The Creation of a Monster (LSx, T56, Ford 9", IROC-Z)

[Jim85IROC]

Yeah, it's not easy finding time to work on the motor. It took me 2 days to mask the block... the only time I had was when my son was napping!

[Jim85IROC]

Pics of block.

All masked on the stand:


Hanging from hoist so I could mask the back and paint it:


All painted:


Bare metal greased back up slicker'n a stripper at the beach:

[blue89irocz]

Looking good Jim

[Jim85IROC]

Finally started filing piston rings. I've got 12 of the 16 finished. I gapped them at 19 thousands for the compression ring, 21 for the scraper. I got a little sloppy on a couple, one measured at 20 thousands and one at 21 thousands, but I checked with my machinist and he said that it's close enough... a couple thousands over isn't going to hurt anything.

I took pics, but I forgot to bring my memory stick to work to upload them. Hopefully tomorrow.

Once ring filing is done, I can move on to pre-assembly to check all of my bearing clearances.

I also need to get started on swapping the valve springs on the heads.

[Jim85IROC]

Got the last 4 rings filed last night. Yay. Now I just need to verify clearances on the oil rings and I'm done with rings.

[Jim85IROC]

BTW, here is a pic of what a 19 thousands gap looks like:


Also, one of my packs of rings was differnet than the other 7. The first and second rings look the same, but the oil rings and the spacer ring look slightly different. I've got to email TSP and find out what the deal is. I would assume that these rings really don't play as crutial of a role as the top two, so I doubt it's a problem. Just odd.

[Jim85IROC]

Minor update. I was on vacation last week, so nothing was accomplished. Last night I pulled out one of the LS3 heads to try and get started with the valve spring replacement. The spring compression tool I have is an ancient piece of crap that my dad had. I figured I'd give it a try.

Here's a pic of it next to the head:


Unfortunately, it kept wanting to slip. The pad would slide on the valve, and the cupped part would keep slipping off the valve spring retainer. It's just too flimsy and clumsy to do the job.

So, I started designing up a new tool for the job:


Unfortunately, the cardboard doesn't seem to be strong enough. Friday I'll make one up out of 1/4" steel. I've seen other people use the same type of tool online and it seems to work well. The only difference with mine is that it's got that angle to it so that the tool sits flush on the valve spring retainer instead of at an angle. I figured I can cut most of the way through the 1/4" plate, bend it, then weld the cut solid.

[blue89irocz]

We have one of those spring compressors also. POS's in my opinion but it does the job most of the time.

[Jim85IROC]

Update:

Since I'm STILL waiting for my replacement rings to show up, I can't do anything with the motor, so I decided to start working on my valve spring tool so I can start messing with the heads. I started with a flat piece of 1/4" steel out of dad's pile o' scraps and marked my spots:


I drilled the smaller holes, and then bent the piece. I wanted to do the bend before drilling the big hole so that it didn't try to bend at the hole:


Big hole drilled with a 3/4" drill bit:


Tool installed. The 3/4" hole was radiused slightly on the backside and sits snugly over the valve spring keeper:


Another pic. See what's missing? A goddamned bolt. Nobody within 30 miles of me has a long enough metric bolt. Rather than just use a bolt to tighten it, I want to thread the bolt all the way into the rocker arm mount and use a nut to tighten it. I had to order a long enough screw... won't be here until friday.


So, now that the motor and the heads are both sitting there with nothing going on, I decided to work on my motor mounts. I bought a used set of clam shells and a new set of poly inserts. I don't have any pics of the separation, but it's basically a job of drilling/grinding out the rivets and separating them.

Here's a pic of them after they were separated:


They look a little rusty, but they're actually in good shape. My wire wheel cleaned them up nicely:


I probably should have sandblasted them, but in all honesty, you'll NEVER see these once the motor is in, and even like this they should stay looking good longer than the rest of the car will. Here's a pic of one of them after I applied a couple coats of self-etching primer:


I think these are going to turn into a little experiment. Rather than just paint them as-is, I'm going to apply a few coats of high-build primer to see how well I can get the texture out of the metal. This will be a good exercise to see if it's worth the effort to do it on the k-member.

If those rings don't show up soon, I may just move on to pre-assembly so that I can start measuring all of my bearing gaps. I've got to blow the motor apart after I do that anyway, so I can just do the rings then.

[pjordan4477]

Why new valve springs? What upgrade caused a need for new valve spring replacement?

[87350tpi]

from what i recall i used water pump bolts for my valve spring tool.... pretty sure they are the same threads, or there are some in your pile that are

[Jim85IROC]

Why new valve springs? What upgrade caused a need for new valve spring replacement?

The cam that I anticipate using will have well over .600 of lift.

[Jim85IROC]

from what i recall i used water pump bolts for my valve spring tool.... pretty sure they are the same threads, or there are some in your pile that are

there are probably plenty of bolts off this motor that are the same thread, but I don't think any of them are threaded all the way up. I don't want to just turn a bolt to tighten this... although I'd probably have no problems, I don't want to take a chance with stripping threads or breaking off the boss. I'd rather bottom the threads out in the boss, then tighten with a nut. To do that, I need about 4" of threads.

[blue89irocz]

Jim they didn't have the bolts you needed at an ACE Hardware or something similar?

[Jim85IROC]

Nope. They don't have anything long enough. I even went to a local industrial supply joint with no luck. I wound up ordering some from Fastenal, which I need to pick up today.

[Jim85IROC]

Minor update. I STILL don't have the right bolt for my valve spring tool, so the heads are still just sitting there. I STILL don't have my replacement rings, so the block is still just sitting there.

So I continued to screw with motor mounts. After a couple coats of the high build primer, I gave them a sanding and then hit them with Extreme Chassis Black. Overall the high build primer did a good job of filling in the metal texture on the larger surfaces, but wasn't enough to fill in the rougher texture on the bolt flanges where the rust had created more pitting. On areas of the k-member that exhibit that level of pitting, I think it'll be necessary to use a skim coat of filler or putty to smooth it out.

But anyway, after painting them, this is what they looked like:


I put them together with new Grade 5 hardware instead of the cheap junk that came with the poly mounts:


I kept staring at them, thinking that those bolts stick out like a sore thumb, so I went out and bought Grade 8 hardware so that the color would match the steel parts of the poly inserts. It's hard to tell in the pic, but they look much better... not that it matters, you'll never see these once they're installed:


My LS2 timing chain and gears also came in:

[Jim85IROC]

Yay. Yesterday I finally got my bolt for the valve spring tool and my new rings came in.

So, I filed 4 new compression rings, only to discover that no matter how carefully I file them, some of the moly still flakes off. Screw it... they go in as-is.

Then came the oil rings... Wiseco sent me a whole new set because the first set seemed to show a very erratic gap spacing... anywhere from 13 thousands all the way to 38 thousands.

So this new set seems to be much more consistent so far... at 40 thousands. Isn't that awful wide, even for an oil ring? I'll have to call Wiseco today and see what they say.

And lastly, I tried my valve spring tool and it works like a champ. My only issue now is that I haven't yet figured out how to get the valve seals off, and according to my book, installing aftermarket spring perches requires some sort of special tool, so I need to start learning about that...

[Jim85IROC]

Called Wiseco and apparently 40 thousands gap is perfectly acceptable.

[blue89irocz]

Sounds like you have plenty to do now.

[Jim85IROC]

Friday Update:
I didn't get a chance to upload my pics yet, but last night I measured my installed spring height, and got a bit of a surprise. Patriot specifies an installed height of 1.8" with their Xtreme Gold springs. When I measured my height, I measured between 1.87 and 1.88". I called Patriot and they sounded surprised... they didn't seem to recall running into any that measured that differently. I need to order a set of shims, but what I need to find out now, is just how close do I need to get to the 1.8 height? Shims only come in .060, .030 and .015 heights. I can stack a .060 and a .015 to get within a couple thousands of 1.8, but I don't think I'm going to be able to get it exact. I also need to see if having the spring perch jacked up that much higher is going to cause interference with the valve seals. Never a dull moment.

[Jim85IROC]

My inexperience is really starting to show it's ugly colors here with my valve spring installation.

Up above I mentioned that my installed height seemed to be way too tall. I had assumed based on how the valve spring tool was made that the spring retainer was to sit down in the pocket of the tool, and that's how I based my measurements. This was my first measurement with the tool installed with the Patriot seat & retainer:


You can see that the tool shows approximately a 1.778" installed height. Because the retainer barely fit onto the tool, I didn't think this was right. I threw the stock retainer in, and got this:


I assumed that this was how things were supposed to sit, so I modified the tool so that the larger Patriot retainer would fit down in the hole. This is how I measured the value I posted in my previous post:


After second guessing the whole ordeal, I borrowed my father's calipers and performed a couple reality checks. First was to measure the Proform tool with the calipers:

You can see here, that at a 1.8" height on the tool, the calipers confirm that it's pretty close, but it's based on the total height of the tool, not the pocket in which I assumed the retainer was supposed to sit.

So, I took a rough measurement of that pocket depth by finding a couple washers that sat at about the same height. It's rudamentary, but it should get me in the ball park:

I measured approximately .145" in height with this particular washer stack, which seemed to sit very flush with the height of the tool.

So, I subtract my measured height of 1.878 by the .146" washer height and arrive at 1.732" height, which is different than my first pic shows at 1.775".

So, as a reality check, I grabbed a nut & bolt, and set them up between the seat and the retainer as shown:


Then I measured it with the calipers:

This height measured at 1.734" - very close to the calculated height of 1.732"

So, I have one measured height of 1.775", and 2 at 1.73x". That's a big discrepancy, but BOTH are well below the 1.8" that it's supposed to be. I might be able to get away with the 1.775", but the 1.73 is going to put me dangerously close to coil bind with my cam lift of around .625".

The first thing I need to do is find a way to actually take an ACCURATE measurement, but I'm guessing that it's going to fall in the 1.73x" range, which leaves me baffled as to what I should do next...

[Jim85IROC]

It would appear that I've finally managed to take some consistent measurements of my valve spring height. I've measured 2 different ways with consistent results.

I bought a washer that was large enough to sit over my valve spring micrometer so that I could try to attain accurate measurements with that. My results were about 1.750 height on the intake valve, and (I'm going from memory here), about 1.730 on the exhaust valve.

Using the washer under the retainer, I also measured the height with the back side of my vernier calipers and was within ~2 thousands of my measurements made with the valve spring micrometer & washer. This gives me the confidence that the micrometer & washer combo is accurate.

It also means that the Patriot springs are officially going back.

[Jim85IROC]

just ordered a set of PRC EHT springs. We'll see what height these install at...

[Aron213]

Jim, if you still haven't installed the springs and looking for something to keep them from shooting out when removing the old or installing the new, go to a machine shop and get a couple .060 #201 spring shims(They are the ones for stock SBC springs so everyone has them. They fit perfect into your tool jaws, and fit great over the retainers and still allow you to get over them to put the keepers in.


If you want I could drop a couple in an envelope and mail them to you

[Jim85IROC]

I've got a pile of spring shims... but my tool seems to be retaining them nicely.

Speaking of springs... last night I did some more measurement taking. I had previously measured the height of the Patriot valve seat and found that it's .064". The stock valve seat height is .044", a difference of .020. That alone doesn't account for the spring height issues.

I threw a stock retainer on and measured it with no seat... 1.825". Subtract the seat height and that gives you a spring height of 1.781".

For the hell of it I grabbed my other head. I measured a Patriot installed height on the 2nd head and came up with 1.753", which is within a couple thousands of the first head.

Let's hope that these PRCs fix my problems.