San Jose Build - Chassis 155.

[SeanW]

Should have done this when the car was broken apart as a roller skate but I've finally gotten a coolant reroute installed.



I opted to go with the Hawley Performance offering. Truth, it's less expensive than the MTune setup by not a small amount and that was the deciding factor with all other things being equal.

Install is super straight forward.

One - Remove the CAS and coil pack to open up room for activities. Scribe alignment marks on the CAS and valve cover so your timing isn't to jacked up when you put it back together. Also a good time to drain the coolant while you're making space.




Two - Remove the rear coolant cover, then remove the lower stud because you'll replace it with a bolt. Clean the mating surface with razor blades and a brass brush to clean out all of the old fiber gasket.





Three - transfer the temp sensor from the old heater outlet cover to the reroute adapter. Install the heater port outlet on the adapter. Use Teflon tape on both because leaking sucks.



Four - build and install the adapter sandwich with the adapter, the new thermostat, and two gaskets. Use RTV sealant on all of the gaskets to ensure a good seal. (Read the instructions on the RTV package and actually follow them.)



Five - Remove the front thermostat cover, thermostat, and mounting stud. Clean up the mating surface with a fresh razor blade and a brass brush, then install the coolant block off with a fiber gasket and RTV.



NOTE: The RTV you use may have a time to torque, obey that. Finger tight for 30 minutes, then full torque for the RTV gasket sealant I was using.

Six - Torque the adapter and block of bolts to spec. (Look it up, don't take my word on the correct torque.)

Seven - Curse like a sailor when you realize you need to extend the wires for the coolant temp sensor. Then extend the wiring and never mention that screw up again.



Eight - Install the long Gates house from the fresh outlet at the back of the motor to the radiator. Make sure that the hose won't pull on any electrical. If you're feeling saucy, zip tie the hose to keep it from flopping around too much. Trim it to length only after confirming routing from back to front.



Nine - Bolt the CAS and coil pack back into place. This is a good time to replace the o-ring seal on the CAS. Seriously, just do it. It's a $2.30 part at the parts store. (-222 size o-ring at O'Reilly Auto Parts) wipe the gunk of the CAS seats, install the new o-ring, slather the new o-ring with some kind of lube, the install the CAS and line it up with the scribe lines. Don't torque it, you should check timing again when the car is running, then you can torque it down.



The RTV I used wants 24 hours to cure before throwing water at it so I'm waiting until tomorrow night to refill the coolant and check base timing.

Tomorrow night I'll let you know if it leaks or not.

[SeanW]

The car is back up and running, the reroute works like a champ, no leaking that I can see after running to full temp for 30 minutes.

[SeanW]

Since I was already pulling parts off the motor (and because I wasn't having a good time trying to put the CAS back in) I decided to pull the valve cover. It's been on my to-do list for a while since I know that it's been leaking around the cylinder 2 spark plug. I've been kind of dreading what I might finder under there with a motor that has almost 200K miles of unknown service history behind it. Apart from the valve cover gasket being a crumbling, gacked mess everything under the valve cover looked pretty mint! I was happy!

Unhappy was snapping a bolt while I was torquing the valve cover down. (Read this as me not realizing that the spec sheet said lb/in, not lb/ft.) My local hardware store actually had M6x1x40mm JIS flange head bolts in stock, thankfully.

Happy was that it looks like the valve cover has been off a couple of times before. The timing belt is in good shape. I've got a spare water pump and timing belt but now I'm not so worried that they were wear items neglected by the previous owner.

Happy was letting the car idle up to operating temperature for 30 minutes with it never bumping over 175 degrees. Before the re-route it bump up over 200, then come back down after kicking on the fans. Zeros leaks so far. I'm happy enough with the result so far. I'll flog it around a bit over the next couple of days but it should be quite good.

[rumm]

Ouch on the valve cover bolt, hope it wasn't too difficult to remove.

I'm a bit jealous of your 175 temps. Even with a reroute I don't see below 190 unless I'm just warming up. Sits around 195-200 with the fan running though.

[SeanW]

May 2, 2017 18:50:38 GMT rumm said:

Ouch on the valve cover bolt, hope it wasn't too difficult to remove.

I'm a bit jealous of your 175 temps. Even with a reroute I don't see below 190 unless I'm just warming up. Sits around 195-200 with the fan running though.

I'm a little skeptical that the temp will hold that steady when it's actually out on the road. It will be interesting to see what the data logger records on my commutes tomorrow.

The snapped bolt was very easy to remove.  There was enough of sticking out of the head that I was able to spin it out with a set of vice grips.

[gwnwar]

Sean did you remember to put a drip of sealant RTV at the 6 points of the 3 cam towers to stop leaks..

[SeanW]

May 2, 2017 20:05:11 GMT gwnwar said:

Sean did you remember to put a drip of sealant RTV at the 6 points of the 3 cam towers to stop leaks..

Yep!

[dnr]

Did you route the heater output back to the water pump?
Trying to get a handle on how to do this on a car with the heater core removed. Going to do this when I get mine down to the skateboard. I've seen suggestions that some restriction should be put in to mimic the restriction of the heater core and encourage more coolant to go through the radiator.

[SeanW]

May 4, 2017 17:06:28 GMT dnr said:

Did you route the heater output back to the water pump?
Trying to get a handle on how to do this on a car with the heater core removed. Going to do this when I get mine down to the skateboard. I've seen suggestions that some restriction should be put in to mimic the restriction of the heater core and encourage more coolant to go through the radiator.

Same thing as before, just looping the feed for the heater core back to the water pump inlet. I'd also read similar recommendations on putting a restriction in-line but honestly just didn't care enough to do so. Since the coolant re-route changes the flow of coolant through the engine an in-line restriction in the heater hose isn't as important, the easiest and thus preferred path for coolant is through the new 1.25" coolant hose running from the back of the head to the radiator.



That photo shows my old loop, I replaced it with a longer single length of house while installing the reroute to get rid of the 90° brass elbows.

You may want to consider just deleting the heater line entirely. Hawley Performance makes a water-pump inlet replacement that makes that it a relatively easy thing to do.  I'm probably going to install one at some point. (A computer controlled electric water pump is on my list of future projects, I'll probably do it then.)

squareup.com/store/hawleyperformance/item/pre-order-billet-water-pump-inlet-1?square_lead=item_embed

[SeanW]

It's been a about a week since I've touched my Exocet, longer since I've actual driven it. Unfortunately I had surgery last Friday afternoon to remove my very non functioning gall bladder. Fortunately the procedure was minimally invasive so quick-ish recovery. But still, today was the first day I've felt another near in good enough shape to drive the car and really shake down the cooling system.

It's good.



That's a the temperature histogram pulled from the log I took while bombing around the neighborhood aggressively this evening. In the past, I'd have been over 200 for a similar drive!

Calling that a MASSIVE win so far.

[SeanW]

It also occurs to me that I didn't post some of the exhaust work I've been messing around with.

A couple of weeks ago, when I put the car up in the air to check on something, I found that there was a pretty nasty exhaust leak between the stock cat and the cat-back. I mean, knew there was a leak, I just didn't realize how bad it was. Really bad.



I've tried a few times to get it to seal but have never been successful with the stock cat and the aftermarket exhaust. In frustration I ordered 2.5 inch OBX Racing resonated test pipe (because it was actually really inexpensive) to see if I could get a good seal with that until I get around to having the full turbo back exhaust made up.

First, the OBX pipe is amazingly wall made for the price! I wasn't expecting much so my surprise at the finish and fitment is genuine. If you're looking for a test pipe I can honestly recommend!



It fits basically perfectly and seals very well to the stock header flange and the flange of my 2.5" exhaust. No leaking at all.



I'd have also replaced the header with a 2.5" unit but I'm still waiting for the lower pipe of it to ship. I decided to go this this header from CX Racing because it should be fairly easy to fabricate a dump pipe from my turbo to the v-band of the header's lower pipe.

[SeanW]

Moving on to more projects, now the cluster. My stock cluster was in pretty bass shape, replacing it had always been part of the plan. Started that this week's

Starting with the charge light/alternator exciter circuit. First pass to make sure it works, Salvaged the 2W 180Ω resistor from the junk dash and wired it in with a cheap incandescent lamp I had laying about. Wired into 1G and 2K it did in fact excite the alternator at idle. I've ordered a fresh new resistor since I couldn't find one in shops locally. I'll wire up a way less janky version of my charge light when that gets here.







Then a test fit of the mocked up gauge pod with the windscreen installed. I'm going to have to do a little redesign on the pod but it's super close to what I want as an end shape.



And last, a mockup of the cluster face.

[SeanW]

Smallish update.

Since I was oncall this weekend and could go out to have a lot of fun, I spent Saturday and Sunday putting the Speedhut tachometer/speedometer unit in the car, finally replacing the broken cluster from the donor. It's a fairly temporary arrangement while I work on design of the full instrument cluster a bit more but it does the job I need it to do for now.

First, I designed up and printed a mount for the gauge. (Designed in SketchUp, printed on a Flashforge Creator Dual FDM printer.) Nothing too special, just a simple gusseted angle bracket with holes for the gauge, the batter charge light, and the brightness knob for the gauge's electro luminescent face. Since this will eventually evolve into a full custom gauge pod, the bracket is held with double-sided 3M foam tape. So far it's been pretty stable and strong.

(If you ignore where I stupidly cracked the mounting bracket overly flexing it by hand just after pulling it off the printer.)



Eventually I'm going to have to make a second pass at my wiring harness, thinning out the things I don't need and re-routing as necessary to make thing clean. In the mean time, I do what I can with what I have: a label maker, a roll of split-loom, and a crap-load of zip ties. And an inventory of pre-wired quick connectors in 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 6 pin configurations.

The bracket itself is printed from ABS plastic filament., I think I'd set the process up to only print a 10% infill.



All-in-all, I'm pretty happy with the Speedhut gauge. The large tachometer and small speedometer on the side works a lot better than I'd thought it would.

[rumm]

This looks fantastic! I'm amazed with how well you were able to color match.

[SeanW]

May 22, 2017 5:51:00 GMT rumm said:

This looks fantastic! I'm amazed with how well you were able to color match.

It's completely by accident, I assure you! I was going to print it out of glow in the dark filament for the fun of it.