How to Eat an Elephant

Hey there gang. (I mean that only as a casual greeting, this is not a newsletter for illicit gang related activities) In the last post I got old Grace running on all cylinders. I even drove her around the block that week. After that was done, I took some time away from the garage. It seems my wife felt that I spent too much time out there and she may have been right. Anyway, fast forward a couple months, and I headed back out to work on actually getting the car actually road worthy.

When I put the 5.0 in, I moved the transmission and motor forward 3" (to the factory mounting location for a V8 Falcon) from where the old 2.3L had been. This meant that the clearance between the water pump an cooling fan got a lot tighter. My old shroud was about 2.5" thick, so I wanted the thinnest fan shroud I could get. 3/4" was about as thin as was practical. I could not find anyone who sold a fan shroud like that, so like usual, I hatched a plan to build it.

The main problem I had was that I don't have a sheet metal brake, and I don't know anyone who does. I considered getting a membership to one of those "maker" shops that let you use a shop for whatever you want to build. While that would be fun, they aren't cheap and you end up having to get trained on every piece of equipment, which seemed like a pain just to make a fan shroud. 

Shroud bending in progress

Thankfully, while watching youtube one day, I saw a video that reminded me that a hydraulic press can be used to bend metal. I had almost all the metal scrap I needed, and only had to buy about five dollars worth of metal.

The end result was definitely not show-quality, but nothing on this car is, so it fit in just fine. I fired up the aluminum welding spool gun on my MIG and welded some standoffs to mount the shroud.

I then cut the shroud to fit the fan and mounted it. Even with the slim shroud, I was lacking clearance. The water pump had a threaded nub for mounting a mechanical fan. I cut the threaded portion (about 1" off) and ended up with about 1/2-3/4" clearance between the water pump and fan. When I first installed it, it wasn't activating, so I had to check the ECU hardware setup and re-configure some software settings in the ECU.

The coolant system capacity is pretty huge on this car. When I filled it up initially, the 2.5 gallons I had on hand didn't quite top it off. I recently remembered that I have a secret stash under the workbench, so I pulled it out and finished the job.

On thing I had noticed when driving around the block was that the fumes from the paint burning off the headers flowed nicely into the cabin on account of the massive shifter hole. Once again, moving the transmission forward gave me more work to do. The main difficulty in this process was not starting the carpet on fire.

Two and a half years ago I noticed that my front brakes didn't grab quite like they should. I tried a couple things to improve them, but wasn't successful. I figured I should actually check brake line pressure to see if I was making enough pressure to actually stop. My brake system has two parallel master cylinders, and the braking bias from front to rear can be adjusted with the linkage that connects them, which is called a balance bar. Brake pressures should be able to reach 1200 PSI, and pressures below 600 PSI may not stop the car. I found that I was only making about 750 PSI to the front brakes with my initial balance bar setting. I then adjusted the bar fully in one direction an could barely make 600 PSI with all my leg strength. I then adjusted fully the other way and was able to make 1200 PSI maxed out. I'll need to do some follow up testing.

And finally, I got around to syncing the throttles. This took a little time, but wasn't terribly difficult. I then drove the car around the block again. One significant drawback of this intake is that it's intended for larger displacement engines, so it can be pretty touchy. At 1500 RPM, 10% pedal application will give a manifold pressure reading equal to barometric pressure... essentially that is wide open throttle. I have some ideas on how to improve this situation, but I won't get into that right now.

I guess there's one other thing I did. I installed the grille to keep my small and eager helper from shoving a screwdriver into the radiator. A few weeks ago I caught him making a beeline for my very not cheap Cibie headlights with a ball peen hammer.

That's all for now, but stay healthy out there, and here's to hoping there's an economy left when COVID-19 isn't the only thing anyone ever talks about. I'm 60% sure I've had it already, and 60% of the time I'm right every time.