metaruss

Drove it around a bit over the weekend.  Took it to work today and romped on it a bit.  The Super 70 is a bit more laggy, but it’s not anywhere near as bad as I thought it might be.  Also, the intake temps are just a few degrees above ambient…this intercooler is the bomb.  It’s pretty peppy even when the turbo is lagging and man this sucker moves when the boost hits.  It will be interesting to see how it works once I start cranking it up.  Right now it’s on the stock cal with the fuel pressure turned way down.  It won’t go low enough in vacuum, so it makes it a little lean further up the scale since the autotrim gets a little out of whack.  It’s like 10.5:1 at WOT, but if I leave part throttle it HAULS.

Finished hooking up all the guages, mounting the guage pods, getting the exterior all lined up, and getting it on all fours.  Had to shorten the hood vent tray to clear the intake manifold.  Also did a little fixup on the fenders, since the 87 put the belt moulding above the belt line, while the 86 has it just below the line.  Did a little creative tie-wrapping to get the early throttle body cable to work on the blow-through throttle body.

It’s alive!!!  Frankentona lives again!  Got the motor all hooked up tonight, pressurized the fuel system, and checked for leaks.  Stared at it for a minute to make sure I didn’t forget anything really important and cranked it over.  It fired right up on the first try.  I was a little surprised, given the major harness surgery it underwent in the engine bay.  It was smoking pretty good from all the oil and grease on the exhaust/turbo, but it didn’t really show up in the picture.  Before test firing it but after putting oil in it, I primed the system with a drill on the intermediate shaft and made sure the turbo was getting oil.

All that’s left is to put the fenders and nose back on, cut down the hood vent tray, and straighten up a few things in the interior.  The goal was to have it running by Halloween, but I may even have it on the road by then!  Just in time too, as the CSX is starting to smoke a bit more….

It’s been a rough couple of weeks at work (70-80 hours), but I managed to get some garage time in.  The exhaust installation is complete.  It came out pretty good, but I had the usual surprises.  The FWD Performance kits really like the passenger side.  The exhaust on both the Daytona and CSX had about 1/2″ too much length between the two 90 degree bends, which pushes the cat up against the heat shield from the back.  I had to remove that amount from both, but I had to cut that pipe anyway to swing the back half up a bit.  It’s clamped for now, but I will weld it once I’m happy with how the exhaust has settled in its hangers.  Add to that the 3″ down pipe, which doesn’t have enough length before the last curve and the cat ends up rubbing the heat shield.  Some heat shield massaging was needed to clear it.  The missing down pipe heat shield required that I wrap the down pipe in header wrap and shield the shifter cables a bit.  The offset oval muffler simplified the cutting/fitting behind the muffler, since I could use the offset to drop the tail pipe.  That part worked out well.

I’m not really happy with the Walker stainless band clamps.  They are nicely made and have captive nuts (which will be interesting once they are nice and rusty), but they don’t seal really well due to the way they pull up on the band where it is welded to itself.  The cheaper clamps that are on the CSX (Jegs/J.C. Whitney) seal better and I like how they “take-up” the band slack in the dished grooves.

Stupid skin infection came back again…grrr.  Really slows me down, but I did get the bobble strut mount from Johnny welded to a backplate and welded to the K-frame.  Man, I suck at stick welding.  At least with the MIG, the tool helps mask my poor skills.  Anyway the mount that Johnny sells is very solid.  However, it is being welded to stamped sheetmetal on the K-frame and the contact patch is only about one square inch.  As such, a transitional plate is needed to spread the load over a wider area on the K-frame to prevent cracking.  I made mine out of a couple of scraps of 1.5″ angle iron that was cut, bent, hammered, etc until it matched the profile of the K-frame.

I also got the exhaust cut and fitted.  Had to make the same basic changes to the back half as I did on the CSX.  Also, getting the nut on the driver’s side down pipe bolt is problematic when using the TU 3″ swingvalve with the .63 A/R exhaust housing.  More on that when it is done.

Got the clutch and did the swap.  Also got the intercooler perminently installed after painting the core support.  The TU ceramic/organic clutch (left) is headed to the CSX.  The Kevlar clutch (right) is installed, along with its sparkly blue painted Sachs pressure plate.

A nasty skin infection has kept me out of the garage for a couple of weeks, but I did manage to paint all of the welded areas on the core support and the new intercooler-related bracketry.  I also welded lips onto the intercooler pipes by carefully tacking 1/16″ stainless steel rings make from rod stock onto the edges.  My initial plan was to roll beads into them with a Harbor Freight bead roller that I got on sale.  Well the rollers were too large to fit into the tubes, so that didn’t work.  I was going to try to have different rollers made, but it wasn’t worth the effort.

The issue I was having at the track with the clutch in the CSX was a good reality check that this LUK T3 clutch isn’t going to hold.  I had purchased a TU “Dual Performance” ceramic/organic clutch for this powertrain, however I found that I accidentally ordered the early small spline version (the small shaft has 18 splines, while the large shaft has 17 splines).  I had a new T3 disc kicking around, so I just tossed that in instead.  I’ve ordered a TU Kevlar clutch (appears to be a Clutchnet clutch disc) that should hold well.  It has a little less holding power than the ceramic puck discs, but I should get much better mileage out of it.  The 6-puck that I had in the CSX before was shot after about 30k.  It sucks to have to drop the trans again, but it’s a lot easier now than it will be when it is all buttoned-up and covered in the inevitable grease.

So a while back I picked-up a Relentless Performance “Triple-Core” intercooler (three stock cores welded together in parallel).  The photo on the left shows (from the top down) the Spearco “1080″ that is sold by a few of the vendors, the RP Triple-Core, and the early Dodge Conquest intercooler that I used in my Shadow for several years.  I finally got it and all the plumbing fitted.  It just fits behind the early Daytona fascia after some trimming to the plastic structure.  I wanted the plumbing to fit without having to move the radiator or the battery.  The intercooler pipes are all 2.25″ T304 stainless steel (one U-bend, one U/J-bend, and a 45 degree bend).  The silicone couplers are from Silicone Intakes, which is by far the cheapest I have found.  I chose 2.25″ pipes because the intercooler and airbox had 2.25″ connections and that was the largest that would squeeze between the battery and the radiator.  The only change I had to make was I switched to a P-body coolant overflow tank to give me the gap next to the radiator fill neck.

Actually have quite a bit done, just haven’t updated in a while.  The interior is in…just have a few odds and ends to hook up (like the guages) that need to wait until the end.  The picture shows the interior after the dash was up and the center console was finally mounted, but before the carpet/seats went in.  The power train is in, as is the core support.  The front part of the core is tacked to the sheetmetal on the cowl, but I’m going to wait until I have the intercooler plumbing all figured out before I finish it up and paint it.  The RP triple core intercooler is mounted and I have designed the layout of the tubing.  It’s a really tight fit, but I’m pretty happy with it.  I didn’t even have to move the radiator.  The early G-bodies have a lot of room behind the nose, but some carving of the plastic was required.

Completed a major rewiring under the hood.  It’s now a hybrid 1987/1989 system that can run either the 1987 Turbo II LM/PM or the 1988/1989 Turbo II SMEC setup.  It was a lot of frickin work, but I wanted something that I could use as a test bed to play around with SMEC stuff.  I compiled a chart that I used to do the actual splicing that lists all the circuits and how they need to correspond between the two.  Luckily the SMECs are functionally close to the LM/PM setup, so it only got hairy in a few places.  All connections were soldered inline without cutting any of the original wires.