gemellocattivo.com

12-7-2007
I got a chance to do some quick reading on vibratory stress relief today. It’s not ASME (American society of mechanical engineers) accepted yet but appears quite common in several industries, particularly for tooling. There are quite a few papers on the subject, but I haven’t tracked any down yet. It appears it can be effective but there are also some places making some pretty wild claims.

I found a place the makes machines for it in Philly, I’ll give them a call and see it they also do treating. I really don’t want to ship the block all the way to CA and back and then ship it again for final machining. I guess once I get it fit to the car I could ship it to the stress relief place and have them ship it to whatever shop I decide to use to do the decks and line bore.

12-4-2007
ahhh to live in Arkansas.....

Heck why waste the jb weld on a simple job like this? I could have just sawed the studs off clean and just wrapper a couple rolls of duct-tape around the engine to hold the heads down

12-4-2007
A little brute force in the form of a collet tool holder (thanks sean) and a 3 ft pipe with some help from the oxy-acetylene removed the last stud! The torch was key, I should have started there. I had to hold the torch in one hand and turn the pipe with the other becasue if I set the torch down, it cooled enough to make the collet slip....but it's out now.

12-5-2007
I didn't feel like actually working tonight, so I just looked at stuff for a few minutes instead. The timing cover looks like I’m going to need to narrow it a bit to look right with these heads. I need to add a flange to the heads to seal to the timing cover, but I thought I’d get away with a basically stock timing cover…oh well, another thing on the list.

I’m ¾ thinking I’ll finish the timing cover and valve covers in a semi-gloss bare aluminum and put a wrinkle red air box on top so it looks very similar to the OEM QV engine….and tell people it’s the rare 1984 only v12 option. Red valve covers are nice too but then I’d have to do something else with the air box…maybe carbon-fiber would look good, but not very OEM for 1984.

I'll try and do some actual work tomorrow so I can get a little closer to needing a color decision

12-6-2007
A little more welding done. 7 cylinders finished and 3 more 1/2 way. 2-3 hours left it looks like.

12-7-2007
This is the part of the project where it looks it’s worst, but it looks worse than it is. The beauty of the design of an engine is that most stuff doesn’t actually have to be all that precise. The bores have to be round and to size, but machines are good at round holes so that’s pretty easy to get right and since the 348 liners are bigger diameter than the 400 liners (in most places) there is matal to cut to make then round. If the bore position is off a full mm in any direction it wouldn’t be ideal, but the engine would still run just fine, it's not all that important, but I'll be able to get them within a couple thousandths of an inch without all effort at all.

You’re right that most of the cylinder is no longer a cylinder, but the bottom inch or so is untouched and right where ferari put it. I can either bold the block flat on the machine and tip the head to 30 degrees or I can trip the block to 30 degrees. It’s an easier and stronger set-up to tip the machine, but then I have to trig all the y direction movements when I start drilling the stud and pin holes. Anyway, after I pick a set-up I’ll indicate the crank journals parallel. Then I just need to put a dial indicator in the spindle and center up on what’s left of the bore, throw in the boring head and cut the hole round again. I’ll record the location of all the bore centers and use that information to decide where to drill the head studs and pin holes.

I’m planning to use the 348 liners, which are bigger than the 400 liners so I have metal to remove and that will make the clean-up much easier. Cutting metal out is easy, putting it back is a pain. The problem at the moment is that I don’t actually have the liners so I have no idea what size to cut anything. For now I’m just going to cut off the heavy weld and get back close to the original 400 size at the bottom and QV liner (I have those) size up top. I want to do the finish liner bores after the block is final decked anyway so I know how deep to cut the holes.

There is a solid day of rough machining I think (which probably means 2 days), but I should have the heads on the block this weekend and be on to the timing chain and cover issues. At that point is will start to look a lot more like there is any hope of it ever running again.

12-7-2007
Ed,
No worries!

Your stud puller worked great and is unhurt, unmolested, and just out of view on the other end of the table. It worked on 9 of the 10, but on the 10th one the threaded part of the stud broke off. I borrowed a collet tool holder from work to grab the un-thread part that was left and that is what you see in the picture. It didn't grab as well as your puller so I had to use quite a bit of heat to get things turning, but it worked.

I'll finish up the cylinder puller this weekend and send it along with your stud puller Monday.

Mark

12-7-2007
I almost finished the welding today before the argon ran out again with about 15 minutes of work left. Oh well, of to the welding store in the morning and I should be on the mill by morning coffee break.

12-8-2007
The welding is DONE!!!! I added a little more in a couple spots where it seemed a little low so it took a little longer, but I wanted to be sure.

After cools a bit it's on to the mill....finally.

12-8-2007
It was take the baby to pictures day, so I didn't get a lot done today. After the welding was done I through the head on the mill and measured the stud and pin holes. Then I cleaned up the block a little bit before heading to the mill.

The first thing I did was set the machine to 30 degrees using an indicator that reads in ten-thousandths of an inch and an angle gauge block. Then the block went on and I indicated the crank parallel to the table...so thought I was ready to go.

It turns out when you go and weld the snot out of an engine block it doesn't stay particularly straight. I realized when I went to touch-off the fly-cutter to clean the weld off the deck that there was a bit of a bow in the deck. The whole block is bowed about .025" and the decks a little more....which didn't seem like very good news.

After the shock wore off a bit I realize that it really isn’t that big a deal. The center of the block bows toward the crank, which means to straighten the crank journals out metal will need to be cut in the center not he ends and that leaves the gears in front and the flywheel in back right where they were. The crank journals need to be line-bored, but I was planning on that, so the crank should be good.

The ends will get cut on the decks, but since I’m cutting the bores to fit the new liners and re-working the timing cover anyway it really doesn’t make any real difference. The timing chain will want to get a bit shorter, but it already had to get shorter because the TR heads have a narrower valve angle than the 400 heads which puts the cam closer together. Since the timing chain is a chain shortening it just means cutting out a few links which is very easy to do. I think the decks will be fine too.

I need to think a little bit about what order to do the cutting now…..I think I need to set the machine back to 90 degrees and cut the flat between on top between the decks. Then I can flip the block over to cut the pan side. Then set the machine back to 30 degrees and cut the decks and it should be right. A lot to do tomorrow.