin in the connector that I cut off and the ECU. I did expect the fan to spin faster, but maybe it doesn't. I don't know what RPM its doing, or what its rated for.

 

[james008]

Think the cooling system issue has turned out to be radiator.
As i mentioned before, i ran the old radiator because it had an angled lower outlet to clear the steering box that ebay cheapies do not, and it didn't leak.
Not that it had much chance to, its about 75-80% blocked.
Most of the hot side of the radiator core was cold to the touch with the engine at roughly 100°C, with no fan.

I've had bad radiators before. Leaks, blocked tubes, fins that turned to dust. Even one or two that were corroded so badly the filler necks fell out. But none were this badly blocked lol.

I'll get a quote to get this radiator recored and go from there.

 

[james008]

I dropped the radiator off to get a quote on getting it rodded or re-cored. The local radiator repair joint is apparently located in a wrecking yard, and the next day call back I was promised has since turned into nearly a week.

So i assume that when I chase that up on Monday, there'll be a bunch of denial and I'll never see the radiator again.

Anyway, I bolted up the exhaust which resulted in a few exhaust leaks.
The passenger side has a gasket and a short piece of pipe in the exhaust. I assume the gasket seals on the taper of the manifold and the short piece of pipe maintains the ID of the gasket.

The drivers side does not have a gasket or a little pipe. I guess I'll need those.
Kinda hard to tell when each exhaust manifold is from a different era and platform of GM car. The exhaust manifold outlets appear to be similar though.

I have gained a couple of cats from a Falcon, which I might blast into the exhaust, since I'm not 100% confident that the 327 with no emissions control outside of LPG will pass an emissions test which will be part of the engineering cert.

All the exhaust pipe mounts are broken, which will need to be welded anyway, so cutting more of the exhaust up won't be a big deal.
And it'll all need to be replaced to fit a decent set of headers anyway, which I might be already be sizing up. And maybe cut outs...

 

[james008]

Well i ended up getting the radiator rodded, it was cheaper than gambling on an ebay radiator of questionable quality.

Anyway, this ute is now in the shed which made replacing the spring bushes a bit less sketchy than doing it on a sloped driveway with no handbrake and using bricks as wheel chocks.

It seems the bushings have been replaced before, but the rears were probably at the limit of their service life since they had disintegrated slightly.

I threw new shoes in the rear brakes while I was there. Only one shoe was actually doing anything, so I’ll need wheel cylinders. I can’t rebuild the existing ones that seized as they’re aftermarket aluminium cylinders, and the scoring is far too deep to hone out.

the front bushings were also poly and much more intact but hard as rock, they shattered when I knocked them out, so they were probably worth replacing. The steel chassis bushings were still good so I left those alone.

The front brakes weren’t great either, the pads and rotors still have plenty of life in them, but the bottom pin in both calipers are seized, and the pistons are pretty sticky.
The swept area by the pads isn’t overly good lol.

I thought the hard brake pedal on the drive home was due to poor manifold/booster vacuum. But I guess half seized brakes would do it too…

I have new pads and slotted rotors to throw in, so I may as well do that. I assume slotted rotors will look better for engineering because it has a V8 that struggles to hit 110km/h or whatever.

 

[james008]

Figured since I already have new rotors to throw on I should at least clean up the wheel bearings.
On the plus side, it looks like they were done not too long ago, the grease still looked pretty fresh, and the hub seal still seems okay. King pin bearings and hub seal still seem okay, so they can all be reused.

Whoever was in there last damaged the outer wheel bearings though, probably from trying to bend the wheel bearing lock washer. I didn’t see any damage on the inner races, but I haven’t cleaned the wheel hubs up yet.
If they’re fine I’ll probably reuse the bearings since they’re otherwise perfectly fine.

I rebuilt the locking hubs too. AVM managed to put a lot of parts into their spring loaded heavy duty hubs.

Bit of a bummer that it has AVM hubs, which have less engagement spring pressure and strength than Nissan hubs while also being larger…. But at least the CVs should be pretty safe lol.