Mezzanine said:If you suspect the valve train is worn out...I'd go after that next. It's sounding like something you need to do anyway, so do it and see if it is solved.
After a day of great advice, and a night to sleep on it, this will be the path. It will probably delay the start of my season, but it's the smart move.
Of course, I ordered the wrong alternator. There is a silver lining though - I may find out soon that my current one is good (more on that soon).
Getting ready to order up valve train stuff. Springs are nice and cheap, but those titaniam retainers...
Worked on a few things while I was waiting on parts to come in. One was reducing the number of batteries in the car by half, and adding a fuse to the main power line running to the Holley Sniper. The Sniper has a fuse up at the unit, but I had nothing at the battery in the back of the car.
With that all done up, I felt a little froggy and decided to install the "bad" alternator and try something. I hooked it up like I always have, but this time instead of relying on the body of the alternator to ground through the brackets, I added a ground strap I had laying around.
When I fired up the car, I just had battery voltage, like before. That is somewhat expected as the pulley setup on the motor is for circle track cars and needs some RPM. So I backed the car out of the garage, let it warm up, and then gave it a little rev. Just like that, voltage went up. Right around 3500 I saw 13.4v, so I'd say it's working.
Canceled my order for the new alternator, putting a few more bucks back in my pocket. Valve springs will be ordered once I get through to Comp Cams' tech support.
Always love seeing progress on this one.
nocones said:Always love seeing progress on this one.
Man, it's nothing compared to your current project!
Well, I've done what I can to get ready for the next dyno session. Smaller alternator pulley appears to be doing the trick, at least for now, and new valve springs are in. I didn't think to test a new one until it was too late, but here are how the old ones stacked up.
You can see the whole thing, and then many reasons my back is terrible, below:
Nice investigation with the spring tester. I'm so excited to see dyno results! I hope the issues are resolved.
In reply to Mezzanine :
Me too! Oh, I just ordered a rocker stud girdle too. It's only money, right?
"I just hitch up my girdle and let 'er fly."
- Babe Didrikson Zaharias
In reply to Gimp (Forum Supporter) :
Now you need some clear valve covers to show them off!
Headed to the dyno soon, but in the meantime, I'm thinking about the front aero of the car and have a ton of questions related to recent rule changes.
Valve springs/girdle fixed the issue and we got three good pulls before the ECU or an injector crapped the bed.
More details later. Beer now.
Sooooo.....
No video yet, but we took the car back to the dyno Saturday and it was not a boring day.
Car did great on it's first pull. It revved and carried power out to 7200, right where we expected it to go, so the valve springs and girdles seemed to make a difference. The car was initially leaner than before, on the last tune , so the tuner started to play with fuel. We did two more pulls and started to get things back in place, but noticed some oscillation in the AFR on the third pull.
He went in and cleaned up the fuel table, and fired it up again.
This time, the car went to a very high idle - around 2000rpms - out of no where. So we stopped and checked the mechanicals to see what happened, and got the idle better (it would still start high, but calm back down after a moment) and decided to make another pull.
Suddenly, at anything over 13% throttle under load, the car would go insanely lean. Like 30:1. We tried throwing 25% more fuel at it, and still the same issue, with the AFR going to 28:1 this time. No difference in open loop or closed loop. Fuel pressure was rock solid at 60psi. If you free revved the car, AFR was fine, but under load same problem. Even pulling the car into the garage caused the issue, so we aren't talking about hammering on the throttle.
At this point we decided that we needed to talk to Holley and not melt anything down. We thought it might be an injector issue, but all four appear to be firing evenly. Big head scratcher.
Called Holley this morning and sent them logs. Two techs looked at it, and they suspect the fuel pump has gone bad. It has pressure, but not enough flow under load. Holley is sending me a new fuel pump this week. I'll know as soon as I put it on if that was the fix.
It's funny... we scrambled and trashed and got this car to Nats and it ran great. Since then it's been nothing but problems. Gotta love race cars.
So I've been having an issue with valve lash opening up that I couldn't figure out.
Well, I found the problem and the motor needs to come out.
The shoulder of the new poly lock that came with the stud girdle is bigger than the ones that were originally on the car. Looks like the first dyno run, where I heard a change in the car, was every rocker arm cracking where the lock meets the trunnion. I even found little bits of the rocker arm sitting on top of the head.
Going to pull the motor and the pan and inspect everything. It may come apart even further, depending on how much debris I find. Oil pressure is good, but there are enough bits that I'm going to have to go through this whole motor.
Very surprised to see that the comp camps stud girdle, with the included poly locks, doesn't fit on the comp cams pro magnum roller rockers. This mistake just got expensive.
Damage actually appears pretty localized. New rockers on the way. May just send this pig.
What was the failure like? Clean breaks with some shattered bits? Any glitter? I support your decision to select SEND.
Mezzanine said:What was the failure like? Clean breaks with some shattered bits? Any glitter? I support your decision to select SEND.
This is the worst one so far, and I have the missing chunk.
Most are cracked in the same spot.
I did an oil change (and cut open the filter) just before I discovered this issue, so I think I'm good there. I also checked push rods and did a leak down test, and everything looked good.
In reply to Gimp (Forum Supporter) :
Oof. I'm pretty sure a failure like that would cause me to light the car, garage, and any money I had left on fire.
Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to Gimp (Forum Supporter) :
Oof. I'm pretty sure a failure like that would cause me to light the car, garage, and any money I had left on fire.
Good news is I'm totally out of money...
I'll have a longer update video soon, but it runs...
A couple quick shots from the weekend. Full album is here - https://www.flickr.com/photos/128791129@N08/albums/72157719379306794?fbclid=IwAR2dohVTwJEfUVBpdpo6JDVBz6YJYYVQ8NhrjnugQrnpcU5U0x8yy8YaXfs
Very coll project! I just found this build and plan to spend the evening going through it.
Two quick outside videos from my friends watching, if you're interested...
A few more cool shots from the weekend. I'm working on finishing up a video, and I have a few new parts on the way.
Made some aero updates to the front... read more here - https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/aerodynamics-presented-nine-lives-racing/c-prepared-splitter-design-taking-advantage-of-the-new-rules-and-asking-a-lot-of-questions/183330/page1/#post3281244
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