That is a good deal^^
Keep in mind that the Reni and most na rotaries don't have much torque... Forced induction doesn't work super well on them either
REW pullouts from a jdm source might be a better option from a hp and tq perspective.
That is a good deal^^
Keep in mind that the Reni and most na rotaries don't have much torque... Forced induction doesn't work super well on them either
REW pullouts from a jdm source might be a better option from a hp and tq perspective.
LFX, the GM v6 used in the camaros..also the honda V6. You'd have to have a custom adaptor plate made with most engines you use...the honda v6 is cheep too. Im all about torque. Also there is a reaon that RX8 is in the junk yard...even if its crashed i question the integrity of the motor
Delorian is one of those cars on my bucket list, proly wont ever have like my Opel GT and the 59 caddy, but still...love seeing all this. And yeah, the shot in the arm, 5 days it was sore!
So having never actually seen the motor compartment of a delorean. I'm kind of intrigued by the possibilities of motor choices. A supercharged 3800 V6 hooked up to a G96 6speed would be a fun little package. Since the 3800 is basicly a SBC with 2 cylinders cut off. I don't think repairing one would be that difficult or costly compared to the renesis rotory. I do like like rotory's as one of my friends growing up had a mazda mx4 with a built 13b. Sounded like a angry electric razor up in the 8k to 9k range where the rev limiter would kick in. Pretty damn quick for the time that was for sure.
In reply to brad131a4 (Forum Supporter) :
True- but getting a G96 would likely be rather out of my budget.
There are definitely things I need to figure out with regards to the engine. I'm not entirely too worried about the Renesis having the power for the car- it has nearly a third more torque and roughly 80% more horsepower than the original PRV did, and while the PRV was underpowered for the car it worked well enough. The main concern would be whether the stock transmission (with the improvements I can make easily) can take the higher revs the Wankel needs to get to for it to really shine.
Also, at least according to Wikipedia the DMC weighs roughly the same as the RX-8 (and my 330Ci), so I think the Renesis would do well enough (as would the BMW 3.0l M54, though I worry about the length fitting in the DMC's engine bay).
There's little doubt the L67 has more torque, as would likely several of the other newer V6s. Once I get more into figuring out what it looks like will fit well (I.e. one I have the body off and can take good measurements) I can figure things out a bit more solidly.
I picked one up for $800 with a humming between 4th and 5th gear. Sounds like a bearing is going out. Going to rebuild it and mate it to a 4.2 audi motor before stuffing it into a Vanagon. If you don't mind tearing into a transaxle then they can be had cheap.
There is another road altogether. A Reverse ring n pinion in a subaru 5speed mated to a wrx motor would and could give you some good power. Keep the center of gravity low and really piss off the purists.
In reply to brad131a4 (Forum Supporter) :
I'm going to be rebuilding the DMC's stock one if I use it, so either way I'd be rebuilding one.
Unfortunately the Boxer engines look like they won't work in the DMC's engine bay, at least not without heavily modifying the frame- the PRV is a rather tall engine but not so wide, so apparently the flat engines are too wide to fit between the frame.
autocomman said:Also there is a reaon that RX8 is in the junk yard...even if its crashed i question the integrity of the motor
Anything that I pick up that doesn't have a very known history (as in, "I bought it from another GRMer who rebuilt it for a project but didn't use it") is going to get rebuilt by me before putting it into the car- I'm not going to spend the time and effort to put an engine into the car that I don't have 100% confidence in. I've rebuilt both piston engines and a 13B before, so neither worries me much.
Got nothing done on the car over the weekend... after a week largely holed up in a beach house there were enough other things to do that I just didn't get around to it. Next steps will be going through the checklist of things to be done before separating the body and frame- probably starting with draining all of the fluids from the car. Then I've got to figure out exactly how I want to handle separating the two and moving one... it's times like this that I really wish my garage had a lift...
I don't mind seeing pictures of the stuff that didn't get done. Even if you show nothing new. It's nice to see progress, or even just the progress that -you- see...
Any chance you can get the body lifted a bit with jackstands supporting it, then use lumber to make a couple of wider sawhorses to hold the body up, while you roll the chassis out from under it?
In reply to eastsideTim :
That's generally what I'm thinking I'll do... though the body is a lot lighter (obviously) than the frame- especially with the doors and seats removed- the frame being on wheels (or, as some apparently do it, removing the wheels and lowering it onto dollies so the body doesn't have to go up so far) will likely make it easier to move around. If I can get enough space to pull the frame back (since I'm not planning to pull the engine first) it will mean I don't have to lift the body as much since the engine is by far the highest thing on the frame.
Yesterday I got started on some of the specific things that need to be done in pulling the body off the frame for the DMC (there's a helpful checklist here). Drained the oil from the engine since I needed to run to the store and would go right by a parts store where I could drop off the used oil.
Next up, I pulled the shifter knob off as well as the cover and heavy rubber sound damper, since the shifter assembly itself will stay with the frame. It's been a while since I'd pulled all of these parts off, and I was surprised at how much junk there was down under the insulating rubber- it appears that some small animal was using the are as a nest. Picture isn't the greatest, but the rusty part of the shifter where the small cylinder sticks out to the left is what is supposed to move up and down (as in, pull up and away from the console) but is currently rusted in the 'up' position, which is why I can't get the car into 1st gear at the moment (it's set up such so that you can go from 'Reverse' to '1st Gear' without the E36 M3er being down and going out of gear and vice versa, to prevent accidentally going from 1st to R or R to 1st and damaging the transaxle. There is an updated part that I'll pick up to hopefully keep this rust problem from happening- one of the vendors makes a stainless shifter shaft.
The main thing to be done in the cabin itself is to pull the 4 large bolts that hold the body down as well as the seat belt bolts, but I'm going to hold off on that until I'm ready to actually life the body so when I move things around it doesn't shift around.
The next thing that I moved on to was preparing to pull the rear fascia and brace off, the first step in doing that being pulling the license plate holder and the rear taillight assemblies. Here is the car with them all pulled off:
The taillight assemblies themselves are kind of interesting since they're pretty different from those on modern cars. Here's the housing and the circuit board (showing the side with the bulbs & sockets):
Yes, that's essentially a flat, very simple PCB with the bulb sockets (originally, at least...) only riveted to it and depending on the rivet to make the connection. Unsurprisingly this did not hold up well over decades (or shorter periods), so most people have reinforced the connections by also soldering the sockets to the board. That notched area on the upper left at the top between the two left-most bulbs? That's where the wiring harness connects. New, the board is copper and brown with the copper being where the circuits run- of course it being very much not sealed, the copper oxidizes, so you frequently have to lightly sand off the oxidization to keep the connection solid... and even then it helps to take additional steps- which brings us to the back of the board...
All of those wires that you see coming through the rivets (or grommets, I suppose they more technically are) are connected to the ground/common for the bulbs- the car is notorious for having bad ground connections for the taillights, so many people run individual wires to connect directly to a ground to ensure that a good connection is made. This is one of the things that I hope to clean up in doing this- ensuring that things like this aren't necessary.
There are a number of available aftermarket upgrades to the taillights... some places make new, better-connected boards that are otherwise identical to the original to ones that have a built in sequencer that does some fancy things (as can be seen here). I'm on the fence regarding what exactly I'm going to do- the fancy sequenced ones are not cheap but are close that what I'd like- but doing what I'd really like (replacing the bulbs with either an RBG or bi-color LED matrix that I can program to do anything I want) is likely to be not only as expensive in the end but also a LOT more time-consuming vs. just pulling the new boards in and being done.
Here's the connection on the car side for the taillight boards for anyone curious:
Tuesdays are my days with the most time available to work in the garage- so I'm shooting for getting it to the point of being able to be ready to pull the body off by the end of the evening if I can.
Didn't get anything done yesterday on the DMC, but did make some solid progress on Tuesday. Not as much as I'd hoped- but that's pretty much par for the course.
On Tuesday I was focussing on getting things done on the back of the car that needed to be done before the body and frame could be separated- the major part of that being that the rear bumper & fascia needed to come off. In theory it's possible to leave them attached to the body, but since four very large bolts hold them to the back crossmember of the frame it is a LOT easier to just remove it- especially since doing so means there's nothing on the body at the very back so the body doesn't have to be lifted high enough for the engine (highest thing on the frame by far) to go under it as long as the frame/engine can be maneuvered out the back through the opening.
Getting the fascia and bumper off involves lots of bolts, so I didn't take pictures of the whole process. It was pretty easy overall once I remembered which all needed to come off and which could stay, since I had taken the assembly off back when I had the front and rear fascias stripped and repainted. I'm not likely to be doing a whole lot with the fascia and bumper assembly besides perhaps replacing a few fasteners that should have been replaced with stainless ones before. The only thing I might be trying to work out would be if I can find a way to get the 'DeLorean' lettering embossed in the fascia to light up without completely destroying the bumper (the easiest thing would likely be to just cut out the lettering and put lighting behind them, but I'd prefer to not cut up the bumper if I don't have to).
Here is the car with the fascia and bumper support removed:
You get a bit better view of the back (front, on most cars...) of the engine with the fascia out of the way. The mufflers needed to come off to get access to a nut holding the bottom of the fascia to the stainless skin. I'd figured on just leaving them connected for the time being, but other than snapping the bolts on the clamps that held them to the headers they came off easily. I don't know yet whether I'll be re-using the mufflers- if I end up using another V6 engine and don't try to come up with an exhaust system that will have a catalytic converter, I will likely be able to re-use them (with new mounting hardware).
Something I did not do when I worked on the car before was to pull the 'rear impact absorber'- the mostly-foam part behind (well, in front of in the car coordinate system...) the fascia and bumper assembly. I didn't technically need to here, but it seemed wise since it would get better access to things and I'd need to anyway when I stripped things off the frame to get it blasted, tanked, whatever. The impact absorber is something that I'll have to weigh what I want to do about. It's clear that the foam has deteriorated in the roughly 40 years since it was made so it would be good from a safety standpoint to replace it... but the problem is that while there are NOS replacements available, they're also going to be 40 years old. Granted they've typically been stored in a warehouse and not exposed to the elements like the ones on the car, but I'd be a lot happier if there was a modern-day replacement available. Even moreso given the NOS part is over $600....
Here is the car with the absorbing foam removed- there's something rather interesting and notable here, but I'll get into that in another post since it is outside of the process of taking the car apart...
In this picture you can see the engine bay setup a bit more clearly. Looking at things, you can see the stainless coolant reservoir on the right side- that is likely one of the few things from the engine bay that will be sticking around after the swap, since the new engine will likely need a coolant reservoir as well. The rusty metal sheet at the back attached to the frame should be coming off as well- but the nuts on it are the original ones and I'd prefer to not snap the studs off and have to replace them, so I soaked them in Kroil and will see if that helped make them easier to remove.
I also got (I hope, we'll see when it comes time to lift the body...) all of the electrical connections between the engine and the body disconnected except for the main battery cables, which I need better access to the underside of the car to do. As such, I think I've done all that I can with it on the ground, so the last thing I did (before, uncharacteristically for me, putting all of the tools away...) was to loosen all of the lug nuts so when I next get out there (hopefully this afternoon/evening) I can get the whole thing jacked up so I can disconnect what I need to on the underside. I'm thinking that I will go the route of pulling the wheels and setting the frame down on my wheel dollies so I don't have the height of the wheels/tires to deal with.
In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :
That crash pad behind the bumper skin is easy to replicate with 2 part expanding urethane foam. Use the skin for the mold, and finish the surface that attaches to the under "beam" in the last picture. Weigh and measure the original to calculate the density to order the correct foam. They probably had a dedicated mold cavity when making the originals, but the bumper skin supported opening up and level will work fine for you. It is a messy process, but the result will work like a new original, and the $$ will be far less than a 40 year old suspect NOS part.
In reply to TurnerX19 :
That might work... but the original part has a metal component with nutplates on it so I'd likely have to cut the foam off the old one.
Where we left off:
Where things are now:
I'll get to posting the pictures between those at some point. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have the frame and body side-by-side in the garage.
Well, Berkley. And Shazbot, Qiznak, Hu'tegh, and kuso while I'm at it.
I knew things were going too smoothly and quickly... it looks like it's going to be early June now before I'm going to be able to get the frame and body side-by-side where I can easily work on both. Why?
That pile of boxes on the right side of the garage- where the frame of the car should be? That's the beginning of donations for the annual Yard Sale that The Dancer's non-profit holds each year that will be held the last weekend on May this year. So I'm not going to have use of the full garage until after that. Which means that I'm going to likely jack the body up as high as I can over the frame and work on pulling things off the frame where it is. Not ideal, but at least I'll be able to make progress...
Bump. I swung by Saturday and we lifted the body clear of the chassis. I got a better look at some of the rust on the chassis and it's bad. This will be a good time to get some circle track race boys to build a new frame for the big D.
Also weird, while the frame is obviously much heavier in the rear (with the engine back there), the body is FAR heavier in the front. I lifted the rear a foot so Bob could slide blocks under the important jack points, but had to use a jack to raise the front.
Sorry I forgot to take pictures....
In reply to KyAllroad (Jeremy) (Forum Supporter) :
Don't worry, I'll hopefully get some updated pictures later today (we were out at our cabin until this morning). You were a big help with getting the body up where I can both work on the frame and be able to move the frame out from under it when I finally have use of the full garage again in a month and a half or so.
The frame is looking worse than I was hoping it would be- but I was expecting it to be pretty bad. I'll have to see once everything is pulled off of it just how big of a problem it's going to be. One thing that is quite clear after just what I've done so far is that the potential to just have to patch the frame and then use POR-15 to fill back in where the old epoxy coating was damaged is not going to work- for all intents and purposes, the original epoxy coating is completely worthless at this point. I imagine that the coating on more than half of the frame will just flake and break off with almost no effort and is not adhered to the metal except in the larger flat areas away from the edges. So if I end up not outright replacing the frame, I'll need to have the frame either hot tanked or media blasted to remove all of the old coating before repairing it (media blasting seems like it would be more useful since it would also hopefully clear out some of the rust) and then having it coated or treated somehow.
It will be interesting (and by that I mean 'potentially frightening') to see how the cost of that would end up stacking up with the cost of having a custom one built here (if I can even find a place to do it) or the $7500+shipping (FROM ENGLAND) for a completely new galvanized and powder-coated frame from DMC Europe.
In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :
If you can design a frame, I know someone who I bet could do the heavy lifting part of frame construction. You'd probably need to do the hole drilling and welding mounting tabs and such, but I would not be surprised if he's up for the challenge.
In reply to Ashyukun (Robert) :
Isn't the frame just flat/bent 18ga sheet metal like the Esprit & Europa? If so, once you have it blasted it should be pretty easy to weld in new steel - presuming there's enough of the original remaining to use as a template.
I'm kinda surprised the frame isnt galvanized like the Esprit S3 frames.
In reply to eastsideTim :
Well, one thing I have going for me is that there is a full CAD model of the stock frame out there- someone over in Europe took measurements from a dozen or so frames and used them to build the model. I don't have the full model at the moment- he hasn't decided yet whether to just release it for people to use or to charge for it (which I'd not blame him for- I understand the time it had to take to build it) so for now has let people download a 3D-PDF of the model which is useful but nowhere near as much as the actual CAD file would be. If I could work out getting the full model from him I could see about analyzing the capabilities of the original frame and using the boundaries of the frame and interface points.
In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :
The frame isn't anything remotely exotic- I'm not sure of the gauge, but it is just standard (for the time) soft steel with an epoxy coating to (theoretically) prevent rust. It will more be a matter of just how bad things are when I get a better look at it- with all I'm planning on doing before it's back together and on the road I want to not have to worry about the frame for, well, the rest of my lifetime if possible.
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