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'56 willys truck


Fuel leaks fixed— I replaced all the driver’s side top injector o-rings as 2 were a bit munched and 1 had a tiny mark and the other one looked good, but I decided to do them all. Still I had leaks after doing that. Then I turned the 6 fuel rail hold-down plates over and wham no leaks.

Then got the fuel pressure dialed in with help from Branson and got it started. Ran it for 5-7 minutes, but it got hot— didn’t boil over, but I shut it off. Let it cool down and added more coolant and left the cap off and it ran 10 minutes before I turned it off again at 209*. Maybe the steam line routing is the culprit? So I’ve got to figure out if I add a fitting in the upper radiator hose or drill and tap the water pump or ???

 

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Still fighting with it getting hot. I changed the steam line and tied it into the upper radiator hose, but it didn't help, but I will try and crack a fitting while it's running before it gets to temp and then again after it gets to temp so see if this will do the trick. The water pump is pumping coolant thru the radiator and the reservoir and we did see bubbles and coolant going thru my little steam line sight tube, but the bottom line is is still is running hot.

On another note my silicone intake 90's are collapsing, so I ordered some exhaust tubing to replace them and hopefully they show up Friday so that I can fight the install of those and remedy that issue. Should be loads of fun!!

Adjusted the fuel pressure since I had Dennis looking at it while it was running and it was only at 40 psi and not 60 psi.

Pic and another video in the next post.
 
Pic— video is too large so I have to see if I can edit it
 

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Attempted to bleed the steam lines and at one point I had full coolant flow and then I didn’t. So I bled it before the temp got to 180* and then after it reached 180*. At idle the temp would climb to 210-215*, but if I upped the rpm’s to 3,000 it would cool down to 190 so I would get it down to 190-192* jump out and bleed it again. I did this a few times and even at 1500-1600 rpm’s the temp would go down. But as luck would have it one of my tranny cooler lines has a leak, so I figured I better shut it down for today. Ill try and attack the leak tomorrow if I get time.

Pic of the intake hose collapsed at idle. Crazy.

So I think I’ll get that fixed before I attempt to bleed the steam vent again, just cuz in my brain the voice says fix that so your motor has no other issues.
 

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Tranny leak fixed so far. I had the temp sensor fitting in there, but I had broken off the temp sensor way back when and figured it wouldn't leak, but it did. Lucky I had another set up but for -08AN, so I had to get creative and make it work. So now I have a new temp sensor installed and wired up and it didn't leak. Again fingers crossed it doesn't leak. Like I said I don't know if I will ever need the extra cooling with the added tranny cooler since it's running thru the radiator also, but I had it there from before so why not!

Re-did the intake piping, but what a hassle. With the Gen lV valley plate and oil pressure sensor meant I had to use the silicone hose at the back of the supercharger and then transition to exhaust tube to connect the throttle body. It's because the oil pressure sensor is in the way when installed normally, so then I decided if I tapped it to 3/8" pipe and put a 3/8" brass street 90* to get it as low as possible I could get the hard pipe to work, but it's still in the way and a hard pipe won't sneak by it, so I put 2 pieces of 3 1/2" tubing inside of the silicone hose to keep it from collapsing. One small piece at the bend and one piece about 3" long after the bend towards the throttle body side. I may in the future move the oil pressure sensor to the side of the block, but right now I don't have a fitting to do that and I want it to run, so I'm doing what it takes to make that happen. One thing the oil pressure sender would screw into the 3/8" 90* fitting, but the 3/8" 90* fitting wouldn't thread into the 'valley cover, so that's why I tapped it. So far no leaks. Fingers crossed it stays that way.

Ok, it still runs hot and I continue to bleed the system, so maybe I just need to keep at it until I get it bled. It's weird that I bleed it and I get full coolant flow thru the steam line and then it will stop flowing coolant until I bleed it again. I'd think I've bled it 10 times if not more. Today though bumping the rpms up to 3000 didn't cool it down like it did the other day.

Oh yea and I redid one fuel return line, cuz it was really tight against the intake tubing. That was all I got done yesterday and today.
 
Vid of steam line coolant flow and of the coolant reservoir.

 
Different engine but on my sons 5.3 after replacing the water pump we took the top radiator hose off and filled into the block. Worked great.
 
I may have to drain the system and do that. I filled from the reservoir in the bed which is 18-24” above the motor and also topped off thru the added cap at the radiator in the bed also. The reservoir fills it thru the heater hoses so maybe it’s got a huge air pocket in it because of filling it that way.
 
csutton7 said:
I may have to drain the system and do that. I filled from the reservoir in the bed which is 18-24” above the motor and also topped off thru the added cap at the radiator in the bed also. The reservoir fills it thru the heater hoses so maybe it’s got a huge air pocket in it because of filling it that way.
Click to expand...
That was the culprit for my son, big air pocket.
 
Thanks, I needed to hear that someone had the same issue and was able to remedy it.
 
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SUNDAY Morning: Ok, so it still runs hot after bleeding it more, so since I have to do family stuff in the afternoon there's no progress to speak of vs tidying up some wiring. So now I'm in thinking mode, which involves doing some searching on the internut in between family stuff. So, I decide when I get back out to work on it I'm going to ditch the steam line to upper radiator line routing and I'm going to run the steam line back to the radiator(attempt 3). See originally I ran it to the Reservoir(Attempt #1).

SUNDAY Afternoon: Luckily I was able to go back and tinker for a couple of hours in the evening. So I start with undoing the steam fitting coming off the motor and there's no coolant. Well definite air lock issue. Ok not real surprised, except that I would've thought I'd've gotten coolant coming out of the upper radiator hose, but nope it was empty. I then remove all the fittings between the motor and upper radiator hose, whilst wondering how I had no coolant in the upper radiator hose, as I had it before when I ditched the original steam line routing in favor of the motor to upper radiator hose routing!! So my air lock issue was much larger than I expected and proven once I uncork the radiator cap and coolant pours out of the upper radiator extra coolant temp sender adapter where I had re-routed the steam line (Attempt #2) to see if that would solve the running hot issue. Well I quickly put the cap back on so I didn't waste a lot of coolant and then proceeded to install the extra coolant temp sensor(loosely), so that I can finish Attempt #3 routing. OK once I get all the plumbing reconnected, oh yea I filled the steam line this time(note to self, recheck to see if coolant is coming out of the steam fitting at the front of the motor!!) and uncork the radiator cap and then loosen the extra coolant temp sensor to make sure I have coolant there and I do. So then I commence to adding coolant via the upper radiator hose/cap. I also added coolant to the reservoir after the radiator hose would take no more and when I did that I got air bubbles coming out of the upper radiator hose. Well I kept adding coolant to the reservoir until I got no more bubbles. By then it was dark and I needed to pack the tools away and I decided I'd loosely put the in-line radiator cap & reservoir cap on loosely and today when I get home I'll check it and see if it went down. If it did then I'll add more coolant via the upper radiator line and when it's full then I'll add more to the reservoir and if the upper line is still full I'll add a bit to the reservoir to see if I get any bubbles out of the upper radiator line and I'll also check the steam fitting at the motor and I'll probably check it at the extra temp sensor. And if all checks out then we shall start it up and see what happens.
 
Still runs hot— seemed to take longer though, but still hot = no good. Still got more bleeding to do for now.

Got my corner weights — 1125 lbs on the front and 1375 lbs on the rear— so the springs I have calc out to be correct or very close, so I’ll put them back on and re-look at ride height and such and see what shakes. I’m pretty sure I’ll need to redo my panhard bar since I built it for 14” coil overs but changed to 16”. And I’m seriously leaning towards 4 linking the front but we shall see.
 
Springs are back on, but both front and rear are higher than I really wanted. I set them up with 1/2" of pre-load for now, so I'll see what happens when I go to 1" and maybe play with the stop nuts for the slider, but at least now it can be driven once I fix the leaks in my tires, bleed brakes and tidy up some more wiring and do some slow test driving to see that all is ok.

Now for the driving part, I'm having a hard time believing I still have air in the system, but it's possible, so I'm not ruling it out totally for now, but what I think is the issue is the water pump can't move enough coolant thru the system and it gets dead headed at idle and here's why I think that is the main issue. It cools down when I up the rpms to 1300-1500 and when I changed my idle to 1000 rpms it took quite a while for it to get to 210, so the question is how to fix it or do I even need to? I think for everyday driving it may be fine because I shouldn't be idling for that long at any one time, + I can rev the motor to cool it down, but for crawling it's another matter. So I think my solution is to see if there are different LS pulleys that will turn the water pump faster at idle or get a high performance water pump or do I go electric. I'm really hoping I can find a pulley to do what I want so I'm on the hunt.
 
If you spin it too fast it can cavitation, but I would try a 10% smaller pulley (10% faster at all speeds) and see what happens.
 
Ok I put a new tune in it and that made the “gettin hot” issue possibly leave the building, but it’s only sitting and idling with rear wheels spinning, but it topped out 207 and again drops down to the low 190’s with a rpm’s increased to 1300-1400 from the 1000rpms at idle. But it stumbles when giving it gas and dies when letting off the gas, so I either have a vacuum leak or some setting is off or the cheap throttle body is the culprit. BrKe pedal issue is fixed. Since I had to shift the steering column over it was tight against the brake pedal arm so I put a slice in in it, bent it over and welded it up. Dang thing is getting real close to go for a test drive!!
 
She didn’t want to stay running after starting it cold. I had to rev it until the temp got to like 165 before it would stay running.

Sprayed carb cleaner all around and no change in idle, so I’m going to say there’s no vacuum leak. But when I sprayed some in the throttle body it died.

I switched out the IAC to the old one and it still didn’t want to run until I gave it some throttle and it warmed up to 165ish, but the stumbling didn’t seem as bad and it didn’t die when hitting the go pedal up to 1800 and 2500 rpm’s and letting off quickly. So that’s an improvement and makes me go back to thinking the cheap throttle body is possibly the problem. Still have some research to do though before I go all in on buying a new throttle body and maybe more tuning.
 
I decided to just bite the bullet and ordered a Nick Williams 92mm throttle body. I don't have time to screw around to see if I can fix this thing anymore and I'm pretty sure it's the issue or at least an issue. Guys talk about how this cheapo TB's leak and need to be machined and monkeyed with a bunch before they get them to work and others have had no issues, so they are hit and miss and I missed it would seem and we will find out once the NW TB shows up.
 
Yea, finally, but I'm playing tuning fun and wow what fun that is! New Nick Williams 92mm is on and I bought new sensors, but interestingly I wasn't able to get the IAC sensor right away, so I decided to slap on the ol' Chinese one and it didn't like that at all and the old OEM sensor was a bit better, but the new one did the trick once I got it and got it to run again. So, Chinese TB's with sensors aren't your friend unless you get lucky. For some reason it didn't like the e85/flex fuel sensor/supercharger tune for that I had originally done, but it would run with my original tune, so I started playing with tunes and finally got another e85/flex fuel sensor/supercharger tune to work, but I do think I may have an intake vacuum leak, so I need to re-torque the intake bolts to see for sure. When I spray the front pass intake corner with carb cleaner there's an ever so slight change in engine sound and I still have the stumble. But the temps topped out at 199 and then went down to 196-197, so that's the best it's been. I was hoping to drive it today, but I need to attack the intake bolts after it cools down and I'm not sure the tranny is shifting or it doesn't seem to shift, so that will be the next tuning thing to attack and it may be that one of the speed sensors on the tranny isn't there, so I can't plug the harness into it, so possibly that's the issue or there's something else.

I did get the heater wired up, so that's a good thing too.

So back to the tuning, I used the supercharger tune in the Terminator x Max software program and then again went and added stuff from Sloppy Mechanics, which is what I had done with the original tune, but it's possible that I got something wrong the first time around, but why it ran the best it had before the Nick William TB change is strange. But so be it, as it seems progress seems to be moving forward, although slow.
 
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Damn tuning is about as fun as poking yourself in the eye when you don't know what the hell you are doing. So the other day it didn't want to stay running after the last tune, so I'm not sure what the 'ell is going on with the tunes and I switched it back. I didn't start it yesterday, but will today to see if it starts and runs. I did tighten the intake bolts a tad, but they seemed pretty tight, but when I sprayed it this time I didn't hear the engine change sound, so maybe I got it or I just imagined things. Still could be the injector o-rings on the passenger side, because I never replaced those as they weren't leaking. I may have to later if it still doesn't run right. I've been watching vids and reading when I can and slowly I'm starting to figure out how to adjust stuff in the Terminator x max software, but still just because a graph looks all pretty and such the numbers entered may not be right for your motor, so that's my next bit research needed so that I can understand how these tuners know what numbers to use for the AFR, Spark and Fuel settings. I started watching an hour-long video last night and that guy so far is going step by step, which is nice, but I only got through the first 10 minutes or so when he's just setting up the initial engine settings and that's pretty straightforward for the most part. Hopefully, he gets into the AFR, Spark and Fuel tables and I learn some more. Oh the fun!!
 
When I started it last night it doesn't want to stay running unless I give it gas for about 30 seconds or so and then it idles fine. When I start it runs terribly, but then I think the IAC kicks in and things change, but since I'm by myself sitting in the cab I'm not sure about that, but I hear a different sound when it finally idles correctly. So I changed one thing in the tune concerning my cubic inches and then let the truck heat up and I played more with the idle rpms to see where it needed to run to keep it from overheating. Initially when I programmed the ECU I used 364 cubic inches, but since I'm bored .030 I'm really at 370 cubic inches, so I changed the tune to 370 cubic inches and it seemed to make the motor run a bit better maybe. Kind of hard to tell, but it seemed to sound just a tad more even, if you will. Then the rpm game was played and somewhere between 950 and 1050 is where it looks like I'll have to be with the idle, but until I get the tune right I'm not sure if that's where it will end up, but right now it runs between 203-204 at 1050rpms and 207-208 at 950 rpms at idle. Also when I set the idle number in the handheld it seems the motor actually runs about 50rpm less, but I need to look at that more to be sure. But one thing is it's cooler outside now, so during summer time that may change things again.

For tuning I'm going to look at my original tune and make sure I'm set at 370 cubic inches and look at a couple of other settings and I'll make a copy of that and then go look at the Fuel, AFR & Spark maps now that I'm little more educated about them to see what they look like, cuz something isn't right yet. Once I look at them I then need to see if I can figure out what numbers to put in the maps so I don't blow the engine up.
 
Any plans to strap it to a dyno and let a pro have at it?

That's my plan. I have a tune that will get my engine running "ok". After a few heat cycles, it's going straight to a pro.
 
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