datsunfreak Posted January 14, 2023 Author Report Share Posted January 14, 2023 The stock doghouse bolts/clamps screw into these stupid plastic inserts that won't hold it down tight enough... So we made some metal ones... 1 Quote Link to comment
datsunfreak Posted January 14, 2023 Author Report Share Posted January 14, 2023 Not sure if Tim mentioned it, but the new belt routing made it almost touch itself in one spot, which is bad. We had found a smaller idler in the spare parts pile that worked, then today replaced it with a new one... And now it doesn't touch itself any more... 1 Quote Link to comment
dimlight65 Posted January 14, 2023 Report Share Posted January 14, 2023 (edited) LOL, simultaneous posting again! So as, John said, I was not comfortable with the gap between the belt runs with the idler pulley I had bought... So we tried a smaller one from John's 351 Ford donk which worked a lot better. We bought a new one of those... And the gap is much more to my liking now... Then we made some metal chingadera... to replace the nylon "headlight adjuster looking square push in" zufalliga Sache... That holds down the back of the doghouse. We replaced the PCV hose from my last post, but took no pictures. Then I sent john out for a test hoon. I giggled a little as he wagged the tail on leaving and decided we were making progress. He came back and beconed me to get in the passenger seat. Off we went for another test hoon. On his third (that I witnessed😝) attempt at drifting it, there was a loud "BANG!" and then scraping noises from the rear. We're now making so much torque that we broke the weld on the (now) upper spring perch of the rear axle. The only thing keeping the nose of the diff out of the floor was the driveshaft up against the wall, redneck mother... I mean, frame crossmember! We drug the TIG welder out and zooked the axle tube to the adjuster thingies I made a few pages back. I drove around the block and am quite chuffed with the donk. Utawesome VRPs are Da Bomb! Edited January 14, 2023 by dimlight65 1 Quote Link to comment
datsunfreak Posted January 16, 2023 Author Report Share Posted January 16, 2023 On 1/14/2023 at 3:54 PM, dimlight65 said: LOL, simultaneous posting again! i decided against posting that photo to pretect the guilty (me). 😁 1 Quote Link to comment
dimlight65 Posted January 19, 2023 Report Share Posted January 19, 2023 I took no pictures, but I added some heat shielding to the oil cooler lines and spark plug wires today. I also replaced the idle air control solenoid and deleted the vacuum lines to the HVAC hoping those things would fix the fast idle and rev-hang. Thus far, they have not. At some point in the near future, I'm going to have someone install* a couple hot-dog glasspacks to try and quiet the thing down a little. We like her "Voice," but she talks a little too loud. *Yes, I'm going to a muffler shop because building this zorst kicked my ass a little too hard for me to consider doing it again! Quote Link to comment
Chopper Jim Posted January 19, 2023 Report Share Posted January 19, 2023 Set of Cherry Bombs. or keeping with the theme, Purple Hornies. Chopper Jim 2 Quote Link to comment
dimlight65 Posted January 19, 2023 Report Share Posted January 19, 2023 3 hours ago, Chopper Jim said: Set of Cherry Bombs. or keeping with the theme, Purple Hornies. Chopper Jim I couldn't find any 2.25" in/out x 12" long Purple Hornies, or you bet your ass they would have been in there! Also, I bought TWO Summit Racing units for what Holley/FlowTech wants for ONE 18" Purple Horny! Quote Link to comment
datsunfreak Posted January 25, 2023 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2023 Made a few things for "beautification". Tim wanted to reduce the amount of speakers in the door (to zero), and we had already cut speaker holes in the door panel. So we decided that since we had some wood paneling left over from the interior makeover, why not make some door panels to match? Also, since we are planning to completely redo the HVAC controls, I made this blanking plate... We may use this to mount the new controls, or we may just use it to block off the hole for now until we make a different plate for control mounting. The new controls require a push/pull cable, so we have to see if this is strong enough, or if we need to make it out of something stronger. We shall see... 1 Quote Link to comment
dimlight65 Posted January 26, 2023 Report Share Posted January 26, 2023 To follow up on John's post, we installed all that stuff he just showed y'all. Test fit, driver's side: Passenger side: Screwed down with all the gubbins reinstalled: And the door still closes! And finally, the HVAC blanking plate I want to build a Panhard rod for it, but I think I'm going to wait a little bit on that. Quote Link to comment
dimlight65 Posted January 28, 2023 Report Share Posted January 28, 2023 So, I am just about ready to scrap the fuel injection and put a damn carburetor on this thing. There's only about 1000 reasons why I'm not doing it... each one of those reasons has a picture of George Washington on it. Quote Link to comment
dimlight65 Posted February 9, 2023 Report Share Posted February 9, 2023 I ordered a thing then totally forgot about it until it arrived from Chi-na! It's an air filter heat shield for my cold air filter. I finger it should also provide a wee bit o' ram air as well. 1 Quote Link to comment
dimlight65 Posted February 16, 2023 Report Share Posted February 16, 2023 (edited) So I bought a new distributor and coil. Installed the coil... Chinese non-union Accel equivalent! Then I had a look at the distributor... I had not touched the hold down bolt yet! I rolled the donk to TDC... And popped the distributor cap. Under the cap, there's a little notch that says "Cyl No 1"... But my rotor is not pointed at that mark! According to the interwebs, there's a thingamabob under there that tells the crank position sensor which 360° of crankshaft rotation it is reading so the ECU knows when to fire the injectors. In addition to being loose and able to just wander around willy nilly, it has apparently been set 45° off as long as I've owned this thing! It's a wonder it runs at all! We locked it down and will go for a drive Saturday to see if that was the issue. I might still replace the distributor, or I might get my $55 back. We'll see. Edited February 16, 2023 by dimlight65 2 Quote Link to comment
EDM620 Posted February 16, 2023 Report Share Posted February 16, 2023 39 minutes ago, dimlight65 said: Chinese non-union Accel equivalent! I got me a pair of chinese MSD coils, hope they actually work! 1 Quote Link to comment
dimlight65 Posted February 17, 2023 Report Share Posted February 17, 2023 21 hours ago, EDM620 said: I got me a pair of chinese MSD coils, hope they actually work! This one fired up nicely but it was just late enough that we decided to wait until Saturday for the test hoon so we wouldn't have to push this fat pig back to the shop in the dark if everything went tits-up. 2 Quote Link to comment
dimlight65 Posted February 18, 2023 Report Share Posted February 18, 2023 (edited) On 2/16/2023 at 6:23 PM, dimlight65 said: This one fired up nicely but it was just late enough that we decided to wait until Saturday for the test hoon so we wouldn't have to push this fat pig back to the shop in the dark if everything went tits-up. On the plus side, we did NOT have to push the fat pig back to the shop. Things are definitely tits up, however. It ran great until the motor warmed up. Then it began its popping and spitting routine again, the idle was too high (1300-1400 rpm), and the rev-hang was embarrassingly bad! We both drove it and decided that dropping the new distributor in was our next course of action. Once that was done, the engine fired up and settled in to a nice, mean sounding, rumbly, 600 rpm idle. I was super stoked! Then we tried to give it some gas... I have never seen a more lazy rev up than that! I can't even begin to describe how slowly it revved. Oh, and it wouldn't rev past... 2500 rpm? To be honest, I was so shocked at how crappily it was revving, I never looked at the tach. We tried turning the distributor, and at some point the idle revs shot up to 1500 and it would accept throttle input again... with massive rev-hang. After consulting the googles again, we've determined that we need an actual ($$$) OBD II scan tool (as opposed to the $ code reader we have) in order to set the distributor's cam position sensor properly. John is going to check with his coworkers to see if any of them have said scan tool. If not, we're going to determine what is cheaper: buying a scan tool or converting to carburetor. Edited February 18, 2023 by dimlight65 Quote Link to comment
iceman510 Posted February 22, 2023 Report Share Posted February 22, 2023 I used to have an actual Chysler DRBII diagnostic tool I would have let you borrow, but I sold it a couple years ago. 1 Quote Link to comment
dimlight65 Posted February 23, 2023 Report Share Posted February 23, 2023 (edited) 6 hours ago, iceman510 said: I used to have an actual Chysler DRBII diagnostic tool I would have let you borrow, but I sold it a couple years ago. We think we are on the right track, pooibly without the scan tool. I re-clocked the distributor/oil pump drive shaft to the "proper" angle and re-wired the cap to the correct firing order... and it wouldn't start at all! Ok, so apparently that was NOT the TDC mark on the balancer. I then spent several hours finding a junk sparkplug, busting the ceramic guts out of it, and epoxy-ing in a hose so I could find TDC on the compression stroke without having to ask someone, "Hey, can you put your finger in my hole while I crank one out?" Of course I wore myself out trying to crank the donk over with a breaker bar and was taking a break when John showed up. He finished the cranking while I listened to the hose. Oh yeah, I had royally up-fucked the timing! We re-re-clocked the shaft and popped the dizzy back in. One final check of the plug wire firing order and we turned the key. It fired right up! The idle was right in between the way too fast of the "rev-hang, popping and spitting" setting, and the lovely rumbly 600rpm of the "laziest revving engine I have ever seen" setting. It revs nicely and the rev-hang is just almost tolerable. Almost. John wants to try a voltage test method of setting the timing, and we have a call in to a mobile ECU scanner/re-programmer dude... so, fingers crossed! Edited February 23, 2023 by dimlight65 2 Quote Link to comment
dimlight65 Posted March 2, 2023 Report Share Posted March 2, 2023 On 2/22/2023 at 9:46 PM, dimlight65 said: John wants to try a voltage test method of setting the timing So in order to do that, I had to buy a multimeter. I popped the distributor cap off and rolled the motor to TDC Then I pinned out the plug on the distributor and poked a couple safety pins in to get a reading I adjusted the dizzy until I got 5v on the tan wire... Yeah, I know that says 0.04v but trust me, it did read 5v. And then it started spewing fuel from this bastard! Well, the hidden bastard underneath this other bastard... oh, nevermind John showed up and got the fuel leak to stop and we tried running the thing. It did not run right. We hooked up the Chinesium scan tool which was supposed to have the programming codes and discovered that it did not. With that failure as the last straw, we decided that it's getting a carburetor! And gutted. And rewired. So... to be continued. Quote Link to comment
dimlight65 Posted March 2, 2023 Report Share Posted March 2, 2023 20 hours ago, dimlight65 said: we decided that it's getting a carburetor! And gutted. And rewired. Carburetor and rewire for sure... I'm having second thoughts about ripping out my BOFA and the rest of the "camping" stuff in the rear, AKA "gutting" Quote Link to comment
datsunfreak Posted March 3, 2023 Author Report Share Posted March 3, 2023 14 hours ago, dimlight65 said: I'm having second thoughts about ripping out my BOFA and the rest of the "camping" stuff in the rear I thought you might. 😁 1 Quote Link to comment
iceman510 Posted March 4, 2023 Report Share Posted March 4, 2023 Blipshift made a shirt. https://www.blipshift.com/products/vanguard-2?variant=41334188474413 Did you get one? 1 Quote Link to comment
dimlight65 Posted March 5, 2023 Report Share Posted March 5, 2023 I must have missed that one when it was offered. Either that, or I said something asinine like, "I've got a real one!" and didn't buy it... or maybe I was broke-assed and just couldn't afford it. So, to make a short story long... No, I did not get one of those. Quote Link to comment
dimlight65 Posted March 6, 2023 Report Share Posted March 6, 2023 On 3/1/2023 at 8:36 PM, dimlight65 said: we decided that it's getting a carburetor! Got a couple packages today! HEI distributor: And a dual plane, air-gap, four barrel manifold! I have a bid on a reman Edelbrock 500 CFM AVS2 carb and a bunch of other bits and bobs in my Amazon shopping cart. IT'S ON! Quote Link to comment
EDM620 Posted March 7, 2023 Report Share Posted March 7, 2023 belly nice.... but where's the GOLD??? 🤔 1 Quote Link to comment
datsunfreak Posted March 7, 2023 Author Report Share Posted March 7, 2023 9 hours ago, EDM620 said: belly nice.... but where's the GOLD??? 🤔 If you think for one second that intake won't be gold by tomorrow... 😁 1 2 Quote Link to comment
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