Spent a lot of time getting the power steering lines all cinched up, with the basic routing done.\u00a0 Poured in a couple ounces of the new Redline PS fluid, turned the wheel a bit (car in the air), all seemed fine.\u00a0 Added about half a quart.\u00a0 What’s that I hear?\u00a0 The PS fluid is streaming directly onto the floor!\u00a0 It’s\u00a0not leaking from any of the fittings or orifices, it’s leaking from between the main pump body and the outer reservoir housing.\u00a0 No way to stop the leak, so I put the half full bottle of PS fluid back underneath and let it pour right back in.\u00a0 Used the above little lab bottle to collect the drips that continued for the next couple weeks, haven’t had the heart yet to get in there and undo all the painstakingly attached hoses.\u00a0 Need to get a new pump too.<\/p>\n Not hard to see how Donohue gave up on PS after only one or two races!\u00a0 It’s a lot of weight (20+ lbs.) and complexity, all up at the nose of the car, that also robs power.\u00a0 Just don’t think I can autocross this beast with a lot of caster without it though.\u00a0 Not and provide very precise driving inputs anyway.<\/p>\n Brake line fittings<\/strong><\/p>\n This project has made me realize how easy most of my earlier car projects have been.\u00a0 Something as simple as brake lines, has been a big pain.\u00a0 The OE-style replacement hard lines don’t thread into the regular Wilwood calipers.\u00a0 Have to get a special adapter.\u00a0 Then there’s stuff like this one-<\/p>\n Have to\u00a0figure out if it’s\u00a0a bad fitting, mismatched threads, bad flex line,\u00a0or something else, now after the\u00a0system\u00a0has some brake fluid in it.\u00a0 At least it’s a neat blue (ATE Superblue).\u00a0 Speaking of blue, took this photo of some oil.\u00a0 The\u00a0LAT<\/a> engine\u00a0oil now in the car is a really\u00a0fantastic blue color.\u00a0 Tried to capture it here by pouring a little in another bottle-<\/p>\n If you’ve ever seen the movie the Fifth Element, it\u00a0looks\u00a0just like blood from the Diva Plavalaguna after she gets shot.\u00a0 I’m sure that’s just what the oil engineers had in mind\u00a0when they were blending it… \ud83d\ude09\u00a0 Fortunately the engine oiling system is currently all set (though the pan install was not without its challenges), and doesn’t leak, now that an oil temp sender has been installed in the pan.\u00a0 Even have a dipstick now!<\/p>\n Leaf Springs<\/strong><\/p>\n As noted back here<\/a>, ride heights are all wrong at the moment.\u00a0 Front is relatively easy to adjust, with some turns of the Afco adjuster.\u00a0 Rear, not so much…variable height spacer blocks are available, but you don’t want to run any more spacer block than you have to.<\/p>\n The Hypercoil springs I first bought way back when <\/a>are the only composite leafs they offer, and come with a 4.5″ “true arch”, whatever that mens.\u00a0 Of the many mistakes I’ve made in the progress of this project, one was assuming this would be a reasonable ride height.\u00a0 Turns out it is way way off, even with a 1″ spacer block.\u00a0 Car needed to be about 3″ lower from where it was with the Hypercoils, so the only real option was another set of springs.\u00a0 Liteflex LLC<\/a>, who makes the springs for Hypercoil, didn’t return my message (their unit is a very high quality piece, despite the poor fitment for my application), so I called Flex-A-Form<\/a>.\u00a0 With one call they were able to take my order.\u00a0 I wanted to replicate the Hypercoil specifications (spring rate and size), but be 3″ lower.<\/p>\n To their credit, they did get the springs to me relatively quickly, considering they had to be custom made.\u00a0 To their discredit, they weren’t going to offer anywhere near 3″ lower height than the Hypercoils.\u00a0 But again to their credit, they have an offset eye design in the spring end, which helps mitigate this\u00a0– by disassembling the spring end and mounting it upside-down on the leaf, you can lower the effective mounting point by 1″ at one or both ends.<\/p>\n Looks easier than it is, they use a pretty aggressive glue to hold it on, making it some careful prying and chisel work to get the end off without hosing the fiberglass leaf.\u00a0 And the contours aren’t quite the same when upside-down so a bit of file work is required for it to fit right.<\/p>\n Once that’s done, I take a closer look at the Flex-A-Form leaf next to the Hypercoil, and realize that it is at least 2″ longer in the rear section.\u00a0 Ugg!\u00a0 So what do I do now, send them back?\u00a0 Will they take them back now that I’ve flipped the eyes?\u00a0 The more important question that came to mind was, what are the chances they even get it right the second time around, and what will continued messing about mean to the timeline?\u00a0 Instead, decided to modify them myself-<\/p>\n Marked and cut off the extra length; re-contoured the fiberglass to receive the spring eye; positioned eye (in the lowering upside-down orientation) and drilled holes for the mount bolts; cleaned it up, applied sealer\/adhesive, and bolted it back together.<\/p>\n Then there’s the issue of bushings and bolt sleeves and washers and fasteners.\u00a0 John Coffey did a good job getting the Hypercoils mounted up way back when<\/a>\u00a0but had to custom-make a few pieces on his lathe to get it to go together.\u00a0 I don’t have a lathe or the raw materials, and thus had to improvise, cutting down and hogging out bushings to fit the larger sleeves John had made.\u00a0 *Nothing* about the springs just fit as delivered.\u00a0 Oh, and the subframe connectors have to be mostly removed to get the forward spring pockets out, which requires pulling apart a bunch of the interior.<\/p>\n What should have been a couple hours (swapping out rear springs for lower units) ended up taking at least 8, and only the first one is done!\u00a0\u00a0Other side\u00a0should go faster but geez what a pain.\u00a0 Good news is, I should have all the info needed to get the next pair of Flex-A-Forms built right (I don’t expect the 250# spring rate I’m starting with, to be the one I stick with forever) so the work on the bushings and hardware should be re-usable on the next pair, making this swap only a couple hours, the sort of thing you might try between days at a multi-day race, with normal tools.<\/p>\n Road Draft Tube<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>Most people don’t even know what this is, and admittedly I didn’t either until recently.<\/p>\n In the old old days\u00a0– like, before the Camaro – automakers had this thing called a “road draft tube”.\u00a0 They recognized that engines built up positive pressure in the crankcase, especially while the engine was working hard, and they had to figure out what to do with it.\u00a0 Without anywhere else to go, the pressure would cause oil to leak out past the seals, and make a mess of the car.\u00a0 So what they did, was run a tube from a port on the engine, down and back a ways, so liquid and mist oil escaping from the engine, would drip “harmlessly” on the road beneath the car.\u00a0 This was a significant contributor to the black stripe in the middle of\u00a0our highway lanes; an intentional, built-in oil leak.<\/p>\n By the early 60’s people had begun realizing 1, this was bad for the environment, and 2, engines actually like a little bit of vacuum on this port – so what the heck, why don’t we just ingest this misty oily air and burn it in the combustion chamber?\u00a0 Thus the modern PCV system was born.<\/p>\n In the case of a ’67 Camaro V8, the road draft tube and PCV system are fairly basic.\u00a0 In the picture below (not my engine) you can see the “tomato can” – a very basic attempt at an air\/oil separator – it is plumbed to the port on the block you see at the very top left.<\/p>\n From that port, a tube runs up and into the underside of the air cleaner lid.\u00a0 This provides a slight vacuum and causes oily badness to get sucked into the engine.\u00a0 This is actually not a good thing for combustion in a performance scenario, as it affects mixture in a negative way.\u00a0 Thus the benefit of catch cans, which are allowed in STX (even Stock) so long as the “original\u00a0PCV function is retained”.\u00a0 Current plan is to run the road draft tube outlet to a catch can-slash-air\/oil separator, which will then be plumbed back into the original place in the air cleaner.\u00a0 This should meet the rules while helping preserve healthy combustion.<\/p>\n So all of this ancient emission history is great, but what’s the problem?\u00a0 The problem is, the tube has this dome thing on it where it covers the port, where a single long bolt runs down through it, into female threads in the block.\u00a0 Since this probably makes for a common oil leak spot, somebody in the history of this block, must have overtightened the bolt, and it is now snapped off in that port, without enough meat protruding to get a tool on.\u00a0 The broken-off bolt has a nice dome shape to its top, making it tough to keep a drill bit centered, and it is recessed so far down there, normal bolt extractor bolts and tools can’t reach.\u00a0 Yay!\u00a0 As an added bonus, this is at the extreme rear of the block, so to even look at it, requires climbing into the engine bay and contorting one’s self, being careful not to mess up all the shiny, new, and sometimes delicate, engine parts.<\/p>\n I plan to give it a go with a traditional drill bit, and maybe see about extending the bolt extracting bit in some way, to get it down into the hole drilled.\u00a0 On a day when I’m feeling very patient and well rested… \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.rhoadescamaro.com\/build\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/ps_fluid.jpg\" "\\"ps_fluid\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n