Sweet!!

Thanks for that Brad.

Can't wait to see it finished.
Very jealous...

Nick dropped in today to see how things were going.
It turns out a bench covered in oily used engine parts is pretty boring.
All the good stuff was gone already.

Next time mate, we'll have to make it after hours.

Took delivery of nicks bottom end on friday.
He finaly got see some shiny and touch some of what his hard earnd has been spent on.

Crankshaft is has been ground and linished and the oil passages chamfered, throws have been equalised and indexed.
Rods have had the little ends finish honed.
Bearings installed, measured, numbered and crankshaft ground to suit.
Block has been bored and initial honed. Gives enough clearance to fit the pistons for mock-up and measuring, Will be finish honed once all other block work is done.


Spent a few hours today at the workshop doing some assembly and meassuring.
Turns out Ford did an ok on the factory machine of this block.
There was only a 2thou difference in deck height from front to back. We need to take 5thou of the deck to get the pistons 18thou down the bore, which will bring the piston to head clearence right where I want it.


There was a pretty bad mismatch between the oil passage in the block and the oil pasage in the oil pump.
This has been corrected as well as a few other oiling system changes.
None of them are really modifications, Just correcting for tolerance stack when the original machine was done and removing sharp edges to give the oil a smoother path to follow, there are one or two other things but i'll keep those tricks to myself

Anyway, the block will be heading back to the machine shop next week to have block decked and the valve releifs cut in the pistons.

I'll get some pics up on monday

Some photos I snapped today

Block bored and initial honed


Crank ground, linished and chamfered



spool rods


10mm Atomic mains girdle


Mahle pistons



Custom Surecam


THE MESS

Looks unreal

Brad,

Thanks again for putting up the photos.

Looks really good.

Just got back from my annual leave today and now it turns out I'm going back to WA again for another three weeks.

Looking at the way the two rosters will fall when I finish there though should mean I get two weeks off work in a row that I can use to work on the car once that's done.

EMS is in the post and I will try and get that in this week before I head back west, depending on timing. Gotta fix some mundane stuff on the car too this week. Hopefully get it all back up and running sweet again.

Just thought I might mention that I just (10 minutes ago) got a sudden urge to ring Nathan (NLBXR6 - or more specifically, the c*nt who ripped me off for that engine) out of nowhere.

Ended up getting a family of confused mexican sounding people who struggled to understand what I was saying. Figured he was blocking my mobile, work mobile and work phone as I had contacted him on these before, I should try the WA work number, that's a ball from left field if I could ever think of one. ha ha.

Having said that, if anyone knows:
a) where he is; or
b) where I can contact him; or
c) where he lives these days; or
d) if he lives with a confused mexican family

I would greatly appreciate it if you could PM and tell me. In fact, I would appreciate it so much, that I will gladly give the money he owes me (a touch over $2000) to whoever finds him for me. f**k it, I've lost the money now, but it would make me extremely happy to see that he doesn't have it either. You'd just have to shout me a beer.


On other notes, put a new alternator and battery into the car last week while I was home. Played a bit more with the J3 chip. Seems the issues I was having with weird idles and so on were most likely to do with dirty contacts. I had sanded them and scrubbed them, but when I pulled the ECU apart again the other day I noticed there was still gunge on the contacts. A bit disappointing that one.

So it's running quite well (bar the pinging due to piss poor tune) at the moment. Well enough to rip it all out and upgrade.

Now is as good a time as any for an update.

As Brad has documented above, he is making excellent progress on the motor at the Auto Gas and Mechanical workshop.

I have the EMS 6860, LS1 coils and their connectors sitting in my bedroom at home (so I'm told, haven't been home for a while) and the leads are in the post.

The Sprintex also arrived at the Snort Performance workshop a couple of weeks ago ready for Geoff to fabricate the throttle body adaptor.

*bzzt* Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Seems Sprintex made an error while measuring the unit up for us. When it arrived it was taller than we had expected, which pushed the physical size outside the envelope we could make work (ie: the blower would have been in the inner guard somewhere).

Hrmmm...

Obviously "will it actually fit" was a consideration that I took into account before embarking on the project. So I was definitely a bit disappointed.

I've had numerous conversations with Geoff and talked about our options. Obviously, I am committed beyond the point of no return at this point to getting the project done.

We have looked at set ups including placing the blower over the exhaust manifold (think Rodney Sammut's EL XR6 before it went turbo) or under the inlet manifold. All of these options would require a lot of custom fabrication. Geoff, understandably, isn't necessarily the most keen to commit to making this kind of set up when he is flat out with his other projects. I am not necessarily the most keen to an open completion date; I want to go for a drive!


With that in mind, Geoff reminded me that his business has always been building balls-out turbo kits.

As you may or may not have noticed, I can't resist an opportunity to still end up with something not quite run-of-the-mill, while still being a bloody good, fun car to drive.

With that in mind, the next iteration of the plan is to take the Auto Gas and Mechanical motor (details on page 17) and garnish it with not one, but two of Snort's finest turbos, feeding through a big front mount and into a Snort Performance Iceman 1200 plenum!

Target power I'd like to see is 401rwkw. (the and one kw is to prove that's its a genuine 400+rwkw streeter )

Now, there are two questions I am expecting:
Q1. Why twin turbos and all the extra effort when a big single would make that much power?
A1. Because it will be more interesting to see it done this way. Other factors come into it as well, but basically, the sum total of my position is, "because I can."

Q2. Why 400rwkw when the turbos will allow for more than that?
A2. Longevity of gearbox, clutch, diff, tailshaft, axles, engine (although Brad has screwed the motor together with a generous safety margin on top of that). I'm not interested in building a hand grenade, and none of us (Brad, Geoff or myself) are interested in having to start again because we have f*cked something.


Comments?

Last edited by nicco on Fri May 13, 2011 5:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Now what fuel is the 401rwkw tune going to be on?

Ooooh I like the sound of this!

its a shame about the blower not fitting those laminova are a pretty trick bit of gear, have you thought of making up a W2A manifold with the laminova cores? With a refigerated coolant tank just for the hell of it?

Is E85 Available in QLD?

No reliable E85 on the pump.

Yeah, it is a bit of a shame I'm not going the blower any more, but I'm pretty excited by the prospect of this set up. And yeah, I'd absolutely love to do a laminova inlet manifold; I've always been fascinated by w2a intercooling. Economics and time have both factored into it though.

Geoff has been thinking about a laminova cooler for Snort, but it won't be readily available any time soon. I could go out and get one made one off for me (the high level maching required to do the job properly is outside my personal skill set) but then that comes down to $$$.

At this point I'll be more than happy with an air to air. Having said that, the runs are on the board for the a2a coolers anyway, they will still do the job.

I'm reserving the right for Brad to come in and slap me around the head for this comment (:lol:), but I'd love to see it done on 98. It is a street car after all. Never say never in any respects though.

Benjii, no, Brett is right, not on the pump. If it was I'd be very interested in running it. Brad and I have already thrown a few ideas around regarding this.