Well hello..... I didn't see you there. LOL
As this has been a crazy year (as I am sure it has been for all), I haven't had time to post, but I am always here looking at others projects...... a little "Dr. Feel Good" for my eyes.
Now that things have calmed a bit, I wanted to give a little update on the "Saleen Cammer" as well as a little project that I am sure will end up not being "little".
Car runs well! Haven't really put that many miles on it, just a few loops around town every few months to get an alignment or car show. Ofcouse the tuning the guys on "Car Fix" did on the show helped a lot with the unburnt fuel smell, but I needed to go a little bit further. I picked up a set of high flow catalytic converters from Pypes. As they are meant to go right after the collectors to take advantage of all that exhaust heat- I already saw a problem. My headers were custom pieces and do not leave enough room between the V band flange on the collector and the transmission. The next spot with a long enough run of straight exhaust tubing was right after the X pipe. Distance wise, it was only about 12-15 inches from where they were meant to be mounted in a perfect world, but still- my thinking was that I was not going to get all the heat needed. Either way, my fix was to use header wrap on the X Pipe. This way the heat from my headers (which are ceramic coated) now travel through the insulated X pipe through the Cats and then on. This should at least "buy" me a little more heat retention. After a text drive of about 20 minutes or so- Total success! Fuel smell has almost been eliminated.
Now on to the current project. After a few years now of having the small oil leak under the car (even when its not running), I have been slowly investigating and testing to see if its really the rear main seal, Oil pan gasket(s), or a leak from elsewhere higher up that is making its way sneakily down undetected to appear as though its one of those previous areas.
First clue is that it will drip even when it hasn't been run in months. It drips more obviously after its been run and the oil has thinned, but 3 or 4 months of just sitting in the garage, I will still see a little puddle. Another clue was when I was installing brand new axle bearings and seals. With just the rear of the car jacked up, no oil drips. The car sat like this for a little over a week as I awaited tools and parts to arrive in the mail. SO - the day I jacked it up in the rear, I also slid under the front and wiped everything down as much as possible as well as cleaned the floor under the engine. By the time I was done with the rear bearings, there were no engine leaks visible. My guess is that the oil in the pan was tilted away from the section in the rear that was leaking and thus didn't drip. This gave me hope that it was just something like pan gaskets (as Jay had originally suggested it might be) when my mind kept going to rear main seal.
My last little clue was the oil pan fasteners. It currently has studs with flange nuts all the way around. A year or so ago, I went around the pan and hand snugged them all to approx. the same tightness (torque becomes an issue as there is not much room under there to get the torque wrench to each nut give the headers, starter, cross member, custom oil pan flare outs for additional oil capacity, etc. I had noticed when doing this that it did feel as though a few of them were a little looser than the others. Unfortunately, even after I snugged each one down at that time, the oil puddle kept haunting me. This time, after the rear bearing job, I went around to each stud/nut again to see if any had loosened and they had! the current fastener set up will definately need to be changed.
So in preparation, I purchased 2 brand new Milodon Premium FE oil pan gaskets (because the engine has a windage tray), High temp Copper RTV (I know everyone says black or red- but this copper stuff specifically says for use with oil pans and I had it on hand from the exhaust work recently completed), a set of Stage-8 locking oil pan bolts to replace the studs and flange nuts currently on there, and an engine support bar (because I am going to try and do this without pulling the engine. What will need to be done in order to access the pan is that the front K member will need to be dropped. My thinking is that it will be "easier" to do that then to pull apart the exhaust, Headers, trans, fuel system, coolant system......etc to pull the engine. "Easier" meaning the lesser of 2 evils.
The only part of not pulling the engine I will regret is that I have always wanted to connect the small front sump of the oil pan to the rear deep sump. I am not sure why this pan was designed like this (even has 2 oil drain plugs), but in my mind the 2 quarts of so that would live in the smaller front sump are basically useless. My thought was to weld 2 seperate -12 AN fittings to the front sump and 2 matching -12 AN fittings to the rear sump- Attaching them with braided hose and AN fittings. This way they can be connected after the engine has been installed and can run under the K member bracing to allow the front sump oil to flow freely into the rear sump (increasing capacity by like 2 quarts!)....... I guess that will have to wait for another time.
Anyway, I know these posts are slightly boring without photos, So I will try and snap a few as this "little" project gets under way.
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