Bemused and Confused

As you can see from the description to the right, this is basically my blog about me, my cars, and my adventures at the track. Well, to me they are adventures. To you, it might seem a bit tame… or obsessive, maybe even boring. But, I am having fun with it and through this blog, I hope that I can inspire others to get out there and have fun.

It has been a long time since I updated anything. Let’s just say that I have been occupied with other things. The last work I did on the car was near the end of last summer. The details of that are below. It isn’t much.

I do have to say that I have gotten somewhat discouraged. I had a number of lousy things, not uber-bad mind you, just not good things, happen over the last year or so. They’ve all added up to a lot of time spent away from the car and the track. I’ve also gotten somewhat frustrated with both the car and my abilities as a mechanic. It is a learning experience and I have to take it that way and not let it get me down. Also, because of the mistakes I have made, and the near destruction of the engine, it’s made me somewhat gun shy. What if I’ve missed something else important? What if it lets go at the wrong time? It makes me cringe when I think about starting that motor up again. Anyway, it is what it is and I’ll get through it.

The Engine

I left off after putting the engine back together. It looked good and all I needed to do was to put it in the car and fire it up. Yep, all great plans of mice and men…

After a lot of wrangling, I managed to get the engine into the car and on the mounts. It isn’t easy when the car is just up on jack stands and you are doing it by yourself. The engine had to be tilted just right and then lowered, and then tilted more and then lowered, and then tilted less and then lowered again. It took a couple of hours to do.

I hooked everything up, double checking as much as I could. I didn’t want oil or coolant spraying all over the garage if I missed a line. I had a bit of trouble getting the coolant lines that go to the heater coil tight enough, it’s a pretty tight space to work in. The electrical was a bit of a pain to hook up. Getting the giant rubber seal plug on the main harness through the firewall was a real challenge. It had been a long time since I had taken all that stuff out so it was difficult to remember everything. But, I got it all done. It was late in the day and I was tired, so I decided to call it a day and planned to finish it up the next day.

I got outside early and finished up the last few things. I checked the oil level and coolant one more time. I had the battery hooked up and charging all night, so everything should be ready. I disconnected the main relay and cranked it over for a while to bring the oil pressure up. Once the oil pressure light went out, I hooked the main relay back up. It was time to try it for real.

I held my breath and started the engine. I cranked and cranked but wouldn’t start. I check the relays, they were all OK. I check all the wires and circuit breakers, they were OK. I checked for spark, none. I checked for fuel, none. OK, that’s just not right.

I tried everything I could think of, and couldn’t get it to work. I used the manual to diagnose everything I could think of using a multimeter and some jumpers to check things at the ECU end of the harness. Nothing was wrong. So, I posted online asking if anybody had any ideas. It’s one of those generic, “my car won’t start” threads. I got the usual starting from basics responses. However, One smart guy suggested that the on board computer might not be getting a signal. There is a wire that goes from the main harness to the OBC and if it isn’t hooked up, the OBC can’t tell the ECU that it has been unlocked. You see, the Germans are very tricky. The OBC can have a code put in it, kind of like a password, and if that code isn’t entered, the car won’t start. On my OBC, that feature is turned off. But still, if that wire isn’t connected, the car won’t start. I found the wire… I connected it. I had missed it when I put the harness in. It’s pretty easy to miss, it’s just one little wire up under the glove box and it had gotten buried under other things.

Starting it for Real

Now I was ready to really start the car. I was nervous, but it should start this time. I did the same trick to get the oil pressure up, and got ready to hear that engine purr. It fired up on the first crank… and made the most godawful clanking sound that I shut it right back off again after about a second. Wow, that’s bad. I just went inside to clean up and think.

I thought through a bunch of stuff, possible reasons, none of them very realistic and none of them right. There was only one thing left to do, I had to pull the engine back out of the car. It was a tough thing to do after all that work putting it in. But, it had to be done. It took a few hours, but got it all back out again without breaking anything.

At first, I was thinking it might be the flywheel being horribly out of balance that caused a big vibration and a subsequent clanking sound. But the flywheel was fine. The clanking sound had a very metal on metal sound to it. I couldn’t imagine what it could possibly be.

I pulled the oil pan off the engine and started poking around the bottom end. Nothing jumped right out at me as being wrong. I was sure I had torqued everything properly. Then I noticed that the rods wiggled really easily on the journals. Then, I noticed the radial play the rods had on the journals. In other words, I could pull on the rod like I was trying to move the piston up and down, and there was a lot of play there. When I looked more closely, I could see a gap in the rod end caps. Not good.

It turned out that I had not torqued everything properly. I had done the initial torque on the rod end caps, but I hadn’t done the final torque. The final torque as an additional 70° turn. I had only torqued them down to the initial 15 foot pounds.  The bolts had started backing out, probably when I was cranking the engine trying to get it to start. When it finally did start, the bolts were loose enough where the rod end caps clanked against the journal making that horrible sound. It’s a very good thing that I shut it right back off again or I would have done some really bad damage.

I started checking all this out and decided that I had better check the pinch gap between the bearings on the rod ends. I hadn’t done it before thinking that the crank had never been turned. Wrong again. After a lot of messing around and asking questions from a very knowledgeable friend, it turned out that the crank had been turned. The bearings I used were standard thickness, but what I really needed were double oversize bearings. The gap was so big that it wouldn’t even register in the plastigage that I bought. It took a while, but my friend found a supplier for the bearings and I put them on order. I have no idea why the crank had been turned before. The main bearings were all fine, just the right gap with the standard bearings. Go figure.

Once the bearings came in, I installed them, checked the gap – perfect – and put everything back together. And, there it sits. I haven’t done much with it since then. I have partially installed a roll bar setup that I bought. The front legs are bolted down, but I still need to do the rear legs. It won’t take much to finish that part off. I need to bolt the flywheel, clutch and transmission back on the engine and then it will be ready to install once again. I’m thinking about hiring somebody to do that part for me, but we’ll see.

I do want to make it to some track days this year. I miss being out there. The car will be a blast to drive once I get it done. It’s one of those cases of bighting off a little more than you can chew. Sometimes, it’s a good idea to take a step back for a while and make sure you are doing things right.

I wrote this post two days ago, but the online editor for my blog decided to delete the entire thing. It has taken me a few days to get up the energy to rewrite it. I guess I won’t be using the online editor anymore; I am back to using Live Writer.

I am continuing to work on small things. It doesn’t feel like things are moving fast enough, but I am getting things done.

Since I had removed the power steering pump, I needed to plug the holes left on the steering rack when I removed the hoses. I could go and try and find some bolts of the right size and length. I would need to make sure that I got enough fluid out of the rack so it does not liquid lock on me. But I think those bolts would be hard to find.

The original hoses have "lollipop" ends that hollow bolts go through and those bolts hold the hoses to the pump and to the rack. I decided I would make a loop using the old hoses and two of the lollipops to make a closed loop system for the fluid in the rack. No liquid lock and no trying to find odd sized bolts.

You can see the "lollipops" on the ends of one of the lines and a disconnected on partially under the reservoir. The bent metal piece used to have a lollipop on the end of it.

I had a hard time figuring out how to get this to work. Some of the lollipops are "swaged" on to the lines and they are pretty much permanently mounted. But, I was able to get one of the bigger lollipops out of a hose and was going to stuff it into one of the lines that I had cut off. It turns out this line was the pressure line and had a nearly solid inner lining. It was pretty much impossible for me to get the lollipop inserted into that line so I gave up.

You can see the solid inner liner in the hose on the left. On the right you can see the center section of the cable where I cut it off. It has a brass restrictor in it.

One of the lollypops had a very long tub on it that bent around to fit properly in the original installation. I simply cut off the curved section and ended up with a lollipop of the right size. I inserted that into the end of the return line and used two hose clamps to clamp the two lollipops into place.

With a little struggle I hooked up the new line. I wrapped the loop around the engine mount.

View from the front looking back.

View from the side looking slightly forward. The two fittings are almost dead center of the picture.

To test is out I ran the steering through the full range, lock to lock. It seemed to work.

But, I kept hearing this frightening clunk sound when I moved the steering wheel to the full left. Not good. I was hoping it would be something silly and not something really bad.

It turns out it was silly. The inner fender cover was too low and was rubbing against the steering rack boot. Initially, I thought it was because the liner had cracked and was too low. But the next evening when I went out to take it off, it looks to me like it is not the correct liner. It had a cheesy brake duct cut out of it. I just removed the whole thing. The other side of the car does not have the liner installed anyway. It appears that the front left fender was replaced at some point. My guess is that it had a liner with it that is from a slightly wrong model because the design of this liner would never clear the steering rack properly. If the PO didn’t notice this, then he must not have had the liner installed for very long.

Just one more of those things that makes you go "Hmmmmm???"

The PO had also installed an after-market "performance chip" from a no-name eBay "company". I really didn’t want it in the car. Fortunately, the PO had kept the original chip for the engine computer. I pulled the computer housing out from under the dash. It is easy to do by accessing it through the glove box. I pretty much mangled the "ProFormance" chip that was in there pulling it out. No loss. I quickly installed the original chip.

The saga of the seats also got more interesting. I contact Sparco directly. Sparco makes race seats and other race safety gear. I asked them about the fixed back seat being unsafe in a car with no roll over protection. The answer was that the idea was basically bunk. I had figured as much, but it was nice to get confirmation from people who actually deal with this stuff on a professional level.

So, I went to order two Sparco Sprint V seats. The are the least expensive seat Sparco makes. I called the local distributor and… they only had one left. They called me back the next day and said if I was willing to pay a bit more in shipping, they could have it drop-shipped from the California Sparco factory. Sure, no problem. I need them by this weekend so I can get them installed.

But, about an hour later he calls back and tells me the factory is out of stock. Jeesh, this just gets better. He tried to sell me the next model up by giving me a good deal on it, but at $650 per seat, I declined.

I check around with a couple of other stores and found one down in California that was willing to ship two up to me. The shipping is costing more than I would like, but they will be here Friday.

Now I needed to figure out how to mount the seats. A guy that I know from an online forum manufactures these cool brackets that mount to the factory sliders and are inexpensive compared to other types. Again, he didn’t have any in stock and wouldn’t have more for about 3 weeks. He gave me the name of one of the guys who had bought the last three sets. I contacted that guy and he seemed willing to sell to sets to me for a bit over the list price plus shipping. That was OK given that it was still cheaper than buying other types. But then this guy had to leave town on an emergency and did not have time to ship the brackets. Man, this just keeps getting better.

I was in all-day meetings today at work so I did not have a chance to contact the dealer up in Washington. I got an email back this evening and they do have a solution for me. It will cost more than I want but it will be a good solid solution.

Now I am will have to pick up some parts down in Eugene after work on Friday. I can then hopefully take the car for its first test drive since I started this. Cross your fingers.