Has anyone adapted this yet?

I was cruising through Harbor Freight and saw this:

 

I'm curious if that would make for a good set of det cans for tuning. Thoughts? 

More manageable arbor plates

The arbor plates I cut before from 1.5" thick steel are fantastic but heavy and a bit awkward for much of the pressing I do for small parts. So, I took the drops from the last cut and sliced off 8" long sections  to use, then cleaned up the edges. Easy peasy.

Project Lazarus: Rebuilding the front suspension, Part 1

This past weekend, being Thanksgiving weekend here in the US, didn't turn out anything like I had planned. It was quiet and restful, for sure, and that was a very good thing, but it wasn't as productive as I thought it would be. That's mostly OK, though. I needed the break. I won't get another break like this any time in the foreseeable future, so, I took advantage of it. =) 

My CRX is rocking stock suspension, aside from new shocks and springs, from 1988. (89 model year, sold in 88.) Yeah, I think it is time to do something about that. The biggest issue right now is the bushings. The car tends to wander a bit under power. Cruising, it holds fairly straight, but get on the gas and you better be paying attention. Most of the ball joint boots are on the verge of falling to pieces, too, so, pretty much everything needs to be replaced: bushings ball joints and eventually steering bits, too. 

The first things lined up to do are new wheel bearings. I had purchased a set of EX knuckles and brakes a while back, as they are a direct bolt on swap that allows for proper suspension geometry and also going from 240mm (9.5") discs to 262mm (10.3") discs on a completely OEM package. On a light car, I think that the typical 11" brake packages are overkill, and my CRX is certainly light. I do, however, want a bit more thermal mass in the brakes, so the 262mm rotors are the perfect compromise. The larger rotors increase the braking torque applied (as the moment arm is longer) with less pedal effort, which is a good thing since I greatly downsized the brake booster to fit a future intake manifold. (Not that the brakes are terrible right now. They work.) Overall, I am expecting the brake part of this to work fantastically.

Anyway, enough rambling, on to pics of work!

This is the "Heavy duty slide hammer" package from Harbor Freight:

I'll probably write up a separate review of the thing. It works, but man, parts of it are terrible. It worked to pull one hub out of the bearing, but not the other. I don't have pics of it in use as I needed both hands and feet to work the slide hammer since the knuckles I am working on are off the car. If they were on the car, I honestly would have had much less of a difficult time getting the hubs out.

The stubborn hub required flipping the knuckle over onto some 2x4s, finding a socket (in my case a 28mm SnapOn 1/2" drive socket fit perfectly) and bashing the hub out with a minisledge. Not something that is good for the bearings, but since I'm replacing them . . . Yeah. heh I finally managed to get the hubs out, and then popped the wheel studs out in my HF 20T press, ending up with this:

The shiny rings on the stem/stub of the hubs are one of the inner bearing races (races are where the balls of the ball bearings roll, kinda like the track at a race track, but with much less crashing, hopefully) and those need to get removed as well. If you plan on doing this job yourself, you will nearly always have this issue, so it is better to be prepared to deal with it right away. 

Before I get to taking the race off the hub, here's a look at what I am doing with the studs:

In order to be track/strip complaint, you are supposed to have extended wheel studs and open ended lug nuts to allow track officials to see that you actually have your wheels fastened on correctly so you don't kill yourself or other people when racing. I REALLY didn't want to have to deal with the Roman War Chariot look that you get when using the ARP wheel studs, but I did need something longer, so with some help from my parts store pimp, Mike, I purchased enough of the longer wheel studs you see above for the whole car. 

Wheel stud part number:

The knurling isn't exactly the same, but it will fit in correctly and securely and I won't have to worry about anything at the track. YAY! (I also bought some Gorilla brand open ended lug nuts, too, so I am ready!) 

The studs are very good quality, and on the base of the stud, you can see that they are very strong, being "10.9" standard hardware:

Way better than those cheap, crappy "tuner" studs that people buy with the scary aluminum lug nuts made in who knows where out of stuff that really isn't quite metal. heh

So, back to getting the race off the hubs! My dad was a big help as while I was taking all this crap apart, he volunteered to stop by Harbor Freight on the way back from food shopping and pick this up for me:

This package definitely deserves a (mostly positive!) review. I was very surprised to see an ACME thread on the "pressure shaft" (I forget what it is supposed to be called). Acme threads are square shouldered instead of angled.  This lets the threads take a LOT more force without galling. In this kind of tool, where a heck of a lot of pressure is built up, you need that. YAY!

The first race took a bit to get off as I was still getting familiar with setting up the tool, and I had to change configurations a few times until I figure out exactly what worked, but work it did!

I first tried the smaller seperator, but the radius of the inner part really didn't match well to the radius of the outside of the race:

Closeup:

  

That wasn't going to work well at all. I swapped over to the larger seperator and was a bit annoyed at the studs, as they were barely long enough to fit. I managed to get the nuts threaded on securely enough, though:

 

 The next step was to set up the puller bits. 

 

At first I used the thick piece of steel across the top, thinking the race would pop loose after it started moving, but I was mistaken. You can also see the ACME threads in the above picture, too. 

I managed to get the race pulled up as far as the bar would allow:

But I had to come up with a different plan. I had the socket that I used to pound the second hub out, but sockets have holes in the back for the drive of the ratchet, so I needed something to cover the holes enough to prevent the shaft from going through, but still fit through the race when it pulled free. I managed to find some washers, though they were really thin. I tripled them up and hoped for the best:

It worked!

The first race pulled off really easily since I had already started it moving with the bar across the top, so the washers didn't bent very much:

 

Pulling the second one off with just the washers on the socket bent them a good bit, but it really wasn't as bad as I thought and it worked well enough so that I got the second one off in less than 10 minutes. Cool!

Too be continued . . . 

Chrysler Cleaning, Part 3 (ugh)

More stuff for that darned Chrysler V6. I'm nearly ready to put crap back together. I have to confess, I wasted a lot of time doing something pretty darned unnecessary. Don't you just love when you do something you think is awesome, and, it might just well be, but then you realize there was a way to get the same thing done without any of the extra effort? *shakes head* Learn by living. 

Anyway, on with the show! Here's one of the two boogered up spacer/retainer doohickies:

Here it is after TIGing the edge:

I decided it miiiiight just be time to replace the sanding disc.

Do you think I made the right call? heh My greatest annoyance with changing those things is that most of the paper comes off, but not the really sticky stuff:

The best way I've found to deal with that is actually WD40 and a brass wire brush. Soak the remaining stuff with WD40 and let it sit for a bit, then take the brass brush and working at 90* angles, get the crud off. It still takes a while, BUT there is no damage to the backing wheel, which is important for smooth sanding. After I got the crud off, I washed the wheel off with acetone and stuck a new pad on. I think I might opt for a bit rougher grit next time. The ones I am currently using are 120 grit and they hold up well, but I usually want material taken off faster, so I may drop down to 80 or so. I still have near 50 discs to use . . . it might take years to go through them all. LOL!

After I got the edges sanded up nicely:

Notice that the top one has a bulge on the concave part, which is not good since that would prevent the piece from sitting on the rocker shaft correctly.  In order to fix that, I busted out one of my all-time favorite tools:

It is a Foredom (that's the brand) hanging, flex-shaft grinder. Why not use a Dremel? Torque. Dremels, quite frankly, suck. Sure, they spin to 35,000RPM, but you can't lean on it at all. I'll take the torque this thing puts out over the speed of a Dremel any day.

But it looks old? Well, it is. I bought it used on ebay. It still works perfectly. I've burned out several Dremels. I doubt I will ever burn this thing out.

Heavy duty and quality made in the US. I also bought this grip:

 I like this one better than the skinnier one that came with the grinder. It has ball bearings so it runs smoother. It has three different collet sizes for different tools, including a 1/8" for Dremel bits. It's also super easy to change out. The metal band clamp that you see on the left side of the handle in the pic above pops off and then the handle comes off with a tug.

If you ever get the chance to upgrade, do it!

I smoothed out the concave section of he retainer thingy:

And then . . . I realize that since there are only two that are really boogered up things, I could have just put them on the ends of the shafts. *facepalm* Oh well. I got some good practice in. I'll keep looking at the positives. heh

Here is the state of the old rocker shaft:

 The hole that is in focus is an oil supply hole. I honestly think that the whole shaft is completely gunked up solid. I didn't want to bother trying to take the press-in end caps off to find out.

That is a LOT of wear . . .

I am surprised the engine ran as long as it did. I just hop I can get it back together well enough to actually run again at least for a while.

Crud, crap, poo, yuck, filth, sludge, grossness, ick, etc.:

This is what I scraped out of the front side of the head:

Click on the pic to get an idea of how thick that stuff is piled onto the paper towel! EEEEW!

This is the new rocker shaft:

I almost oops putting all this together in that the oil supply hole on that shaft was facing up, not down the way it should be.

My last remaining concern is one of the rocker shaft bungs. I tried to run a tap down through it . . . and it wouldn't go. =( All the other ones cleaned up nicely. That one is, of course, on the rear head and the hardest to get to. I am not sure what I a going to do at this point. *sighs* Tomorrow is another day. I have to get some assembly lube and pick up some oil for the engine. I want to coat the new parts in assembly lube so that they don't run dry until the oil pumps up. 

New tools in use and mounting an engine!

The past few days have been frustrating. First, the power dies at home so I couldn't mow the lawn (yes, I still mow the lawn) because "we" have an awful electric lawn mower. The next day (Thursday) I replaced the upper control arms on my Sister's Accord. That went surprisingly well. After that, I loaded up my car and went to drive off into the sunset, or, to my "shop" and get some work done. Then my Legend decides to nearly die on the way there. I decided to fill up while I tried to figure out WTF was going on. The engine would start up fine but had little to no power, reminiscent of my earlier troubles. I decided to be stupid and I drove to my "shop" and I made it there, through terrible traffic and slow going outside of traffic. I spent the evening checking things under the hood after pulling an "Ignition signal" code off the ECU. I went through the troubleshooting procedures, but didn't find anything terribly conclusive. I crashed at my friend's place, as I happened to have a sleeping bag and there is plenty of floor space for the grabbing. LOL! I spent a few hours moving stuff around in the "shop" consolidating a large volume into a more compact space in anticipation of lots of work of the next week.

I woke up this morning and got to work! I took the old SOHC engine off the stand:

I've had this cheap engine stand for over a decade:

 It was given to me for helping swap an engine ages ago.  It certainly has seen quite a lot of use and abuse and travel. 

I put together my new grinder stand:

This thing actually surprised me. It is well cast, the hardware is decent and it fits together perfectly. I have yet to bolt down the grinder, but that will happen shortly. The only complaint I have is that the tube supplied is a bit thin so it bends if you crank down too hard on the lock bolts. But, it is really sturdy and totally useable! 

The next thing I set up is this:

Harbor Freight's disc/belt combo sander. It went together with a minimum of fuss, the bet and disc supplied are actually decent, the belt track straight, and the motor is pretty OK! For the work I did today, it functioned nearly flawlessly. I would like to put some light thread locker on the set screw that holds the disc in place, but that is about it. I've already been researching belts and discs for it, and have found some very reasonably priced, high quality stuff that I will likely purchase through Amazon soon. 

The next bit is harder to see in this picture:

The stand underneath the wood top is the thing I'd like to point out. This one was not so great to put together, but only because the box was not intact and some of the hardware is missing. I'll get that straightened out son enough. It is fairly sturdy and for the price, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it for light or medium weight things. 

I might have mentioned this before, but this foot switch is really good to have:

I mostly use it with my band saw when it is in the vertical stand. I can start and stop the saw with my foot instead of using a hand. This allows for more control, and when dealing with cutting and grinding tools, control and awareness are paramount!

 The next few pics are of the parts of the box that Pete's engine was shipped in.

I have to say, I am very impressed with the construction. Any time it takes you over 45 minutes to unpack one thing, you know it is packaged to survive anything! heh

I labeled the panels  and the frame as I took them off to facilitate putting everything back on when it is time to ship the engine back to Pete:

Top of the frame:

Side view of the frame with the engine nice and snug inside its wrapping:

Once I got it out, I set about cutting these:

from threaded rod purchased from McMaster-Carr. (M12x1.25!)

Having chopped them to size in the bad saw, the ends needed some smoothing, so it was time to put the new sander to work!

Talk about quickly making a nice, smooth end! I love that sander! 

If you'll notice, though I am not happy with the amount of crud and muck on the rod. I ran a a tap over the threads to clean everything up:

ALWAYS lube taps and dies, even when just cleaning threads. ALWAYS. 

Here is the difference:

If you are curious about measurements, I made the shorter blind-hole studs 4.25" and the longer through-hole stud 5.5"

I made the long one long enough to double nut the end, like this

You'd also be wise to notice that I have a washer in between the stand leg and the block. Most cheap engine stands aren't finished well, and I would rather have a smooth washer against the block than a poorly finished tube. Little things like this make a difference!

Artsy shot:

Once I got the block mounted on the stand, it was time to put on Pete's pan:

 I stole two studs and nuts from my SOHC engine, which took a while to do since I didn't want to ruin those small studs and took the time to clean up the threads so that they wouldn't booger up Pete's nice and newly machined and cleaned block! Taking care of threads takes time, but it is much less time than repairing a thread that gets boogered because of lack of care. 

More views:

I have to ask Pete who made this plexi cover:

I really like it! Of course it has to come off for putting the head on, but I think it is a great idea to have to keep the mating surface on the block in good shape!

Now here is where things get a little goofy:

Yes, that is a ratchet strap holding the head and block together. I totally forgot that I didn't have any dowel pins or extra head bolts . . . Duh. That will be taken care of soon enough, especially since I want to get the head indexed correctly before making any serious commitment to a particular measurement for the primaries or downpipe (in Pete's case). 

This is where the block came from, recently:

I have to say that I am EXTREMELY impressed with the sleeving job. I like the design and the fit and finish is, as far as I can tell by visual inspection, extraordinarily good! This engine is being built so well!  I am just glad to be a part of it. =)

Some other block markings that I just liked enough to take pictures of:

The oil inlet caught me a bit off guard:

I haven't seen one like that before, or at least not that I've noticed. If I remember, I'll grab a pic of the same spot on my SOHC as it is quite a bit different. 

On to more fun stuff! The flange needed some clearancing:

More was needed on the timing belt side than the passenger side, but having the belt sander make quick work of it:

Now it might seem like I am going to brag about something, but, I'm really not, at least not at the moment. Take a look at this:

The gradations closest to the front of the picture are 1/64". That line is supposed to be on the 1/8" line. It's less than 1/64" off. So, why am I making such a big deal out of this? Because this is me being INACCURATE. Normally, I would obsess over getting things even more precise, but, I am realizing more and more that sometimes your tolerances don't need to be quite as close for most things . . . (Except for fitup for TIG welding. heh) The point here is to know what you are doing an what is necessary. Getting to caught up in details can stall everything. There is such a thing as "good enough at this time!"

The lines above were for installing a clamped fence to cut these: 

Which I finished in record time thanks to the new sander. I am still not happy with how much work it takes to match the sides up, but I have some good ideas on how to improve on the process in the future, which is good because I will have several more headers and manifolds to make the rest of the summer!

Of course, I HAD to show this thing off again:

I LOVE it! The ink is different than normal Sharpies, too. It takes longer to dry, or, at the very least goes on thicker an makes for goo score lines:

I didn't get to take pics of the last couple things I did, but it was mostly some layout prep work for finishing up Mike's bike and something to make my life easier when doing this next header. 

Tomorrow will be a busy day. Dave and I are going to venture forth to exchange my bottle (it is finally near its end), pick up material from McMaster-Carr and I think we'll actually finish his header! I'll be finalizing the layout for Mike's seat pan and battery tray, triple checking my measurements, and that will be ready to get done soon, too. I am going to have to stop a bit earlier than usual as I am going to be the door man at a bar for a gig. A few bands are playing and the music alone makes it worth getting in for free. The added bonus is getting to be imposing, handling a large wad of cash and being nosy. All things I like. LOL!