Sunday, September 23, 2007

Getting there!! Light at the end of the tunnel

Wow, a lot has happened since my last post. Due to trips and Internet problems I have gotten behind. Here is the update:
I finished my fuel lines all the way to the engine. I've attached some pictures showing the aluminum fuel line and the beading tool used to construct the lines.








The beading tool is Earl's part# 008ERL



Heater lines. I wanted to use some hard line instead of rubber line for the heater runs to keep the OD of the lines down and less worry about being close to the exhaust. I ended up going with copper pipe. To fit copper lines to the 3/4 rubber heater lines I had some standard copper fittings machined to .75 dia (thanks Lee) and then sweat soldered a ring to keep the hose from slipping off. For the 5/8 dia line a the standard 1/2" copper pipe was just right with a ring sweat soldered on it in a similar way. I'm sure there was probably a better way out there but that's what I've done. I spent about a day cutting, fitting and soldering. After all that time I have what is in the pics. Looking at it now I think it turned out but took way to long.
















I also finished the shifter close out. I want a nice fit to keep the noise and heat out of the cabin. I used the rubber boot from the f-body car. I removed the metal from around the perimiter and cut it smaller and rewelded it together. Then cut the boot down as well. Seems to work just fine.









I currently have the engine loaded into the engine bay with both headers on this time (to help set the placement of the heater lines and shifter closeout etc). I couldn't resist. I plugged in the wiring hooked up the battery and attempted to connect through the OBDII port with my laptop. Wouldn't connect. After some trouble shooting of the wiring I found it was just the software I was using was getting impatient and the autoprotocol feature wasn't working with the PCM. manually set the protocol and...Hello. hey PCM is working, engine's in.... SO I ran a quart or two through the fuel lines to flush out any dirt or metal in the section after the filter. Connected up the fuel line and....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T4qxA7LEkI

Only ran it for a few seconds since I don't have the cooling hooked up. Oh I also finished the throttle cable.

I think the next step is to pull the motor again and finish the hold down's on the heater lines. Misc work on the ABS mount. Clean everything up and add some heat shielding.











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