bstardchild
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 14,971
Club RR Member Number: 71
Member is Online
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Jun 16, 2021 22:03:41 GMT
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As I said to you on the day I was very happy to see the car made it there Nice article BTW |
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Just caught up with this. Great car, great work, great story. Looking forward to the engine breathing. Best bookmark it then.  |
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Aug 11, 2021 14:22:16 GMT
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Well it’s been a while, but I have actually been making progress on the chevelle! Until recently I’d been enjoying the chevelle to much to start tearing it apart again, but then we had to self isolate for 2 weeks. Since I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere I figured it was the perfect time to start on the engine upgrades! First step: strip off all the old grimy stuff    Always good to see mis matched head gaskets  Then clean everything up and start fitting shiny bits, starting with the heads. I also trial fitted the headers before bolting the heads down but thankfully they fitted with plenty of room - left them hanging loosely in place as it seems impossible to fit them with heads in place…  Then the new cam, cam chain kit and lifters  Then I cleaned up, ported and painted the intake manifold. The manifold is meant for a quadrajet carb (tiny primaries and massive secondaries) whereas I’m using an edelbrock which is square bore (almost the same size primaries and secondaries). I also had to oval the bolt holes as apparently the heads have been skimmed significantly… the correct thing to do would be have the manifold skimmed to match, but I didn’t know this until I came to fit the manifold… Which of course meant I had to clean and repaint the manifold once I’d got it to fit properly    Then all the other stuff went on; distributor, headers, carb, etc  About this time I modified and cleaned up the wiring harness. The original harness had basically disintegrated and I needed to wire in the electric choke and the HEI properly (it was previously just a wire from the fuse board through the firewall)   Finally all the boring stuff - accessories and radiators etc…   Then fill it up with coolant and try and start it! …. Or not, as coolant started curse word out of everywhere… Closer inspection showed it was coming from a heater hose (easy enough to fix) and the right hand cylinder head - intake manifold joint (not so easy to fix). Well, I guess take it all apart again and see what’s going on… |
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Aug 11, 2021 15:42:12 GMT
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After begrudgingly stripping the intake manifold again, I did actually find the culprit of the leak - it looks like this head has been severely dropped at some point, and the bruises were preventing the intake gasket from being properly compressed. 5 mins with a needle file (while crouched inside the engine bay like Gollum) had it sorted. An easy fix, just annoying I didn’t spot it earlier!   Since I’d have to take the radiator out again, I figured I’d upgrade at the same time. The original looked okay, but the car has always struggled with climbing temps in traffic - I even sat out some of the autosolo at goodwood because of this. I went for an all aluminium one from eBay, which was cheapest by virtue of being the only one available in Europe  I also decided to switch to electric fans. There is a lot of debate on the chevelle forums about electric vs mechanical cooling fans, but let’s be real, electric ones are just better  And the fan on this car kept contacting the cowl, slowing it down. The fact that I already had these fans lying around had nothing to do with it    They’re wired in to come on at 91 deg top hose, and I’ve also wired them in to the A/C compressor - I do plan to refurb the A/C on this car, but in the meantime it means I can just switch the fans on permanently  Next up, the exhaust! |
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Aug 11, 2021 17:43:10 GMT
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Right,best take the rad back out and make proper brackets for those fans.
Those zip tie fixings will saw through the rad in short order with road vibration and ruin the rad.
You need to fix them with a frame that mounts on the sides of the rad.
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Aug 11, 2021 19:20:00 GMT
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Right,best take the rad back out and make proper brackets for those fans. Those zip tie fixings will saw through the rad in short order with road vibration and ruin the rad. You need to fix them with a frame that mounts on the sides of the rad. I’ve always mounted them this way in the past without issue, but I take your point, it is not the best way of mounting rad fans. For the record these are regular cable ties threaded around 3 rows of tubes, rather than the serrated zip tie type fixings that come with the fans. I’ll look into fixing them to the top and bottom rad mounts - there’s not really anywhere to fix them to the rad itself. I think I’ll also check my other car with its fan mounted like this; I’ll be honest I’d not really considered that as a failure mode |
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Aug 11, 2021 22:29:37 GMT
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I've seen loads of rads holed by fixing by ties through the fins. The fan just chafes against the rad and wears a big circle through the cooling fins.
Best safe than sorry with the mounting.
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It looks like you have enough space to knock up an Ali cowl that the fans mount to. Then you just have to mount the cowl.
I did similar on my Cressida if you felt like trawling through that thread, but I'm sure you get the idea.
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It looks like you have enough space to knock up an Ali cowl that the fans mount to. Then you just have to mount the cowl. I did similar on my Cressida if you felt like trawling through that thread, but I'm sure you get the idea. Just had a look through your thread, you’ve had quite an adventure with that car!! Fair play for sticking with it The original cowl clipped in to the bottom rad support and bolted to the top one, so I think I’ll do something similar but with Ali sheet - as you say there’s plenty of room in there |
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Aug 12, 2021 10:46:22 GMT
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It looks like you have enough space to knock up an Ali cowl that the fans mount to. Then you just have to mount the cowl. I did similar on my Cressida if you felt like trawling through that thread, but I'm sure you get the idea. Just had a look through your thread, you’ve had quite an adventure with that car!! Fair play for sticking with it The original cowl clipped in to the bottom rad support and bolted to the top one, so I think I’ll do something similar but with Ali sheet - as you say there’s plenty of room in there Tell me about it. My hand is healed now and hopefully this weekend I will be purchasing some motivation, so should be some movement on the thread soon.. |
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Paul Y
Posted a lot
Posts: 1,951
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Aug 12, 2021 13:06:13 GMT
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Good work Sir! Not wanting to teach you to suck eggs etc but did you remember to put thread sealer on the head bolts? As they screw into the water jacket you will find another area of water loss if you have forgotten to do this. As for the cowl I have seen a number of people (admittedly in the USA) use Aluminium baking trays as the basis for the fan shroud. Or just bend up a bit of ally.... P. |
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Aug 12, 2021 22:41:16 GMT
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I like the baking tray idea!
Unfortunately I probably would need 3 to cover my rad.. and work put how to mount one big fan across all three!
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Aug 13, 2021 10:23:32 GMT
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Good work Sir! Not wanting to teach you to suck eggs etc but did you remember to put thread sealer on the head bolts? As they screw into the water jacket you will find another area of water loss if you have forgotten to do this. As for the cowl I have seen a number of people (admittedly in the USA) use Aluminium baking trays as the basis for the fan shroud. Or just bend up a bit of ally.... P. The head bolts I used came with patch lock on the threads already, but that is a good tip for new players. I like the baking tray idea, but to be honest I think Ali sheet would be cheaper! |
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Aug 15, 2021 22:24:32 GMT
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With the engine breathing mods done, it needed a better exhaust to suit. I found some used Schoenfeld long tube headers on Facebook and for the exhaust I went with a summit racing 2.25 inch dual exhaust kit in aluminised steel. I would have preferred stainless but they didn’t have any in stock…  This is a true dual system by design, but I think I prefer the sound of a H pipe, so first step is to make up a H pipe!   Actually, the first step is to get the reducer pipes to line up properly… the headers I have had come off a G body el Camino and I think they’d been tweaked a bit to clear the cross member on that car. A simple matter of adjusting the angle of the flange on the passengers side pipe. I also took about 5 inches out of it to make it end level with the drivers side (for some reason the drivers side collector had been shortened?)  Much better. Now on with the H pipe   Then on with the rest of the mid pipes to the first mount at the rear of the silencers.   I had to modify the mount brackets slightly to use the original mounting holes in the frame - presumably the kit is made for a 2 door and the 4 door frame differs slightly in this area?  With the silencers in place, the tail pipes can be fitted and cut to length, unless you like the wheel barrow look   Overall a pretty well fitting exhaust, I think every pipe needed a little bit trimming off to get it all to sit nicely and tuck up under the car properly. I’ve seen a few cars where this clearly hasn’t been done and the exhaust looks a bit of a mess, but with a bit of care I think it looks pretty good!   I’ll try and get a video uploaded tomorrow |
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bstardchild
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 14,971
Club RR Member Number: 71
Member is Online
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Aug 15, 2021 22:50:47 GMT
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I’ll try and get a video uploaded tomorrow Presses F5 furiously!!!! |
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Nice work on the engine and exhaust,
This is looking better with each update,
What's going to be next, bodywork or will you keep the current patina ??
Nigel
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BMW E39 525i Sport
BMW E46 320d Sport Touring (now sold on.)
BMW E30 325 Touring (now sold on.)
BMW E30 320 Cabriolet (Project car - currently for sale.)
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Nice work on the exhaust, looks really tidy!
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Nice work on the engine and exhaust, This is looking better with each update, What's going to be next, bodywork or will you keep the current patina ?? Nigel Yeah, bodywork is next on the agenda, followed by interior. Theres still a fair bit of welding that need doing to make it watertight but thats less important than burnouts I'm trying to keep the patina as much as possible, where paint is required i'm attempting some faux patina - you'll see the first attempt soon |
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Aug 17, 2021 18:51:04 GMT
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Last Edit: Aug 17, 2021 18:51:47 GMT by Splitty456
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ive really enjoyed binge reading your thread (not seen it at all until today) i even watched the 307 build vid!
i offer words of caution about using stone chip paint as a top coat, ive learned to my cost its porous and meant to be used as a primer, my landrover chassis started rusting through it despite whire wheel and hydrate80 underneath
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Last Edit: Aug 18, 2021 9:55:13 GMT by darrenh
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And the fan on this car kept contacting the cowl, slowing it down.
