Flow

Is better now.



Today was the first day of the half off sale at Pick Your Part, so I made my way down to Chula Vista and picked up the 90+ manifold, dip stick, and a couple 16v cam gears for Josh at YoshiFab. Tomorrow I'll be up in Long Beach to hopefully find a back up block, and anything else that tickles my fancy.

-'till next time

fingers crossed!

On this years "build of the year" on RetroRides!

-'till next time

It is cold!

And raining! But that isn't any real excuse why I hit another lull in posting. I still have yet to re-clock the turbo, or go to the yard and find the better exhaust manifold, but I have been doing my research on what I will be buying. As it stands the purchasing order will be as follows:

1. Clutch, pressure plate, and pilot bearing.
2. Finalize how I am going to be actuating the clutch. Because going either with the stock hydraulic or using a hydraulic throwout bearing are looking to cost the same, and while cable looks to be significantly cheaper it isn't nearly as awesome.
3. Purchase the wires and connectors for the wiring harness.
4. ??
5. Profit

Besides lurking on car forums and part stores, on Tuesday I had the awesome chance to learn how to make pasta from an awesome gal, Kate. I am not talking about going to the store and then throwing it in a pot, we made it from scratch. BOOM!

It took me a bit of time before I realized that I should be documenting this; so I missed the creation and kneading of the dough, but was able to get in the first few when we started to roll it out.



Then we cut them into nearly equal sized strips.



Then we started to make the sauce for the pasta. I am very used to a traditional tomato base with hot Italian sausage, but Kate said that we should make it a light sauce because then we can taste the pasta and not just the sauce; I agreed. So we started to cut up some turkey basil and something sausages, chop some garlic, and throw in all in a very large skillet with rosemary and something olive oil.



Wine always makes things better



boiled a pot of water and tossed in the pasta



I was a bit forgetful in taking a photograph of the finished product, but this will not be the last time that we make pasta from scratch (I am hoping for some gnocchi next time). The pasta was extremely delicious as well as being significantly better than store bought.

I am still waiting for other people to post up some photos of Matt Schnarr's birthday party on Friday night, so once those are put up I'll post them up here.

-'till next time

Let's hope this works: part 2

Yesterday I finished manhandling my head and turbo to get everything to bolt up together with the least chance of leaking with the hand that I was dealt.

 To fix the bolt that was broken off in the head I tried reverse drill bits, titanium drill bits, and finally ended up falling in love with cobalt bits. I figured I’d tackle the easier of the two problems first, the turbo. The 15g had the bottom two studs broken off, and there was no way that I was going to try to easy-out them, so I starting drilling into it. The first pilot bit, standard high speed, broke off; the second bit, titanium, broke off; finally the third pilot bit, cobalt, went through it like butter. I was able to center one of the bits perfectly on one of the bolts, but on the other I wasn’t as lucky. So instead of having 4 equally round holes I now have 3 and 1 more like a slot. After that was taken care of and cleaned I moved onto the head.

I tried every pilot bit that I could find and/or buy to get drill into the snapped easy-out but nothing was working. So I called up Josh and asked if I was to drill and tap on either side of the hole would that accomplish sealing the manifold. He said that I was taking a very drastic approach and could not guarantee that it would work, but there is a chance that it might. Seeing as I had no other option I took the chance. Aluminum is super easy to cut through so I went at it slowly. After that was taken care of I tapped into the head with a 1/4-28 bit.



Then I put some bearing grease on the head and mounted up the YoshiFab adapter plate to get an idea of where the two holes were placed. I took out my cobalt bits and started drilling away. I knew that there was really no way that I was going to get the holes perfect on the first pass, so after a few mounting and test fits later I was able to open the holes up enough to clear the bolt.



Put in the bolts and tightened the whole plate down.



This led to another expected issue, bolt head clearance with the manifold.



Marked up the manifold, put it in a vise and started grinding away the worthless material. In the end it looked like this.




Mounted it to the plate, and tightened all of the bolts down. And by the way, does volvo hate the people that work on their cars? Because who in their right mind would make a 4 piece exhaust gasket...




Now my engine is really starting to look like a real one.



Today my only goal is to re-clock the turbo and order the clutch, pressure plate, and pilot bearing.

-‘till next time

"This is bad right?" or "What can't this fix?"

The horribleness that I mentioned yesterday was only compiled with yet even more lameness and shit. For the kids who keep asking why isn’t my engine cleaned, painted, pretty; this is why…

Yeah… that is a cracked block. I didn’t see it before because the block was dirty, so while I was cleaning it I found it. I reached my fingers inside of the flame trap opening and found out that it is a straight crack through the block. Balls. So I did some research and made a call to Josh and asked if it was weldable; it isn’t. He mentioned that the best thing to do would just be to just JB Weld it and hope for the best. I love JB Weld, but this is kind of pushing it to limit of how much I trust it. So I did a bit of lurking on the internets to see if other people have done this, and surprisingly there are quite a few outboard boats that do it. Seeing as I am so far along in the project, and the next half-off junkyard day isn’t until the end of the month I figured that I will keep using the block until it blows up and just have another one waiting.

Before I started on the crack I purchased what the hardware guy said was a “sure thing” to remove my stuck bolt in the head. Yeah, no. It snapped within the bolt, fuck that. If there is an exhaust leak, there is a leak and unless I find another head it’ll be there for awhile. Then I turned to the turbo and tried to get out the two bolts that are also seized, no prying could help, and it already wore down two of my bits so I have to get some more tomorrow, and hopefully something will go right for me.

So after all that I finally got around to cleaning the area around the crack

Made a grove where the crack is so that the JB Weld can have even more contact with the metal around the crack.

Roughed up the groove, cleaned the surrounding area, and brought out the good stuff.

Mixed it together, and dumped it all around.

Then I cleaned up the bit on my oil pan and while the engine was on its side I fixed the tension on the timing belt. So that end another day, and now I am off for a coffee and then later drown in vodka+ while playing GT5.

-‘till next time

It's starting to look a lot like and engine...

Today was a continuation of the motor piece together and it was littered with both great and horrible things, I won’t get into horribleness today because the lighting wasn’t the best.

Since the oil pan was off the block I looked under its skirt to see if I did indeed have the awesome oil-squirting block, I did…

Here is Josh’s handy work with the new turbo oil drain.

And here is how the engine sits with the oil pan now installed

Then I FINALLY got my collector edition of GT5 in, and of course I was forced into the dilemma of racing vs. real.

I chose real and installed the intake manifold as well as YoshiFab’s tensioner, getting the tension right will be a job for tomorrow.

Then started on the exhaust side with the removal of the exhaust bolts

During the process, of course, one of the bolts snapped in the head… another thing I’ll be working on tomorrow.

Test mounted YoshiFab’s exhaust adapter plate and noticed that bolts that come off the 16v head are a bit too long. So I ran to the hardware store and picked up some bolts (I want to say they were M8x1.25 at 30mm) and washers. Then it got kind of cold and dark so I decided that the best course of action was to just pick up where I left off early tomorrow.

Then about 30 minutes ago my monitor mount finally came in!! So GT5 action is soon to come after a nice shower, some food, and some vodka+

-‘till next time

head bolted

The 16v head bolts showed up this afternoon at YoshiFab!!! So I unbolted my oil pan so that Josh could weld in a fittingfor the turbo's oil drainage. The fitting seriously took Josh maybe 10 minutes to weld it in... insane fast in my honest opinion. I forgot to take photos of the oil pan today, but I'll get them tomorrow when I finish making the engine look like a real engine.

When I got back I started the attack...

Super Volvo sealant applied after torquing the bolts down: 15 lbs, then 30 lbs, then 115 degrees.



Top of the head half way though putting in the lifters



Installing cams: all nuts torqued to 15 lbs == DO NOT EXCEED OR YOU WILL SNAP THE BOLTS!==




and done!





Tomorrow I'll be bolting on the manifolds and oil pan, re-clocking the turbo, installing the timing belt, and cleaning it up a bit; I can't wait for it to look like a real engine.

-'till next time

Sim racing to a different level

I pre-ordered the collectors edition of GT5, but when I checked the status on release day amazon said that it was back ordered; balls. So I got my refund and ordered it off of a different supplier on amazon and it should be coming in within days. In order to fully experience the beauty of this game...

example from Hakosukaa :

 I ordered a 25" monitor from geeks.com on cyber Monday and it arrived at the house yesterday. Now the Sim seat is is a plank and a few bolts away from being awesome!

-'till next time