Project Big Red

Yeah I still like SBC in my hotrods. Although I might put a 351 in my 50 ford. We will see. My 63 fairlane still runs a 170 straight 6 although i think it needs poser forced induction.

Laser - can you post a detail pic of your rubber block off plugs you made? I'm having trouble envisioning how they work.

It's a 3/4" rubber cylinder with a 1/4" hole in it but not all the way through. I used 3/4 because that's what I could get readily. I used Buna nitrile, which should be fine for diesel but I would have preferred viton. You can drill rubber with a very sharp end mill. It cuts okay. I used the lathe. It's hard enough to not Waller too bad.

And just because I needed another kick to the balls, my turbo coolant plumbing won't work as planed either. So we are punting 9.5 yards deep in our own end zone here.

In other news, I ordered my intercooler and piping today. Think I picked a piping kit with enough stuff to make it work. If it's anything like the turbo install, who knows.

Bits for what I hope will be successful turbo plumbing are arriving tomorrow and Saturday. Stay tuned.

at first you don't succeed, try try try again, just keep it to a minimum of "trys"
as I told you, atleast your not over powering a pretzel! lol
ive been fabbin for a while now, and sometimes it still takes me a couple of trys to get it to work, and or the way I want it to be done.

consider it experience.

one thing I like to do, and I did with my truck.
even when I had the mock up engine,
is to have a engine out of the vehicle, and the one youre working on in the vehicle.
work on both to make the final product.
makes things a little easier, and when you gotta add that brace, extention, or other mod.
youre not welding over your nice engine.

grab some brew, and serenade your truck! it will all fall into place!

Well, if at first you don't succeed, try 500 more times. It feels like I've had the turbo off 150 times this weekend. The bad news is that I still have not completed the oil drain. The good news is that I think I have a path forward. I also have all the other lines fit.



I ended up reclocking the turbo yet again so that that instead of coming out the back with the oil drain, it's now coming roughly out the bottom. Bottom line is that to use the AN fittings, there was just never enough hose between them to make the dogleg to the drain in the valley pan. The fittings only left about 2" of hose between them. Just no way to make that bend. So I reclocked and tried to fit hard line in there. Nope. Not enough give to make it. So I finally found heater hose fittings and figured out that I THINK I can get a piece of hose from turbo to drain. Great. Unfortunately the drain adapter I made is threaded for -10 ORB which means I need to either buy the special fitting or remake the drain adapter. I think I'll have time to remake the fitting and that will make it use something pretty standard.

If you look around in that pic, you will see the fuel pressure gauge is installed.

At this point, I'm grinding to a bit of a hault on the engine front because I can't finalize and bang things down until I get the trans back in. I'll make that call tomorrow to get an ETA.

So I started running around and putting bolts in holes so I can figure out what hardware I'm still missing. I need to get myself a paint pen or something so I can start going through and torquing stuff that's finger tight and mark it. I'll never keep track otherwise especially if I have to keep jumping around.

So I started digging out the core support stuff. Luckily, I think I found all of it.



Here's some of it. Conveniently, I wrote on the one piece it goes on the passenger side. [emoji6] I still have the rusty one to look at. You can see these are fairly clean. Mainly just dirty. I gave them a quick blast to clean them up trying to leave the zinc on them as much as possible. Then primed them.



So I've got stuff to paint. I'll probably mix up some enamel with hardener for these bits. Few more to do. Need to figure out if I'm going to refurb the bolts and clips or just clean them up. Once these are done I'll be ready for front sheet metal. Need to epoxy prime the fenders and such before I install them though.

Looking good, I know it can be frustrating to have to redo work but when you are building custom assemblies it's bound to happen. A team of engineers designed it originally and I know from working in R&D that I am sure they had back and forth on the design to.

Stepping back some times I come up with a solution in the middle of the night lol. Looking great so far, you will get it.

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk

Laser - I would open up the Auveco catalog and buy all new nuts and bolts for the fenders. Or most of them. Cleaning up those little things is hardly worth the time. A box of 25-50 bolts is like $7.00. I probably have parts numbers if you want them.

Engine looks great!

junk said:

Laser - I would open up the Auveco catalog and buy all new nuts and bolts for the fenders. Or most of them. Cleaning up those little things is hardly worth the time. A box of 25-50 bolts is like $7.00. I probably have parts numbers if you want them.

Engine looks great!

Click to expand...

Tell me more about this Magical place?

I remade that adapter in 1/2 npt and picked up another hose barb today. I now have all the ports on the turbo ready to roll. Just need to get the transmission back.

laserjock said:

Tell me more about this Magical place?

Click to expand...

https://www.auveco.com/default.aspx is the place. My local store can get most of the fasteners from their warehouse. I forgot to grab part numbers, but I probably have all the part numbers I used for my truck still in the shop. It's super convenient to have a stash of these as you reassemble stuff.

I'll take a look. Most of the stuff from the parts truck is actually pretty clean rust wise. My problem will be what it always is. Missing bits. The good news is however, that I'm finally getting to the early stuff I tore down and I was a lot more carefull with the bag and tag back then.

So two tidbits. First, I found the rubber isolators are still in the old radiators I have. Should be good there.

Now the not so good news. Heard from the trans shop. Apparently it was a good thing I didn't just put it in and run it. The front seal was broken. That probably means the oil I had in the bellhousing was actually tranny fluid with clutch dust. The syncros were mostly wiped out and a couple of the bearings were bad. So basically she's getting a full rebuild. ******* the pocket book but I guess better now than after its all back together and on the road. Should be ready for pickup on Friday.

Always something.

Oxymorron....sorry to hear but glad its caught....

Dude you will so have a better n new truck when done....and no 500 mo payment for 84 months

I know that move forward go back feeling.... Luckily all my gaskers and studs arrived yesterday. Now to build engine number two for mine. Lol maybe one day it will make it and stay together

Yeah, but I've stacked a lot of $500 payments together here lately... plastic is still smoking...

Yes I am glad I didn't just slap it back in there and run it because honestly, I came real close. It would have eaten itself about the first time I loaded it down heavy and took off on a trip because that's how my luck runs. The good and bad news is that the only real question marks at this point will be the tcase and the carrier/pinion bearings in the rear end. Everything else will have been gone through.

At this point I have so much time and money tied up in it, I could have bought a decent truck. The only reason I have kept going honestly was that I knew I could turn this off anytime I needed to. Can't just call the bank and say... I'm not going to pay you for the next few months and you are going to be okay with that.... Just no sense of humor on their side.