In reply to Gunchsta:
Me too! 
In reply to Gunchsta:
Me too!
First off, congrats on the new toy. You certainly won't see your doppelganger coming down the road in the opposite direction any time soon.
Secondly, we have one of these at Autobooks-Aerobooks.
Follow the link for the book.
Also- are you actually going to turbo this thing? I read a comment about turboing it but wasn't quite sure, then I saw a fuel pump and what appeared to be a blow off valve??
If you are you have tremendous cojones sir. My hat is off to you.
In reply to Jerry From LA:
I have an old Solex book and a rebuild kit, but after being told by my wife to turbocharge it, those are going on the shelf unless someone else wants them. Thanks for the link, however.
Gunchsta: yup. Megasquirt. Turbo. Totally learning as I go. I have the liberating vehicular status of "when I dragged it home, it wasnt running anyway". So I am aimming high.
I have been wanting an "add a turbo" project and an "install a megasquirt" project for a long time. Finally found the project car to do both, and the wife thinks the car is cute!
I have my eyes on some Goodyear Radials TA with the raised white letters and keeping the stock wheels. Then I only need to fit an entirely new brake system. Like, from a different vehicle completely. I finally have a third garage stall (along with a second!) so if this a long term build, nothing is sitting through a Wisconsin winter.
I got my very cheap fuel pressure regulator with 1:1 boost reference in the mail too.
I received a bunch of closeout wire, a couple of relays and a small fuse block from RockAuto. I still need to figure out a bunch of things:
I think I'm leaving E85 off the table for now. If I understand it correctly, you can tune for any fuel E0-E85 with a permanent wide band O2, but that might be exclusive to MS3, and I have MS2.
I also revised my horsepower goal(s) as follows:
You might find some ideas here at Jan's site: FI conversion who converted a Citroen with a grab bag of components. Great site as well, although gone a bit dormant.
Oh man turbo and megasquirt this is gonna be amazing
Rufledt wrote: Oh man turbo and megasquirt this is gonna be a long term build
FTFY, lol
I'm excited for it too, but damn if having kids doesn't make everything take ten times longer.
Only 10 times? I would've guessed higher! Worth it though
RossD wrote:Rufledt wrote: Oh man turbo and megasquirt this is gonna be a long term buildFTFY, lol I'm excited for it too, but damn if having kids doesn't make everything take ten times longer.
Yeah but you get the added fun of something the kid(s) may enjoy. My kids love the station wagon.
I would encourage you to start fresh with brakes - Wilwood has all the tech drawings on their website for each caliper they sell. Read Fred Puhn's book The Brake Handbook while you wait for the kids to fall asleep. With that info you can come up with what you need easily.
I designed and installed a complete brake system to replace an antiquated system, and it was easier than I thought.
New brakes will be easier than repairing the old, and you will have a better selection of brake pads. Unless you are building to a set of rules, better to start with new assemblies, start fresh, rather than repair.
The mailman was very nice to not only drop off the newest GRM, but also a care package from Mr Jumper K. Balls!
If I understand the internet correctly, here is what it looked like when I unboxed it!
What could it be?
TURBOS!!!! I will only need one, the small one, but the rest is for parts.
Thanks again Jumper K Balls!
It made it fast and in one piece! Excellent.
I felt bad when I dumped a near 30lb box through the drop box/tilting dumper thing and heard it crush everything in the cart.
In reply to Jumper K. Balls:
Dont forget to email me your address for your counter-care package.
Thanks again
I had an interesting 24 hours.
Wayslow told me that he had a R8 engine, transaxle and spindles all four corners and that there were rusty and taking up space. He offered them to me for free and could bring them from Canada as far as Petoskey, MI.
How could I say no?
I booked a hotel for Friday night in Petosky for me and the fam and planned to leave after work, 5 or 6pm, on Friday. Well SWMBO got home at 8pm! So by the time she was ready and the 2.5yo and the 9mo were packed up it was 8:30pm. We hit the road. Now mind you Petoskey is at best 5.5 hours from Appleton, WI. After much coffee and some great moon lit vistas over Lake Michigan, we pulled into the hotel at 3 am Eastern. We unpack the kids, the essentials, and hit the hay. Damn, feed the baby a bottle at 4am and back in bed 20 minutes later. 6am comes around the baby is ready to rock and roll. Le sigh. I feed her, load her up in the car and we go to the drive thru for breakfast, hoping she will fall asleep during the ride. No dice, but shes finishes her bottle in the hotel room and we sleep 45 minutes before we have to get up. We eat the warmish food from the drive thru and I load up the toddler this time, to go meet Wayslow a mile away at the fair grounds. A quick introduction and we toss the the parts from his truck to mine. I toss him some local brews and a cheese gift box for all the effort, and we part ways. Thanks a ton Andy!
We head back to the hotel, pack up and check out. Its 9am Eastern time zone. We get across the Mackinac bridge and stop for gas. I notice in the gas station there is an antique tractor drive across the bridge today, thankfully we only saw a couple on trailers. We made it to Manistique before the kids erupted completely and set them loose on the shoreline and out to a lighthouse.
Another drive thru meal and we hit the road.
A random diaper change on the side of the road, and pull into a yet another fast food place but this time for the playroom...and an ice cream cone and more coffee.
Home by 5pm, unloaded, return my dads pickup, and return to my bathed family. Whew, I am tired.
My booty:
Manistique boardwalk! Facing the other way you can probably see Big Boy. Less than 10 minutes from my cottage, if I was up there I would have given you a place to crash. And too late now, but the next time you to through, let me know, there is a huge wooden castle park thing just off US2. It's getting slightly run down but the kids never seem to mind and they can burn off a TON of energy in half an hour.
A big wooden castle would have been awesome! Its beautiful up there!
I hung some "temporary" shop lights and I got the car turned around so the engine is by the bench.
After performing dad-ly duties (and everyone was sleeping) I snuck out for some wrusting (like wrenching but with no wrenches and mostly rust). I decidef to play with the extra spindles that Wayslow gave me (thanks again!)
Some penetrating oil applied over the past few days and I am ready to hit some E36 M3.
The caliper is held in by pivoting clips. I already removed the cotter pins by my very hamfisted approach of hammer cheap screwdriver into loop end, wiggly it around until you can clamp a plyers between the screwdriver and brake, and hammer the plyers to pull the pin out. I then tapped the clips with the hammer and used a pry bar as a brass drift.
A couple more taps and I moved the clips enough to budge the caliper.
Even more tapping and I am getting the caliper and pads moving as a unit, but I stopped there to make sure the kids were still asleep and the cat wasnt on fire. Of course more penetrating oil before walking away.
But Ross, you might say, why mess with some rusty bits when the brakes on the car are slightly bettet shape? Mostly for mock up reasons and to bettet address whats saveable and what to toss. When I spun the car around, I also wheeled the engine stand into the garage so I can do a similar assessment on the engine.
I started doing research on siamese intake ports, 1-3-4-2 fire orders, and port fuel injection. It seems the outer two cylinders often run lean since those cylinders intake valve open directly after the inner valve opened. So any fuel that was in the runner goes to the inner cylinder and the outer cylinder gets only a short time of fuel delivery. Then the time when the two other cylinders are doing their thing, more fuel is being delivered and thats the fuel that goes to the inner cylinder making it rich compared to the outter.
Ross
Your time might be better spent, adapting some new calipers, like Wilwood or something similar. One nice thing about Wilwood or similar, there will be good brake pads available.
I am sure there will be many other rusty things to deal with on this project, brakes might be easier and better to start with something new. Even some slightly used stuff, that has a good selection of pads available.
Look thru the Pegasus catalog, or others might not cost a lot either, you don't need real big brakes, but new would be better. You could also replace the brake master with something new.
The only reason I mention the Pegasus book, they have drawings of some of the brakes, so you will have a idea of what might fit.
In reply to TED_fiestaHP :
You are spot on! That's why I am taking this a part on the bench, so that I can get some measurements and try to figure out what calipers/rotors I should adapt to what's there. The whole system shall be new components or at least new to a Renault 8.
Got the family to bed and made my way out to the garage last night.
I got the caliper off. More tapping and prying. Took me a while to get the dust cup off of the hub nut. Then I got the castle nut sheet metal cover off.
I didn't realize it was a cover until after loosening it, but I didn't mess it up so...!
It took some effort to get the hub off the spindle. I put the real hub nut back on just proud of the end of the spindle and slammed it on to a nice piece of red oak. It worked! The smallish nuts holding the dust cover/caliper bracket to the spindle came off nicely even though they were rusted quite terribly.
The reason? I used a 50/50 mix of acetone and AFT with a sweet new 'tool' suggested by someone on here too!
I got some time in the garage on Friday. I cleaned. I organized as best I could without jumping the gun and buying a bunch of storage selves/bins/cabinets. Because I've got plans for that.
I did get to work on the car, or more like work on the spare parts. I got the rotor off of the hub with the acetone/aft mixture and a hammer. I also dragged the engine hoist and stand into the garage. I had to run to three different stores to find bolts for the engine stand to the engine.
I got the intake and exhaust manifolds off and wouldn't you know it the spare cylinder head has individual intake runners to each valve and similarly with the intake manifold. Score! Now to pull the intake/exhaust off of the one in the car and see if it's the siamesed version or split. I might be swapping heads... Should I pull the head anyways just to verify the condition of the pistons/cylinders?
Love the wide angle shot- that garage looks massive!
Probably not a bad idea to pull the head for a visual inspection, but you might learn more by doing a compression test beforehand (if you haven't already) than you will from a visual inspection.
Good point. I'll have to see how much of my cheap compression tester kit is left littering my toolbox.
The garage is nice and deep. The single door that I use for the Grand Cherokee is pretty small. Like I have to check my mirrors on both sides every time to make sure I'm not going to have one clip the door frame. The stairs to the basement are just beyond the OSB half wall in front of my Jeep, so the double door that my wife and the R8 share is nice and deep since the stairs end before that area.
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