The Turbo 3500 F23 swap (Page 64/80)
Will APR 27, 07:53 AM

quote
Originally posted by ericjon262:

As for the engine, I think my biggest mistake was taking apart a running engine to make parts better that didn't need to be made better.



Better is the enemy of good enough.


quote
Originally posted by ericjon262:
I didn't have a shop bore the rods or measure them, they are PM rods, which IIRC, don't recondition well compared to older style forged rods, I may be wrong though. it should be pretty straightforward to get it patched up again once I'm back on the east coast, honestly, if I play my cards right, I'd bet I could swap the engine out in an afternoon as long as I don't have any egregious hiccups.



Fractured cap rods require special *OVER*sized rebuild bearings which have a larger OD than the OE bearings. For the Northstar, Promar uses those in the mains (probably rods too, but I didn't ask). The rebuild bearings are typically only available in one configuration, like 0.010 over + 0.010 under. So the rebuilder would bore the rod or main bore for the rebuild bearings AND cut the journal. They work great in production rebuilding because you bore every bore to the same size and cut every journal to the same size and send it. They're not so great for onesies/twosies because of the extra labor involved.

[This message has been edited by Will (edited 04-27-2021).]

ignorant prodigy APR 27, 01:17 PM
bummer
ericjon262 APR 27, 03:12 PM

quote
Originally posted by Will:

Better is the enemy of good enough.




yep, I've been beating a similar ideology into my head

"Perfect is the enemy of a job well done"

thankfully, LX9's are pretty cheap, and I should be able to make something happen fairly quickly once I have space to work on the car again.


quote
Originally posted by Will:


Fractured cap rods require special *OVER*sized rebuild bearings which have a larger OD than the OE bearings. For the Northstar, Promar uses those in the mains (probably rods too, but I didn't ask). The rebuild bearings are typically only available in one configuration, like 0.010 over + 0.010 under. So the rebuilder would bore the rod or main bore for the rebuild bearings AND cut the journal. They work great in production rebuilding because you bore every bore to the same size and cut every journal to the same size and send it. They're not so great for onesies/twosies because of the extra labor involved.




I was thinking something like that would be required, as machining the mating surfaces would probably weaken the rods quite significantly.

quote
Originally posted by ignorant prodigy:

bummer



yeah, it really is, but I should be able to recover from it relatively quickly. I have a few avenues I can pursue to make it happen, but I'll probably just grab a stock short block throw in a cam, my heads and intakes, and call it good. I re-engineered my mounts so that the engine would be a bolt in, with no modifications to the engine to make it fit. which should make things quite a bit simpler and easier.
La fiera APR 27, 07:34 PM

quote
Originally posted by ericjon262:

Thanks for the offer, but I'm probably going to stick with Ben's recommendation, he has a ton of R&D tied up in the aluminum head 60V6.




Suuuuuure!
ericjon262 APR 27, 08:32 PM

quote
Originally posted by La fiera:


Suuuuuure!



I can't tell if this remark is meant to acknowledge my reply, or to be a sarcastic jab at Ben's R&D efforts, but considering I've been assisting him with measurements, general engine parts interchange, and various other details involving the heads and intake manifolds, I'm fairly confident in his abilities, and his recommendations.

------------------
"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

La fiera APR 27, 10:10 PM
I don't know and I don't care about what Ben can do but I know what I can do. If Ben/WOT's heads sold to customers can't get near what I have accomplished with Iron heads naturally aspirated those are things that make you go HMMMM!???? He sold some aluminum heads to a guy in The Netherlands with a destroked 3100 to make a 2.8L. in a Ford Capri.
His friend ported the WOT ported heads and got more CFM out the them!!. How is that possible????!!!!!!!! He knows he's stuff right???
I'm not doubting Ben's expertise and I don't want this to sound like I'm putting him down in any way. He gets a business out this, I don't.
But I haven't seen a project from HIM that shows his expertise. I've seen lots of his customers fail with aluminum heads done by him trying to match my goals and they end up installing turbos because Ben's heads can't deliver.
I come up with stuff and I deliver, the proof is in the pudding.
But this is not about Ben or me, this is about your LX9 or LZ9 or next project.
Keep it up mate!!

Edit for wrong name!

[This message has been edited by La fiera (edited 04-27-2021).]

ericjon262 APR 28, 02:15 AM

quote
Originally posted by La fiera:

I don't know and I don't care about what Ben can do but I know what I can do. If Ben/WOT's heads sold to customers can't get near what I have accomplished with Iron heads naturally aspirated those are things that make you go HMMMM!???? He sold some aluminum heads to a guy in The Netherlands with a destroked 3100 to make a 2.8L. in a Ford Capri.
His friend ported the WOT ported heads and got more CFM out the them!!. How is that possible????!!!!!!!! He knows he's stuff right???
I'm not doubting Ben's expertise and I don't want this to sound like I'm putting him down in any way. He gets a business out this, I don't.
But I haven't seen a project from HIM that shows his expertise. I've seen lots of his customers fail with aluminum heads done by him trying to match my goals and they end up installing turbos because Ben's heads can't deliver.
I come up with stuff and I deliver, the proof is in the pudding.
But this is not about Ben or me, this is about your LX9 or LZ9 or next project.
Keep it up mate!!

Edit for wrong name!




Veekuusi built the 2.8, I'm very familiar with the car and the thread, he snapped the crank in two due to a balancer failure, then torqued a connecting rod too tight and snapped a rod. I'm the one who suggested he route the coolant outlet, that normally flows out of the LIM, through the end of the heads. Ben also explained in that thread that the casting Veekuusi was requesting typically did not flow as well as some of the other options he recommended, or something like that. The discussion was about camshafts not heads, Ben also did not port my heads.

I'll shoot straight with you, I(and I suspect others too), am very skeptical of your and Lou Dias' dyno runs, which happen to both be on the same type of dyno, and neither backed up with other data, like a 1/4 mile run or 0-60 times that I have seen. While I understand those other benchmarks show the performance of the entire car and the driver, not just the engine, coupling them with other measurable parameters(IE vehicle weight, altitude, air temp ect.), and observed indications(IE wheelspin, wheel hop, missed shifts ect.) can give a accurate indication of the performance of the engine. I have also yet to see an aluminum head 60V6 other than Veekuusi's have as much work put into it as your engine. I have only seen one full custom intake(Veekuusi), one 1/2 custom setup with ITB's that bolted to a stock LIM (superdave) and all others used ported GM castings. Superdave actually went faster in the 1/4 mile when he put a plenum back on. I haven't mentioned Shaun's ITB 3500(until now) mainly because it was turbocharged, which doesnt' compare well to N/A builds like yours, Veekuusi's, Lou Dias', and superdave's. I suspect that a warmed up aluminum head engine would outperform yours on the same dyno, I could be wrong, who knows. this isn't meant to be some kind of callout, quite frankly, I don't care enough about most of it anymore to worry about it, it's a simply a hobby of mine to make my garbage less garbage-y.

------------------
"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

Will APR 28, 09:30 AM

quote
Originally posted by ericjon262:


Veekuusi built the 2.8, I'm very familiar with the car and the thread, he snapped the crank in two due to a balancer failure, then torqued a connecting rod too tight and snapped a rod. I'm the one who suggested he route the coolant outlet, that normally flows out of the LIM, through the end of the heads. Ben also explained in that thread that the casting Veekuusi was requesting typically did not flow as well as some of the other options he recommended, or something like that. The discussion was about camshafts not heads, Ben also did not port my heads.

I'll shoot straight with you, I(and I suspect others too), am very skeptical of your and Lou Dias' dyno runs, which happen to both be on the same type of dyno, and neither backed up with other data, like a 1/4 mile run or 0-60 times that I have seen. While I understand those other benchmarks show the performance of the entire car and the driver, not just the engine, coupling them with other measurable parameters(IE vehicle weight, altitude, air temp ect.), and observed indications(IE wheelspin, wheel hop, missed shifts ect.) can give a accurate indication of the performance of the engine. I have also yet to see an aluminum head 60V6 other than Veekuusi's have as much work put into it as your engine. I have only seen one full custom intake(Veekuusi), one 1/2 custom setup with ITB's that bolted to a stock LIM (superdave) and all others used ported GM castings. Superdave actually went faster in the 1/4 mile when he put a plenum back on. I haven't mentioned Shaun's ITB 3500(until now) mainly because it was turbocharged, which doesnt' compare well to N/A builds like yours, Veekuusi's, Lou Dias', and superdave's. I suspect that a warmed up aluminum head engine would outperform yours on the same dyno, I could be wrong, who knows. this isn't meant to be some kind of callout, quite frankly, I don't care enough about most of it anymore to worry about it, it's a simply a hobby of mine to make my garbage less garbage-y.



I'm not looking to get on anybody's "side". It's easy enough for numbers and testing to rule the day in these cases. I haven't kept fingers on the pulses of many of these community issues. I'm also skeptical of less rigorous dyno protocols.

I will say that there's a HUGE difference between a factory short block with full bolt-ons and the same bolt-ons on a built shortblock. My Northstar with built shortblock, even with crappy oil control burning lots of oil, went from 255 RWHP with the factory short block to 312 RWHP with the bult shortblock + tuning. Between the two, there are exactly the same parts above the head gaskets, with the exception that I swapped from the OBDI throttle to the same diameter OBDII throttle and added a MAF sensor.
pmbrunelle APR 28, 12:07 PM
I think it's pretty normal to think you're more capable than other people (somehow more than half of drivers think they're better than average), and sometimes those thoughts may be justified, but social convention normally requires that those thoughts remain private.
zkhennings APR 30, 01:21 PM
Ah that blows. I was really hoping to see this finally get buttoned up. There are .002 oversized OD rod bearings for the LZ9, I would imagine for LX9 too. You could probably get the single rod bored out and run that bearing, but I think you would need to get the crank journal taken down so I don't know if that's worth it. Might be easiest to see if you can replace the single rod.

For what it is worth it is not very much money to have a machine shop verify all the clearances and make sure parts aren't twisted or out of spec. The machine shop I use will even measure my dirtbike cylinders for free and check them for straightness and out of round. Plastigage is another good tool to get a ballpark idea and just do a sanity check. And finally I plan to send my torque wrenches back to CDI for cal before I start bolting my motor back together as it has been a few years since they were checked.

That really sucks though I was very sad to see that this happened.