If not farm truck, why farm truck shape?
It turns out my oil pressure issue was in between the chair and keyboard. I had a Holley oil pressure sensor chosen instead of the OE LS sensor. 60psi at idle now.
If not farm truck, why farm truck shape?
It turns out my oil pressure issue was in between the chair and keyboard. I had a Holley oil pressure sensor chosen instead of the OE LS sensor. 60psi at idle now.
I just realized that you live fairly close to me! I am just up near johnson creek. Are you planning on taking this to any shows in the area? I have a friend with a 500whp AW11 MR2 that lives down in janesville. I've gone cruising down there with him before. I have an 88 montero 2 door as one of my project cars and I have thought about ls swapping it. I believe that it is very closely related to your truck.
Definitely farm truck!
I gotta say, this is one project that every time I open this thread I think I could own it..... If you ever want to sell it LMK first lol
java230 said:I gotta say, this is one project that every time I open this thread I think I could own it..... If you ever want to sell it LMK first lol
That's very high praise, I really appreciate it. I don't really ever intend on selling this truck. I'm coming up on 8 years with it now and I'm just starting to get to actually enjoy it.
In reply to RacetruckRon :
I didn't think you would be selling it! It's coming together so well.
Mrfurzzy said:I just realized that you live fairly close to me! I am just up near johnson creek. Are you planning on taking this to any shows in the area? I have a friend with a 500whp AW11 MR2 that lives down in janesville. I've gone cruising down there with him before. I have an 88 montero 2 door as one of my project cars and I have thought about ls swapping it. I believe that it is very closely related to your truck.
What color is that MR2? I saw one on highway 14 a few weeks ago but can't recall what color it was.
I'm not a big car show guy normally, I took it down to Hwy100 in Milwaukee a couple times when I lived in Waukesha. Definitely hit me up for a cruise sometime though.
Edit: that Montero is a half brother to my truck, a lot of carryover between them, I'd love to see that thing sometime.
In reply to RacetruckRon :
His mr2 is black. I will definitely let you know the next time I head to Janesville to cruise
RacetruckRon said:I need a coolant overflow tank ASAP so if anyone has any junkyard suggestions I'm all ears.
May I suggest...
In reply to AWSX1686 (Forum Supporter) :
No. I hate that tacky crap even on rat rods. I want to find something that fits with the Frankenstein OE parts bin that this truck has become.
In reply to RacetruckRon :
Put in one of those Death Star coolant bottles from a VW, just to throw everyone for a loop.
Coolant Reservoir | 603-559 | Pressurized Coolant Reservoir | Dorman Products
In reply to RacetruckRon :
Fair enough. Can't say I have a good suggestion on OE parts though, I mostly deal with Miatas and BMWs. Miata is a weird shape, and let's be honest, no one wants BMW cooling system parts unless they have to.
I was looking at boat tank style universal fuel level sensors last night and even measured my gas tank to see how deep it was since the gas gauge has not been working lately. Apparently that scared my gas gauge back to life *shrug* I'll keep an eye on it, I have a plan now if I need to completely replace that system.
RacetruckRon said:
Hey! I recognize that!
Truck's looking good!
I've been driving the truck a bit this week, tweaking the tune quite a bit. I'm getting some of the fine details ironed out but the base fuel and timing maps are on the money. Accel enrichment, coolant temp enrichment, etc need a little fine tuning still but it's streetable. I need to do some tuning on the dampers, this thing rides either rides like a kart and pogos down the concrete highways or is super lumbery and floaty with the couple changes I've made to the dampers. I added a stiffer rear spring to the truck back in South Carolina to help with the rear ride height and lost my notes from 4 years ago on the shock adjustments I made.
Another issue I've run into is WOT 2-3 shift is met with a nice grinding noise and no third gear. I've never experienced that with this transmission and I was shifting at 7500 rpm instead of 6200 rpm when I had the 5.3 in the truck 4 years ago. I was pretty sure the clutch was dragging a little bit so I adjust the clutch pedal out 3 turns on the master cylinder and tested it tonight. That seems to have solved what I at first thought might be a synchro issue. This adjustment now feels like I have 7" or more of pedal throw. I need to dig up an old excel file I put together about this a couple years ago. I am probably going to mull that over for the next week or so on the beach in Alabama though.
Got back home to Wisco late this afternoon, a getaway was much needed. A couple boxes accumulated for the truck, one I knew was coming the other I wasn't sure if I got scammed or if it was legit.
The AFCO box was the questionable order. I found a site called afcodeals.com that seemed to be legit and have discontinued AFCO shocks, master cylinders and the rest of their catalog. All of the contact info and sales emails were the same as the legit AFCO website but there was zero reviews for this deals website. A 7/8" master cylinder kit was $19.99 on this site instead of $109 for a similar Tilton so I took the gamble since I could check out with paypal. I never got a shipping notification email but a box was on my front porch when I got home today and there wasn't a brick inside of the box. Big Win. Maybe I'll scoop some shocks from them, I'm suspecting the Jegs QA1 knockoffs are blown out after 6 years of sitting in a garage and riding on a uhaul trailer with an overloaded bed for 2000 miles.
Other box is a fresh take off OE Fbody oil pan and pickup tube for less than the price of a chinese amazon knockoff. This is for the aluminum 5.3 and will get the Improved Racing baffle I have that's been gathering dust on the shelf for 3 years now.
I'm waiting on some parts from SendCutSend again but parts from Speedway and McMaster have arrived to help solve a general issue with C4 rear suspension.
More L33 progress. It's basically ready to come off the stand once the paint dries on the valve covers.
It's been raining like crazy here almost ever day for the last week which makes waiting on parts while the rear suspension is blown apart not a big deal. My latest engineering exercise involves Gumby's favorite, SendCutSend.
I have been fighting the rear camber adjustment since I installed poly bushings. I can set the camber where I want it, torque everything down and after a shakedown run my camber is back to negative 3-4° where it was before adjustment. This seems to be an issue a lot of C4 owners have run into in the past. There are a couple kits to delete the eccentric bolt adjustment and move to a rod end turnbuckle for the lower link. The cheapest option I've found is ~$450, rough math from Speedway and McMaster parts told me I could do it for about half that with pretty minimal design time.
I made a couple design changes of course from the After Dark Speed kit that I took inspiration from. A big one for me with rod ends is maintenance, so greasable rod ends over teflon lined. I also reduced the number of camber gain adjustment holes to simplify and increase cross sectional area of the bracket in the bolted joint. I could have had SendCutSend make these as a single, bent piece with powder coat or zinc plating but that would have made these brackets three times the cost. So a tab and slot welded joint and spray paint will do just fine for me.
Quick fitment check says I didn't totally berkeley this up.
I had to clean the garage up a little bit to get to the welding table and also discovered my wife stole my welding stool for the kitchen island. I'll be keeping an eye on the harbor freight stools in upcoming sales. I just need to get some paint on these brackets now, get them slapped on the truck and do a quick alignment.
Constructive critique that may improve your final product: draw your tab and slot/notch joints with area to lay in the filler material.
Corners to be outside welded should meet at the inside edges of the thickness. Similarly, tabs should terminate below the surface rather than flush to the outside.
There are solid refinements happening here. I'm excited to see how this next iteration performs
In reply to gumby :
Yeah this wasn't something I actually thought about until I had the welding squares out. I'm considering running a bead on the inside corner just to get a little bit more filler in that joint. I'm very well versed in injection molding and casting design, still learning sheet metal that isn't progressive die stamped. I almost didn't include the welded tie bar but figured GM included that for a good reason otherwise the accountants would have made that two single plates.
I got the rear camber dialed in where I want it a couple nights ago and then had a revelation underneath the truck. I don't think the rear suspension has been cycling properly since I installed the poly bushings on the rear lower control arms back in SC. I'm pretty sure those lower control arms were have been binding the whole time. Blame that partly on the poly bushing but mostly on me for welding all of the pickup points in when the suspension had old worn out rubber bushings.
With the rod end lower arms in I made a couple shock adjustments following a different train of thought I have after reading a bunch of Moto IQ articles and made a beer run with the truck tonight. It rides so much better now and the rear is so planted. I got a headlight wink of approval from a fellow hooligan in a slammed NA Miata so that felt good.
I still want to put the larger bore AFCO clutch master in but it's running so good now I think it deserves the passenger seat.
I switched out the clutch master cylinder a couple weeks ago. I still have the 2-3 shift grind above 4500rpm. I'm starting to think that's always been there and that's why I got this trans for $400. I never really did a full throttle 2-3 shift with the aluminum 5.3 because I had 2.59 rear gears back then and that would have been a 90mph shift at 7500rpm. The truck is still running great besides that so I'll approach getting a spare trans or rebuilding the current trans sometime in the future.
I put the passenger seat in and installed the glove box. The truck deserves to look a little more put together plus I'm trying to organize the garage just in case we decide we are moving for a new job in a week or so. The wiring isn't perfect but I don't have a lot of passengers in this truck and it all works fine.
It's been unseasonably cool here lately which mean the 3 mile drive to my new job isn't so bad without AC. With the Saab out of service for the time being the truck has been called up. Several of the guys on the floor have already come up to me and in more or less words been like "new guy have weird noisy truck, new guy pretty okay." Which is a win for an engineer surrounded by factory workers.
I swung up the road to Menards on my lunch break to get a 26mm socket to fix the Saab. I always get a kick out of this truck parked next to modern trucks and SUVs.
There's a big hole in the fuel map or pedal enrichment when cold that I logged this morning. I'm going to get that sorted out later, it just wants a little more fuel in one spot so it should be a simple tweak.
Congrats on the new job, and congrats on the approval from the floor personnel. I'm a fan of good relationships between engineering/manufacturing, I think it makes both groups better
So happy to see pictures of this driving! It's been good motivation for me. Ditto on congrats for the new job!
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