Gar

Got side-tracked on some other tasks today. Old horizontal bandsaw didn't keep its blade on. One of the big wheels had become crowned. The metal lathe wasn't big enough, so we chucked it up on a wood lathe, and used a grinding wheel to flatten the blade face back true again... it worked. Did manage to form the front frame components, just didn't get em on when Hottie texted me I better head home before the snow. The snow was north of me, but she's usually pretty good on weather. Pix tomorrow with front biz, and I start on diff case fab.

Gar

Didn't find enough choices for motorcycle sprockets at my junkyard, but it was a nice enough day to collect what was there. Italian bikes.... took a little longer cause I don't speak Italian.... got out my 2 pound translator and all good after. (that's just a joke)

I visited neighborhood Crazy Dave the bike guy and got 5 frames. Only yielded a couple assemblies due to Crazy disassembling everything leaving important parts without grease to protect from the weather. Cut out the crank assemblies and reviewed the sprockets. I think I'll build the diff case to hold bicycle sprockets rather than motorcycle since bikes are way more plentiful and varied in size. Out of Crazy's collection, I found a pair of triple sprocket crank cogs. I can arrange these in the diff case for 3 different event gearing by opening the case.... banked oval speedway, boardwalk cruise, and rock climbing. (plus, it's my insurance that I have all the options I need in case my calculations for weight and speed are wrong).

Picture disclaimer....

Purely for the purpose of actually seeing the size and scale. The backbone must be dog-legged higher for peddle/ground clearance. The front end frame head must be built. The diff case is as-delivered before new fab, and the transition derailure assembly isn't even there yet, along with the wishbone for the rear spring mounts... oh, and no body or seats.

I only have a month so things should progress quickly in the pics department.

Gar

Since being out of work, I've spent a lot of time at a bar owners farm workshop building everything from steel I-beam structure building for fine wood storage, to electric and pneumatic manimatronic charaters as decoration for the bar.

The bar owner is a creative guy, personal friend, and generous civic personality. The latest project is a human powered art vehicle, competing agaist others over a multi-mile course of streets, mud, gravel, and water for nothing more than bragging rights. Nearly all have several riders and use bicycle type motive power. Check the link for some idea of the creativity (questionable sanity) of the teams from other years.

http://www.kineticbaltimore.com/

Baltimore is getting a Grand Prix race this summer so our team has decided to build a vehicle loosely based on a 50's era open wheel race car. I'm the engineer. We are using an old electric golf cart for its nicely built rear axle for the differential and drum brakes. I've removed the motor, disassembled the diff, removed the ring gear to replace it with a motorcycle sprocket. Since the cast diff case incorporated an intermediate gear reduction shaft and motor mount, I've decided to fabricate our case from plate steel and use a jackshaft arrangement to place the input chaing drive centrally in the vehicle. I couldn't find a freeby CVT that wasn't part of an OEM engine case, so I'll use a bike derailier sprocket on the input to the diff case, and look for a freewheeling design option from bike hub if it's strong enough for the 4, inline cyclist's torque. They will be somewhat recumbant seated. The golf cart also lends its front axle with steering to the project well. The weight of 4 tuff guys and the vehicle turn out to be right within the range of the golf cart with big riders and batteries, so heft, springs, bearings, and tires all suit well. The thing will be around 16 foot long. Donno how I'll address the floaty part of the course yet.

Local forum buddies are encouraged to come out for a day and shake my shaking hand and offer a covert push if possible.

The farm shop has all the tools a guy could want for this sort of fun.... fine welder, plasma, chop saw, bandsaw, clamps, torches, lathe, and stock of materials to allow lots of imagination.

Beer makers promote their brands with "beer tins".... embossed, painted signage usually aluminum or thin steel sheet. We'll use dozens of these, rivited (airplane style) together for the body skin.

To know me, you'd recognize how much fun this will be for me. I'll start posting pictures as the build progresses. I've mocked up the beginnings with front, rear, and backbone today, but didn't take my camera.

Dom, I'll push this to a blog if you'd rather.

Gar

First verify proper inflation on fronts. Then, check for a badly dragging caliper on the side opposite the direction it pulls. It would make the wheel rim hot after driving, but don't just lay your hand on it..... hover over it cause it could be unbelievably hot. Other causes ..... bad wheel bearing, horribly loose tie rod end, maybe differential, CV, or intermediate shaft problem.

Block rears, jack up whole front end. try rotating the wheels checking for drag. Shake tires at 3 and 9 to check tie rods. Rotate each side listening for clunks from CVs, differential. Look at intermediate shaft mounting on passenger side near center to see it's not flopping around.

Gar

K Jeff... always try to be helpful.... especially if it's just my old stuff. Speakin of old stuff....

I still have the ole 95 rear disc setup on my donor if there's any member interested. Ideally, there would be nuttin left where the car sat when I complete my project. It's such a pain to have it taking space... if there's parts anyone can use, gimme a shout.

Gar

Jeff,

My collection comes from mid 90s thru 2000 Contour and Escort. All carry the same part number as best as I can make out from the faded stickers, 93 BB 18808, although my 2000 Contour manual notes "The front speakers incorporate integrated high frequency tweeters within the mid range cone, using Inductive Coupling Technology (ICT)". Mine came from fronts and backs with no difference noted either at time of removal, or on the bench.

My collection may not include that later premium package coaxial unit.

Four are from my heavily optioned 95GL. It had the remote amplifier typically associated with premium sound.

We need comment from other members to determine if there is a "premium" speaker.... I can't swear there was. All of mine are marked, "20 watts, 4 ohm".

Gar

Jeff,

Here's my inventory of speakers.... pulled three out of doors today. They all have good voice coils, but all have some degree of complience ring rot.... some very holey.

There are two that have only just begun to show signs.... they are all I can offer.

PM me an address and I'll send them off.

Gar

Jeff,

Just out to the shop.... my 95 with remoted amp doesn't have a rear deck speaker, just rear door speakers. Is that what you're after?

Pulling the easy one now (door is off the car)

Gar

See post I left in your new thread, Gar

Jeff,

I'll pull the speakers from mine and scrutinize em as possible candidates for your fix.

Repairing speakers is a business. One that benefits from experience. The one repair action you might attempt is a re-solder of the eustachian conductor that connects the frame to the diaphram, but only if you have the chops to determine if that's where it has failed. Because it flexes, it can break the bond where the eustachian attaches to the fine voice coil wire. To troubleshoot, scrape the paint from the fine wire and ohm tween that point and the terminal tab for each end of the coil. Other than that, it takes a guy in the biz to fix any other faults it could have.

My personal friend is a re-coner. Car speakers are not a business model that makes repair practical... show biz speakers and HiFi are where that biz lives. But he can rebuild most anything he can match a voice coil form to, and salvage the cone and outter support ring (not real likely there is a source for these). Let's chase down all the used speaker options there are (and any NewOldStock sources) before trying to convince my pal to spend the effort to fix yours.

It's a snowy day... I'll retrieve the speakers from my donor today.

Gar

Jeff,

I supported myself repairing consumer electronics for years. A considerable amount of that work was car audio.

Mechanicals age... you know that.... the belts, clutches, push buttons.

Electronics, on the other hand, don't.... with only a few exceptions. When it changes its behaviour, it's typically a broken radio.

One area that does age.... is the first RF amplifier transister in the tuner. It must be a quiet, and high freq, capable transister. The aging that occurs affects the frequency responce over its operating range. Most beta/gain testers think it's good because they test with DC or low freq signal. In the extreme, you receive only a few strong stations. This is way more often an FM problem, AM is a lower band than FM, and typically, a different set of transisters.

Although the dated design (in my 60's and 70's repair biz years) used 3 transisters in the tuner, RF amp, Oscilater, and Mixer, the same degrading of the RF amp transister affects the new synthisizer designs as well.

The sound quality may be affected, but the dead give-away symptom of this fault is the lack of stations you can receive.

Capaciters dry and age, but their faults are generally night and day, like it is so bad, or it doesn't work at all.

In my repair approach, I always look where the work is really being done.... in audio, it's either the power supply or the output stage. Since this is car audio, the power supply isn't really a candidate.

The output stage can suffer malfunctions that degrade audio by a subtle amount, or very obvious. Each channel is actually a paired set of amplifier transisters (push-pull).... one huals the speaker towards the 12 volt rail, and the other pulls the speaker towards the ground rail. When one fails, you can have an offset that may not sound bad at all at a low level, but anything past a quarter volume is distorted.

Viewed on an osciliscope, half the waveform will be missing or much smaller.

So, once reviewed, would you say you have all the stations, and how does the distortion sound at different volume levels?

You mentioned that speakers are not the problem, but you ought to have a look. The paper dries out and crumbles away leaving the voice coil un-centered, and rubbing in the air gap. I've long since had the doors and speakers off on my 95, and can say that even the premium sound option that my GL had, still used a rather cheapish speaker, and they were dried and crumbling.

Gar

+1

Gar

A damper is not a balancer. A damper is a rotational inertia component in concert with the elastic behavior of the crank to disipate energy at the natural resonate freqs of the crank, so balancing a pulley is not at all the same thing as a damper and can't produce the same result.

If you're really asking how long it will be before catatrophic damage occurs, a pretty long time most likely. Any increase in performance typically reduces longevity, so, from that perspective, you could look at it as a trade off.... and ask, how much gain am I getting for reduced longevity?

In this case though, you don't have to make any bottom end longevity sacrifice if you were to use a damper with an underdrive pulley. The sacrifice in that case would only be those associated with the slower moving PS pump (increased load on your arms), alternater (deeper cycling of the battery), and AC compressor (lower system pressure, or not as cold all the time).

You may not use the car long enough to ever see the downside, it's just a downside you don't have to make.

Gar

I couldn't tell if you were saying you still have a damper or not in your posts.

If you still have the damper, then all that is different is the speed the PS, alternater, and AC compressor run. Since they have neutral balance characteristics, the engine doesn't know the difference.

If the replacement pulley is not a damper meant for the Duratec, then there will be stresses along the crank that are detrimental over the long run.

Are there symptoms you've noticed that prompted asking?

Gar

Quick look for AMP.... these are extracters I've used:

http://www.crawfordtool.com/amp.html

Again, the chances they are sized like Ford uses... donno. I'll do a little research on it Speedmaster.

Gar

I've reworked many electronic product connecters over the years in the biz I was in. We used AMP brand. My experience also includes some military connecters. Within the brands, the actual pins are rather common in terms of their locking mechanism, making for only a few different extracters. The lock styles include 2 to 4 flanged out fingers (or teeth, if you like better), or a spring C ring in pricier cases. The extracters have a slitted (for the wire) thin wall springy cylintrical barrel that compresses the lock, and you pull extracter and pin out together. When the tool is new, it performs very nicely.... when you get one that somebody else mangled, it can be a pain.

So far as I've fooled with automotive, the pins have had the finger style lock (I'm not the authority on automotive). As Dom said, you can often identify the fingers and coax em to release the pin with tiny tools.

The AMP, Modu family of pins look like the ones I find in automotive. I should hunt for a proper AMP extracter among my hords of electronic stuff, and see how well it works.

If positive, I would share or give you a part number/source for it.

Gar

My dear Dad's engine montra.... it takes three things to run:

air/fuel mixture, compression, and ignition.

A 4 cylinder can break its timing belt and no longer make compression (it's a non interference engine that doesn't whack the valves with the piston)

Either I4 or V6 could have a failed fuel pump.

Either could have a failed crank sensor or coil pack or fuse/wiring that dosn't make spark.

You'll have to narrow down the cause.

You can look in the oil fill cap on the rocker cover to see if the cam(s) is turning.

You can check for spark. The methods are varied, but for novice (you don't want to feel an ignition jolt) I suggest you use a cheap spark tester from Harbor Fright to check ignition.

http://www.harborfreight.com/inline-ignition-spark-checker-4424.html

You can pull a plug to look for wetness from fuel.

These are pretty easy steps to identify which of the notorious three is missing. Then we can take steps to root out why.

Gar

No, the first will a Sube mid-engine, built as light and low as I can make it using either a take-out normal asperated 1.8 or 2.2L using the FWD 5 speed that came with them before 1995. None, or simple torpedo body open wheel. The rear suspension may end up like a VW's, trailing swing arm, since the arc formed by the travel can be used around the diff center to minimize the plunge that will result from making the ride height angle of the halfshafts so steep to lower the car. I want to be only a couple inchs off the pavement. The frame will be triangulated tiny DOM. I have a very modified VW front beam that I abandoned on the current fiberglas project that may be my simplist option to slap on. This first climber is to get involved cheap easy and fast, and be noticed. They make up classes for weird stuff to build membership letting everyone participate. I want to be faster than street cars the first showing.... skills just have to catch up :) I raced the buggies fearlessly, so I would expect to have an edge on many racers where the car can't tip, and there's no emotional baggage over the sheet metal bending against guardrails.

I'm pretty sure I'll like the fun, so I expect that I'll want torque once I get involved.... like in a couple years so a V8 or supercharged V6 for a car that competes in a real class would be next, but it has to be a car capable of winning once I'm educated, drive-wise.

To me the thrill of racing in the mountains is the greatest... Western PA upbringing.

Gar

That tells me it's too soon to be making a commitment then, just such a wide variety of potentials. Both you two could bend my ear on your faves on the visits I'd like to have with you Westminsters. The usual fence side I'll fall on will be the most rational on the expence side. The aftermarket value has to develope over time, so I'll stay busy with the other projects I've set for myself till an easier pick shakes out. Thanks for help.

Gar

Confound you RAC, for making the choice more difficult!

When are we ever going to get together?

Pick a date in January so I can come over and see your stuff. You're welome over here to see mine any time you give me a couple day's notice. I spend a lot of weekend at Hottie's place, but would enjoy car talk as a change. Maybe a day at a junkyard over your way. Let me know.

As for engine choices, I think I'd use the Passat that already fits the tranny over another V6. I also have the SVT engine in the shed, but I'm after 300s HP range. My old Buick V8 is another lesser pick. The application is the second hillclimber after the Sube mid-engine build that I'd like to knock out next summer... just to get my feet wet in the sport and learn the ropes, although it could also serve as a streetable project if another interesting body comes along. If I do a Karmann Ghia, it will be a middy Sube.

Gar

Dom, since you've just worked on the Mustang, et al,

On a suggestion, I've begun looking at the new, Modular named Ford V8s, specifically the 4 OH cam 302ci. It reads pretty impressive, perhaps except the powdered rods.... oil squirters, 6 bolt, aluminum, high redline, etc. Don't know how available they are yet in the junkyard, but I'm curious about bell housing mate and the allowable clearance on the back transverse side for an MTX75. Any personal experience with this engine and any shortcommings has value to me. Buiding a one-off adapter doesn't trouble because of my own shop and buddy machinists. I'd be building a car around the power train. I lean towards the Passat FWD longitudinal mount tranny (Passat for cheaper, Porsche Boxer relationship for toughness), or the MTX75 in a transverse mount. Supercharging the Passat V6 is a competing engine choice for the longitudinal layout. The Volvo V8 and Yamaha (Lexus) V8 are also in the candidate zone.

Gar

Course I don't enjoy spreading bad news, but Terry knows as well.... The passageway past the head gasket doesn't have to blow into the oil passages at the same failure... you can have just a hole to the water jacket. So long as there isn't water jacket pressure to send coolant into the cylinder, the open intake valve is easier to draw from than the water jacket.... making white smoke/sweet smell more a closed throttle occuance, and depeding on severity, may not be noticable. The pressure generated by just compression without ignition is substancial... now, consider a cylinder that is still firing sometimes, and you easily have huge pressure to vent past the head gasket.

The way to troubleshoot your symptoms is to do as Terry suggests... a cylinder compression test, and a coolant system pressure test. These should be pretty conclusive in deternining if you've got a blown gasket. I hope not, but I've seen many, and you have the symptoms.

Gar

I think your head gasket is leaking on a couple cylinders. The coolant spatter from the pressurized water jacket, the sputtering and lawn mower (less than all jugs firing) all fit the prognosis.

Gar

It takes three things for an engine to run...

fuel-air mixture, compression, and ignition.

You've verified ignition, and substituted fuel/air. You should check compression. A chain/tensioner failure bad enough to jump teeth could have bent valves. Place your hand over the throttle body opening (holding throttle plate open at the same time) and crank to see if there's any vacuum being made.

Wise to review the other two as well since bad compression is the worst of the three.... a bad fuel pump, fuse, or tripped crash shut-off can interrupt fuel. A recent plug wire change done wrong, bad crank sensor, fuse, etc, could prevent proper spark.

Gar

Are any of the halfshaft bellows torn?

Gar