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Project: Midnight Panic

The first step to swapping engine was getting the project over to the other side of the shop where I could use the overhead hoist,
I was trying to get this part done before visitors arrived, So I borrowed dads foklift for the shuffling process,
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With everything positioned the best I could, visitors arrived & we dove right into pulling the mock up engine & transmission,
Before worrying about installing anything I took the opportunity to weld up a few areas inside the chassis that I did not have access to with the mock up stuff in the way,
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Next up was bolting the engine & transmission together, but I first had to drill a couple holes & mill a notch for the cock-n-balls port distribution block mount in the midplate,

There were a couple other things to do on the back of the engine, install cam journal plug, install dowel pins, cut/shorten dowel pins, (in that order unfortunately) & install the flex plate,
While bolting up the flex plate I noticed is had a slight rock to it, Being some expensive razoo billet, one piece, 100% machined to be perfectly true part, I thought that was kind of odd, reviewing the instructions they note to "make sure the FP sits flat on the crank", after checking & double checking the crank I found the plate itself had a slight crown to the mating surface,
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Of course the manufacture was closed over the weekend so I could not make a call to their tech department,
So it was filed back in the box & se aside for later, we grabbed another more stockish performance FP & bolted it on for now, as I really only need it to crank the engine over,
Also as a note, I did call Meziere, The tech guy said it should be flat, so I sent pics for them to review, He called back & said the owner/engineer said "it'll be fine, torque it down & it will conform"

I'll cross that bridge when I get there,


Last thing before bolting up the transmission was to prime the oiling system while cranking the engine over by hand via the flex plate, (normally do this in the stand with the front crank bolt, but I currently have a steering pump drive setup in the way,


With the two major power train components married together we could finally set them in place,
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My wife even got a little bit of video,



All in all it went pretty smooth, & after a few bolt's it didn't take long to stack everything back on top,
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With no reason to keep the truck in it's current location, it was moved back over to the lift bay.
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The rest of the day was spend doing little things like reinstalling the X-brace over the engine, building/adding another set of O2 bungs to the headers, & just general cleanup from the last couple days,
Even made time that evening to just visit with visitors,

The next day I was on my own again, & continued on by installing the headers, making a couple small changes to the Enderle hat before bolting it down, then started visualizing plumbing & getting started on it,
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I actually started plumbing by removing the fuel tank & welding on that thingy I posted earlier,
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Through the whole process of engine plumbing I probably spent to much time building or modifying tabs or brackets, but I think it will be worth the effort in the end,

This one was pretty simple, just a cheap 1.25" tube clamp form Summit, they are not threaded, but intended to have to bolts pass through & thread into the part your clamping to the tube, but a piece of cold roll the right length, drilled & tapped the right spacing, then coped to fit the tube it will weld to,

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Makes a nice mount to help support that big #16 feed line to the steering pump.
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Another one that was only slightly more difficult, Same cheap tube clamp/mount, & threaded block for it to bolt to, only this time the block is aluminum, & is it's own second clamp that holds another pair of hose,
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Finished part,
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These were really easy, just a slight cope to make them fit the chassis tube better,
The hardest part here was figuring out how to hold them in the mill to fly cut them,
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I needed a couple different sizes of those,
#10 for the feeds to the block,
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And a #12 for coolant returning to the radiator,
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The rest will be for plumbing up front at the radiator,

From there I think I kinda went bonkers for a couple days, I really wanted to make the return & relief line mounts for the front steering on one side, & the engine oil accumulator line & wiring harness clamps on the other side, part of the tinwork mounting that I will be doing later on,
I'm sure some weld tabs for the tin work, & a couple rubber dipped clamps would do the job, but I figured I could do better,
I sort of lucked out having few pieces of chopped up 1" key-stock just big enough for these parts, I wanted rectangular 1"x.750" rectangular cold-roll, but figured I'd just mill the width down later,

After milling each 1"x1" bar to the correct length, they were all coped/profiled to fit 2" tube,



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Next up was the clamp parts, I had a couple pieces of 7075 leftover from building the soft jaws you see in my mill vise, plenty of material if I could find a way to cut it without to much waste,
Just so happens a few months ago I bought a 90* head for the Bridgeport & that head came with a slitting tool & arbor,
It looks a little sketchy, but actually worked real well,
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The aluminum was then finished to the correct dimensions, cut & milled to length, then drilled/countersunk for the clamping bolt,
The 1" key-stock was also drilled/tapped for the clamping bolts, but rather than mill the sides down to match the 3/4" aluminum bar, I thought I'd try a .750 slot, .050 deep, so now the aluminum part of the clamp kind of keys into place,

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Once the two halves could be bolted together, they were setup in the mill & milled, drilled, & then reamed to the correct tube/hose size they would be holding,
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Then they were all dolled up with a little radius to the corners, err, wait, weight, they were lightened up, (race car parts)
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Not bad for a couple days work :laughing:

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In the pic above you can see the top side is also drilled/tapped, that will be used for attaching tin work later,

All 6 parts were then welded to the chassis,
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Now I just needed to make the plumbing fit,

I was originally going to use flex hose from the last hardline bulk head back to the hydraulic tank, simply for the ease of maintenance later, but before building those line clamps I actually asked Allison what she thought, (I really didn't care either way & since she spent this last weekend at the shop with me I figured she'd enjoy being involved, besides, everything she has weighed in on has turned out pretty dang good so far, if her choice was braided stainless with purple anodized fittings, that's what I would have ordered)

I pointed out the relief line had to be black flex hose, & asked what we should pair it with for the return line, after a few seconds she chose the stainless hardline,
So after the clamps were built & tacked in place, a piece was flared & bent to fit, a bit more work to fit, but worth the effort for sure,
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3 clamps on that stretch is a bit excessive, but it sure holds the flex line nice & strait,
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I did finish off the return line with a few inches of flexible line to ease actually hooking to the tank, plus if the tank ends up being slightly higher after the finish work is complete & the tank is installed on some type of material to keep it from directly contacting the chassis, there is a little room to work,
Here you can see the relief hose goes to a remote mount adjustable pressure relief regulator, which attaches & dumps back to the tank through a large fitting,
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Along with the steering & cooling, the fuel/injection plumbing was also completed,
pretty much the only thing left to plumb at the back of the truck is the engine oil accumulator, & breather/valve covers to the header evac,

Hopefully that will be done next weekend & I can move on to the radiator & brakes.

Until then here are a few pics of everything as it sits.

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If there is one thing I've learned from this thread, I need a 'Drool' button next to the Like button :smokin:

Or maybe a "subscribe to everything he builds" button. I mean really, wouldn't you like to see the curtain rods he builds for his wife?

On a serious note, I wonder if his daughter will turn out to be a builder. In twenty years I'll be watching videos from my hospital bed of her spitting chips off the lathe.
 
The work on all the custom clamps is outstanding. Each is well thought out for it's purpose and execution is, well perfect like the rest of the build. Plumbing in general looks to have ease of maintenance in mind. Fucking awesome.:smokin:
 
On a serious note, I wonder if his daughter will turn out to be a builder. In twenty years I'll be watching videos from my hospital bed of her spitting chips off the lathe.

That would be pretty cool, but I really don't know which way she'll go, I think she's pretty creative, & does some interesting stuff, (just a couple weeks ago we had to try the spray paint hydro-dipping)

However she really likes doing stuff with her mom most of the time, & that means horse power one at a time,
No matter what she decides to do, she's still the coolest thing I've ever had a part of building,
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This weeks update is a little lame, Continued on plumbing to the point of getting a little burnt out on routing lines,

I started out the week by building a couple #16 to #12 AN adapters for my cranks case/ header evac system, Both fittings started as a standard AN to pipe adapter, after a little machine work to both fittings they were pressed together, & used to figure out location, then mounting tabs for the fittings were built,
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The tabs were then welded to the fittings,
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Each tab catches one of the existing mid plate mounting holes,
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So now a #16 hose attaches to the fittings in each valve cover, routes down to this adapter, & from there goes to a #12 hose, which is a nice slip fit over the check valve threaded into the header collector,
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I think I'm down to one hose for the the engine oil accumulator, & the rear/engine part of the truck plumbing will be complete,

I then decided to move up front & get the radiator & water pump plumbed in, It took a while to decide where I wanted to put the fittings in the chassis, but once that was sorted out it only took an hour or so to tack the fittings in place & build the hoses,
Unfortunately, by the time I got that done it was a little dark up in that part of the chassis for pics, & I never thought about taking them the rest of my days off, (really nothing special to look at anyway,

Since I was in the neighborhood of the master cylinder I thought I would mess with the brakes lines a bit, Again, not much for pics, but it's basically just a hardline going from near the master cylinder down the chassis to a location near the calipers on the T-case, from there it tee's to each caliper via short braided stainless lines,

There was one run about 4ft long that just looked like it needed something holding it to the chassis, so a little time was spent on an excessive bracket to hole one 3/16" hardline,

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There was also an evening where I actually spent several hours figuring out what I needed for control cables, I figured since I was ordering them I just as well get them all coming,

There will be two cable running from the fire wall the the front of the engine, one for throttle, & the other for fuel shutoff,
Of course I had to measure both of these twice since my first measurement landed right in the "half foot" zone, the cables are normally stocked in 1ft increments, so I had to decide if I want to try & tighten things up, or deal with an extra 6" (that's what she said)

Both the throttle & fuel shut off are pretty long runs, (12ft & 13ft) so I decided to try I tighten things up,

Quick little trick for those actually reading along,
I use 3/8" nylon air line for mock up, it has similar flex characteristics as a control cable, & is fairly easy to get, (any OTR truck shop, or even Ebay, I have a pretty good stock of left overs from the last Peterbilt project & used the same 15 ft length for measuring each cable)

The next cable has to run from the driver side rear high steer arm, up the link bar, & into the back of the cab to the rear steer return to center sensing unit, this one also ended up being a 12 footer,
The last & shortest at 5ft is just the transmission shift cable,

I usually always order my control cables from the same place I get my mechanical injection parts, Good Vibrations Motorsports, They stock both threaded bulk head style cables, grooved style, or grooved on one end/threaded on the other, all in 1ft increments up to 14ft I think, but they will custom build longer if needed,

This time I called & talked with them about their "HP core series" which is basically just a tighter cable with less slack, I figured for the extra $10 per cable I'd use that for the throttle & return to center cables,
Those should be here next days off,

Also noteworthy, I got my spare fuel pump boxed up & sent in to Enderle for inspection, repair anything that's needed, & then flowed, hopefully that will be back in the next week or so.

Cable routing is kind of an eye opener to the fact of how things are going to start getting a bit cluttered soon, a few fluid lines, & a couple control cables here & there really start showing where there is no frame rail to hide anything in,
I still have two air lines to get in there (air lockers), & two gauge lines (oil & boost pressure) plus a wiring harness or two,

Just looking into this part leads to looking ahead to make sure I don't have to deal with something in the way later, this translates to hours of looking at stuff & not getting a dang thing done,

At this point I decided to step away from plumbing for a little bit,

The next major part of the project will be wiring, so I decided to start dragging the stuff out I have for that, & see if there was anything I needed to get ordered up, I feel like I have most everything , but you never know what will end up in the truck,

Like this deal,
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I never figured I would need a kill box before, but for the money, it's just a good idea for this type of build,



At this point in the week things got a little sideways for pretty much the rest of may days off,

I'll spare the details, but, nice weather combined with trading recently purchased old junk for someone else's old junk lead to a road trip & a nice break from the shop.
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I traded a running Hough HF that I just bought, for this non running HAH,
My wife thinks I'm nuts, but I think it's a better fit for around the shop,

Got the gas tank soaking & a carb kit on the way, We'll see if she's right early next,
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Maybe after a day or two of rotten gas smell I'll be ready to get back in there & button up some plumbing
 
Soooo f*ing cool !
Thanks for sharing !
 
Bigger isn't always better. That looks like a pretty capable compact unit.
Thanks again for sharing! Looking forward to how you handle the wiring. I rewired parts of my car just after I bought it, but some had "I'll fix this later" written on it, and years later I still haven't. I need to move the battery again to fit something bigger and it's probably time to fix those other runs I wasn't happy with.
 


Maybe after a day or two of rotten gas smell I'll be ready to get back in there & button up some plumbing

What tires are you running on the one on the right and how do you like the performance on loose gravel?
 
What tires are you running on the one on the right and how do you like the performance on loose gravel?

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/cok-67640


they work pretty good all around, as long as you keep the rear tires from sinking,

I went with sold rubber rears & they’re a little narrower than what was on it originally & tend to sink in the soft stuff, if I were to do it again I would stay with a winder pneumatic tire on the steer axle, but as far as the drive tires I have not been disappointed with these Cokers.
 
Thanks for taking the time to share this amazing build! My son and I really enjoyed mountain mafia too.
 
https://www.summitracing.com/parts/cok-67640


they work pretty good all around, as long as you keep the rear tires from sinking,

I went with sold rubber rears & they’re a little narrower than what was on it originally & tend to sink in the soft stuff, if I were to do it again I would stay with a winder pneumatic tire on the steer axle, but as far as the drive tires I have not been disappointed with these Cokers.

If you're getting away with load range C's without tearing them up then I'll just slowly work through my stock of shitty old dry rotted 16s and then buy some Chinese E's when I'm all out of those.
 
Great work. On the cables, I use this place.

https://www.cccables.com/default.aspx

They will make what ever you want exactly the size you want. They are fast too. I use to work close to them and could run over there and they would make the cable up while I waited. They also shortened a cable after I screwed up the measurement.
 
Well I didn't do an update last week, cause I didn't work on the project at all, to busy tinkering with a loader, However I can say that the loader now runs, is completely re-wired, & is about 98% ready to work, if I needed another loader, However I need it for loading/unloading junk & parts, plus moving stuff around the yard, but other than a little brake work, & a fork attachment it's good to go.

While tinkering with that I did have a few parts show up for the MP project, my cables came in from Good Vibrations, & the freshened up fuel pump came back from Enderle as well,

I started with installing the pump, then focused on getting the fuel shut off, & throttle cables installed,
Most of the time at the pump the fuel shut off cable attaches to a bracket with a hook/latch & a grooved cable housing, but since I am not running the shut off valve in a normal orientation, I figured I would have to build part of the bracketry any way, so I used a threaded bulk head cable, & built the mount to suit,

It took a bit to figure out what should work, then a scrap of 7075 was whittled down to what I needed

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And that pretty much set the tone for the entire set of days off, lot's of aluminum chips this week,

The other end of the fuel shut off cable goes into the cab at the fire wall, under the dash, & will have a tab just to the right of the steering wheel so it will be easy to reach,

Next was the throttle cable, & aside from a little work on the rod end & a return spring, I didn't have to do anything at the throttle linkage/hat ,
However the other end was a whole different story, My throttle pedal had two small issues I knew I would run into, first was not enough "throw" on the linkage to open the throttle blades all the way, that was easy enough to fix with a little extension piece, a couple "Option" holes were added as well,
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Probably the most technical part of the new arm was fasteners, I'm not sure if the OG holes were for a metric fastener, or maybe some type of bushing, either way I didn't want to drill them out for a bigger fastener, (already overkill using two 1/4" bolts), so set screws were used as mini studs, & a couple nuts had a step machined to fit the odd hole size,
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With the arm extension in place I could figure out the next issue, which was a bracket to hold the cable housing, This could have been a 10 minute job, I managed to milk it out for several hours tho,

A 1.5" x 1.5" piece of bar 6061 stock was cut 7" long, using the existing mounting points on the pedal assembly, (a pivot bolt, & radiused slot for adjusting angle of the cable bracket) I got the basic part done, then just continued to mill on it until it wasn't quite so bulky,

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I figured a slotted mounting point would be easier to work with, especially later for cable replacement or adjustment,
To keep the cable from "walking out" when tightening the mounting nuts, or having possible alignment issues, a pocket was cut to fit a washer, so once snug everything would be locked in place,

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Other than a few adjustments, & tying the cables up in place in the chassis, that pretty mount rounded out the throttle cable,
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