• Got the Contributing Memberships stuff finally worked out and made up a thread as a sort of "How-To" to help people figure out how to participate. So if you need help figuring it out, here's the thread you need to take a look at -> http://www.corvetteflorida.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3581 Thank you, everyone! Rich Z.

427 engine (part 2) - RHS block

Monday was pretty much allocated to trying to figure out what to do about that fuel leak at the banjo fitting. I think the washers I have on order will fix that, though, as long as they aren't too thick and then cause an issue with clearance with the firewall. The guy at NukePerformance told me the copper washers will work, but I need to lube the threads on the bolt going into the end of the fuel rail and REALLY crank down on it to tighten it. He estimates around 120nm, which is 88.5 ft/lbs. So I guess it depends on what those new aluminum washers look like as to what method I will try first.

Since I was already slapped around with the fuel leak, I decided to go ahead and take a stab at that stuck brake bleeder screw. Figured I might as well get 100 percent pissed off today if it was going to be another problem........ I mounted the knuckle, hub, and the brake hardware so I would have the caliper solidly mounted before putting a wrench to the bleeder screw. Used a 10mm offset box wrench so I had as much purchase as possible on the screw, and gave it a tug. Loosened right up for me, with barely a whimper. I guess a couple of days soaking it with PB Blaster and tapping it with the hammer did the trick. So I was able to push the caliper pistons back and then install the new brake rotor and pads. So now I've just got the driver's side front hub and brakes to do. I may start on that on Tuesday even if those banjo washers come in. I'm not sure how long that banjo fitting will be leaking gasoline and how low the pressure needs to drop before it stops. I may have to crack open a hose fitting to relief the pressure completely so everything can dry out more quickly. I feel like I'm really bucking fate and skirting around just torching that car with this fuel line stuff.... All it would take is a little tiny spark at the wrong time. But I'm thinking (on the positive side) that those open fuel lines going to the passenger side fuel tank were pretty likely the cause of the gasoline smell all along. Excluding the leaking fuel injector early on, of course.

But now that has me thinking about the passenger side fuel tank. I doubt Aaron ever really filled up my gas tanks while he had my car, and certainly neither did Harwood, so I wonder if it's been dry all this time? When I had the fuel pumps running on Monday, the passenger side was gurgling like crazy, so I'm wondering what exactly would happen if the driver side was the only one with gasoline in it, and I then start up the pumps with the fuel lines set up correctly. I'm wondering if perhaps some fuel gets pumped over to the passenger side from the driver's side in a case like that to try to balance both tanks. I didn't think to look at the fuel gauge to see if it changed any.

Speaking of which, how in the world did my fuel gauge even work at all? I believe BOTH tanks have level sensors in them, and there is just no way that both tanks had the same amount of fuel in them. :thinkin: Guess I've still got lots more to learn about this stuff.
 
Got those washers in today for that banjo fitting, so I went ahead and tackled that. Wasn't very much pressure in the fuel line, so I guess it does leak down after a period of being inoperative. The washers seemed way too big in diameter for the application, but I had them, and wanted to use them, so whatever.... Gotta do what I gotta do...

banjo_washers_01.jpg


I probably could have gotten the copper crush washers to work had I just really cranked down on that banjo bolt, but since these washers seem to be holding fine, then I'll go with them. If they develop problems later on, then it will be back to the copper washers. Just want this fuel leak problem licked...

But the worst part was that the fitting seemed further back than with the copper washers, and was actually touching the firewall now. I wasn't real comfortable with that, so I just bit the bullet and broke out the Dremel to take a chunk out of the firewall. :ack2: I'll see if I can find something to touch that up later so there isn't that ugly gaping hole sitting there. Maybe some sort of black duct tape or something similar. Maybe even making the hole much more uniformly circular and finding some sort of black plastic recessed cap or something similar to JB Weld into there. I'm sure something will come up for a fix.

firewall_hack_01.jpg


Anyway, I had the camcorders running, just in case the car went up in flames during the SMOKE TEST. A hundred years from now I might have found watching something like that on a video humorous. Anyway, I just had the fuel pump itself running for a while, and it built up pressure pretty quickly. I checked all of the fittings, lines, injectors, etc., and didn't see even the slightest fuel leak. So I figured I might as well crank it up and see what happens.



Now it was interesting to me to note that the car seemed to idle and rev up MUCH better than before. Kind of odd, since all I did was straighten out the fuel system. So I'm wondering if there was something subtle going on with the fuel system affecting the tune and how it was running. I couldn't rev up the engine quickly and release the gas pedal suddenly before without the car just dropping on it's face and stalling. But now it handles it just fine. Beats me....

Just to see what would happen, I used HPTuners to command the PCM to go into CLOSED LOOP MODE. The car had been running in OPEN LOOP the entire time, and I wanted to see what would happen when the actual tune was used putting the oxygen sensors in the loop. Pretty much died right away, so obviously something is wrong somewhere in the tune, or whatever the tune is looking for in CLOSED LOOP.

In any event, I can now pull out the fuel injectors and send them off to be inspected for gunk from the unfiltered fuel going through them, and also get the fuel pump out (after emptying the fuel tank) and off to Lonnie's Performance to be modified. Then while the fuel rails are off, I can relocate that MAP sensor from in back of the intake manifold to up in front somewhere. Just have to figure out some vacuum plumbing for the MAP sensor and a line running to the fuel pressure regulator. I will likely need another vacuum line for that modified fuel pump, since I seem to recall it activates that second booster pump when 2 or 3 pounds of boost is detected, do that indicates to me that it probably triggers off of positive pressure being detected in the intake. So somehow I've got to get three new vacuum lines available. I don't think I can do anything with the vacuum hookup the old MAP sensor is using, so I'll likely just leave that sensor in place anyway.

Maybe by mid to late April my car will be on the road again. Hopefully I won't find something else wrong that will try to "brick wall" me.
 
I know you have put a clearance hole in the wall but I have an idea that you might want to consider. You will have that rail off again when you send out the enjectors so if you have a spare banjo bolt you might try grinding it so the edge will clear the wall and if it will then you can patch the wall before the enjectors come back.

Banjo Clearance.jpg

Figgure 1 is the problem and Figure 2 is my effort at showing how the bolt can be altered to give the wall clearance. Even if you take away half of the flat for a wrench or socket you will still be able to torque the bolt down.
 
Yes, I see what you mean. Actually a more narrow head on the bolt itself would probably help. But what is done is done. The hole is in the firewall so there isn't any need to do anything more with the fuel rail and fitting. I am talking to some suppliers of recessed sheet metal and panel plugs to see if they have something that will work for me in that hole. If I can get that hole rounded out better and get a recessed plug flexible enough, I should be able to JB Weld it into that hole and make it look much better. Unfortunately the firewall isn't exactly a flat surface there, so I will need to form something to fit flush all the way around. If not, well, I have a roll of black duct tape on order....
 

Attachments

  • recessed_plug_01.jpg
    recessed_plug_01.jpg
    5.1 KB · Views: 126
To get the hole cleaned up drill a hole in a piece of wood that is bigger than the plug hole you need. Then get some playdoe or modeling clay and put it on the firewall. This will allow you to ignore the shape of the firewall. Now you can mount the wood piece flat over the hole you have. Now get a bit for the dremel that has a rasp or file end and use the smooth shaft to run around the hole in the wood template. That should give you a betteer looking hole and if you size it right the plug you are suggesting should work.
 
Actually I used a side cutting bit in my dremel to cut the hole you see there. But yeah, having a template would be helpful. Only problem is that it's pretty tight back there, so not a lot of wiggle room to get fancy. Putting a piece of wood and still being able to get a dremel back there might be a challenge.
 
Since I now have the fuel being filtered before going to the fuel injectors, I've been running the car an hour or so periodically to drain the fuel tanks that way. Kind of comforting hearing the car rumbling in the garage while I do other stuff in the garage or around the yard. Coolant temp doesn't seem to get above 195 and no fuel leaks spotted anywhere. There is a slight coolant leak right at the petcock, though. It was there a while back when I first ran the car for a spell, so I tightened the petcock fitting and that seemed to make it better, but not perfect yet. Might need another eighth turn maybe.

Been checking the oil and it looks just as clean as when I changed it not that long ago. I'm not sure why it was so black when I got it home from Aaron's. Seems odd to have been that dark with only 400 miles put on it and supposed to have been changed by him at least three times.

I should have the gas tank drained enough by early next week to pull out the fuel pump and send it off to be modified. I'll be pulling out the fuel injectors at the same time to send them off to be inspected. Need to figure out some vacuum plumbing in the meantime, but once that stuff mentioned above being sent out comes back and gets put back in, it should be time to start on the tuning.
 
This is good news Rich! At least when you do it yourself, you know it's done, you know it's done the way you want it done, and you learn detailed info about all of the different aspects of the car. If you have to leave something "undone" while waiting on parts or something, you always go back to it and finish it up. From the tone of your posts you seem to be very confident and satisfied about those areas you've worked on. Little by little, it's ALL getting done, and it should be a BEAST when it's finished! :yesnod:
Andy Anderson :wavey:
 
Yeah, I'm definitely learning a LOT as I go. Not that this is really what I wanted to be doing, but I didn't see any other acceptable alternatives presenting themselves. Between Chris Harwood, Aaron Scott, and all the parts and tools I have had to buy after their "workmanship", I guess I have spent at least twice what I had planned on doing this project. As Aaron said to me on the phone one day "Rich, your car was a piece of sh!t when it got here, and it was a piece of sh!t when it left." So Harwood turned it into a "piece of sh!t" in the 11 months that he had it, and Aaron didn't do enough, by his own admittance, to change that situation in the 14 months he had the car.

So yeah, I have to play the clean-up crew, I suppose....
 
BTW, got the gas gauge into the red zone and the "RESERVE FUEL" warning flashing. So by Sunday I should have the gas tanks drained of fuel. I'd rather have as little fuel as possible in the tanks when I pull out that fuel pump. Been running the car at stretches of an hour or more, and the fuel system seems to be holding up just fine. Actually, if I had the wheels back on the car, I wouldn't be afraid to even drive it somewhere now. Still need to tidy up some stuff in the engine bay, but I think I've taken care of all the dangerous as well as damaged and potentially damaging stuff that needed to be addressed.

Of course, once the car is on the road, no telling what other gremlins might show up. I'm going to be going over all the wiring with a fine toothed comb to check for frayed or loose wires anywhere. And I'm definitely going to be doing a better job with wrapping all the electrical than merely with electrical tape like I see under the hood right now. There are much better ways to do that.

I'm hoping like heck that I don't get the "REDUCED ENGINE POWER" gremlin like Mike has plaguing his car.
 
Rich Z said:
And when you have someone else work on your car, that is enforced, how?
Click to expand...
It ISN'T! That's the point. Any quality control that's there is up to the owner to check out and give it a :thumbsup: or a :thumbsdown:. Most people tend to trust the people they have working on their cars, but you've been bitten twice now. That being said, if you do the work yourself, it'll be what you want and expect, so the quality control will rest with the owner. When you got the car back from Harwood/Aaron, you didn't like the looks of a bunch of stuff (it didn't pass the quality control you were looking for), so you dove into the problems to correct them yourself. AND..........you seem to be doing a HELLUVA job at correcting the problems to your satisfaction! I've been following this thread since the beginning, and my hat's off to you Rich. I don't know how you kept from doing bodily damage to Harwood and/or Aaron, but you took the high road and when it tripped your threshold, you tackled the job yourself. Keep the thread going! I've got a hunch that now that you're doing the work, ALL of the problems/gotchas/gremlins will eventually be worked out and you'll have one screamin' C5Z.
Andy :wavey:
 
Got the fuel injectors and the fuel pump removed from the car today (actually Monday). I didn't run the gas tanks till the engine died as it seemed to be taking FOREVER to empty out. The gas gauge needle was just about laying on top of the letter "E" in "Empty", though. I took some video of everything, so when I get a chance I'll post that stuff.

I took some pics of the fuel injectors while I had them sitting on the fender cover, and just on a whim, I grabbed one at random and turned it up so I could take a pic of the fuel rail end of it. So I was just looking over the pics tonight and couldn't figure out what the heck I had taken a photo of when I looked at that injector photo. Well, you take a look and tell me what you think. My guess is that it's a darn good thing that I decided to send those injectors off to have them inspected and serviced by fuelinjectorconnection.com.

injector_junk_01.jpg


injector_junk_02.jpg


So these are pics of SOMETHING sitting inside of the feed end of that fuel injector. Nice, eh?
 
navy2kcoupe said:
It ISN'T! That's the point. Any quality control that's there is up to the owner to check out and give it a :thumbsup: or a :thumbsdown:. Most people tend to trust the people they have working on their cars, but you've been bitten twice now. That being said, if you do the work yourself, it'll be what you want and expect, so the quality control will rest with the owner. When you got the car back from Harwood/Aaron, you didn't like the looks of a bunch of stuff (it didn't pass the quality control you were looking for), so you dove into the problems to correct them yourself. AND..........you seem to be doing a HELLUVA job at correcting the problems to your satisfaction! I've been following this thread since the beginning, and my hat's off to you Rich. I don't know how you kept from doing bodily damage to Harwood and/or Aaron, but you took the high road and when it tripped your threshold, you tackled the job yourself. Keep the thread going! I've got a hunch that now that you're doing the work, ALL of the problems/gotchas/gremlins will eventually be worked out and you'll have one screamin' C5Z.
Andy :wavey:
Click to expand...

Well, honestly, if I hadn't had a lift in my garage, it's very unlikely I would have found even a tenth of the problems that I had on my car after bringing it home from Aaron's. It's just not that easy to look underneath of a Corvette without one. Heck, after seeing that stuff in a fuel injector just today, there really is no telling what else I might find.
 
While I have the fuel pump out, I've been looking that over closely as well. I'm waiting for the gasoline smell to dissipate somewhat before sending it to Lonnie's Performance. Anyway, the grids on the fuel gauge sending unit look pretty cruddy. Can that be cleaned up, or is it just a good time now to replace that as well?

fuel_gauge_sender_01.jpg


fuel_gauge_sender_02.jpg
 
Sheesh.... Now I've got some people saying that my fuel pressure regulator might have a bunch of junk in it as well. I guess I've got to take that out and take it apart and see if I can see anything. I have no idea how small the orifices are in a FPR and the likelihood that they could become clogged because of unfiltered fuel.

:banghead:
 
I took the top off of the fuel pressure regulator, but quite honestly it seems like a really simple device. I'm not sure crud in the gasoline would even affect it much. Spring tension controls how much pressure is needed to open the valve, and there is a diaphragm separating the top half where the spring mechanism lives from the bottom half where the gasoline is located feeding to the fuel line fittings. Perhaps crud could keep the valve to the return line from closing completely, so I think the sign I would need to look for would be dropping fuel pressure at high engine speeds. But not sure even that would be the case since as long as the fuel pump can send enough fuel to maintain the set pressure (59 psi in this case) the only time I would see dropping fuel pressure would be if the demands of the engine exceeded a combination of what the fuel pump could provide and any that was leaking past the valve into the return line.

Oh, interesting to note that the screw on the rear left side holding down the cap to the FPR was barely tightened. I'm surprised it wasn't leaking fuel.

The spring was kind of rusty, though, and had rust stains on the top and bottom retainers. I cleaned that up as best I could and just put it back together again. If I see fuel pressure problems I'll just replace the FPR, I guess. But for now, I don't see it as being necessary to do.

fpr_20.jpg
 
So this morning just before 9 am I hear the phone ringing. Of course I'm still in bed because I didn't hit the sack till nearly 4:30am last night. Connie answered the phone and then came in to tell me that Jon from the place I sent the fuel injectors to (http://fuelinjectorconnection.com/shop/) called and wanted to speak to me and asked that I call him back when I am available. I just knew it had to be bad news, and no sense trying to get back to sleep with that hanging over my head, so I just got up and called him back to get it over with.

Yeah, he said all of the injectors are just loaded with pieces of metal. He told me that they all just really need to be replaced. "Well yeah, so what else is new?", I thought. There goes another $500+ down the drain, I was thinking. So I asked Jon what this was going to cost me, reaching for my wallet I had just placed next to the phone, anticipating this news. Surprisingly he told me there would be no charge. He's been following this thread all along and said he wants to help me out as much as he can. I was quite surprised by that and told him that I would pay for the injectors, as this certainly is not his fault. But no, he said for me not to worry about it. He'll send me out a new set of injectors on Monday. Actually I had quite a pleasant conversation with Jon and he seems quite personable.

Oh yeah, I mentioned that I had a head bumping with the guy (Ed Hutchings) who was going to do the tuning on my car, so Jon said he would hook me up with the guy I really need to talk to. Mike Carnahan out of Georgia. I actually spoke to Mike a few months ago, but really never pursued his help all that much. Matter of fact this is the guy that Aaron contacted about helping me with the tuning as well. Evidently the guy is just very busy, so perhaps that's just the status quo with tuners that are really in demand for their expertise. Jon said he would get the ball rolling for me, so I guess I'll just hope for the best with this.

Honestly, I guess out of all this it is rather humbling to run into a few people who really have gone out of their way to help out with this disaster.

Thanks, Jon, your help is really appreciated.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top