Has it really been three months since the last update? I suck…

Well, actually, I started a new job on September 10th (good timing there, eh?), so I’ve been pretty busy settling in to my new position while wrapping things up at my old job. Now, the problem isn’t money, it’s time.

Nevertheless, I managed to get some parts ordered from Summit, and I finally got around to coating all my exhaust bits. For the sake of those contemplating following in my footsteps, I’ve listed all the part numbers and costs (as of November 2001) below.

Old, stock distributor on the left, shiny new MSD Pro-Billet unit on the right…

MSD Part #8367 - $289.95 (ouch!)

It’s so gorgeous, though… I carried it around the house like a scepter all night after it arrived. "I am the King of Spark! Bow before me!" That went over real well with the wife and pets.

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The glacial pace of this project continues… I haven’t done too much in the past month for lack of finances, but here’s what little is new since the last time.

Here’s what the exhaust crossover looked like before and after a trip through the blasting cabinet. You figure out which is which…

The exhaust manifolds get the same treatment, both to clean them up and to give some ‘tooth’ and open up the pores for the coating they’ll soon receive. I made sure to mask the machined surfaces of the manifold in order to keep them as flat as possible and hopefully prevent leaks. I still haven’t decided if I’m going to use gaskets or not when I put it all back together, though.

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Before we begin, let me apologize for the wonky color balance in this update’s photos. I had the white balance set wrong on the camera, and although I corrected it to some extent they still look a little weird.

Drunk with success from porting the turbocharger housing, I decided to match-port the exhaust manifolds too. Although the real-world benefits will probably be slight, I figured that since I was going to refinish the manifolds anyway, I might as well work them over internally as well. Here’s how I did it:

Unlike the manifold-to-turbocharger junction, I can’t simply use the carbon marks on the manifolds as a guide. That’s because they won’t be going back onto the same heads they came off of in the first place. Here, we can see that McCoy has done a little work on cleaning up the ports, and even if they were as-cast, they might be different from my old heads due to production tolerances and core shift.

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Finally, an update worth reading! I hauled the engine out to the shop, but the big news is that I worked over the exhaust housing of the turbocharger with the die grinder to cure the bad inlet mismatch. Have a look…

There’s no problem getting the crate into the truck with the forklift at the warehouse, but getting it out at the shop required some ingenuity (engine-uity?). With the tow chain from Michael’s tractor rigged as a sling, the cherry picker was once again pressed into service.

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I still haven’t taken the engine from the warehouse out to the shop… Getting the crate out of the back of the truck will be a two man job, and Michael’s been gone a lot this week. So it’s been time for some housekeeping and a little on-the-job training.

Before I dig into restoring the wiring harness, the engine bay desperately needed cleaning. So the Sy got dropped back onto its wheels and saw the sun for the first time in months. It sure is easy to push with the engine and transmission out, although with no weight in the front it has the stance of a stadium off-road truck. Having the truck parked outside for a while also gave me the opportunity to sweep up the remaining cubic yard of ATF-soaked kitty litter on the floor of the shop.

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Sorry for the long delay between updates! A lot of things have happened since last time, but none of them were interesting enough to make a whole page. Here’s the compilation of the last three weeks.

The really big news is that my new motor arrived! For the time being it slumbers in its crate, while I marshal my resources for the final push… (translation - I need money to finish getting all the new parts that will get slapped on before the engine goes in)

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With Michael’s help (well, actually he did most of the work), I got the heads off, the bottom end apart, and the pistons out.

First of all, the exhaust manifolds had to come off.

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This week’s update proves that the right tools make all the difference.

9 out of 10 dentists surveyed agreed that the power steering pulley needs to come off in order to remove the pump, which in turn makes it possible to remove the power steering/alternator bracket from the block. Here we see the wonderful puller kit I borrowed from Kragen. I highly recommend that the next time you need a weird tool you make a stop at the local CSK auto parts store and take advantage of their tool loan program. I slapped down a $42 refundable deposit and off I went.

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Now that the engine is out, the fun really begins. Certain parts (like the intake manifold upper and lower) need to be removed and sent to McCoy to be worked over, while everything else needs to come off so that it will be ready to swap over to the new engine when it arrives. I also need to get the transmission ready to travel, so when my stuff arrives from Brian Hartman it can all go to the shop to be rebuilt.

Remember how hard it was to get at those transmission cooler lines? With the engine out and the transmission on the jack, it’s a piece of cake.

Getting the transmission out from under the truck was another story. I found that I couldn’t jack the front of the truck up high enough to clear the top of the bellhousing with the transmission still sitting on it’s zippy little jack, so I had to carefully (clunk!) slide the transmission off the jack and onto the floor, then drag it out from underneath. Of course, the 45 gallons of ATF the tranny spontaneously generated all came out through the dipstick hole and once again soaked the shop floor.

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OK, the transmission jack is in my possession, everyone has gathered, and it’s time to try (once again) to finally get the engine out…

The transmission has been firmly strapped to the jack, which now supports its weight. The engine is still hooked up to the hoist, waiting to be freed.

April 25, 2001

Since Michael is:

1. Impatient, especially when faced with my extremely deliberate methodology for this process, and
2. Very sure of himself when it comes to yanking things out of cars,

We decided to take a shot at pulling the transmission even though I don’t have my special high-zoot transmission jack yet. The reasoning was that getting it out would be easy - putting it back in would be where we needed the adjustability and stability of a transmission jack. Things didn’t quite work out the way I hoped…

Before removing the transmission, the manual (and common sense) dictates that these hard lines running from the passenger side of the transmission just behind the torque converter cover need to be removed. They run up forward to the transmission cooler built into the radiator, and are already loose at the other end. Unfortunately, there’s no way to get any sort of a wrench on those nuts with the transmission still in the truck…

Happy Birthday to Syclone #1853! April 18, 2001 is the 10th anniversary of the date it rolled off the line at PAS. Unfortunately, the swap isn’t done in time to celebrate, but there’s always next month’s 10th anniversary of the day it was sold…

April 14 - There’s a bracket on the transfer case that holds the fuel lines in place, and because the hard lines are attached to the transmission, the shop manual tells you to take ‘em loose at this point. Of course, the connection is lower than the level of gas in the almost-full tank, so I got doused with 6-month-old Premium before I could get a pan in place to catch it.

Now we get down to the heavy lifting - getting ready to remove the transfer case and transmission. Because Michael was out of town, and I didn’t want him to return to find my rotting corpse pinned under something heavy in his shop, I limited myself to what I thought were the easy bits. The transmission will be an all-hands evolution, I think…

Hey, the driveshaft comes off pretty easy! Just imagine that sucker rattling around like that after breaking a u-joint. And this is just the "pain-in-the-ass" end, not the "pole vault" end…

OK, back to work… You may remember that when we last left off, I had run into a problem getting the A/C compressor mounting bolts off, as they didn’t want to make it past the pulley. The solution?

The Die Grinder!!!

I thought that for a change of pace, I’d post a few pictures of myself and the new turbo that I’m going to put on. Sorry about the fact that the photos are in black-and-white; Somebody else took the pictures for me with their digital camera, and must have had it set up wrong.

Here I am holding the compressor wheel of the new DD-trim turbo

"Just unbolt the mount and move it to the side" everyone said, when I asked what to do with the air conditioning compressor when I took the engine out. Turns out it’s not that easy…

Here we have Michael working over one of the A/C compressor bolts with the biggest breaker bar I’ve ever seen. "I can’t get the socket all the way on the bolt head - there’s something on the bracket that’s keeping it from seating", he said…

About this time, Michael realized he was late for a booty call, and left me to my own devices.

I didn’t get a whole lot done that evening - just disconnected the power steering plumbing, and removed and cleaned up the upper intake manifold. But there are lots of pretty pictures to look at!

Here’s the shots of the underside of the CAC I promised you last time. See what I mean about the paint?

In this installment, I pulled the downpipe loose from the turbo, removed the crossover pipe, pulled the intercooler, and took off the throttle body and its related cables and connections. 

Enough smalltalk! On to the pictures! (which should take seven minutes flat at 28.8k. Unless you’re on AOL, in which case you should go to bed and check in the morning to see how far it got before you were unceremoniously dumped)

I got to do some more preliminaries - the engine’s not out yet, but I’m closer. The CAC radiator came out, the catalytic converter hardware is off, and I managed to get the downpipe nuts loose without any undue cursing. Here are some pics of my boss’ shop at his house, and the progress I’ve made.

In case you’re wondering, FrontPage calculates the wait time for these pictures as just under 5 minutes at 28.8k. Maybe you should go get a sandwich, or clean the catbox now (don’t do both - that’s gross). I’ll be here when you get back…

More delays! I finally got to haul the Sy up to my boss’ shop in Ramona, CA, about a half-hour from my house. I discovered that sometime after February 3, some dirtbag had broken in to my truck and stolen some random things, including about $4 in change, and my new fuel pressure gauge. Fortunately, the locks were OK - either he used a slim jim, or in all the chaos on the third I simply forgot to lock it. Although removing the battery, radiator, and belts makes the truck as a whole pretty much unstealable, it also means no alarm. Oh well…

We loaded the truck onto my boss’ flatbed trailer, which was an adventure due to the lack of power steering or mechanical assistance beyond a come-along winch. But we managed to get it done without any overt cursing and the rest of the trip was without incident. My boss, Michael, is a former stock car guy and has a shop at his house that is large enough to accommodate four cars at once comfortably. He’s volunteered the space and his assistance to help me do the engine R&R. No pictures this time, but we’ll have some of the shop in the next installment - you’ll be green with envy!

Other news for this week - After several mixups with the bank, I managed to finally get Jerry McCoy the deposit on my new motor. It’s going to be based on the "Performer Plus", but upgraded with Eagle rods and Stage 1 heads. Unfortunately, Jerry’s a popular guy and my engine is number seven in line… it looks like I may have to wait more than two months to get it. That means the truck won’t be back together in time for it’s 10th birthday, but I think the wait is worth it if Jerry’s motor is half as good as people say.

A great day to be outside! It’s 75 degrees and sunny here in San Diego - Hardly seems like February. Referring to the SyTy shop manual, I started pulling everything I could get at with the truck still sitting on the street. The plan is to haul the truck up to a friend’s shop, where we’ll finish extracting the engine, transmission, and transfer case. Since my friend (and his trailer) wasn’t available this weekend, I thought I’d get a head start.

Everything was going fine, until I got a call from my wife - While taking her aunt to a doctor’s appointment, they were rear-ended by a city bus! Fortunately, their injuries are apparently limited to bruises, and her Subaru Outback Sport suffered only minor damage to the rear end. The hit was hard enough to bend the driver’s seat frame, though…

So, in the end, I only got about 75% of the work done that I had planned to do, but I’m not complaining….

Editor’s note: I’m reposting all my old rebuild stuff in chronological order, starting from square one. Here’s the post that started it all, way back eight years ago… 

Syclone # 1853 in happier times. And no, I didn’t "break it racing"… 

In the beginning…

A loud rod knock that developed in October 2000 necessitated a rebuild of my Syclone… Unfortunately, finances and other complications delayed the start of the project until February 2001. Because my life is intensely fascinating, and everyone clamors for the intimate details, here I present a chronicle of the rebuild process. The plan is to remove the engine, transmission, and transfer case myself (with the help of some friends), and replace the engine with a ‘crate motor’ from McCoy Motorsports.

I’ve set a goal for myself - I want to have the truck running again by April 18, 2001. That’s because it will be the 10th anniversary of the day the truck rolled off the line at PAS. (Hah! I was off on that one a little bit! - Paul)

Purpose: This modification will upgrade your intercooler pump and get rid of the metal I/C lines from under the hood. The stock I/C pump is inefficient and most of the time fails after the years, so replacing it with a newer pump that flows more is beneficial. The stock metal I/C lines run right on top of the engine and intake, soaking up as much heat as possible. This is a bad thing and replacing them with rubber heater hose and rerouting them away from heat is a good idea. Plus, if you need to remove the intercooler for some reason it’s a lot easier.

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What is RTI, anyway?

Ramp Travel Index is a way of measuring the articulation, or flexibility of a vehicle. It’s a scale that’s used by off-roaders to compare the theoretical rock-crawling abilities of their trucks. RTI is measured by driving one wheel up a 20 degree ramp, until one of the three remaining wheels lifts off the ground. The RTI is then calculated based on the distance you made it up the ramp (measured along the slope of the ramp), compared to the wheelbase of the vehicle. If you manage to get the back wheel to touch the base of the ramp, your RTI is 1000.

Since it’s a pain in the ass to build a 20 degree ramp, an easier way to calculate RTI is to simply lift a wheel with a forklift until another wheel lifts, measure the distance from the tire to the ground, then do some math.

Why would you want to do this to a Syclone?

You wouldn’t. I just happened to be lifting one wheel to look at a failing half-shaft from underneath, and thought I should do an RTI test while I was at it. The results were not quite what I expected…

Under no circumstances should you attempt to duplicate this test, both because it could be dangerous in ways that need no explanation to thinking beings, and because I want to be able to say that I’m the only person who’s ever done it to a Syclone. So there.

Last modified 2/6/01
Click on thumbnails for full-sized photos

Editor’s Note - I wrote this in response to the many requests for information about the repair and replacement of the front propshaft on Syclones and Typhoons that were coming up on the SyTy mailing list. I was sending this e-mail to the list about once every three weeks as new people came on and asked about broken propshafts. Rather than continue to post it every time, I decided to put it on my website and simply send the link instead.