'75 TVR M Ford 331ci V8

Slow_M said:

In reply to oppositelocksmith :

Thanks for those tips. Especially the 60 grit. I feel like that's the kind of place I might self-sabotage. 

I'm 90% leaning toward epoxy and 10% Gorilla Glue. What do you use? 

I use steel inserts that come with a kind of teeth on them (an industrial product from McMaster Carr). Holes are drilled for a light interference fit, but not tight enough to split the wood. I use a slow cure epoxy for bonding. 
 

oppositelocksmith said:

Slow_M said:

In reply to oppositelocksmith :

Thanks for those tips. Especially the 60 grit. I feel like that's the kind of place I might self-sabotage. 

I'm 90% leaning toward epoxy and 10% Gorilla Glue. What do you use? 

I use steel inserts that come with a kind of teeth on them (an industrial product from McMaster Carr). Holes are drilled for a light interference fit, but not tight enough to split the wood. I use a slow cure epoxy for bonding. 
 

 

Awesome!!! Thanks!!! 

This boy broke my heart to pieces, yesterday morning. 

He made everything in my life better for seven and a half years. For the last five and a half, we were at each other's side 24/7. 

He is, in every way, the most beautiful being I have ever known. 

In reply to Slow_M :

Aw man, I'm so sorry.  I had to put down my very best friend three weeks ago today.

He was 16, and had lived with us for 11 years.  My heart is still raw and I still walk around the house talking to him.  We can only appreciate them for all the love they bring.

Time to go grab a tissue.

I see toe grips. 

I get it. 

Scott, I'm so sorry. 

I'm leaning heavily on the love and joy Samir brought into my life and into the lives of all those who met him over these seven and a half years. 

Well, no window winders. 

I ordered them from Mini Mania, because they showed as having them in stock. When I dealt with them back in the '90s and '00s, they were amazing. Apparently they have been under new ownership for the past couple of years, and like so many other things, they've turned to E36 M3.

I'd love to report that they have the worst customer service on the planet, but it's not even up to that level. A couple of emails and more calls than I care to count, ZERO response. Stupid filthy rat berkeleying piece of E36 M3 shiny happy person fatherberkeleyers. Bad enough that I have to deal with that kind of unprofessional garbage (yes, I mean the people) day after day in my professional life, mostly with government agencies. I have absolutely no headspace left to tolerate that from anyone in the private sector. 

And by the way, I appear to be in the second stage of grief. Powerful stuff. I don't recommend it. 

Thanks for the heads up. I just brought my customer's Austin Cooper S in for service. It has been at least seven years since I;ve needed anything Mini specific. Must keep this in mind.

This is on its way to me. The idea behind this car was always to have something that I could deal with every aspect of, if/when pressed, and that includes tuning. 

It's going to be my first time dipping my toe into the deep end that is EFI. Hope I don't blow it. Take that any way you want. 

Sympathies on your loss.

I would also echo frustration in dealing with Mini Mania. Nothing I've ordered has been in stock, and trying to follow up with them becomes just begging for them to sell me something where I'm doing all the work in the conversation. 100% should be the other way around.

ViperT4 said:

Sympathies on your loss.

 

I would also echo frustration in dealing with Mini Mania. Nothing I've ordered has been in stock, and trying to follow up with them becomes just begging for them to sell me something where I'm doing all the work in the conversation. 100% should be the other way around.

Thank you. 

Close to 100°F. Aluminum and stainless steel parts were getting so hot from laying in the sun, that we were throwing them in pool, to cool them enough to touch barehanded. 

Nevertheless, we made quite good progress.

Lubrication plumbing: close to 100% 
Coolant plumbing: close to 100% 
Fuel plumbing: most supply/return lines made, still need to be installed. Still have to find/make fuel inlet pipes. 
Induction system 100% (to be able to run) but I still need to make an air cleaner box. 

Since we moved the pre-oiler lower in the chassis, there's going to be lots of space for the ECU.  Other than that, we're quickly running out of real estate. 

No progress for nine days, but this is my locked screen and it makes me happy every time I look at it.

Meanwhile, the new aluminum radiator and fuel filler neck arrived today. And I dug out new door rubber, a blue throttle cable, and the back footwells in my captious daily wagon are filled with all of the fluids except for fuel.

It's taken a lot to get to this point, but I'm finally happy with the level of almost 100% of everything that's been worked on.

I've been making, installing, and procuring hardware for brackets, and looking for missing fasteners and replacing them. Throttle linkages and cabling are getting closer. Fuel system is needs clamps and the tank side filler neck swapped out. 

Also spent the past week going through the oil tank, making a little improvement at a time. It started with a good scrub inside and out. Then I used a C clamp to push the cratered bolt holes against a soft piece of wood wrapped in cloth. When the indent went the other way a bit, I backed off. Flat enough for a good seal, I think. 

It also seems apparent that whoever overtightened the flange bolts in the first place did so in an effort to cure a leaky seal. I'm going to double the number of fasteners along the flange and use large diameter (1"), thick washers as load spreaders.  

Along the way I also attracted a project helper. My neighbors have the privilege of housing and feeding her.

Made a new gasket out of oil and heat resistant rubber and trial assembled. Tomorrow I stuff the baffle back in and reinstall it. 

I changed my mind about the color of the exhaust system. Couldn't help it. Too many ridiculously cool '70s racing cars had white exhausts. 

Prolly one of my favorite builds right now.   Carry on. 

I've read that a 331 is the preferred stroker motor, don't remember why but it was for a good reason, like a tendency to keep the rotating parts inside of the block and ability to make power.

White headers are the shizz, if you can keep your finger prints off them.

TurnerX19 said:

White headers are the shizz, if you can keep your finger prints off them.

They came back from their pro coating adventure silver on the outside, black on the inside. They refused to do white, so I rattle can hosed 2,000° ceramic header paint over a shiny factory finish. Figured I could always squirt on more white, while they're in the car. 

In reply to akylekoz :

Thanks! 

It's because of optimum rod length and where that puts the wrist pin in relation to the rings in the piston. With a 331, the pin still allows for support under the oil ring land. 

In reply to Slow_M :

That is a job for aluminum foil spread under them and over everything else. It is amazing how brown the prints appear when they warm up. I am interested to see how the paint holds on the ceramic coating. I tried red on top of Swaintec coarse pearl silver. It turned orange pretty quickly, but lasted a while. Since Swain got bought by the other guys the color dropped from the lineup.  

I looked into Swain but the texture sounded like a trap for all kinds of dirt. 

In reply to Slow_M :

It really did not . I did it in 2006, and it stayed in outdoor east coast service until 2022, and it is hanging on the wall now looking spiffy, but actually cracked....Ran it about 60,000 miles. Moot point now, when Jet-Hot bought them the products disappeared. 

End of day. 

Headers partly back on. 

Had to solve an interference issue between a right header down tube and the oil tank fitting for the pre-oiler feed. I moved it to the bottom of the tank. 

Gave the original four core brass rad a scuff and a fresh coat of black. 

Couple of other sundry odds and ends. 

I'm becoming an old hand at assembly and disassembly and reassembly of this version of the car. It's crazy tight quarters, but it can, for the most part be unscrewed and put back together. Glad for manual dexterity, though. That's for sure. 

So apparently the guy who's going to set up the MS (I am in a pretty massive time crunch to get it running.) refuses to work on it unless we abandon the mass air sensor because including it would be problematic for idle control. No idea if that's correct, but I'm sure that getting it running is only the beginning of a hundred revisions, so doesn't really matter. Presumably it's because the cam is not sedate enough. 

MS doesn't use mass air, it uses manifold absolute pressure. You only get one or the other with any system. Also it removes the restriction in the inlet, so a win-win. Not that there is a major loss with your style mass air sensor, but I have heard as high as 2% on the clean ones. Much greater with older mass sensors. Your tuner will probably use the "alpha-n" parameters if you have a big cam. 

I tried to optimize flow around it and into it by designing a bellmouth based on some technical research I once saw and on a conversation with Gary from TWM. For the time being, I'll leave it abandoned. I can replace it with lightweight fiberglass, but I'm also playing with the idea of revising the intake. Then again, I'm also playing with the notion of a cam swap and ITBs. 

I didn't realize that the MS doesn't use the AFM.