The Comeback.
Phew, what a crazy few weeks. After our initial teardown from the last post, the full teardown revealed where things started to go wrong.
#6 broke a rod bolt, which was the splayed rod cap that was in the bottom of the pan. 5 and 1 followed suit as things wound down, so we have 3 mangled souvenirs for garage art. Our suspicion that the heads were spared proved to be correct, but they did need some work to get back into shape.
Lots of bent valves, and about .004" warpage around #6 from the piston hitting it (!). Everything cleaned up well, saving us a LOT of time and headache.
All ready to go back together.
A bit of cleanup..
While the pieces for the motor were being staged, I took the Saturday morning before the 4th to clean up the mess that evacuating the crankcase at 6000+ rpm left. Literally everything under the hood was bathed in a fine coating of Driven XP3 oil.
Misery is..crawling around under a car while oil and SuperClean drip in your face. At least it was early so it wasn't too hot yet.
All clean again.
Work smarter..not harder. Plus I was by myself..
Better. Faster. Cooler.
While everything was out, it was the perfect time to finish up our cooling system upgrades. Step one: streamlining the airflow through the nose. Without the crash bumper, the nose has two big caverns for air to flow into and go nowhere.
This should help calm things down in there.
Bead rolled, painted, and final mounted.
The second half of this equation is a bigger radiator. The old one had a few extra inches on each side. A new 31" fit the bill, maximizing the space and just fitting between the framerails, core support, and steering box. We transferred the Black Magic fan over to a new shroud, with a relief for the steering box, and got it mounted to a set of extended tabs.
421
Back to the motivation. Dad got everything assembled on the 4th, and we got it set up on the run stand for break-in time last week.
Had a couple little quirks to take care of on the valve seals (which have given us problems on these heads a couple times in the past), but this week we were able to get it dropped in.
Fortunately, our system works pretty well and has been made even easier in the new shop. The plan is to button up the rest of the details Sunday and take it down the road. I can't wait to see how 40+ cubic inches helps motivate things
Time is short for Austin, but we will hopefully get it to two autocrosses before then to help me get a handle on things. A lot of memories of thrashing to make it to Drag Week in 09 the last few weeks. That ended up working out pretty well, let's hope we're good for another.