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Should be able to sleep better knowing the cam bolts are locked down, and yes I used the approved Schpenxel RED loctite method....or was that BLUE?
Springs, seats, seals and pushrods are in. Honestly I think this whole LS rocker arm arrangement sucks. Didn't like it the first time I saw it and like it even less by the way the the trunnions tighten up in the aluminum saddles, offsets on the intakes must have some strange side loads on the bearings, etc.... Can't wait to get rid of them
Awaiting HB from IW, blower belt and new power steering pulley for Saturday startup
I'm sure everyone has their own technique to swapping springs, so here's mine. Basically the only difference is putting the retainers and keepers on the new valve stems which by far sucks the most, especially when you're doing both intake and exhaust at the same time.
The most common method is piston at TDC for safety and pressurizing the cylinder and trying to back off the spring pressure while hoping the keepers stay in place and the stem stays centered. Kinda sucks to center the stems in the retainer, put keepers in, back out the tool and hope the keepers stay on even with grease, especially when doing 2 valves at a time.
I use no air in the cylinder and just bring piston to TDC. Let the valves sit on the piston and crank the tool down till the retainer is flush with the tip of the valves stem. Then lift the valve off the piston with a set of needle nose, put the keepers on, then push the valve back down to hold the keepers in while you do the next 1 of 2.
SO I'm cleaning up the shop while waiting for the HB and notice a seal on the end of the old HB snout. Looked around to see what this does but people are just calling it a "seal". To me it looks like seats against the rotor and stator of the oil pump to keep oil frfrom squirting out the "end" of the pump which is pretty important. Some HBs have, some don't
Question is does the IW balancer come with a new one and if not, is this needed. Don't want to lose oil pressure by not having it.
As per IW, that seal is only for OEM damper assembly at the factory and is optional for use with their HB so I scrapped it. Turns out the ECS pin kit is NG since the hub of the IW is longer and the crank snout is recessed in about 1". Possibly forged cranks have longer snouts, not sure. I wont attempt to drill though that forged 1" of length of hub with no support for the drill bit and do not want to **** this up. Turns out there is an easy solution to this and all you need to do is spend more money. IW has a super nice pin kit that has an adapter that fits into the recess, is keyed to the balancer keyway and pinned to the nose of the crank in 3 places.
Decided to finish up the drive while waiting for the pin kit. The lower idler on the new 4 rib tensioner didn't seem right so decided to pull it off to see what was going on. Loosened up the bolt below shown in red and it kept spinning, the nut or whatever was behind the plate was spinning. So figured I'd take the whole bracket off and stripped out those cheesy allen cap screws that hold the bracket to the timing cover bolts. Looks like those bolt heads were milled down to clear the belt and idler so they weren't very deep for the wrench. So drilled them out easy enough. Looks like there's a circular nut pressed into the plate that needs to be welded in. Doesn't seem that robust to me but guess others have no problems so it must be me.
At this point I was so pissed off I threw the plugs in and just started the thing it up, no belts, no radiator. Fired right up, oil pressure over 60psi. sounds nice and tight. Only let it run for 30.
I had no problem using the ECS pin kit to do my damper. Worked fine for me.
Sorry, but I don't think the standard ECS kit can pin a stock crank to an IW balancer but I'd love to see a pic of that to prove me wrong. I think you have a forged crank so maybe the crank snout is longer than stock so it's flush with the inside lip of the balancer. Besides that IW doesn't recommend using a .250" pin because the balancer hub isn't thick enough and they recommend a .187" pin if the crank snout meets flush. That;s one of the reasons I paid an extra $75 for a thicker hub
At least it started! The IW pinning kit does look nice.. sucks it cost $140.
Only $75 for normal shipping. I would have skipped the overnight shipping had I known the car would be down a few more days till I get a new bracket. Can't weld that nut on because the plate is aluminum and the nut is steel. Maybe I'll get bored tomorrow and grind flat spots on the nut and dill and tap holes in the plate to mount something up against the flats to keep the nut from turning.
Did you have that same setup on your drive? Not sure if mine is special to the flip drive
PS: Whatchu mean "At least it started?" Sounds like you have no confidence in me LOL jk
EDIT: I'm just going to pin that round nut to the plate with (2) 1/8" dowel pins. No way it's going to turn after that. Also counterbore or countersink the bracket and put flathead allen bolts in so no new parts needed
I've had nothing but IW on my car with ECS kit. Stock crank, stock motor, and now forged crank. Always same pin, always same kit to pin it. Zero issues.
Can see where the stock crank is pinned at the top of the photo of my stock motor.
I've had nothing but IW on my car with ECS kit. Stock crank, stock motor, and now forged crank. Always same pin, always same kit to pin it. Zero issues.
Can see where the stock crank is pinned at the top of the photo of my stock motor.
Can't see much detail on that pic so guess it will remain a mystery. Surely you can look at the pic showing the balancer installed on my crank and see the crank nose is recessed in about 1" , So in order to hit the crank, the drill would have to go through the HB for that 1" with no crank to support the drill, drilling half a hole in air, not the crank.
It's possible your ECS pin kit is specific to IW which is the same thing I bought today. The "original" pinning kit from ECS I received was for a stock balancer with the crank nose flush with the hub and drilling that is a piece of cake.
Regardless, the IW pin method of inserting a keyed adapter and pinning that to the face of the crank with 3 ".187 pins is better. It basically turns a non keyed crank into a keyed crank. No re-drilling or trying to line up the drilled holes when re-installing
Some more housekeeping chores this morning. Also did some quick idle tuning and damn this thing sounds nasty. (in a good way)
Cut off another water pump boss to clear the heavy duty tensioner idler. The instructions said to cut 3 "other" ones off but they could have stayed and that's what I get for reading instructions.
Noticed the tensioner hits the IW when the belt wasn't installed. No big deal really until the belt breaks then the tensioner starts chewing up my $500 balancer. Probably only have this problem on the 10% ODs. Made a ghetto mod on the tensioner to act as a stop in case the belt breaks or stretched and I don't realize it.
Designer Imagines A Corvette That Looks More Like a Corvette Than the Corvette
Slideshow: A Jaguar designer's personal project imagines what a modern front-engined Corvette might look like if Chevrolet revisited the golden age of the Stingray.
