metaruss

Well, it’s running so sweet that I broke 2nd gear.  It was an A520, but it had the chrome-moly bearing retainer plate.  Time to accelerate the A555 build-up that I’ve been putting off, as the Daytona is still apart.  Picked up an OBX and JT hooked me up with some carrier bearings.  The main shaft in the A520 still looked pretty good.  It’s got one little dink on the bearing surface…like it chewed something (a gear tooth perhaps…).  Hopefully it will hold for a while.  New shafts are no where to be found.  Gonna have to find a way to fix these things.

I was running 5psi of boost all winter, to save the Blizzaks.  That’s why I didn’t notice that my intermediate sprocket had jumped ahead a tooth when I swapped the cam.  When I turned up the boost, it misfired badly when I accelerated.  Set it to 10 degrees and now it is running sweet.

For reasons I don’t quite understand, the #4 exhaust cam and follower got trashed.  The valve train was making some horrible sounds when I got home from the meeting last night.  I swapped the FM475 cam with an ’88 TBI roller cam.  Also put in the PT Cruiser followers.  The valvetrain is very quite and the lope at idle is gone.  Idles real smooth, but runs a little rich now and lost some bottom-end and midrange torque.  Pulls OK at the top end.  Need an adjustible cam sprocket, as I can’t remember if the donor car had the square tooth or round tooth sprocket.

Some dude switched lanes right in front of me while I was accelerating to merge into traffic and checking my blind spot.  I hit the brakes and swerved too hard to avoid him, came around and ended up in the guard rail while going backwards.  These cars are way too tail-happy when you are really on the hooks.  The car hit the front corner first, so the front fender and the door took the brunt of the damage.  They are a loss, but the rear quarter is definately fixable…it didn’t even touch the tail light.  All four of my new tires have flat spots on them now, especially the fronts.  Grr….

I pushed the front-end underbody out with the Porta-Power, gave the fender some foot-stomping action out in the yard.  Also used the Porta-Power to push the door back out by the hinges.  Doesn’t look half-bad, considering how little time I spent on it.  The Daytona is nowhere near being done, so the CSX still needs to put out.

I got the 225/50 HR15 Kumho ECSTA 711s mounted on a half-decent set of 15×6.5″ crabs.  The balance is not great, but boy can this thng handle now.

Took the CSX to Ohio for SDAC15.  There was no way that my work schedule would let me finish it in time (it’s not even close).  Had an awesome time as always, except for the nasty hangover on the last day (oops).  The car did OK, though I couldn’t break into the 14s at all this year.  It just doesn’t feel right at the top end and the boost always drops way off.  With the wastegate disconnected, it can barely keep 15psi when I wind it all the way up.  I tried wiring the wastegate shut, but that didn’t help either.  At low engine speeds, it’ll crank out 20psi with no trouble.  Not sure what the deal is, but I do think it needs a bigger turbo.  I have that TU S60 with the .48 A/R housing and clipped turbine.  The Daytona’s engine has been collecting better toys since I got the turbo, so maybe it should get a true Super 60 instead.  It may be that I have the (modified) Talon BOV in the bottom hose and at high engine speeds, the IC starts backing up and the pressure in the lower hose goes insanely high and pushes the valve open.  I may try to remove the BOV and see what happens.

All put back together and back on the road so that I can put the Daytona down for a while. I cobbled-together a small guage cluster and mounted it under the center console.  It has the fual pressure, oil pressure, and the new oil temperature guages.  It’s basically a Radio Shack 8″ x 5.5″ x 3″ ABS project case.  The guages are angled towards the driver with those Auto Meter inserts.  It doesn’t look great, but its servicable.

The rusty areas of the floor pans are prepped for POR-15.  Most of it is surface rust, but it is starting to pit and flake in a few spots, so it is a good time to address them.  I also noticed a crack in the firewall, but I don’t really have time to deal with it now.  If/when I ever pull this motor for a rebuild, I’ll patch up the firewall properly.

Well, I have the oil pan back in.  I dropped it to fix a leak and went ahead and welded a temp sensor bung, side baffles, and some reinforcements on the bottom after banging out all the dents.  It was then stripped and painted with POR-15.  I also cleaned and painted the control arms and radiator/IC brackets.  The control arm bushing on the passenger side was walking out of the arm, so I purchased new poly bushings for it again.  I don’t think it was properly lubricated, so it shouldn’t happen again.  I also got the radiator recored, which has been in dire need since I bought the car.

Put the car to rest for the winter.  The inner tripod on the passenger side axle is pretty loose and the car needs tires, but other than that it ran good all summer/fall.  I do need to drop the oil pan and install the crank scraper, oil temp bung, and possibly some baffling.  The one thing that got me at the driving school at SDAC was oil supply problems.  By the end of the session the car was running pretty bad because of collapsed lifters.