Might I remind you of my clutch disc debacle of a few years back? Stuff happens.
Might I remind you of my clutch disc debacle of a few years back? Stuff happens.
wawazat said:Might I remind you of my clutch disc debacle of a few years back? Stuff happens.
thanks man, i appreciate that! ;-)
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:Final count:
2 plugs loose
3 plugs finger tight
3 plugs "socket in hand" tight
welcome to challenge thrash! at least you installed all 8
Sounds like you will have cut your drag times down by several seconds and you still have 9 months time to find more speed!
Happens to all of us, you keep checking and double checking but we don't have a team of race techs behind us.
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:Final count:
2 plugs loose
3 plugs finger tight
3 plugs "socket in hand" tight
Think of this more as adding safety margin to the halfshaft welds and gains for next year.
Not car related but I once had completely reassembled the transmission on a large HVAC chiller, rigged it into place and reassembled the compressor section. Somewhere around this point I couldn't remember if I'd tightened the flare nut on the oil supply line to the main bearings. When back together the only access inside was a roughly 12" x 12" access plate and lots of work if I wasn't able to figure something out. I couldn't find a 15/16" crow foot wrench so I bought a cheap wrench at a nearby hardware store, heated it up with my torch and made this:
Yep, it was tight. At least I slept that night! Keep up the great work.
So, thermal management. Specifically, dealing with heat from the headers:
the C4 LT1 had these cool spark plug wire retainer brackets that bolt to the heads:
They worked for the stock routing with stock manifolds, but I couldn't use them as intended with these headers. I can, however, use them to support a lower heat shield, which I will attach to the bottom of the shields I made for 2023. Partial CAD concept below:
so I separated the plastic wire retainer bits from the brackets:
using a piece of 1/16" steel TIG rod that I beat flat on one end:
with those out of the way, I can trim and bend and drill the brackets, then form and attach the lower shield.
I'm burning a PTO day tomorrow to work on this stuff, as I've been invited to display the car and do a presentation and Q&A at the Detroit Area Corvair Club's annual Homecoming meet this Saturday in Ann Arbor.
Is that a fan switch in the head, or the ECT?
I melted almost all the various fan switches I put in my '77, and eventually did a capillary-tube/rheostat one in the rad fins. If I didn't melt the fan switches on the outside, I melted them on the inside.
When I went EFI for a time, I put the ECT in the intake manifold.
In reply to SkinnyG (Forum Supporter) :
ECT sender for gauge and idiot light, not used by PCM for engine control.
Making some progress on heat shields. AK1 gets the big brain award of the day for suggesting I use heat to make the material easier to bend.
After shaping both upper extension, I removed the exhaust from the collectors back, to give me enough room to CAD up lower extensions:
shown: no exhaust. Not shown: CAD, because at this point I realized I should make the lower forward pieces, that will be the floor of the box around the primary tubes. So I transferred the CAD for those to a scrap of aluminum leftover from cutting the pontoon boat gas tank down to size. but I'm not a smart man, and I didn't even consider that I'm neither strong enough nor heavy enough to bend this stuff.
and now it's 9:30 PM and I'm calling it for the night.
Lower heat shields will be attached to heads by 2 brackets per side. Passenger rear bracket is most complex shape, as it has to be stepped to clear the temp sensor. So I went from rough measurements to CAD and laid it out on a sheet of aluminum:
then cut with hand shear and band saw, and drilled holes for inside corner cuts:
then using propane torch heat and either the edge of the welding table or a pair of wide jaw Vise Grips, I ended up with:
and here's where it's gonna live:
I should have made the inside corner holes bigger and closer together, as the corners tore in a couple places. After I know it all fits together, I'll probably TIG the corners. Probably.
one down, three much simpler to go. Here's a not-to-size mock-up showing approximately what the bottom of the box will look like:
Lower shields will protect spark plug boots and wires, temp sensor, dipstick, and knock sensor and wire.
break time is over, back to work I go. more later.
I saw a non-shiny object:
and redirected my effort for a bit:
I only had a small piece of 1500 wet or dry, some rubbing compound, and some 3-in-1 cleaner polish wax. It's never gonna be great, but it might be good. It'll certainly be good enough.
The alloy on your heat shield brackets is too hard. They might survive if you do a TIG bead along every bend. The striations with the grain make me guess it is 6061 T6, which should never be bent at all. The heat to bend tends to confirm. Regrettably that same annealing does not agree with 6061. It would be OK with 3003 or 5052, but when working with scraps I always assume 6061, which can be bent some if T4 or softer, but T6 is the most common thing you come across, by a wide margin. If you can't read the mill marks, assume the most brittle.
In reply to TurnerX19 :
thanks for the info! i'll call these "Rev 1" and see how long they last. Fortunately it only has to support a few oz.
Spent some quality time in the CAD lab last night, got one heat shield fully modeled:
now pondering which surfaces will be part of which piece. Goal is a 2-piece design that will be easy to install and remove.
bilge fans arrived, and AK2 helped me check out the air movement through the CAD shield. I think they won't be too hard to package and duct. Just need to find budget space for them.
Won't make much more progress until the weekend. working on a friend's race car tonight, and having dinner with the other inventor of The Childo on Thursday after sitting in on a couple afib ablation cases using our device. That's gonna be wild. Will be my first time seeing it in use.
This is wonderful to look through. I see stuff and think - "Hey, I know those spot welds" "I remember cutting that metal out - what a pain"
I think to myself, wow - there's so much in here that I can learn from.
Then I realize that I'm only on Page 22 of 100...
Time for a drink.
chris_white said:This is wonderful to look through... I think to myself, wow - there's so much in here that I can learn from...
you'll probably find the "Don't do it that way" to "Definitely do it that way" ratio is about 10:1. I've tried to include the bad with the good, and explain the whys as much as the hows. i'm glad you're finding some value in it. :-)
I've been chipping away at the passenger side heat shield a few minutes at a time. Since the last update, I've made some changes in CAD that will improve function and installation. Here's the revised layout of the bottom:
Here's a section view showing clearance for temp sender and attachment of mount:
and a couple views of trial fit:
I still have to install forward mount, add the spigot for bilge fan duct, and weld another attachment point to secondary pipe, but I think this design will work well. Side 2 should go a lot quicker.
AC, I'm sure you've found it already, but if you put soot on the aluminum and then heat it till the soot is burned off you have destroyed the temper of the aluminum and you can bend it a lot easier.
Nice use of safety-free foot gear there sport! Way to show the man that he can't tell you what to wear in your own garage!
In reply to wawazat :
He's just trying to impress Stampie
RacetruckRon said:In reply to wawazat :
He's just trying to impress Stampie
I don't have to try.
Hahaha!
I was about to say, happy to see, "safety flops" are approved here....I have truely found my new home 
In reply to fouckhest :
Fight the power, lil G!
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