ausiejohn : I have a borgeson in my 1970 big block with stock manifolds and getting the number 3 cylinder spark plug out and in is impossible.
My only course of action appears to be unbolting the drivers side engine mount and elevating the the engine 1" to 1 1/2". Anyone else having the #3 spark plug issue?

 

Never heard back from Jim Shea regarding the pics he posted in the thread I linked to in post #7. But, I went back to that thread today to see if I could make out any dimensions in the photos and discovered the photos have been fixed. Not the greatest resolution but much better than the original blurry Photobucket pics.

Here are three of those pics. The other 3 were simply comparing the mounting holes in a Jeep gearbox to the stock C3 gearbox which doesn't help since Borgeson has already sorted out a new mounting plate.

Note the pics show an actual Jeep gearbox (not the Borgeson) but other than the mounting pads the dimensions should be the same.

















Not sure how much they'll help. I'll have to study them in a bit more detail. One of the issues with a size comparison is how much more of the Borgeson box hangs over the frame, which negates some of the size difference.


DC

 

After studying the drawings in the post above, there is still not enough info to make a determination either way as to fitment of the Stan's Tri-Y headers with the Borgeson gearbox. It still looks promising but there are potential interference points.

It looks like the best case is that the Borgeson box is only 3/16" closer to the engine than is the factory gearbox. That's fairly close to the 3/8" I read about in another thread. Because the top of the Borgeson box where the lash adjustment screw is located is more square than the factory box, it's possible there might be a clearance issue with the #1 header tube and the corner of the box labeled "A" in the photo in post #19.

I've held off on contacting Stan's again until I had better measurements but I probably have everything I'm going to get at this point unless someone with a factory gearbox can take some measurements to compare to those I've taken.

DC

 

Thanks for the engineering drawings. Since I have both of these units I'll volunteer to measure. Give me a couple of days......

 

Anything you can provide will be appreciated. Thanks for the help.

DC

 

DC, this appears to be another thing we are both interested in. I spoke with Stans maybe 3 or 4 years ago. At that time the person I spoke with did not know if it would clear the Borgeson unit. He couldn't give me a clearance number, and said only that they will definitely clear the stock unit. Maybe they know now given how many of these Borgeson's are put into C3's.

I didn't dig any further since then as I had already had the power cylinder and control valve rebuilt. So, my plan is to just have the gear box rebuilt and use it until things start to leak again. The fact is that when new the car's steering was darn tight. I think folks who never drove a C3 when new might judge the steering by how it is after 50k miles. On my with 90k it is very loose at this point. But properly rebuilt will give steering response most people would rate very good to excellent , IMHO.

Even if it does clear, if it's close, another factor could be heat. The ceramic coated option can keep this way down. But, I'd hate to pay for ceramic and then ding the pipe for clearance at a specific spot where heat transfer might be a concern.In any case, I will be interested in what you find.

 

Cool. I ended up with the Borgeson unit because the previous owner and I had both thrown all kinds of money at parts and repairs for the factory steering to get it to stop leaking and were unsuccessful. The factory system would have been just fine had I been able to stop the leaks. That said, I do prefer the way the Borgeson feels on the road.

I communicated with a guy at Stan's named Bruce (he's no longer there) a year or so ago. At that time, he said they had not installed their Tri-Y header on a C3 with a Borgeson steering system and did not know anyone who had. He could not confirm one way or the other but wanted me to touch base with him if I ever figured it out. More recently, I reached out to Stan by email to see if he could give me some dimensions but he's one of those guys that doesn't like to do business by email. He prefers we talk on the phone. I'm doubtful he'll be able to give me any definitive information to confirm one way or the other. I may end up offering to buy a set of his headers to test fit if he'll waive the re-stocking fee if I have to return them. He may not want to do this if he custom makes each header. Not sure when I'll get a chance to call him but I'll report back when I do.

DC

 

Silver 7T8 was kind enough to email me some photos to help sort this out. I'm posting those photos here. The measurements were taken from the outside of the header mounting flange. He advises to add 0.448" to these measurements to account for the thickness of the header flange and gasket.





I later asked Silver 7T8 to measure the width of the factory box per the yellow dimension lines in the above photo. His measurement was 3.6" The same measurement on the Borgeson box was about 3-3/8". This surprised me a bit as I was thinking the Borgeson box would be wider and therefore possibly interfere with the #1 header tube.





It was kinda hard to read the tape in the above photo. Silver 7T8 later confirm a measurement of 3.517" from the edge of the aluminum cap to the header flange mounting surface in line with the bolt center line. The 3.517" includes the thickness of the header flange and gasket. This correlates well to the photo in post #20 with the 3.5" board showing the clearance.




I'll post some similar photos I took of my Borgeson setup. Remember to add Silver 7T8's header flange/gasket thickness to the measurements in the above photos.


DC

 

Here are some photos I took of the Borgeson setup to compare to the photos from Silver 7T8 in the post above. There are no headers in these photos so all measurements are directly to the header mounting surface on the cylinder head.















It was hard to hold the tape and get a good photo. I later used calipers to confirm the measurement of 3-3/8"






Based on everything that has been posted to date, I am now more optimistic the Stan's Tri-Y headers will fit. I plan to contact Stan's next week and discuss this further with them.

DC

 

looks like we'll finally get a definitive answer. Keep up the good work.

 

k finally had time to pull my C3 box, cleaned it, and took pictures of it and the Borgeson box.
Currently in the process of measuring them and adding dimensions to the photos. I have 3 views on each box like a blueprint, The first pair is below. Others are forthcoming.





Help Question: is anyone here any good with Photoshop?
I would like to superimpose the two pics, and ghost out the C3 box, to more clearly show where the Borgeson box is larger. I thought it would be very helpful to a lot of us considering or doing the upgrade. But I don't know how.

 

Thanks Leigh,

Your pics will add value to this thread. I don't have Photoshop but that's a great idea. I thought Sketchup might could do it as you can import and match photos to your drawings but I couldn't figure out how to overlay two pics once I got them into Sketchup. I do have some photo editing software (GIMP) that might be able to do this but I'll have to spend some time figuring it out.

DC

 

Perhaps an option for an overlay - in ppt you can use a photo to fill a shape. Then you can adjust the transparency of the photo in the shape. Here the link

I played with this for about 20 minutes. Here's the result. It takes some work and some things I didn't check. One item is ensure the shape has the same width to height ratio as the photo. I did this by first just putting the photo in the ppt slide, then creating the rectangle shape around it. Then I deleted the photo and then inserted as fill for the shape per the link above. I did this for both photos making one of them partially transparent.

Then when I overlaid them it was obvious the scaling was different. To correct that I used the mounting holes as I assume they are the same geometry for both.I gradually increased the one image size until the hole patterns matched. Note when doing this you need to grab a corner of the shape you're resizing and hold shift while you resize it. Holding shift will keep the aspect ratio constant as you increase or decrease the size.

As I said, I didn't spend a lot of time perfecting this and I'm not sure I did maintain the aspect ratios. But just as way to get a gross indication of the dimensional differences it may be a starting point. The ideal would be run both in a ct x-ray and overlay the result 3D models. You could ship them to me for that. The price would be that you only get the original one back. Truthfully, I used up all my home project ct scanning points with my analysis of the dana 44 bearing caps.


overlay borgeson and gm

 

Here's my attempt using GIMP. The two images are very slightly out of alignment rotation wise but I couldn't figure out how to rotate just one layer within GIMP, it wanted to rotate the entire viewable area. I did align the vertical and horizontal axes (the two shafts) as best I could. This might be good enough. I did not scale either photo. As best I could determine on my PC, the bolt holes were approximately the same size in either photo.




Looking forward to seeing a top view.

DC

 

Both overlay attempts are terrific! And give guys a good idea of the size difference. No I probably did not shoot them at the same distance/scale because the new one visually looked so much larger. Next time I'll do better! Hah! The borgeson box looks like a monster compared to the original, I am actually surprised the shaft dimensions match, and that it fits in the car well.

But to be accurate, the three bolt holes and the input shaft would all have to line up. One image would have to be scaled.
If you were going to scale them to match, I would use the 2.50" measurement from the top bolt hole to the input shaft centerline. That should make it work.

Or I can send original undoctored/uncluttered photos to anyone who wants to have a go at it.
PM me.

Still measuring & editing on the top and input views.

Here's a link to my album with all my original pics taken with a Canon SLR. https://www.corvetteforum.com/g/album/16855215
So as to to take up too much bandwidth in this thread.....

 

Might be difficult but probably the best way to take the photographs is to use a tripod that holds the camera in the exact same position for both units plus you would have to pick a common point or two on each box in order to place each one exactly. Might be more trouble than it's worth. When I get another chance, I'll try to align the two photos a little better and scale them as best I can.

DC

 

After further review . . . I had no success trying to scale using the top bolt hole to shaft dimensions. It made the C3 box way too big in relation to the Borgeson box. The mounting plate dimensions were not even close. So, I adjusted the Borgeson photo to match the C3 photo using the distance between the top two bolt holes on the mounting plate as a reference. I also figured out how to rotate just one layer using GIMP so I could sync the two mounting plates. The end result ended up looking a lot like Vince's post above. It does make the C3 box look pretty small compared to the Borgeson.

Leigh - maybe you could stack the C3 box on top of the Borgeson box and shoot one pic from above to see how the actual size compares to the overlayed photos?

Here's my latest attempt:







DC

 

It's nearly impossible to accurately "ghost" the two using the methods mentioned because your scaling easily changes when you try to do it. What I do is write a measurement grid on a poster (or board), using a common center or bottom line, place each one on the same place in the grid and take a separate picture of each. (Set this up with the camera in the same spot each pic.) Then ghost the pics matching the grid lines, and the objects will be accurately displayed.

 

I agree that lining up the bolt holes does not get things right. Two issues which might not be possible to resolve with photos. One being that the scale will change as you get further from the center of the the photo. The other that if the part is leaning differently in the photos will change the aspect ratio.

Option 1: Just to keep Leigh busy, you could take a block of wood about the width of the mounting plates, as long width wise as the Borgesson, and about 1/2" to 3/4" thick and drill the mounting hole pattern into that. Nail that to a flat surface (like a bench you don't care too much for). Then drill the mounting holes on through that surface. Then you could mount the gear boxes onto that and know they are not leaning top to bottom or right to left. Mount it with allen head bolts and paint the tops white. Shoot your photos with a tripod mounted camera. The three bolts then could definitely serve as scaling points as long as the tripod position and camera angle do not change between shots. .

Option 2: Just to help Leigh spend money, buy the Stan's tri-y's, mount the borgesson, muont the headers, and report back.

 

Hah!

Yes I shot the pics free-hand not with a tripod, or a green-screen, or mounted, or while standing on my head, although that would all be cool.
However You will have to muddle through as best you can without me this weekend.
I am coaching in a huge 64 team robotics competition tomorrow! Yikes!