she lives!

[jovial_cynic]

Oh yeah - street legal for sure. It'll be my daily driver. And for that reason, I don't plan to spend a bunch of money on some show-quality paint job, either. I just want to have a car that I built that I can drive around all the time.

 

The thing is, I know that once it gets legal and I start driving around, I'll discover that there are some things I want to change on the car (like upgrading the brakes, and maybe throwing a rack on the steering) that'll end up putting my car out of commission for a while again.

 

Hrm. I wonder when a car is done...

[jovial_cynic]

I've got a set of twin SUs on my dime at the moment, but I'm getting tired of fiddling with them to try to get them tuned up.

 

I want to make sure that engine is getting enough air, so I don't necessarily want to drop down to a single downdraft weber, unless I know that it can keep up with the head. It's an A87 head on a Z22 block with an L20b crank, so it's about a 2.1L, I believe. It's also got the shadbolt cam (510 lift, 280 duration).

 

Any thoughts on alternative intake suggestions?

 

I had the EFI equipment when the engine was a plain Z22e, but I've since gotten rid of all the EFI bits. It'd be a bit of a pain to get it all back, unless somebody wants to trade straight across for a set of SUs. That'll require me fabricating up my own intake, I suppose... but it might be worth it.

 

Anyhow... thoughts?

[datsunfish]

Your setup is a little strange to me. A z 22 block has the same deck height as a l20b but has larger bore for larger displacement. I will take your word for it being about 2.1L. A 510 lift cam is very big. It will never idle smooth no matter what the carb setup is. A weber 38/38 dges would be the best downdraft for your application. You can also look into a rochester 2gc carb. They came on older v8s and straight 6s. Maybe do a single sidedraft 2 barrel. Those su's should be fine so long as they are in good condition. Again,I dont think it will ever run smooth with a 510 cam. Also,is it a open or closed chamber a87? A peanut on anything over 2.0 is a little high in the compression for street use. Either way you would want the intake ports to be enlarged to 1.5" and it wouldnt hurt to install some l28 big intake valves.

[jovial_cynic]

I had the block bored out as well. And I failed to mention that I'm using a mishmash of rod/piston (lightly milled down) combinations, on account of Z22e and Z22s differences.

 

It's an open chambered head - I realize that the compression would be upwards of ridiculous if I had a closed head.

 

Anyhow, I'm not so concerned about getting it to idle smoothely. I know that it's going to sound lumpy. I'm more concerned about the pain of simply getting them tuned at all. Between the mixture, the idle, the balancing, the oil, etc., etc. I mean, if somebody had a really good mind for tuning SUs, I suppose I could just have them twist and turn whatever needed to be twisted and turned and not worry about swapping anything out.

[Icehouse]

Oh yeah - street legal for sure. It'll be my daily driver. And for that reason, I don't plan to spend a bunch of money on some show-quality paint job, either. I just want to have a car that I built that I can drive around all the time.

 

The thing is, I know that once it gets legal and I start driving around, I'll discover that there are some things I want to change on the car (like upgrading the brakes, and maybe throwing a rack on the steering) that'll end up putting my car out of commission for a while again.

 

Hrm. I wonder when a car is done...

 

haha Yep I have the same problem, always wanting to change everything :D Thats why I have 2 of them. My new rule is I can't disable one if the other one isn't running :D I do have my truck but would rather drive my cars at the moment. Kinda burned out on the truck after 1 year of driving it. So all you need to do is find another dime :D

[jovial_cynic]

hm. that's a good plan, Jeff. I'll see if I can swing that one past my wife... ha!

[Icehouse]

hm. that's a good plan, Jeff. I'll see if I can swing that one past my wife... ha!

 

If you want that one to work its all about timing, wait until she gets something she wants then bring up getting an extra dime :D Tell her its an investment, the value on dimes never goes down :D

[jovial_cynic]

I went out to try to tune the carbs again. I followed the standard instructions -- go all lean, back out 3 full turns, balance... turn in a half turn on both, balance, continue until it dies, and then back it up 2 full turns. I got it to run pretty well, and then the banjo bolt hole started spewing gas (something stuck in the needle), so I tapped on it a bit (standard how-to-deal-with-SUs fare), and thought I had it... and then I ran out gas.

 

ha.

 

Anyhow, I think I've got a good handle on getting the carbs tuned... but it's a pain in the arse.

[jovial_cynic]

For the longest time, I've been having difficulty keeping my engine alive after running it around the loop in my neighborhood. Each time I'd open it up (probably not the best thing to do in the neighborhood), the engine would rev up just fine, but once it got back to idle, it'd stumble really bad, miss, and then finally sputter out. I assumed that one of the two SU carbs was tuned way off or something, maybe running too rich and fouling out the plugs on one side.

 

A while back, I learned that the SU carbs came with a set of banjo bolts designed to let the carb floats vent out. My carbs came had the banjo bolts, but it didn't come with the banjo connectors shown in the picture below (connector shown in the middle).

 

 

I just loosened the banjo bolt up a bit, hoping that it would provide enough venting as I drove around. As it turns out, the bolts turned themselves in from the vibration of the engine, and sealed up the floats, causing the floats to drain out and starve the engine of any fuel... hence the missing and stumbling.

 

I looked online for banjo fittings, and they're stupidly expensive, so instead of going that route, I simply replaced the banjo bolts with a similarly sized threaded nipple, like the one seen below, and ran some fuel hose to the side of the engine to catch any runoff gasoline, in the event of carb needle blockage.

 

 

Sure enough, that fixed the problem. Vroom vroom.

[jovial_cynic]

Now that the engine is running regularly and reliably, it's time to start doing things to make the vehicle legal. And safe.

 

You guys think you have a rat of a vehicle? Here's my list of rat-car projects I need to eventually clean up:

 

1. Battery held down in trunk by bungee cords.

2. VW Radiator held down by bungee cords.

3. Muffler/exhaust held by three clamps and some coat-hanger wire.

4. Gas tank filler tube is a series of thick rubber tubes and clamps, with a rubber lid clamped on. (previous owner shaved the car, and had a fuel cell in the back... and filled through an opening he had on the rear deck. No rear windshield, because he planned to use the car to drag race).

5. Rear windshield? What rear windshield?

6. Windshield wipers? What windshield wipers?

7. Seatbelts? nope.

8. Rear lights? nope. Previous owner replaced the rear with a flat sheet, so i need to cut out spots for lights.

9. Wiring harness? nope. With no lights installed, I've got about 5 or 6 wires in the car, total.

 

 

I'm sure more will come to mind later.

[jovial_cynic]

Ok. I've got some things done.

 

Proper battery box secured down.

Rear windshield installed

New starter purchased

New alternator purchased

New ring-gear on installed on flywheel

Carbs tuned just fine

 

 

Next immediate projects:

 

1. Reseal the front-cover. I hate oil leaks.

2. Install O2-sensor into downpipe.

3. Put engine back into car.

4. Get some door windows (or new doors)

5. Install windshield wipers. Washington weather and all.

6. Drive drive drive.

[datzenmike]

Why the O2 sensor with SUs? It can indicate your a/f ratio, but there's no way to adjust it like on EFI.

[69FJWagon]

Why the O2 sensor with SUs? It can indicate your a/f ratio, but there's no way to adjust it like on EFI.

 

never really used SUs but why couldnt you adjust your AFR cant you do jet changes and adjustments there for changing your AFR. thats how Troy does it with webers and mikunis on the dyno using the wideband o2 from the dyno to tune to a good AFR reading. if you had a good wideband AFR meter (Innovate! great product) in the exhaust with a accurate gauge in the car you could probably tune it while taking readings while driving and make changes based on your findings

 

Clayton

[datzenmike]

Yes as a diagnostic tool or a gauge in the car to monitor the a/f ratio under driving conditions. It would show rich or lean conditions but couldn't adjust them like an ECU. It would remove some of the guess work between how the car feels at different throttle positions and what the carbs are actually doing.

[69FJWagon]

Yes as a diagnostic tool or a gauge in the car to monitor the a/f ratio under driving conditions. It would show rich or lean conditions but couldn't adjust them like an ECU. It would remove some of the guess work between how the car feels at different throttle positions and what the carbs are actually doing.

 

Gotha, doesnt self adjust to throttle position and load like an ECU does to keep the "sweet spot" in the AFRs..correct??

[jovial_cynic]

Yeah - for me, it's primarily to make sure that my carbs are in tune, and to allow myself to correctly make adjustments in the future. That's all I had in mind. Nothing fancy.

Edited November 21, 2008 by jovial_cynic

[RandyinRenton]

dual carbs, dual O2 sensors... so you can get better balance across the curve. Or so the conventional logic goes. Trouble is - you would really want a way to log the results so you can actually see it as a trend, which means you need to log the RPM at the time, which leads you to want to log throttle position. So by the time you're done , you've bought 99% EFI... or stay blissfully ignorant and buy a carb throat vacuum gauge to balance the carbs and call it good

[jovial_cynic]

:: sigh ::

 

I traced down an oil leak on my engine while I had it out of the bay. The front cover gasket didn't go all the way up to the head, so oil was escaping through those holes, mostly on the passenger side. I got some new gasket material and filled the holes.

 

The problem is that I unbolted the water pump in the process, and must have broken the seal (as well as shearing off a bolt INSIDE the block... ugh), because after I bolted everything back up and stuck it back into the car and filled up the radiator, I saw coolant leaking all over the floor.

 

So... I'll have to pull the oil pump off again, reseal it, and hope that I can manage with one bolt short. Otherwise, I have to yank the whole front cover off again and see if I can't extract that broken bolt piece and put in a new bolt...

[jovial_cynic]

Got the front cover and water pump taken care of, but somehow, the installation of the new alternator, and the proximity of the lower radiator hose to it (using a VW rad) caused the alternator to very quickly rub a hole into the hose, causing a spray of coolant to shoot out of my engine bay and onto my garage wall, and everything in between.

 

One new lower rad hose later, the engine is purring just fine. Time to bolt everything back up properly, and I should be on the road. Still not legal (no tail lights on the rear blank panel yet), but drivable. Oh... I guess I should probably fill the tranny with gear oil before I take it out, though.

 

Slowly, slowly...

[jovial_cynic]

Here's the alternator-bit lower rad hose:

 

Here's the priximity of the alternator to the new flex hose. I'm going to either install a sheet metal shield over the rad hose, or find a way to pull it back to keep it from every getting close.

[jovial_cynic]

The engine is running again, and I drove it around the neighborhood. Still need some tuning on the carbs, but it's back on the road. Not exactly safe yet... the radiator isn't bolted down, and I'm a couple of bolts shy of having the engine properly seated on the mount location in the engine bay.

 

Here's the latest vid of the engine running:

 

 

There's some smoke towards the end of the video... I think I still have a bit of a water leak in the head somewhere. I *believe* there's some coolant coming in on the intake side seeping in somewhere.

 

:: sigh ::

[jovial_cynic]

O2 sensor installed and wired up:

 

 

 

Electric radiator (wired through relay and thermostatic switch in radiator):

 

 

SU choke cables hooked up; cable mount fabbed up and installed:

 

Edited April 12, 2009 by jovial_cynic

[bonvo]

right on man shes moving right along thats good to see

[jovial_cynic]

I think I might have the record for the slowest-progressing, longest-lasting 510 project. I've been actively wrenching on this car for six years now. But that's what happens when you've got a wife and three kids, a single income, and not very much time for projects. I've done a LOT of work this last week, since my family was down in California for spring break, and I had the house to myself. I've been driving my car around every day.

 

The next step is for me to get spots cut out in the rear panel to install lights -- the PO replaced the rear panel with a piece of flat sheet, so I have to mark spots for the lights and take my plasma cutter to it. I'm a little hesitant to move forward with that, since it has to be very precise. I don't want cock-eyed tail lights...

[bonvo]

use that to your advantage to instal custom tails i think old shool vette taillights would look cool