Popular Post kws Posted December 9, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 9, 2022 Its happening. Prepped the engine tonight, and it'll be coming out tomorrow. 29 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post kws Posted December 11, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 11, 2022 What a weekend it's been. So much coolant on the floor... and so much progress. It was time. Lucas was getting the 3.9 engine fitted. The first job was Friday night after work; I pulled Lucas into the garage and began stripping the 3.5 engine down. This was the last time Lucas would be driven with the 3.5 engine, and the last time this particular engine would ever be started again. Due to the length of the car, and my garage, the only way this job was going to work was to have his arse hanging out of the garage. I started by draining the coolant and pulling out the radiator assembly. With the fan and hoses removed, this comes out as one big assembly by removing the two bolts that secure the upper "slam" panel. This uncovered the additional transmission cooler a previous owner had fitted. It's probably an ok cooler, but it's been bodged into place and wasn't really that good. It was out of the main airflow, and the aux electric fan sandwiched between the cooler and radiator was wired to run at key on (disconnected when I first got the car). It turns out the lower hose had also been trapped between the radiator and the sharp edge of the plastic undertray, which had caused it to slowly weep fluid, coating everything in a coating of trans fluid and mud. See damp spot on the plastics. I'm going to remove the cooler and run the hoses straight into the cooler built into the radiator, as it should be (this loop was still fitted, so it went from trans, to radiator, to cooler and back to trans). I'm not going to be using this as a heavy-hauling tow car, so I'm sure it will be fine. It wouldn't be my car if it didn't look like this at some point Little did I know it was going to be so much worse. Next, it was a case of removing everything else from the engine. *snaps fingers* The inlet manifold came off, to reveal a suspiciously clean pair of heads. Clean like, brand new, not even any muck in the ports. This also confirms they are carb heads, as they don't have the small cutouts in the top of the ports for the injectors vs the heads on Effie Under the valve covers was spotless too, with only some baked on oil on the rocker gear giving away its true history Interestingly though I did notice this on one head; the center head bolt has been removed and replaced with a stud, some washers and what appears to be a (used) wheel nut. It'll be very interesting to pull this engine down and see what's going on. Nothing was immediately obvious. It's no wonder the valve cover gaskets were bucketing oil everywhere. On the one side I removed, the gasket had shrunk or got pinched and pulled away at the back of the cover. It wasn't even trying to seal. Speaking of the inlet, it came off in one lump, and appears to be in decent shape. I did a bunch of new hoses on it recently, so they will be reused. The injector hoses appear ok for now, so they will be left, but I will fit new injector seals and feed/return hoses on the rail. This whole assembly is being fitted to the 3.9 basically as is. Once all the ancillaries were removed, I pushed Lucas back into the garage and called it a night. Tomorrow was the big day. I managed to rope in a friend to help with the big part of the job, which was a huge help, I'd hate to have tried it solo. He also brought another friends engine crane with him, which was kinda handy. There aren't too many photos of the actual work as we just smashed on through, and it was a hard and dirty job, so we only stopped at certain points. We started the day by doing the under-car stuff that I had left the previous day (and wish I had done, as now I was rolling in coolant...). I disconnected the downpipes, unbolted the lower bellhousing and sump plate, disconnected the starter wiring and removed the torque converter bolts. Up top, while I did this, the exhaust manifolds were being removed, and the lifting eyes were fitted. With the under car work done, we lowered the car down again and removed the bonnet. My lovely wife jumped in to help here too, as it took two people to hold the bonnet and one to undo the bolts. With the bonnet now carefully placed on some underlay on the roof, we slid the crane under the car and took up the weight of the engine. The remaining bellhousing bolts were then removed, as were the engine mount bolts. Using a jack under the trans pan, I gently took the weight of the trans, and then we used a pry bar to carefully separate the engine and trans. This came apart easy enough, and then suddenly the engine was up in the air and out of the car. Almost too easy. We had it out by lunch time. It's been asked a couple of times, "can you remove the engine without the trans?". Well yes, you can, and it's quite easy. Just make sure the torque converter doesn't slip forward, otherwise it's just like any other engine to remove. We didn't even need the leveller on the crane for removal, just refitting. The engine happily cleared the crossmember. We had a break for lunch, and then got stuck into converting the two engines. The sump, windage tray and oil pickup were removed from the 3.5 (including the long stud still fitted on the rear bearing cap, you need that too). into the drain pan it went And with the 3.9 conveniently upside down on the engine stand, the old sump was removed (and fitted to the 3.5) and the 3.5 parts were fitted Before the sump could be fitted, the front cover had to be swapped over. I started by removing the 3.9 cover. This was easy enough, it's just a series of bolts hidden under years of oil and muck and then it comes off. This then revealed the timing chain, which after much inspection, was one tooth out on the timing. The red and orange lines should perfectly line up. The pointer on the lower (really the upper; the engine is upside down) should line up with the tooth that has the square cutout on it. The hole in the big gear is a casting mark, not a timing mark. There was also some slack in the chain. Thankfully I had a new chain and a pair of genuine gears to fit. I removed the old ones, carefully rotated the crank so the teeth were in line, and fit the chain and gears. The orange line shows that the pointer and square line up nicely The new chain is taught, with no slack in it. Due to the length of the chain, there is no tensioner. This also reinforces the misconception about timing chains never needing service. The old gasket was scraped off, and then we set upon the old 3.5 to remove the cover. One "Pro-Tip" I will say now, is to open the block drains and drain the block. I didn't, and I swear there must have been a thousand litres of coolant in the block, either that, or it was generating it, as it never stopped pouring out. With the front cover removed from the 3.5 we had access to the timing gear on that and by golly was it bad! The chain was so slack it was barely on the crank gear Wiggly wiggly wiggly Interestingly, it had a solid steel cam gear, instead of the nylon gear it should have fitted. There were big wear marks on the teeth, so it was trash anyway. My worst fears were confirmed too. The oil pump housing was damaged. There was clear scoring on the walls. Most of it was so fine you couldn't feel it, but there were a couple of scores that could catch a nail, and some embedded chunks in the wall. In this photo I had carefully taken some super fine 5000 grit sandpaper and wet-sanded (with oil) on the LH side, which made a huge difference. It took very little to clean it up, but you can still see a couple of the deeper marks. A close up. of the other side before I gave it a quick tickle up. Both sides ended up looking ok in the end, but far from ideal. From the state of the gears, which were in decent shape, I can only presume the damage was done when the old engine failed and no one thought to clean the housing up. The base has some wear, but nothing I'm too worried about. Despite its appearance, it's quite smooth. I removed the pressure relief valve, which moved nice and freely. Cleaned it, oiled it up and refitted it with a new copper washer. I have no doubt that if I have low oil pressure on the new engine it's probably due to the housing. I tried to get a replacement front cover but really struggled, so I'm stuck with what I have for now. The oil system is meant to be low pressure high flow, so I can live with a slightly lower pressure as long as it's otherwise happy. The front cover had a new front crank seal fitted, as the old one was like plastic that had been set in the sun for a million years, and fitted to the 3.9. A pair of new gears were fitted, along with half a tub of Vasoline, to help the pump prime. A new gasket was fitted, dry, as I had heard there is such a fine tolerance here that even sealant can affect the operation of the pump, and the base refitted. Now it was time to fit the sump. Whilst I was messing around with the front cover this was given a good clean to get the old sealant and gasket off it. Unlike Tess, the sealing surface appeared to be in reasonable shape, with minimal warp (but in hindsight I should have checked with a straightedge at the time). The block was given a thin coating of sealant, the gasket set in place and the sump fitted and tightened to hand tight. It should be 14nm but the gasket was reacting badly at just hand tight and starting to squish out (and in the end actually split anyway, so now I'm going to replace the gasket again this week). With the 3.9 almost ready to go, the 3.5 was dropped off the crane onto the floor, where it proceeded to dump yet another couple of litres of coolant on the floor, soaking the cardboard it was meant to be on, before we kicked it off to the naughty corner to think about what it's done. Remember kids, block drains are great. And that's about where we wrapped up for the day. We lowered the trans onto a creeper with a couple of quickjack blocks on it, and rolled Lucas back into the garage. He had some mad reverse rake going on My friend departed for the night, and I was left to clean up the coolant and remove the intake manifold from the 3.9, ready for fitting the next day. The old 3.5 got an upgrade The next morning, we were back into it again. I started by realising there was a pilot bushing in the end of the crank, which was missing on the 3.9, so had to pop out and buy a puller to get this out as I didn't have a spare. The puller was obviously designed for bushes that are flat in the crank, not protruding, as I quickly ran out of thread to pull the bushing once it started to come free. It was suggested that I use a wrench as a spacer, which worked a treat I had tried the thing where you fill it with grease and hammer an extension into it to hydraulic the bush out, but all that did was make a mess. I then replaced the rear crank seal on the 3.9. This was in really bad shape, with clear signs of leaking, and it was hard as a rock. We started by drilling it and screwing screws into it, but could not get them to bite hard into the seal, so they pulled out. In the end, I used one of the holes I drilled to jam the seal removal tool into and levered it out that way. Fitting the new one was fun. The inner lip of the seal is smaller than the outside of the crank, so you couldn't just push it in place. There is a special tool, which I lacked, so out came the water bottle and knife, to make a sleeve to get the seal into place. You wrap the bottle around the end of the crank, and slide the seal onto the bottle which slides it over the end of the crank. This worked a treat, allowing me to use the old seal as a driver to hammer the new seal in. The pilot bush was hammered into the crank too. With those jobs done it was time to fit the flex plate. This was torqued to the required torque, on the crane, using a prybar on the ring gear to keep it from turning. Now it was time to get the engine off the stand and swing it ominously over the car Which suddenly, after much wiggling about, ended up with it being in the engine bay, bolted in place, and being at one with the car. That was cause for some celebration. Almost 24 hours since the engine came out, the replacement was in the hole; we were done by lunch time. The old 3.5 was hoisted up onto the engine stand and pushed out of the way, and then the bonnet refitted and the car pushed back into the garage. I'll be honest, I could be a lot further forward in the project if I had kept going for the rest of the day, but I was tired. Everything hurt, and I just wanted a rest. Thankfully all the heavy and hard bits were done, so my friend went on his way with the crane in tow, and now I'm left to do the rest of the reassembly over the next week. To make it to the work day on the 21st, the car NEEDS to be running next weekend. Stay tuned for the next exciting instalment of "man takes broken engine out, and puts the unknown engine in its place - will it start?" 35 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post kws Posted December 17, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 17, 2022 Woah what a week it's been! I have spent almost every night (Thursday was rest day) in the garage until well past my bedtime working on Lucas, trying to make sure I was on track. Right, so we left off with the basic 3.9 in the car, but nothing attached to it. My first goal this week was to get the crank pulley on, but before I could do that I needed to strip it down and fit the trigger wheel for the Speeduino crank sensor (just some "futureproofing"). This is the original SD1/EFI pulley. Since I converted to the original V-Belt front end I couldn't use the 3.9 Serpentine pulley. This is what a bad crank seal can do to the pulley. The hardened, almost plastic, seal can wear into the metal. I will keep an eye on the seal and if it leaks I will either need to source another pulley, or fit a Speedi-Sleeve, which is a thin tube of steel that goes over the damaged surface to give the seal something to seal against. A quick zip with the rattlegun removed the three bolts Because it worked, I am replicating the same install that Effie had, with the trigger wheel (the same 6 bolt 36-1 2.5mm thick trigger wheel from Lloyd Specialist Developments) mounted between the balancer and the PS pulley, so I slipped the rear section of the pulley off This allows the trigger wheel to slip on. I have marked the same spot I aligned Effies pulley to A+ reference material Before it can be fitted, you need to hammer down the roll pin that locates the pulley The trigger wheel should now fit flush And the rear pulley can now be bolted back on Compared to the Serp pulley, it's quite different. They're the same basic length in terms of pulley alignment, but the snout on the Serp one is much shorter to account for the crank driven oil pump. The crank pulley bolt is 15/16", if anyone was wondering Now, this is where it's interesting. I had done a lot of research and asked around, and as best I could tell I needed a crank spacer, so I paid a hefty amount to get one from Rimmers. The spacer goes on after the pulley, and allows the crank bolt to secure the pulley if the crank end is too long (otherwise if you did the bolt up without it, it would only touch the end of the crank and not the pulley). This example image shows the spacer. It's just a thick ring of steel. Long story short, I didn't need it. My pulley fit perfectly, and the bolt secured the pulley against the end of the crank. Oh well, I love paying lots for surplus parts. So, yes, the pulley was then slipped into place Where it promptly fouled on the timing pointer. I remember this from Effie, and the fix is to file the mounting area down to about where the orange line is, to clear the now slightly offset rear pulley. I refit the modified pointer and did the main crank bolt up to about 6 ugga duggas. Next I thought, "oh, let's install the power steering pump bracket". Nope. Should've done that BEFORE fitting the pulley. So I undid the pulley bolt again, slid the pulley forward enough to get the bolt in and secured the bracket. The lower bolt on the front needs to be spaced away as it's used to having the TDC sensor bracket mounted on it. I tried to do this with washers, but in the end just smashed out the old sensor and mounted the bracket. I think this time I might end up modifying this bracket to work with the Speeduino crank sensor as it's quite a neat little mount, instead of making. my own bracket again With that little segue done, it was time to get messy, swap out the valley gasket and install the intake manifold. First I had to split the manifold from the trumpet base, so I could clean it all up. This proved to be harder than expected, and I had to use a chisel to carefully separate them. With the trumpet base off my plan was to just replace the main feed and return hoses, and the injector seals I removed the rail and injectors The old hoses weren't looking too hot. They weren't leaking though. The return to the regulator had a somewhat clever attachment, as in it almost wasn't attached It had deformed the hose too Regulator with new hoses. I tested the regulator and it held vacuum, so that's a win. I removed the injector clamps, taking care to only poke my finger with a pick once. Use said finger poker to carefully lever the big rubber upper seals out of the housing as it'll be corroded in there. I replaced the two hoses that link the pair of rails The old seals look pretty gross I used a sharp knife to carefully cut them off. The lower seals were stuck in the manifold, and hard as plastic. A few of them were quite deformed too. I hadn't originally planned to replace the hoses on the injectors as they weren't leaking and didn't appear cracked (not like the ones on Effie), but upon closer inspection, there were fine cracks in the rubber As it turns out, the inner layer of the hose had basically turned to plastic and crumbled when cut. Don't presume the hoses are OK just from a quick glance. Thankfully I bought a kit from Mr Injector in the UK that came with new seals, hoses and the retaining ferrules (the metal cup at the base of the hose). I set about cutting off the old hoses and ferrule. The instructions are very strict that you must not use a knife to cut the hose off, so in the end I used a combo of "aviation" snips and side cutters. I got it down to a fine art, and took only a matter of seconds to strip the hoses off. I would use the snips held upright to cut vertically through the ferrule, which would usually take two snips do, then use the side cutters to twist the cut ferrule out. I would then use the side cutters to munch horizontally at the bottom 1/4 of the hose, until it was damaged enough that I could push sideways on the top of the hose where it would rip through the cut section and come off. The new hose and ferrule are straightforward to fit. Slip the ferrule on, dip the end of the new hose in fresh engine oil, and push it onto the injector, using a hard surface to push against and force the hose into the cup of the ferrule. That locks the hose into place. Injectors with fresh new hoses Now the new upper seals can be fitted. Don't be like me, and for the second time, forget to put the upper retaining plate over the injectors first. Thankfully I remembered before the first seal dropped into its groove. You cannot fit this plate with the seal in place. Lube the seals with some rubber grease and slip them into the groove I cleaned the corrosion off the bases with a wire brush in the drill, and loosely fitted them, along with new lower injector seals. Next, it was time to clean the manifold up. I removed all the old sealant and wire-brushed the under intake coolant pipe. Speaking of, I had bought a nice new, remade, stainless pipe in anticipation of this job, only to find it's not needed. I think someone has been here before as the pipe fitted is in good shape, and made of a thick-walled steel pipe. With the intake cleaned up, I moved to the valley gasket. There aren't many photos of this because when refitting I was against the clock to get the manifold back on before the sealant went off. I removed the old one and promptly directed it to the nearest bin. Like the heads, the valley is coated in a layer of burnt-on oil. No sludge though, and the cam appeared visually ok (some wear but had lobes and the discolouration wasn't abnormal, it'll do for now). The new gasket and inlet manifold went on easily enough Starting to look like an engine again, with the injector rail fitted too The intake was promptly covered in a rag to stop anything falling down the holes, and then I used my engine brace to lift the engine for the sump gasket replacement. I recall commenting when I did the sump gasket on the Tess, how much easier it would be with an engine brace, and I can confirm, it's much easier. Yes, I had replaced the sump gasket when the engine was out. I purchased a new nice cork gasket from Rimmers, and when fitted, it split in one corner almost straight away (with the bolts gently nipped up by hand), and overnight had split in a further 3 or 4 places. I ordered a replacement gasket locally, which was supplied as a Permaseal gasket. This was slightly thicker than the unbranded Rimmers one, and had a better shape. With the sump off you could see how the seal was spat out. Most of the seal was destroyed removing it from the sealant though, and by golly that was not a fun job, scraping sealant off the bottom of the engine, under the car. I did check the bolt holes in the sump when it was off last time, but didn't really check the flange for straightness, which I should have. Whether this contributed to the seal failure, or it was just a rubbish seal, we will never know. Using a straightedge, you can see how the flange dips down. It was like this the whole way around. Using the tried and true rag and grips method (rag to protect flange surface, grips to pull flange up), I gradually tweaked the flange as straight as I could. There is still a dip in places, but it's only about a mm. I then used Hylomar to stick the new gasket on Which then made its way to the underside of the engine. The bolts were all nipped up by hand, with no splits in the gasket. While under there, I reinstalled the torque converter bolts, and cover plate. I also removed, cleaned and installed the oil lever sensor with a new washer and some thread sealer. With the sump on again, I could put oil in it, which meant only one thing; priming the oil pump. I reinstalled the SD1 distributor (the 3.9 one doesn't have the oil pump drive; I might look into if I can fit an oil pump drive to it as the ignition curve might be more suited to the engine) and connected the ground temporarily. I turned the key, and nothing happened. Ah, I forgot to plug in the main loom. I tried again, and had the sweet sounds of the engine turning over on the starter. After a few turns the oil light went out, and I could see fresh oil coming from the rocker gear Great success! I did have a fail though... even after doing the same thing with Effie, I forgot how much transmission fluid the trans can pump out of disconnected cooling hoses. Knowing the oil pump worked was great. All it took was packing the pump with Vaseline so it wouldn't suck up air. Before I could drop the car down to the ground again I needed to sort the exhaust. I dug the original EFI exhaust manifolds out of storage, only to find they were the same as the ones already on the car. Regardless, the studs were in better shape, so after running a die down the threads on the studs and cleaning the flanges, they are the ones I used. The downpipes weren't looking as good. One of them had a leak that I knew about. It was in a crack in a weld, and since I have a welder, I quickly ground it back and hit it with the welder. That area to the left wasn't looking happy either, so I quickly made up a plate, and hid it from sight. It's not pretty, but it'll work. These downpipes are a bit of a mess really, and would benefit from being replaced with some nice long tube headers. There is also a hole in the bottom of the Y joint in the main mid section, which sounded like a tractor last time the car was running, but with it installed in the car I would only blow a bunch of holes in it with the welder, so that will be fixed when the exhaust comes out to fit the wideband O2 sensor bung. In the meantime, I wrapped it in exhaust tape and put a clamp around it. The manifolds were installed with new gaskets and sealant The downpipes could then be wiggled into place. For the first time in a few days, the car was lowered back onto its wheels. Sweet positive camber yo. This brings us to today. Now it was a case of putting the top of the engine back together. First was to install the new valve covers, since everything goes on top of them. These are the original EFI covers, painted in black wrinkle. New stainless hardware to fit them Much better than the gross old ones The power steering pump went on next. As I had been advised, it was a lot easier to install without the pulley on the front. Just like Effie, I spaced the pump back from the bracket with one washer on each bolt; this brings the pulley into alignment with the crank again (which was pushed back due to the trigger wheel) On the other side, the alternator bracket was next to be fitted. This was almost straight forward, except one of the bolt holes in the head was bigger than the old heads. I had a spare bolt that fit (new on the top, old under it) As the new bolt had a larger diameter it no longer fit through the hole in the bracket. A 10mm drill made short work of that problem. And bracket in place, with new coolant hose beneath it Getting there. The power steering pump was finished off, with the pulley and belt fitted. It was refilled with ATF. Moving up top again, the trumpet base was cleaned thoroughly, and refitted with a smear of Hylomar on the flange. This allowed me to run the wiring that lives under the intake, and tidy everything up under there. The plenum top could be fitted I don't know why, but it really triggers me when people run the wiring harness under the throttle mech, instead of over it, on the platform designed for it. I think all my SD1s except my first one, have had the wiring run like that. I fixed it on Lucas, so now its how it should be Finally, the rest of the engine bay could be assembled. I removed the transmission oil cooler, and re-routed the cooling lines into the radiator as they should be. So, what does that mean? IT'S STARTING TIME. I checked everything was connected, made sure the oil level was good, and that the power steering had oil. Then I connected the battery and turned the key. It didn't start. I noticed it backfired into the intake a couple of times, so suspected the distributor was 180 degrees out. I removed it, spun it around and refitted it. And turned the key. It's alive! I only ran it for a short time as there was no coolant in the system, but it ran well and ran quietly. I filled the cooling system up, and then ran the car to bleed the system. When the engine was at operating temp, I checked and topped the transmission up, set the idle speed, and set the timing to approx 10 degrees on the timing light. The engine runs really well, it idles nicely, and really shows how loud the old engine was at idle, this one is just so quiet. The oil pressure isn't amazing, I didn't expect it to be, but it's within the "good" range when warm, of 15psi at idle and 30psi driving. It was slow to come up when cold, but I'll see how it is tomorrow, since maybe it was only due to the first start. As long as it has pressure, and is quiet, that's enough for me. After it burnt off a bunch of stuff and filled the garage with smoke (from the engine bay, not the exhaust; the exhaust is perfectly clear, with no signs of smoke) I took it out in the rain for a quick test. It's hard to judge because of the rain, but acceleration seemed quite rapid, when it wasn't fighting for traction. The engine is turbine smooth, and revs well. I'm looking forward to the weather clearing and seeing what Lucas can do now. Job done. One week from engine out, to driving. Now to shake it down and see if it makes it to work on Wednesday (60km round trip in traffic) for the Christmas party. 31 12 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post kws Posted December 21, 2022 Author Popular Post Share Posted December 21, 2022 The time had come to take Lucas on his longest voyage in years (and the longest drive in my ownership, basically doubling the mileage I had done on the old engine), it was time to go to work. As I have previously said, the goal was to drive the 60 odd KM round trip to and from work today, as it was our work Christmas party and there was a "bring your weird car to work" sort of small car show planned. After all the work that had been done, I wasn't 100% confident in the car, as I haven't had any real time to shake it down, but it was doing it anyway. I always have this imposter syndrome that makes it hard to trust any work I have done, even if I know I've done it properly. The day before, I gave the car a good wash, and finally got around to replacing the old faded center caps on the wheels. I'm not sure how or why, but in the space of a couple of years (I have photos of the car from various years) the center caps had gone from being nice right red, to this horrible faded yellow The plastic domes on the caps had badly yellowed, but the red decal behind the dome had also faded to silver. I pulled all the plastic domes off a while ago, as the silver centers looked slightly better But it was always missing that pop of red. I bought some replacement caps from Rimmers a while ago, at great cost, and finally sorted it last night. The old caps were in good condition other than that... To remove them, without taking the wheel off, I first tapped them in the downward direction with a soft face hammer, and then gently tapped a small thin flatblade into the junction between the cap and wheel. This popped them off easily and without damage. The new caps press into the center of the wheel. Of course, I aligned the cap with the tyre valve, for that extra fanciness. Much better So, that takes us today, and the drive to work. I left slightly early to try and beat the worst of the traffic (failed). Lucas fired up nicely and we were off. I'll tell you what, I shouldn't have been worried. Lucas performed flawlessly. Temperatures were rock solid, and I could hear the viscous fan cut in and out as needed. Oil pressure was solid, 30psi at cruise and 15psi idling in traffic, I can live with that. Even the wipers, which are best described as lethargic at best, worked perfectly on the wet screen and did a good job of clearing without too much juddering. Interestingly the "intermittent" setting was just a constant wipe in the morning, but intermittent on the drive home. Typical Lucas. There was a slight whiff of coolant each time I would take a sharp corner. Not 100% sure about the cause of that, but as it was in the interior I suspect there might be a weep from the heater core. Otherwise, the drive to work was great. The car was planted, cornered well and the suspension felt good. The trans shifted smoothly, albeit a little eager to get into top gear. So, the engine. It's a beast. From a stop, the car isn't what you would call fast. It accelerates well enough, but it feels like the auto trans is sapping some of the power; where it really shines is in gear acceleration and pulling up hills. In gear, even top (3rd), if you give it a poke of the throttle the speedo goes up, without changing gear, or having to rev high. It gains speed without much fuss. If you drop it into second, it gives you a good increase in velocity. Climbing hills was a surprise. There is one fairly long and steep hill on the way to work, which it more or less idled up and would happily accelerate if I wanted it to. I recall the same hill requiring quite a few more RPM in Effie, which had the high comp 3.5 EFI engine. This engine loves to work at lower RPM, but isn't afraid of some revs if needed. It works quite nicely with the auto for that lazy, effortless, wafting-along feeling; Exactly what an SD1 should be to me. I had some positive reactions to the car on my drive, which is always fun. Kids seem to get a kick out of seeing it, which I guess isn't a surprise when all they are used to seeing on the road are wheeled whiteware in various shades of boring. Lucas got me to work in perfect 80s comfort, window down, blasting some Kiss from the cassette player (albeit via adaptor to my phone). It was a good way to commute. The car show was a bit of a bust, some people wussed out because it was raining that morning, and others just didn't bother. That left three of us bringing in our unusual cars. There was Lucas; a 1992 Mercedes E320, which made Lucas look quite small in comparison And one of my team brought his 1986 Mitsubishi Mirage Geneva. Great little car this one and a real time capsule. This one even has a sweet digital dash. So that was that. I had some good feedback from others at work (and the usual "geez I'm surprised you made it" and "do you get tired of crossing your fingers as you drive?" jokes). I would've liked to see a proper little display, with more cars, but it is what it is. Not only did Lucas get me to work, but he even got me home again. Once again, perfect drive, even in crawling traffic. The only real surprise was at the gas station on the way home. I wanted to fill up straight away so I could gauge how (un)economical the trip to work was. 22.9L/100KM. 10.3MPG It's not great Maybe I should stop gunning it everywhere just to hear the exhaust. Nah. 26 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post kws Posted February 12, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted February 12, 2023 Other than fixing a couple of minor coolant leaks that have popped up, Lucas has been flawless since the engine swap. Took him out to get some sun at the dog park yesterday. Found a couple of other doggos to chill with. 20 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post kws Posted April 9, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted April 9, 2023 It's been a while since Lucas has been featured in a post here. Mainly because he has been flawless, but also partially because I haven't driven him much. He was flawless... but it wasn't his fault he had a hiccup. I decided the other day to jump in and take him to work for a change. A drive I have done a few times since the engine swap and haven't had an issue. This time was slightly different. The engine fired into life nicely, with no apparent issues, even after sitting for a few weeks. I back the car up the drive, noting a slight fuel smell. Thinking it was just exhaust fumes from the cold start, I ignored it and began to head off down the road. What I couldn't ignore was the niggling feeling that the raw fuel I could smell was wrong. Lucas normally has no fumes in the cabin, and no real smell, so alarm bells started to ring in my head. A couple hundred more meters down the road and the smell wasn't gone, so I turned into a side street and popped the bonnet. Raw petrol was pouring from the hose on the outlet of the fuel filter, about an inch away from the exhaust manifold which was quickly becoming rather hot. Not ideal. Having no tools and raw fuel pouring out, I shut the bonnet, hung a quick U-turn and made a swift retreat home. I've gotta say, that was a very stressful drive home, and far more stress than I needed that early in the morning. Thankfully I made the 500m drive home fine and proceeded to quickly wash the fuel off the inner guard, check it wasn't going to keep leaking, shut the bonnet and change cars to head to work. He then sat in the naughty corner feeling sorry for himself. This weekend I grabbed some new 8mm EFI hose and got to work. These were two of the last hoses that I hadn't replaced since I got the car (the other was the cold start injector hose). They were all on the radar, but I ran out of hose when I did the rest of the hoses and left this as a "they're easy to get to, I'll change them when I get more hose". Well, I didn't get more hose in time, so it forced my hand. That's a good lesson to not leave old hoses for later, just replace them; I was in a rush to have the car back on the road after the engine swap, and it nearly bit me. This is where the hose decided to finally give way It's way closer to the manifold than I am comfortable with and the hard-line creates something of a natural drip loop above the manifold. I noticed even before removing it that one of the hoses (not the one that failed) was the wrong rating. This should be R9 hose, which is EFI pressure rated and made of different rubber so is less likely to have fuel permeate it. The hose on the car was R7, which is really designed for carburetted engines and not as resistant to fuel. I drained the filter and removed both hoses. It's no real surprise that the hoses failed after all this time. The newest of the pair was date marked 1996, while the other was a couple of years older, having been made when I was about 6 years old. The oldest one was the one that failed. Both hoses were very soft (you could easily squeeze them closed by hand, which you can't do with the new hose) and when cut open the inner layer of rubber had gone soft and gummy, like it has absorbed fuel. The "better" of the two hoses was also showing signs of cracking While I was there I also replaced the cold start injector hose, as this was visibly old but had no date stamp. I cut a pair of nice new hoses for the filter, making the inlet hose slightly longer as the old one was kinked in the bend before the filter. New clamps were used, along with a new shiny P-Clamp to hold the hose. I removed the air intake hose, turned the ignition on and opened the flap to trigger the fuel pump. This successfully primed the system, with no leaks. Great success. So that was a very lucky escape on that one. Had I just ignored, or not noticed, the fuel smell, I don't know how far I would have gotten before something far worse happened. So in saying that, this now lives in the passenger's glovebox. it's a perfect fit. I hope I never have to use it, but it's good to know it's there. Since Lucas was already in the garage, there were a couple of other things I wanted to sort. One was a decent wash and vac, but the other was to remove the passenger's front door card and reconnect the window switch I forgot to connect last time it was off. I very carefully popped the clips, removed the screws and pulled the bottom of the door card away. This allowed me to see the connector I needed to join Luckily I could just reach up from the bottom of the door and reconnect it blindly, and I managed to do so without causing any damage to the door card, which is always a risk when messing with it. The window now works from its own control again, yay. I did spot something a bit weird while I was there; a section of hose in the drain channel at the top of the front guard This isn't meant to be there, it serves no purpose and is just blocking the flow. It was a little further down when I first found it, I had moved it before taking the photo. Some careful poking with a pick and then grabbing it with needle nose pliers removed it. There was a significant amount of old dirt built up around where it was, so I cleaned that out with compressed air. Now the drain channel can drain completely freely. No idea how long that hose had been lost there, but I suspect it's a decade or two. Lucas then got a nice wash, and a couple of spots touched up with polish to remove some marks in the paint The interior was treated to a decent vacuum since it was full of leaves and tree debris from living outside. It's a very inviting place, with warm white LED room lights, wood grain, and plush fabric seats. The reason for all this, other than not burning to death in a car fire, was actually to go to a car show I was planning to go to before Lucas had his whoopsie. A few friends were planning to attend the final of the local Cars and Coffee meet for the season, so I was planning to tag along. After a solid day's work, we were ready to go. My wife and I enjoyed a lovely cruise up the coast. Lucas drove perfectly and loved to stretch his legs. The show was a success. Some great cars there, and I'm looking forward to going again sometime in the new season later in the year. Out of all the cars there, Lucas was the only Rover. There were a couple of other British cars, namely a Reliant Scimitar, Morgan Plus 8, a few Minis, a TR7 race car and a couple of Trumphs. Lucas is due for a WOF in the next couple of weeks, so I will need to book that in and hope he passes again. Not much has changed, and he's only done a shade over 500km since the last one, but it's always a gamble with classic cars. 24 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post kws Posted April 22, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted April 22, 2023 Another WOF inspection completed without issue. Great success. I did get a couple of advisories this time, one being the front wheel bearings might need adjusting for the next WOF, and the front swaybar D bushes are perishing, so I have some minor work to complete soon. Overall, excellent result. Not a glamourous photo, but it does the old shopping run pretty well. Hopefully this time I will be able to do more than 650km between inspections (6 months). Winter isn't the best time, but he lives outside anyway, so better to use the car than have it sitting on the drive. 13 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post kws Posted June 18, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted June 18, 2023 Lucas has a drinking problem. No matter how I drive him, or where I drive him, the fuel consumption is horrific. I needed to fix it, or I couldn't afford to keep driving him. I track the fuel-ups for all my cars using Fuelly. Not only does this allow me to compare consumption between different cars, but it can show me just how bad it can be. The Honda averages 7.0L/100KM on its daily commute. This was measured over about 120,000km of fuel ups, but fluctuates a lot depending on traffic or if we take the car away on a long fun. Lucas on the other hand... has cost me $347 in fuel, to cover 446km. That is an average of 25.2L/100km (9.3MPG). The last trip was a round trip up the coast and back, on the open road, mostly at 80-100kph. And it averaged 26.9L/100km. WTF. I can pound on it and push it hard, and it's just as bad as if I baby it and cruise at low throttle. It was time to see if I could fix the issue. I had my suspicions that it might be the flapper Air Flow Meter. Long story short, this is a device that has a flap inside it (hence the name, Flapper), that opens and closes depending on how much air is being drawn into the intake. The ECU measures how far it's opening and closing, by a change in resistance as the flap moves, and uses that to adjust the fueling. More open, more air, more fuel. I recorded a short video of what the flapper is doing when you rev the engine. The U shaped copper arm, and the black track it runs on, are how the ECU knows how far open the flap is. The main tool I needed was a wideband O2 sensor. This measures the air mixture in the exhaust fumes and gives a readout of how many parts air to fuel there are in the fumes. The "ideal" is 14.7:1 (14.7 parts air, to 1 part fuel); this indicates a nice complete combustion. A bigger first number means it's lean, and smaller rich (more air, or less air to fuel). You can't run an engine at 14.7 all the time, so the ECU will vary the fuel mixture as needed (richer when accelerating, leaner for cruise, as a rule of thumb). I have a wideband setup already, the 14point7 Spartan 2 from when I installed the Speeduino on Effie, but that doesn't have a gauge, so no instant readout. I needed a gauge. I tried to buy a cheap secondhand setup but unfortunately, it was DOA, so I ended up opening the old wallet and throwing money at the problem. After a long trip on the slow boat from Freedom-land, I had a nice new Glowshift digital WB02 gauge in my hands. Along with the gauge, I also bought an Innovate tailpipe clamp, so I could use the sensor without having to drill and weld a bung into the exhaust (and so I can use this setup on other cars, like the Marina). The other night, I soldered a 12v plug to the gauge wires, so its plug and play And then set the gauge up and free-air calibrated it (so the gauge knows what "fresh air" smells like) Yesterday I slipped the clamp into the exhaust and tightened it, using a bungee cord around the exhaust hanger as a safety. It didn't come loose, but I wouldn't want to lose it if it did. The reason I specifically went for the Glowshift gauge, was that they use a remote control box. Not as neat and tidy as the likes of AEM or Innovate where the O2 sensor harness plugs directly into the back of the gauge, but it gives me a good couple of meters of extra wire length, since the O2 sensor has its own wire to the harness, and then the harness goes to the control box. The control box then has another long wire to the gauge. I placed the control box in the center console, and ran all the wires to it The O2 sensor wire is carefully shut in the tailgate seal, and then run through the boot, over the back seats and to the control box. The gauge is duct taped to the steering column shrouds. I plugged the 12v socket in, fired up the engine and off we went. After the initial sensor warm-up, we had this on the gauge, on a cold start This was to be expected; rich. The ECU dumps more fuel in when it's cold, to help the warm-up phase. It should steadily lean out as the engine warms up. It didn't. No matter how I drove the car, it was always reading 12-13:1, except under one condition; hard acceleration, where it went VERY lean. I could back off the throttle and cruise as much as I wanted, and it was still rich. No wonder we were drinking fuel. Now, the "lean" condition. When using this much fuel, the "lean" reading surprised me. It's very unlikely it was actually lean, and what I believe happened was what's called a "false lean" condition. This happens when there is a slight misfire (such as fuel fouling a plug slightly under load) and the sensor reads the uncombusted air/fuel mixture as lean (because there is "unburnt/unused" air in the mixture). After a couple of laps around with the engine warm, it was obvious that the engine wasn't going to lean out the mixture as it should. I had previously checked the temp sensor, and that was well within range, so I knew it wasn't that causing the richness. This was the gauge on a hot idle It's slightly richer! Madness. It explains why no one would ever follow closely, and when my colleague did, he promptly got a headache and was light-headed. As mentioned above, my first port of call was the AFM. The one in the car wasn't the one the car came with, it was an unknown one from my spares. I swapped it when I got the car (before the engine swap) because the one with the car had been tampered with and I wanted to eliminate that. All that turned out to be a non-issue compared to needing to replace the engine, so I just left the unknown AFM in the car. I grabbed the AFM that came with the car and set about reinstalling it It's very easy to do. Removed the plug, remove the hoses on both sides, remove the two front bolts and then push it towards the back of the car to disengage the rear fixing, and then remove it. I swapped the original AFM in and fired the car up. Instantly I noticed just how smooth the idle was. It wasn't rough before, but always had a slight stumble or unevenness about it. That was gone. The wideband was also showing an immediate difference. Sure, this was a warm start, but see the photo above for a comparison. It's significantly leaned out, and far closer to that ideal 14.7:1 ratio. I took the car for the same short drive I did on the previous AFM, and the AFR was drastically different. Instead of a rich 12-13:1 under all conditions, I now had a slightly lean 15:1 at cruise, high 13s accelerating, no more "false lean" when under load, and the engine felt smoother and responded better. It was a great start! I had expected I would need to tweak the AFM settings to adjust the mixture, but it was damn near perfect as it was. Next, I had to take it for a bigger drive, including some hills, to see how it reacted and make sure it didn't lean out under load, so today I did a 60km round trip (or the same route as my daily commute). Lucas worked flawlessly. The engine seems smoother, but as expected it lost a little "punch" that it had when it was rich. The engine still pulls like a train, it just feels more refined. I confirmed that the engine was not running lean under load, and although I'm still missing my extra enrichment, the engine was happy enough. Hopefully once I can fix the enrichment I might gain some of that punch back. We stopped to check everything was OK with the car, and grabbed some photos It's a great looking car and I do enjoy driving it. One of the biggest differences I noticed on the drive, people now follow too close... Maybe I should have kept gassing people, just to keep them off my tail. Once home I removed all the wideband gear, as I'm comfortable that it's running as well as it needs to. The next test will be to drive it for a full tank and see what economy the next fill records. Interestingly the tailpipe clamp is discoloured, but isn't sooty, which is a good indication to me I also hit a milestone when I got home. This is how many KM I have put on the car since the 3.9 engine went in So, I have an excuse to drive the car more now, just so I can see how many miles I get out of this tank. Better get onto it then. 37 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post kws Posted June 21, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted June 21, 2023 Just a quick update. Since people weren't being asphyxiated when following me anymore, they had a tendency to sit on my bumper now. I wanted to make it a bit more obvious I was braking, so they wouldn't become one with my bumper. The brake lights (and tail lights, for that matter) on the SD1 kinda suck. I guess they were OK for the time, but these days where everything is bigger, faster and worse, they're small and hard to notice. The standard brake lights use just the two outer red sections of the lamp units. They don't really stand out and could be mistaken for tail lights. The tail lights use an even smaller section inboard of the brake lights I previously fitted halogen upgraded bulbs to the tail lights so they were brighter, and feel that's enough for rearward visibility. Some people have fitted dual filament bulbs to the fog lamps so they do double duty as brake and tail lights. To upgrade the brake lights I had two ideas. One was to fit a high-level stop light at the top of the tailgate glass, so higher vehicles could see it easier. The second was to change the massive rear fog light sections near the number plate, to act as additional brake lights. The first one was easy enough. Clean the glass, and stick on a suitably retro high stop lamp. Due to the super flat angle of the rear glass, getting a high stop light that works properly is a real pain. This one is adjustable for angle, and even then it only just works. The one benefit it has is that the higher you are behind the car, the brighter the light is (and the less visible the lower standard brake lights will be). To wire this in I just ran the wires down the C pillar under the rubber seal, and tapped into the RH brake light 12v feed, and ground. Easy. The next one required some fettling. Because in NZ we don't need rear fog lamps, I'm OK to eliminate that functionality, which makes this job a lot easier. All I did was unplug the 12v feed to the fog lamp bulbs and run a short jumper wire from the 12v brake light wire to the positive terminal on the (ex)fog lamp bulb holder. Done. It's completely reversible, and since I swapped the fog lamp bulbs to LED bulbs, the extra load on the brake light circuit should be minimal. Here's a quick comparison of the stock brake light setup, and the modified setup, with and without tail lights on. Some might say having 5 brake lights on the back of the car is excessive, but I disagree. It's still nowhere near as bright as the LED brake lights on the Honda, but should draw attention to the fact that I'm braking a lot better than the original setup. 24 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post kws Posted June 26, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted June 26, 2023 Uh, I’m an idiot. I’m very embarrassed but have to clear this up in the interest of being open and honest. I stuffed up. It turns out that when I set the car up on Fuelly, somehow I missed changing over the odometer reading from KM to Miles in the settings. Since finding, and changing, this setting, it’s looking a whole lot different. It’s still not good, but it’s a damn sight better than it was. 15.8L/100KM or 14.9MPG. 12 6 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post kws Posted August 4, 2023 Author Popular Post Share Posted August 4, 2023 The time has come, Lucas has been moved onto a new owner. No, I know it's not the outcome most people wanted, but it's the best outcome for both Lucas and myself. He goes on to a new owner who can take the next steps and look after him, and I get to move on to a new and exciting project and get to stop stressing about having two British projects. It's a shame I didn't get to do another Speeduino install, but that takes a lot of time investment, and I just don't have the motivation to spend that time on Lucas when I really need to be working on the Marina. I'll find something to install the Speeduino on, one day; maybe even the Marina. The new owner is an ex Vitesse owner, who regrets selling his car a few years ago and wanted another SD1; so he knows what he's getting into, knows the cars well, and is committed to spending the time and money to look after Lucas. As part of the sale I agreed to include the original 31A engine that came in bits with the car, but I also wanted to include the crank from the old carb 3.5 I removed from the car, as the 31A crank was rusty from being badly stored. This meant I had to rapidly strip the engine. I didn't take too many photos because I was working quickly, and it was messy. The heads come off easy enough. I question if the head bolts were torqued properly though as I could crack the head bolts with a 1/2" ratchet without much effort. The heads have had work before as they are very clean inside, and the engine had composite head gaskets. They're good heads, so I'll try to find a new owner for them before they go to scrap. The block threads were a bit sad though. This one straight up pulled out of the block and this one had previously had a stud inserted into it, and a wheel nut used to secure it I stripped the whole engine down, and if I'm honest, there was no real smoking gun like I was hoping to see, to tell me what was causing the horrible clacking from the engine. Even the cam had all its lobes, and none of the lifters were dished. My only real suspicion is that the timing chain was so loose it was slapping around and making noise. There was some ugly wear on the main bearings (likely from contaminants in the oil), but they weren't spun Thankfully the crank was spotless, so that was removed and put into a box and loaded into the car And the rest piled up under the bench, waiting for me to hurry up and do a scrap metal run So with that, it was all loaded into the back of the Rover, and after a week and a bit of waiting for transporters to get their A into G, Lucas was loaded up onto the truck today and off into the sunset he went Good bye Lucas, it's been an adventure. Now to spend some much-needed time on the Marina, and begin the process of obtaining the next toy. 21 6 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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