ML builds an old truck

[ungeheuer]

I just found out my clutch will only hold 750 horsepower.

That won't do 

..it'll do for a short while 

[Monsterlover]

..it'll do for a short while 

[ducpainter]

..it'll do for a short while 

...until it doesn't.

[Monsterlover]

Okay it's update time. I have been slacking on posting pictures and whatnot.

Things have been progressing well but still slow.  And by slow, I mean roadblock after roadblock. I knew it would be like this since everything I'm doing with this vehicle, well, none of it was ever intended to happen to this vehicle when International designed it.

Adapt and overcome.

After I got the frame all welded together in the front, I rolled my axle underneath it and promptly discovered that most of my steering linkage interferes with the underside of the very front of the frame before I can even get the axle rotated all the way into position.

Currently, I'm going to explore adapting a steering rack directly to the axle tube and using a slip joint for the steering input. This is a hair brained idea me and a buddy came up with in the garage. I got on the internet and almost immediately found some kits for late '50s or '60s Ford pickup trucks that do exactly this. It's a steering rack that mounts directly to a solid i-beam front axle and uses a slip joint to allow suspension articulation.

Gets rid of the need for a steering box which I like and provides more precise steering which i also like. However, this will require more engineering. So it goes.

So in order to figure out how all the steering is going to work out, I thought it would be a good idea to have a completed engine and transmission in place.

And that's where things are at currently.  Pics in the next post.

[Monsterlover]

The engine is a 6.0 l Chevy LS V8. Technically it is an LQ4 engine which is an iron block from a work truck or van.  The pistons have a dish to them and no valve reliefs cut into them. This is one of the lower compression LS engines at 9.4 to 1. That will work fine for boost. This thing will see a lot of it.

This particular engine came from a friend of mine who bought it from a running vehicle off of craigslist. My buddy then promptly brought it home, took it apart with an impact gun and threw all the parts in a tub. Well three tubs to be exact.

The insides of this engine were in remarkable shape for something with 160,000 mi on it. It is obviously been neglected as, I believe, both the valve cover gaskets were toast and puking oil all over the sides of the engine. Literally the entire engine was coated in a quarter inch thick film of dirt and grease and oil. It was thoroughly waterproof. That's 6 mm for my metric friends.

How the heads looked when I started
2022-12-25_06-01-52 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

I had dropped the block off at the machine shop to have it hot tanked, the head surface is decked for flatness, hone the cylinders and install new cam bearings. They advise me they were not able to hot tank the heads because they were aluminum and the chemicals would dissolve it.

That means I had to clean it myself. I discovered this miracle liquid called chem dip. It was like $40 a gallon which I did not like but after seeing how well it worked it was worth it. I bought four gallons is that's all I could find locally and dump them into a 5 gallon bucket. I was able to soak half the head at a time.

Essentially it's soak it for a couple hours, scrub the daylights out of it and resoak it. This stuff is technically for cleaning carburetors but it destroys all oils and gunk.

In process-
2022-12-25_06-02-06 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

2022-12-25_06-02-19 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

2022-12-25_06-02-33 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr
2022-12-25_06-03-08 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

My conscience got the better of me and I ended up taking the heads back to the shop to have those services cut as well. I figured for the things I have planned for this engine. I might as well start off with the most chances of having it survived. That means flathead gasket surfaces.

Time to paint that block. I've been really taken with a lot of the newer colors I'm seeing from most car manufacturers these days. They're glossy but not metallic. I like to refer to them as solid colors if that makes any sense.  The color I chose for this engine is from Toyota and is called lunar rock.

I hung the block at the shop and got busy with the needle scaler busting off all the stuff that the hot tank didn't just get off by itself.

Then it was a thorough cleaning with brake cleaner and primer, base coat, clear coat after that. I do not claim to be a painter but this stuff came out pretty good. The local paint shop was able to load up an aerosol can of the base so all I had to do was point and shoot basically.

The color is difficult to realize by looking at a picture. And even in person, the color does look different in sunlight versus under fluorescent lights.

2022-12-25_06-03-33 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

2022-12-25_06-03-59 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

And because I'm a sucker for free shipping, I ended up picking this up from summit racing while ordering a bunch of other crap.

2022-12-25_06-04-19 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

Got the crankshaft set into place. Chevy was not screwing around when they designed this engine. Six bolt main caps. Four vertically into the block and one from each side horizontally into the main cap from the outside of the block. The more I worked with this, the more I could see why people are getting four figure horsepower numbers from these engines and they hold together.
2022-12-25_06-05-02 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

I got all the rings gapped. This is the key to a stock bottom and holding together with a crap load of boost pressure. I opened up the ring gap on these to.030" minimum. I have a couple that are approaching 40 but I don't care. It's not like it won't run.  040 would be right around 1 mm for my metric friends. 030 is about .75mm

2022-12-25_06-05-12 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

I had to get the Truck Norris cam.  This is not the rowdiest cam on the market for the LS but it has proven to add a significant amount of power and torque to an NA engine. Seems like 400 to 450 horsepower is easily attainable with this cam and this engine. Adding 15 lb of boost pressure will roughly double that power number. And I'm not afraid to go to 25 providing we can keep it fueled.
2022-12-25_06-05-23 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

New GM oil pump and melling timing chain. Gears are OEM.
2022-12-25_06-05-35 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

More stuff painted with Toyota lunar rock
2022-12-25_06-05-57 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

Big windage tray from the factory. What's not to love?
2022-12-25_06-06-10 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

New rear cover and rear main seal
2022-12-25_06-06-24 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

Oil pan!
2022-12-25_06-06-33 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

ARP head studs. I have purchased running vehicles for less money than I spent on this box of head studs. However, I recognize that they are also a key and holding an extreme amount of cylinder pressure in place. I like my head gaskets to stay where they're supposed to be.
2022-12-25_06-06-40 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

Here's a neat little widget I discovered to allow me to feed oil to two turbochargers. Here's a great case of something I could easily make myself but this thing cost like $23 and there's no way I could even draw it up and solid works and think about programming it for that amount of money.
2022-12-25_06-06-49 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

Here are the ARP studs ready to go. A lot of people wonder why these things cost so much, but I can see why. Higher tensile steel, heat treated, threads have been rolled instead of cut and they come with 12 point nuts and special washers. The washers are smooth on one side and waffle cut on the other. The waffle cut grips, the head and the smooth side allows the nut to rotate easier. ARP instructions call for applying ARPs thread lube to the underside of the nut as well as the threads. On that end. The block threads get installed dry. Each stud, conveniently, has a female hex in the end to allow you to drive the stud into place.

That's a huge convenience because that thread lube gets everywhere. I think it's grown in the same factory anti-seize is made in.
2022-12-25_06-08-05 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

Here's a little poem I wrote on my piston crowns. I don't know if this Flickr video is going to show up or not but I'll give it a try.
PXL_20221115_222224176 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

Getting ready to install these heads and decided to take an artsy shot of the valve springs.  I reused all the intake valves. As I lapped them all, I discovered that all the exhaust valves were pitted all over the band that contacted the cylinder head. I'm estimating roughly 50% of the contact was lost. I don't know why they pitted, I haven't seen that before. But, as the only way the exhaust valves can be cooled is by transferring heat to the seat in the head. I want as much contact as I can get. I spent $100 on all new exhaust valves. They all lapped in fine.
2022-12-25_06-08-15 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

I had to pull the oil pan back off since I forgot about drains for the turbos. So I yank the pan and got a really nice carbide tooth hole saw at harbor freight and drilled holes in a perfectly good oil pan.
2022-12-25_06-08-55 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

- 10 AN bulkhead fittings were installed to facilitate oil drainage. A rubber sealed crush washer is on the inside along with some RTV. Threadlocker, on the retaining nut on the inside of the pan. I'm pretty happy with how this came out.
2022-12-25_06-09-12 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

Here's the whole thing put together
2022-12-25_06-09-34 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

Sidebar in the next post-

[Monsterlover]

I actually built this engine three times. The first time. Everything was going pretty well and as I was rolling the engine over with a ratchet to allow me to install the rocker arms, I felt a tight spot.

Not just a tight spot, a spot that felt grindy. I didn't know what it was at the time but all my years of machining and building precision things told me do not run the engine the way it is. It will eat itself.

So I started tearing things down and taking parts off one at a time. Waiting for this tight grinding feeling to go away. It never did. I ended up pulling the crank back out and found some scoring on one of the main bearings.

I consulted with a buddy of mine who is built a lot of engines and he felt that some junk got down in there and got ground into the bearing.

So I ran myself an hour one way to another parts store that had the exact bearings I needed and bought another set for $140.

I ordered in a set of engine brushes and got the cleaning. The thing like it was going into an operating room.

Honestly, I did not get very much out of all the oil galleys and all that with the long brushes. My friend mentioned cleaning the bores with brake cleaner which I did not do the first time.  He mentioned that when they honed engines that there was tons of small grit that would get into the crosshatch.

He was correct as lots of scrubbing with shop towels and brake cleaner yielded dirt from the bores.

I set the new bearings in place and got to building. This time I got to experience the tight grinding spot after all the pistons went back in and the cam was in.

I called my buddy and asked him to come down and take a look. I know something wasn't right and I didn't want to go any further or spend any more money or time on it until somebody that knew more than me got to take a look at it.

So he came down on a Sunday and we spent about 5 hours going over everything.

We plastic gauged the crank. Right in the middle of this back. No problems there. And play was about .007, again right in spec.

With no main caps in place, we put indicators on the main journals and spun the crank. Absolutely zero run out. I had to touch the indicator to confirm it was actually contacting the crank journals.

So we greased everything up with assembly lube and installed the crank. Rather than put all the pistons and rods into place, we went right to installing the cam since that's when I had problems last time.

The problem returned again.

Further, diagnosis showed that when you pulled on the crank snout it would grind. If you pushed on it. It would not grind. Remember that end play was only 0.007.

We ended up using a paint marker on the reluctor wheel at the back of the crank and painting that. Spinning the crank around. We're looking for where marks in the paint. We found nothing.

I pulled the can, spray, painted the back of my old cam and put that in place. We could find no rubbing there.

I got to looking a little closer after pulling that cam back out and noticed that the camshaft bores were like a quarter inch, 6 mm, away from the reluctor wheel. There's no way any of that stuff was rubbing.

I installed my new cam again and as I was bolting the retainer plate down my buddy snaps his fingers and goes "I bet that bolt is too long."

Sure enough, one of the bolts that secures the Cam retainer plate was a through hole. The bolt was just long enough to touch the front counterweight on the crank. And as that counterweight was rough machined you could easily feel the grooves as you rolled the crank back and forth over the bolt. There was my grinding feeling.

I spent 30 to 40 hours and $140 on new bearings that I didn't need because of bolt was .010 too long.

I hit all four of those retainer plate bolts on the grinder for about 2 seconds each and the problem is gone forever.

Live and learn I guess.

[Monsterlover]

Anyway, onward and upward. Now that I had a, probably, functioning engine, it's time to add stuff to the back of it.

But before that I needed to torque my harmonic dampener. This is a fun one. It requires an installation tool that I didn't have. However, I did have a really long piece of all thread. That was the correct thread for the crank. I was able to rig up my own install tool with some nuts, washers and along socket to drive it all in place the impact gun. That worked just fine.

Instructions that I'm following say to use the old balancer bolt on the new balancer and torque to 240 ft lb. Then remove that bolt, install your new bolt, torque to something like 30 ft lb and then 140° of rotation past that.

Let me tell you it's interesting trying to torque something to that high of a value by yourself on a motor that's on a stand that's not bolted to the floor.

I ended up making a plate out of some 3/16 by 2 in, 5mm by 50 mm for my overseas friends, and bolting it in place of the flywheel. The mounting bolts of the engine stand contact this plate as I torque the bolt at the front of the engine.
2022-12-25_06-09-51 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

Back and front side of the flywheel. It is aluminum with a riveted steel insert for the friction discs to contact.
2022-12-25_06-10-07 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr
2022-12-25_06-10-15 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

Okay now for the pilot bearing. This is an actual bearing. Instead of a bronze bushing. It has needle rollers. It has a o-ring to seal itself against the transmission input shaft and prevent junk from getting down into the bearings rollers. Pretty neat little design. This is actually the bearing from an early 2000s Chevy Corvette ZO6.

The o-ring is supposed to go towards the transmission. I check this like four times and still managed to install it backwards. At least I caught it before the bearing was fully seated and was about 3/4 of the way there.

It took me like an hour and a half to find some place that had another bearing. So I went and got that and I got a pilot bearing puller from the parts store. I didn't really need this but I'm just going to chalk it up to this is the price I pay for screwing up. Plus I get a tool out of the deal.

This particular puller is a two finger style. It's designed to slip through the center of the bearing, u-turn a screw that then spreads these fingers. Imagine the letter l and a second one back to back. The foot of the l expands and hooks against the inside face of the bearing. A steel strap bridges the flywheel flange on the crank and as you turn a nut, it draws the entire bearing out of the crank. Great design.

Except it didn't work for me at all. All it did was rip the cage out of the bearing. I have to say getting pretty irritated.

Did I decide to mig weld the bearing to each side of both of those fingers ?

Yes, I did.

Did it work, yes it did.

Do I regret this ?

I do not.

2022-12-25_06-10-38 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

Here's the engine with the flywheel installed and the pilot bearing installed correctly.
2022-12-25_06-10-54 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

This bellhousing, it took me 8 months to get it. This is a steal SFI explosion proof housing. It's designed to contain what amounts to a bomb if the flywheel or clutch ever fails. As I like my feet it was worth the wait and the almost four figure cost.  In this picture I have an indicator on the flywheel and I'm checking the centerline of the bell housing to the center of the crank. The better in line these two things are the less vibration that transmission will produce and the longer it will live.
2022-12-25_06-11-08 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

Here's the whole thing together. There's no clutch in here but I wanted to bolt it all up and see if it fit in the vehicle. I'm actually exchanging my friction discs for pressed metal ones. The fiber discs hold 750 horsepower and the metal ones hold 1,000. Plus. I need metal.
2022-12-25_06-11-21 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

First trial fit
2022-12-25_06-11-33 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

2022-12-25_06-11-42 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

It fits! But not really. While it is in there. I need some more room. The front of the oil pan is on the axle which is at ride height. I need to raise the engine about 7 in which means a transmission tunnel is in my future.
2022-12-25_06-11-58 by Kevin Ames, on Flickr

Now you're all caught up!

[kopfjäger]

 

[LMT]

How many work hours do you think you have in it?

[Monsterlover]

How many work hours do you think you have in it?

I don't know. I should have kept track when I started. Or maybe it's better I didn't? 

Maybe 500 at this point if I had to guess.

[Popeye the Sailor]

Do not track the hours.

Burn the receipts. 

Got any pics of the steering issues?

[Monsterlover]

Do not track the hours.

Burn the receipts. 

Got any pics of the steering issues?

Not specifically. I really want to make a rack work so I don't have to shoehorn a steering box in... somewhere.

[ducpainter]

You know that bolt would have clearanced itself...right?

[Monsterlover]

You know that bolt would have clearanced itself...right?

I do!  Then I would have shit when I cut the oil filter open and realized I needed to tear the engine down to figure out what was going on

[Popeye the Sailor]

Not specifically. I really want to make a rack work so I don't have to shoehorn a steering box in... somewhere.

There's a steer clear steering doohickey that helps relocate things when stuff gets tight if it's any help.

Not cheap, but I've heard good things about it.