The Silver Buick's 1969 Firebird OHC six project.

[Deaf Bob]

Looking pretty good!

[TheSilverBuick]

Bent up some straps to bolt to the head to support the turbo. I will probably make a bolt on lower support from a stud ran through one of the transmission mounting holes just to put some extra stiffening in the support.





In the car, I'll have to move the external oil pressure regulator and re-plumb the electric water pump and reverse cooling hoses, but its doable.




It supports the turbo, but will likely need extra support from the rear, particularly if I put flex couplers on the cross over pipes.

[TheSilverBuick]

Wow, I hadn't updated this since before I moved! I brought this car out to the new house a while ago and the family and I have been taking the Skylark to a Sunday cars and coffee car show that happens every other weekend and been wanting to take the Firebird but it didn't have any rear seat belts so was a no go. Fortunately Summit Racing is right down the street getting a set of universal seatbelts wasn't a problem, but the bolts were a bit back ordered. Finally got them all installed about a month ago.


Then this weekend was going to be the moment of truth and we were going to go to the car show in the Firebird.... Almost.

So starting Friday night, even after putting a new transmission pan gasket and rtv in it, and even letting it sit for 24 hours before putting fluid in it, it still leaks a fair amount of fluid so I wanted to jack it up and slightly tighten all the pan bolts and wanted a working surface in the backyard until I save up for some dirt work and concrete so.... For about $100 I now have 64 square feet of working area on the gravel. Still seems to be seeping a bit, time will tell if snugging them helped at all. I'm getting ready to put the 4L60e in it and am going to simply get a Microsquirt controller for it. In the mean time, I've pulled the 4.56 gears out of storage and am thinking of putting them in sooner rather than later.



Then Saturday morning.... Since it was a car show we were going to the next day I thought I'd clean up some wiring under the hood and then go get it washed, and be ready for the cruise. Well..... The wiring I was cleaning up I decided to move the water pump relay and shorten up the wires, well I apparently got two wires crossed and when driving to the car wash the engine got hot so I pulled over to troubleshoot. I could smell electrical burning in the car, not good, and the water pump wasn't running. It also popped the 15amp water pump fuse so yanking some wire connectors off and hotwired the water pump to the battery which cooled down the engine quickly but strangely the fan stayed on. BUT, it still fired up and everything on the screen was normal, so drove home to yank the Megasquirt out. At which point in time the Dog thought he was going to go for a ride, d'oh!


And now the carnage. Opened the Megasquirt and the INJ outputs were toasted, particularly the one the water pump was hooked to was completely vaporized away. If you've read through this thread, you may recall when I first got the Firebird running I toasted the Megasquirt's power circuit when I mis-wired the alternator to the wrong side of the cut off switch, and that white wire down by the exposed copper was a jumper lead I had to put in from burning out the connection in the board.


This resistor (R20) was toasted.


Looking at some troubleshooting schematics, R20 is part of the INJ1 circuit, which is what I had the water pump wired to.
https://www.diyautotune.com/support/...jector-driver/


So I had another Megasquirt board I've scavenged parts off of before (such as the power circuit when I toasted the one here), so thought I'd could just take a few pieces off, maybe make a jumper wire or two and be back in action....


But after transferring the resistor and doing some other continuity checks, something else was shorting the INJ outputs to ground and I'm not sure where. SO I began transferring parts from the burned out board to my spare parts board until it was complete! Look Ma I put the smoke back in! A new board from DIYautotune.com is $219.


Back together with the new "old" board.



Now Sunday morning.... Re-wired the relay, triple checked it was wired correctly, and plugged in the Megasquirt, and success! The water pump cycled on and off as it was supposed to, so off to go get it washed.
https://www.facebook.com/randal.burn...1918502611604/

Then apparently the car show location changed at some point between 7pm Saturday night and Sunday as went we arrived there, no one was there and I checked the Facebook page and it had an "Alternate" meeting location that I didn't want to drive 30 minutes more too. So we decided to go have the coolest car at the Wilbur May Arboretum. Put 40 miles on the Firebird today in 80ºF weather, mixed freeway and surface street driving and it ran flawlessly. So I'm going to call that a win.

[Beagle]

A win indeed!

[silver_bullet]

Nice repair and recovery!

[TheSilverBuick]

Made its first trip to my "new" job, and didn't have to drive or park on dirt! It gets warmer in stop and go traffic, but that is expected when there is no airflow across the radiator. When I get a VSS hooked up (like with the 4L60e swap) I'll probably have the radiator fan come on at 190ºF and below 20mph instead of just over 205ºF and no speed criteria. It never actually broke over 195ºF, but it's something to watch.

[TheSilverBuick]

Trying to make a push for Drag Week 2018. Photobucket becoming ransomware really killed my enthusiasum for posting since I typically post a bunch of pictures, so I'm going to start linking Facebook pictures again and they'll eventually have broken links too, but oh well.

The goal is to have a turbo engine together in time for Drag Week. At bare minimum have a turbo on the car with the boost capped low.

About a year and a half ago I was working with a guy on getting an intake manifold casted for EFI and he patterned it after my sheet metal one, but shortened up the runners to make sure it fits a variety of vehicles. His primary market is the Chevy 250, but he cast enough material into the intake so that it could be ported a bit differently and line up with the OHC Pontiac ports. About a month a go I bought the first one and had it sent directly to Nick Smithberg for finishing work. Nick's preliminary assessment is the runners should be longer, and for some reason the center port dividers stop about an inch short of the plenum. Nick is going to open up the plenum and extend the dividers and do his other magic to it. I would like the 292 machined off and I'll replace it with either OHC or PMD decal of some sort.


With that, I sent him a 72lb cylinder head to pair up to it. I sent a couple Manley valves for preliminary use, but now we have decided to run with what I have rather than buy more parts so need to send him the remaining valves.


I finally assembled one of the two 10x12 sheds I got. I emptied the storage unit with all the heavy stuff in it, namely 7 engines and the air compressor. I don't have power out there (yet?) to run the air compressor, but looking at getting a marine battery, solar panel charger and some 12v LED lighting. The big thing is I've got my turbo header back home and can start working on it again, hopefully finishing it up in the next month or two.





The next bit of planning, I want to get a tube core support to make the intercooler plumbing simpler and start the short block machine work.

Oh, I also picked up some Summit Racing open box discount parts for anywhere between 50%-75% off. A new Goodmark aluminum radiator, a higher stall converter for the 4L60e I'm putting in it, and a spare Menziere 55gpm pump motor for when I get a 55gpm pump for the car.

[squirrel]

that's a neat intake! coincidence...just last night, I got to thinking that I need to get a 292 put together, to put in the bread truck.

The pictures..you can upload them to this site, no need to use facebook. Just click on the photo icon, then click the upload tab, then find your image file, then click "send it to the server", and there you go, bob's your uncle, etc.

[DanStokes]

I host mine on my desktop. I use the weird icon at the top right of the page (it looks like a suitcase with a fishhook in it) (upload attachments) and then follow the directions - easy. And you have control of all your pics!

Dan

[TheSilverBuick]

Yeah, it was easy to cross post in multiple forums with a 3rd party host, just highlight, copy, paste.

[mopar57]

Glad to hear about t6his one again, a favorite of mine Randall.

[TheSilverBuick]

Getting some work done! At Nick's recommendation I ordered a performance intake/exhaust gasket from Clifford to get some more port size. He's got it marked out and starting the rough port work.

The gasket ports scribed out.


It squares up the exhaust ports on the end. I'll have match up my header flange, but that isn't a big deal since I haven't done final welding on the header flange.


Roughed in.



Unfortunately the valves I had are not for this head. Thought they were, but are not =/ So that's going to be an extra few hundred dollars for new valves.

[Beagle]

If you have another one to do a before weight, you can do the weight before and after... that is a shit ton of metal !!!! If the port CSA stays anywhere close to that you are going to be shocked at how much less it weighs I bet.

[TheSilverBuick]

Going out Fedex weighed it at 73 pounds in cardboard!

[TheSilverBuick]

Hot off the presses. All I can do is show pictures, I trust Nick is doing the right things.

Before any work is done on the valve side of the intake port.


A rough cut.


A very cleaned up port compared to a rough cut port.


A closer picture of the intake port.