1993 Ford Escort KL swap / SCCA SMF build

Swank Force One wrote:

turboswede wrote:

Swank Force One wrote:

mazdeuce wrote: OK, but you're going to have to figure out how to do it eventually. I get that you want to remove one variable when getting things going. Keep in the back of your head that you're missing a skill set here, one that's easily learnable. I'm all excited for you to get this running. It's a damn cool car.

I know how to do it, it's pretty easy on this car, i just don't have the equipment, space, or time to do it myself at the moment. When i'm driving it back from Louisville in a couple weeks, i'll just bring it by in person. It's pretty likely that they'll touch it up for free, the guy who was doing it is a nice guy.

You have a smart phone, a tape measure, some wrenches, a jack and a set of jack stands? You do? Then you have the tools to get it just as close as they did, if not closer. Its just about going slowly and using a process that is repeatable. The rack and lasers just makes it all easier, but the process is essentially the same.

I even have a laser level that will measure angle! What i don't have is a readily available work space at the moment, and it's cold outside. Either way, i'll be doing it myself in the future, especially once i start driving it and moving away from the "base" alignment. But at the moment, i paid for an alignment to my specifications, and i didn't quite get it, so they're fixing it for free. It'd be a silly thing for me to do it myself when they can do it much quicker for "free", and are probably better than me at it.

Good. We completely agree. Just wanted to make sure you knew that you were stacking a bunch of Bob Costas excuses on top of the one valid one.

Nice writeup in the magazine!

bgkast wrote: Nice writeup in the magazine!

Thanks!

Picked up the trailer tonite, the car is leaving in about 9 hours to go down to Ludwig Motorsports to have the Haltech wired up and to get tuned.

Super excited!!!

Annndddd..... picking up the next project on the way home. One 1993 Miata coming right up!

Well?

Well what? It'll be down there for a couple weeks.

However, looks like i'll be getting the MSM dyno-tuned the same day as the Escort, so that'll be nice to finally be able to drive that car with a tune worth a E36 M3.

JamesMcD wrote: Well?

Well, there is a basket case miata sitting in my barn.....

"Basket case" doesn't begin to describe that thing. It was certainly priced correctly.

In reply to Swank Force One:

I'll agree to that point

Car ran earlier today.

On 3 cylinders, and stayed running. Made 73psi of oil pressure revving low, so that's good.

Unfortunately, it won't run on 6 cylinders. Compression is good on all 6.

Front bank refuses to run, no combustion, header staying stone cold, and it's pushing air out of the ITBs.

That's pretty much the nail in the coffin for this season. I won't have time to get back into this car to this extent until late July. I'll update then.

That's really too bad. A lot of ground got covered though, you should be in good shape when you start back in on it.

Sucks to hear that Ben, I can imagine your frustration.

Give you tree-fiddy for it.

Swank Force One wrote: Front bank refuses to run, no combustion, header staying stone cold, and it's pushing air out of the ITBs. That's pretty much the nail in the coffin for this season. I won't have time to get back into this car to this extent until late July. I'll update then.

Did you have it running before?

Seriously, instead of back burnering it out of frustration, spend a day triple checking all the little E36 M3 that comes up. You might be able to figure it out pretty easy. If it is something serious, take a break.

I've never seen this motor run.

It's pretty obvious that it wasn't timed correctly (or snapped a cam, but i'm reasonably sure it's not that). Timing this motor is going to require yanking the motor again.

It's not just frustration... it's that i've got another car in my garage right now, and i have to go 2 hours south to pick the car up, which will run me about $150 in towing costs. Then it'll have to be towed to my garage whenever i have a space open. Then pull the motor and re-time it. Then tow it 2 hours south again.

Don't really have the time, space, or the money for that right now, so i gotta just go pick it up and dump it at the storage garage at my apartment and leave it alone.

I'm not questioning your judgement, but what's driving the "pull the motor to time the cams" requirement? Doesn't seem normal...

It's also not normal to have a KL in a BG chassis lol.

I don't think i can get the timing cover off with the motor in the car. Then there's all the pulleys and brackets that need to be removed before i can even get to the timing cover. ITBs have to come off to take off the valve cover in the event that the cams haven't meshed together properly.

Basically i probably should have thought harder about not putting a timing cover on this thing.

Ouch! Sorry to hear that.

Seconding the Ouch to this. I know this isn't a factory install where access may have been easier to consider; I guess leaving the cover off for next time is an easy solution. Or maybe something else can be thought up, you've got some time.

Does this mean you're free to come help me on my stupid projects because your smarter project is in dry dock for a while?

All isn't lost just yet. Investigating which way the missing tooth on the trigger wheel sits when motor is at tdc. Ignition timing might be 180 off.

Pres, I would if I wasn't balls deep in mndsm's challenge car. Actually working on it right this second. Motor about to come out. This thing is a berkeleying basket case.

Swank Force One wrote: Ignition timing might be 180 off.

Let's get caught up again.

3/18/13

Chris working his magic.

The result of me being a moron and forgetting to send two sets of front bank wires instead of a full normal set. That doesn't look goofy at all! (Sending down another front set today.)

Swank Force One wrote: I've never seen this motor run. It's pretty obvious that it wasn't timed correctly (or snapped a cam, but i'm reasonably sure it's not that). Timing this motor is going to require yanking the motor again. It's not just frustration... it's that i've got another car in my garage right now, and i have to go 2 hours south to pick the car up, which will run me about $150 in towing costs. Then it'll have to be towed to my garage whenever i have a space open. Then pull the motor and re-time it. Then tow it 2 hours south again. Don't really have the time, space, or the money for that right now, so i gotta just go pick it up and dump it at the storage garage at my apartment and leave it alone.

4/3/13

Orrrrrr....

I could put on my man pants and get this bitch running.

[B]Yesterday:[/B]

If there's ONE good thing about this swap, it's that there's actually MORE room on the timing belt side than there is in any car that had this motor from factory.

Removed timing covers and accessory pulleys.

And here we have a problem. There's no way this car should have run at all. Chris is a wizard. The cam pulleys on these motors are actually the SAME part, same part number, same everything front and rear. They're actually "flip-able." On one side, they're marked with an "L", on the other, an "R." Each side has different timing marks that correspond with the notches on the head on the front bank, valve cover on the rear.

It's IMPOSSIBLE to time the motor correctly if they're backwards.... which, they were. The back bank was a good 90 degrees out (advanced), and the front bank was around 180 degrees out. (Probably why it was shooting gas/flames out the throttles.)

Really, besides the belt being an utter whore to deal with in terms of getting it over the crank sprocket, timing this motor isn't bad at all. Now that i've done it once, i could probably do it with a helping hand and air tools in about an hour, start to finish.

So i threw it back together, and called Chris to let him know what happened, and so he could walk me through how to re-set the ignition timing to get the car to start again.

Ooooooo.... PRETTY.

New super-fancy Hall Sensor.

Trigger tooth offset set to 0, Angle to 53 degrees.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0yEAGcv5tM

2nd start, couple throttle blips. This is quite literally me just tapping the gas pedal. This berkeleying thing revs like a sport bike, and is going to be an utter WHORE to drive on the street. 2nd blip is to 4000rpms. It's idling at 1700rpms, and you can still hear it camming a little bit.

Yes, i realize it's loud enough that my phone mic has no idea wtf is going on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0eBOIA2fOs

Dragging the car back down to Chris on Saturday for dyno tuning.

I didn't get it to the dyno. It blew up Thursday night while idling.

4/4/13

I think we should be referring to this particular motor in the past tense at this point.

I idled it today to burp the cooling system and just to circulate the oil a bit. Made it about 5 minutes, up to 133 degrees water temp, oil pressure holding at 83psi (idle high due to base map).

Then it died. Wouldn't restart, starter making horrible noises, but no crank. Figured maybe it vapor locked (running crazy rich on base map.) since there was gas coming up out of the throttles once it died.

Pulled the plugs, threw the car up in the air to drain and change the oil. Oil looked good.

While it was in the air, threw a 1/2 ratchet on the crank to turn the motor over by hand. Seemed really hard to move.

Then the timing belt skipped. Belt is frozen. I'm guessing a seized cam. Pissed, i went home.

Full post-mortem to follow tomorrow as i investigate. I'm finding it really difficult to love these KL motors if i must be honest. Been a total pain in the berkeleying ass the entire way. These are fresh rebuilt heads with all clearances to factory spec, the cams had zero damage, beautiful finish on the contact surfaces. All torque specs perfect and dead on, cams turned easily by hand prior to this.

Turbo BP may have been the correct answer.

4/5/13

Cam pulley locator pin sheared. Front exhaust cam seized. Top idler pulley is hosed. Front cam gear inner lip is shattered.

Cam is hosed and I can't trust these heads any more.

Built motor is all I can really do from here.

But hey, at least i got my new Pierce Motorsports strut tower brace installed!

CARNAGE

Well THAT'S not gone well!

Already sold the bottom end out of the car. Cams going out to Delta to get copied tomorrow. Fresh heads with RD titanium retainers, chromoly locks, and Interprep springs, and ported acquired. New 01-02 bottom end will be here this week to put the 12:1 forged internals in.

This motor should approach or break 300whp.

So with what I would call "crazy high" oil pressure, the exhaust cam seized? What oil is in this thing, and have you figured out why this happened?

pres589 wrote: So with what I would call "crazy high" oil pressure, the exhaust cam seized? What oil is in this thing, and have you figured out why this happened?

That's not ridiculously high for one of these with tight tolerances, while cold, at 1700rpms.

Rotella T6 was in it.

Haven't figured out why it happened. Too many things broke to really properly go back and tell exactly what happened.

Not much i can do besides be extra careful on the next motor and hope it's not some horrible deja vu scenario, because this time we're talking high stakes.

As in.... one of the top 5 most built/powerful n/a KLs in the last decade or so. Gerry Sica and "leo323" are probably the only ones out there that have gone farther than this.

I'd really rather not lose another set of heads.