Project No-Flight Update
March 2005
Well, it's officially spring and time to get my arse in gear and get some work done on the car. I decided the only way I could get enough time together was to take a week off and have at it. Since Alexanna's school is on spring break, this week is it. I started by stripping the engine down to the short block so I could change it over to my AFR aluminum heads and the new (milder) Crane cam. Since it was the first time I had it apart I was glad to see the inside looked pretty much as advertised. I took quite a bit of time removing all of the silicon from the original builder, he must have had stock in 3M. The bottom end is internally balanced and all forged pieces.
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It took me a full day to strip the motor, clean it up, and get the cam and heads back on. I'm not sure that I really like the gear drive, but I could not see the cost for a Jessel belt drive for a mostly street motor so I checked it for clearances and put it back in (it took me a good hour to figure out the right sequence so that I could get the idlers to slide in easily, ad yes I did remember to bend over the bolt locking tabs).
I wanted to try one of the new one-piece oil pan gaskets. I had to notch the steel insert to fit around the splayed main caps. I guess they didn't account for those in their design.
Not a very good picture but you can "kind of" see the roller lifters. I took a picture of all the lightening holes in the lifter bodies but it didn't turn out. I soaked all of the lifters in oil to make sure the roller bearings got a good dose. I put a temporary manual oil pressure gauge on the back of the block and primed the oil system up to 50 psi and let if run until all the gurgling stopped so that all of the oil system was purged of air bubbles.
It took me a full day to fit the intake between cleaning up threads in the AFR heads (kind of disappointed in having to do that, but all of them were tapped just tight enough that the bolts were too hard to start by hand). I couldn't use the end gaskets that came with the Fel-Pro intake set as they were about 1/4" too thin!! Not my preferred method, but I had to use a bead of silicon for end seals the same as the motor had from the prior builder. It took two fittings to get enough silicon for a good squish and seal, but not so much that it would leave a big glob.
Anyway, this is what it looks like all buttoned up. I've got to work on my photography (or talk Juliet into taking some better pictures for me). Next task is to take it off of the engine stand and put it on the cradle I made so I can roll it under the car for installation. With the injection I couldn't use my normal engine sling, so have to wait a day for Jeg's to send out one of their engine tilter assemblies.
Thanks to the wonder of overnight delivery I got the new engine tilter (it took longer to unwrap it then to actually use it before retiring it to a life on the shelf) and was able to get the motor off of the engine stand and onto the installation "cart". I installed the trans several times re-checking converter clearance etc (making sure the converter was bottomed out and the converter to flexplate clearance was ok since the engine mid plate (and flex plate spacer) make for a not quite stock installation). I "thought" I had a flexplate/converter mis-match problem as the bolt patterns didn't line up. A quick call to the trans builder who pointed out that the flex plate has both bolt patterns (brain fart) showed that everything was ok.
I was pretty sure the trans and converter matched fine since they had installed it in their test car to run the trans when it was built. It has been sitting for almost 2 years now since I got it, guess this build is going a little slower than I had originally expected (and WAY slower than the Overhauling crew...wonder how I can get them to spend a week in my garage <LOL>).
Here is the complete assembly waiting for installation. It was "much" easier to assemble the motor and trans out of the car like this. I've still got to wash the dust off of the trans (good thing all of the ports were sealed during it's long storage).
Next I rolled the entire assembly underneath the car and lowered the card down over it.
Here is where the "theory" met with reality. Due I guess to "less than precise" positioning of the water pump and forward engine bolt holes by the general the motor plate when installed onto this engine (instead of the mock-up block) left the position for the shoulder bolts at the frame ends off by 1/16". Quite a bit of tinkering with slightly over-sizing the bolt holes at the water pump and lower block, which of course required removing the water pump and the studs each time I took the plates back off) and juggling finally enabled the mounts to fit to the frame. The mid plate and trans mount holes all lined up much easier. It also was much harder to juggle the engine position around by myself, as the full-up engine weighs a lot more than my mock-up block did. So finally, after quite a lot more effort than I had expected, the new motor was finally in the car with the front accessories installed.
Here you can see just how far back the engine is mounted compared to a normal Corvette. I had previously notched the hood flange, and it looks like my notch size and position were just about right. The Dual sync distributor just clears the intake stacks and throttle shaft. A larger body distributor would not work.
One last shot to show the rocker parts. I had to get some Moroso long reach cross bar cover fasteners as there is not enough room between the valve covers and the injectors to get in a start the normal valve cover nuts onto the studs.
