Just a short report this week, plus a video. I got the rear end gears installed on Wednesday night, and spent Friday night and Saturday until noon getting the throttle linkage worked out. From there I started working on the wiring, disconnecting all the wiring for the old ems-pro EFI system, and the datalogger electronics that I had added to it, and then working over the wiring for the MS3X that I had put together on the dyno. Bill Conley was in town over the weekend visiting his wife's family, and he stopped by for a few hours on Saturday night to help out. Towards the end of the night we had beer and pizza, and Bill snapped this photo of me installing some of the MS3X wiring in the car:
I had no idea that the broad, flat surface of the plenum would be so convenient for holding a couple of beers
Anyway, I got most of the way done with the wiring on Saturday night and finished the MS3X wiring up by about noon on Sunday. After a family commitment I was back out in the shop by 3:00; I still had to install the wiring for the O2 sensor controller and a new relay and wiring for the electric water pump. Once finished with that I turned on the power, and happily there was no smoke. After checking out some of the systems everything seemed to be working well except for the Aeromotive fuel pump. It had flipped on once when I was messing with the wiring, and that was it. Finally I gave up on that for a while, and finished up under the car, which involved filling the differential with oil, draining the old transmission fluid, installing the pipes and mufflers, and then installing the rear tires in preparation for breaking in the rear end gears. After that was all done it was around 6:00 PM, and I decided to take the fuel pump and filter arrangement of the dyno and plug it into the car. Once I did this the fuel system started working fine. Filled her up with trans fluid and put water in the radiator, and crossed my fingers as I turned the key. The engine spun over with no trouble, but wouldn't start. I broke down and hooked the computer up to the EFI system, and realized at once when the display came up that I had not recalibrated the throttle position sensor. I did that, and tried again, and this time the car fired right up. Next I wired in the electric fan control, and set up the software to turn the fans on at 180 degrees, and started the engine again. As it warmed up the idle came up higher and higher, and I still have to address that issue. The Accufab throttle bodies have the throttle stop screws loctited in place, and there is no additional screw to set the throttle openings, so I had to try to do that with the linkage. That of course is not the ideal solution, and I'm going to have to work on that in the coming week to find a solution. But after adjusting the throttle linkage a little more I got the engine to settle into a 1500 RPM idle (?), and warmed it up. Everything looked fine, so after it cooled a little I took the following video, where I started up the engine again and put the car in first gear to break in the new rear end gears. The video is not the greatest quality but you will get the idea. You will also see that there is a lot of cleanup and finish work left to do on the car:
http://youtu.be/DZb7XK9qNMMAfter I got done breaking in the rear end gears I felt pretty good about this thing. Then, I looked under the car, and saw a big puddle of oil with drips coming from the back of the pan
I'm a little baffled by this, because the engine wasn't leaking any oil on the dyno, but somehow between the move from the dyno to the car, something has changed. I started the car up again to try to find the source of the leak but it appears to be dripping all across the back of the oil pan, and the front side of the flywheel is wet with oil. Its almost like the rear main blew out, and badly at that. Right up to that point I was confident I was going to make it to the track on Friday this week, but it is leaking so much oil I don't think I dare take it racing. It looks like I'm going to have to pull the pan. I will do some more investigation on this tomorrow night and try to figure out where it is leaking; maybe I can patch it externally with some RTV if its not the rear main. We'll have to wait and see if I can make it to the track or not. I'll post another update next Sunday...