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.

Over the last few weeks I have been steadily adding components to the engine when I had the time to work on it.

I did run into a bit of a problem with the intake manifold as shown in my last post. The problem turned out to be me, as usual. It seems that I hadn’t gotten one of the old gaskets off of the head. It blended in so well that I didn’t see it. That is how the intake manifold cracked, the mating surfaces were not flat.

I got another manifold, cleaned it, and tried to bolt it on. I cracked it too. That’s when I found the old gasket. Pretty stupid, I must say. I don’t know why I didn’t check better before trying the second one. I guess I was thinking I had just let the manifold get partially hung up on one of the studs and that is what caused it.

So, I found another manifold and had it shipped up. It arrived yesterday. Unfortunately, it was an intake manifold for the wrong engine. When you look at one of these manifolds, they look pretty much the same. But when you put them side by side, you can start to see the differences. The one I got would fit, but it has smaller tubes so it won’t flow air as well.

 The dirty one is the wrong type.

I found yet another manifold and am having it shipped up. I checked the casting numbers on this one and it is the correct model. Now I just have to wait for it to get here. Then I’ll have to clean it up and then install it. What a waste of time and money. It’s things like this that really make me kick myself. Oh well, lesson learned.

Bigger Stuff

I installed the flywheel, clutch, pressure plate and the transmission today. It went relatively well. The only real problem that I ran into was getting the clutch plate properly aligned so that I could mount the pressure plate. There is a special tool for doing this, which I don’t have. I managed to whicker up a little rig with some sockets and extensions that managed to do the job though. Aligning the transmission with the engine was a bit tricky. The engine has to come off of the engine stand, obviously, and it was mostly just hanging on the hoist. Getting it at the proper angle and height to mate up with the transmission took some time, but I eventually got it.

I will mount up the starter and the new manifold when it comes in. There are a few more pieces that need to go on, but then it is ready to go back into the car.

I also bought an oil pressure gauge and sender unit. I want to be able to see what the oil pressure is not see an idiot light when I have no pressure. However, I bought an adapter that is going to allow me to keep the factory oil pressure switch (which runs the idiot light) and hook up the pressure sender too. I have to wait for the adapter and some hose to come in before I install it. I also have to figure out where to mount the gauge in the dash. I am not sure where I am going to do this. I can cut up some stuff, or velcro it on, or buy a mount system to put it down where the ash tray would normally go… but I don’t know yet for sure what I will do.

Sights

Since I was still waiting on some parts to get here, I decided that I would take care of a minor problem on the car that had been bugging me for a while. There is a large gap between the bottom of the bumper and the top of the front spoiler.

You can see the gap in this photo. It splits the license plate.

The previous owner said that he just hadn’t had time to adjust it after he had done the “bumper tuck". A bumper tuck is when you compress the bumper damper (or “shock") all the way which allows the metal portion of the bumper to tuck into the trim more. This makes the dreaded “diving board” bumpers less ugly. After this process was over, the PO just didn’t spend the time necessary to get the spoiler lined up. Or so I thought.

I figured it would be pretty easy to fiddle with it and get it to line up better. Well, as usual, nothing seems to go according to plans. I got the spoiler off of the car easy enough. But then I was presented with something that I didn’t really expect to see. It looked to me like some custom brackets had been made for the spoiler. They actually look pretty good, solid anyway. But there was no way to really adjust them. They are also mounted on some relatively flimsy sheet metal at the point where the most stress is applied and the brackets just don’t quite fit for what they are supposed to do.

So, I ended up spending most of the day futzing around with it until I got it about as good as I could get it. I reduced the gap by at least half. It is a solid improvement, but I don’t think I will be able to do much more with it. Given some more motivation, I might be able to put a bend in the brackets to allow the spoiler to fit better. But even then, I am not sure it will work. The sheet metal that the bottom of the brackets are attached to is not really strong enough to hold up the spoiler. I wonder what the real brackets and mounting hardware looks like on these cars?

 The gap is still there, but not as bad

The gap is about half of what it was

Sounds

I had most of the parts that I needed to put the intake manifold back onto the engine. So I started at that today. Again, it should have been a short job, and basically, it was.

I have been waiting for a couple of washers that are supposed to go with a tube assembly that connects the manifold to the engine case. I suppose the tube is there for crankcase ventilation, but I don’t really know for sure. I just know that it was a slow leak for oil before. I didn’t have the washers, but I did have the O rings. I figured that it would be OK to install without the washers.

It was a bit of a trick to figure out how to get the tube on while I was sliding the intake manifold into place. But it turned out to be pretty easy. The tube has a spring on it that keeps the tube pressed up into the intake manifold. With the tube pushed all the way into the crankcase and the spring fully compressed, it had plenty of clearance for the manifold to slide in.

I went to torque the nuts that hold the manifold onto the head. The manual does not cover this procedure at all… which is a bit odd. It does cover removing and installing the throttle body, twice, but not the intake manifold. The nuts were M8 size so I decided to use the standard torque for that size of nut which is 22nm or about 15 ftlbs.

I got to the very last nut on the rear of the engine when I heard it. It was one of those sounds that you know are not good. It was just a light “pop” sound. I stopped tightening the nut and took a look. I already knew what I would find, but like a traffic accident, you just have to look anyway.

There was a dandy crack running through the mounting flange and up into the injector port hole. Not good. This pretty much finishes this intake manifold. It can’t be used now.

It’s the white line going from the injector port on down

It doesn’t look so bad after I took the manifold off. But it is still there.

So, that pretty much brings me to a halt until I can find a new intake manifold. I don’t think it will be too hard to find, but we’ll see. I don’t think I used too much torque but maybe I did. From what I have found, I was OK with the torque value that I used. If this thing was going to crack, honestly, I am glad it happened now and not after I had got up to the track.