Sam's VN

[savage1987]

Well things have taken a turn for the worse today.

I hit quite a harsh bump recently (Townsville people will be familiar with the Dalrymple Rd floodway) and things started to go downhill. I slowed down for the dip and pushed 3rd gear for a hard pull up the other side, for no reason other than to feel the torque and get a little rush . The car quickly began running rough and shaking quite violently when I tried to put any power through it, and it smelled strongly of fuel. I limped it the 2km or so back home and did a quick walkaround while it idled - roughly - to see if I could find any signs of an obvious fault. I didn't find anything of use except to notice the exhaust was making weird pulses that pulled my hand back onto the pipes sometimes, and I'd almost certainly broken my T56 mount because everything seemed to be moving more than normal.

The next morning I started it up and had another look. With a rough idle and a totally different exhaust note and a smell of fuel I checked out the engine bay to find the driver's side header had separated a little from the head and the rearmost cylinder was spraying fuel vapour out the resulting leak so quickly that it was actually forming droplets in addition to the fine mist. One of the pipes at the rear (the right hand one) was pulsing with vapour (possibly fuel but I couldn't really smell anything on my hand) and the exhaust from the other pipe seemed clear and fine.

I crawled it up the sloped driveway into the shed with difficulty - lost lots of power - and left it there for a couple of days. The odd startup yielded the same symptoms, obviously, since it wasn't going to fix itself.

I've been having trouble starting it lately (unrelated) and the trouble seems to be with the ignition switch itself. I figured that was an easy one I could handle so I pulled it apart and cleaned it up. I put it back on to test whether I'd fixed anything to find out, annoyingly, that if anything I'd made it worse. That's neither here nor there, just a side story. What is relevant here is that when it did finally crank, first it fired lazily and failed after a couple of seconds, then I tried it again and it cranked and fired into life but immediately stopped with a nasty bang and a sound like dribbling fluid, but no sign of any leaks anywhere. Cranking it after that was hit and miss; I couldn't get it to run at all, sometimes the cranking stopped with a nasty clunk and it sounded like the starter would come out and engage the flywheel, but something had jammed it.

Hoping I was wrong about the sound, I tried it again this morning. I just wanted it to run for a few seconds so I'd know the motor was, internally at least, OK.

The cranking started and ended with a pretty horrible bang. The shaft of the starter motor broke in two.

Unsure where to go from here.

[Quark]

If it was p!ssing fuel into cylinders it's not impossible that it hydraulically locked on cranking. Not something I've seen before, but your other thread mentions excessive fueling. Pull the plugs on the suspect bank and check for liquid fuel in a cylinder.

When you say you drove through the floodway, it wasn't flooded was it?

[savage1987]

When you say you drove through the floodway, it wasn't flooded was it?

haha no, it's just a terrible piece of road. Like this \___-->___/ very very harsh transition to suddenly uphill.

I'm thinking liquid fuel in there as well, noticed today my oil stinks of fuel too.

[Quark]

The internals probably won't be pretty if its hydraulically locked.

[savage1987]

Finally got the starter wreckage out of the way.

Got a full revolution by hand with no noticeable grinding/seizing, so that's a good thing I guess. Did it with the plugs still in. I did hear a weird amount of bubbling/squirting noise from a cylinder though, like fluid bubbling, but nothing came out anywhere, so my guess is either air bleeding back into the fuel line through a buggered injector under compression, or fuel being forced down past the rings, or fuel getting sucked INTO a cylinder under vacuum. Next thing is to pull the fuel rail and see what happens if I prime it while I can see all the injectors I guess.

[Quark]

That sounds better than a worst case scenario. Good luck!

[Woodchukka]

is either air bleeding back into the fuel line through a buggered injector under compression, or fuel being forced down past the rings, or fuel getting sucked INTO a cylinder under vacuum. Next thing is to pull the fuel rail and see what happens if I prime it while I can see all the injectors I guess.

You say what now? Injectors will not be subject to compression from engine unless it is direct injection and if fuel (or anything else) is getting sucked in past the valves under vacuum you have bigger issues. If an injector is leaking under fuel rail pressure then it could fill a port and drop into the cylinder when the valve opens.

[savage1987]

You say what now? Injectors will not be subject to compression from engine unless it is direct injection and if fuel (or anything else) is getting sucked in past the valves under vacuum you have bigger issues. If an injector is leaking under fuel rail pressure then it could fill a port and drop into the cylinder when the valve opens.

Right you are, never mind me I am definitely losing the plot.

[savage1987]

I decided to get back into it today and pop the fuel rail up to see if I have a dud/leaky injector that filled a cylinder up with fuel when I primed the system like 100 times (shitty ignition switch) before starting it up... but I got sidetracked and now I'm sitting in my air conditioned study with a piece of the PCV hose arrangement in front of me, sneakily modifying it so my catch can hoses will end up wayyyy neater than before and hopefully still factory-looking.

Hard to explain without pics and I'm very lazy and haven't taken any, but the catch can setup was a mess so I'm making the hoses run much more directly than before and should remove maybe 12" of hose in total. Doesn't sound like much but when they loop all over the place it'll make a big difference to general tidiness. Maybe once I've put it all back together I will actually get around to pressurising this rail and see if any injectors squirt/dribble when they shouldn't...

Anyway, back to chopping and rearranging this hose, sneaky under-factory-foam-sheathing-spec.





................



lifted fuel rail, turned ignition on

fuel POURING out of that driver's rear injector. that cyl would have filled to the brim in no time, it's a wonder it cranked at all. REALLY hope no more damage but that's potentially a real bad scenario in there...

Now to swap injectors around and see if it's the harness or the injector itself..


on a positive note, the new PCV setup looks nice, and it's going to be easier than I thought to hook up a carbon canister as well. Don't know why I didn't do it ages ago. Probably order a brand new one to avoid getting a VT LS one that's full of shit

[savage1987]

Quick comparo on the PCV arrangement.... bear in mind that the "before" pics don't show the mayhem too well because they were just random engine bay photos I dug up..

Before:









After:









And a shot of the starter motor, just for lols:

[savage1987]

Well I played a little more last night.. there's no way the starter is coming out with the header still in place, even unbolted. And there's no way that header is coming out without shifting the motor across to the other side a fair bit, at least not without dropping the steering and that is a HUGE pain in the ass to get those oil line fittings done up again. Hopefully I can just dodgily bump/swing it down enough to work around it without actually having to remove the rack completely.

If I do take the rack out there are other things I can fix while I'm at it so I guess I'll just make the best of it whatever happens.

If it has to come apart much more I should just bite the bullet and grab a set of Pacemaker headers for it, throw this CAE hammer-mashed-and-still-doesn't-fit set in the bin where it belongs. Looking at photos of the Pacemaker set in Gary's 454 VR thread today they look muuuuuch neater, don't go adventuring outward so far before turning downward to hug the block. They are supposed to fit a lot better than CAE's as well; I certainly hope so and will be hoping/looking for some sort of assurance from Pacemaker that they will work, even if it means (for example) changing my engine mounts etc to whatever they recommend.

[savage1987]

Got the starter out:
1. remove spark plugs (pass. bank)
2. remove all bolts holding passenger header so it was free-flopping everywhere
3. remove two main steering rack mount bolts
4. swing pass. side of steering rack out of its mount and down directly under where it belongs (driver's side stayed in place)
5. swing header ALL OVER THE PLACE, and shout at everything until starter came out the top somehow.

It's quite broken.



Pics of starter bits:
http://i534.photobucket.com/albums/e...ps96f38401.jpg
http://i534.photobucket.com/albums/e...ps59ed08dd.jpg
http://i534.photobucket.com/albums/e...psc66f27ba.jpg


Not real happy with this either - it sits SO CLOSE to the headers that it's all deteriorated and cracked (surprise surprise, rubber doesn't like 1million degree heat)
http://i534.photobucket.com/albums/e...pscc34215c.jpg




Here's a couple of pics of where it's all at now, general chaos once again

[savage1987]

Oh yeah, a week or so ago I got really pissed off, like irrationally pissed off that the car was STILL in the garage, so at about 7PM I started putting it all back together. Around 10PM I had it up and running and took it out for a test drive. No faults with the injectors since, so I'm putting it down to a one-off problem, perhaps a little tiny grain of something jammed it up, I don't know. Either way it's been driving admirably all week and I'm really enjoying it

Of course I still have a list of things that need sorting out... off the top of my head:

Need to perfect battery terminals before finally putting the lid on that box properly - one is the wrong size and has a screw down the side of it.
Need to sort out a proper washer bottle setup. My amazingly awesome Finish dishwashing liquid bottle behind the guard doesn't hold water.
Need to remove and replace immobiliser as I think it's the source of an annoying startup problem
.
Need to remove and re-fit pass. side header - reusing old ripped gasket was a bad idea, it whistles now. (???) Sounds like a squeaky drive belt.
Need to remove and re-fit driver's side header - since first instal it's leaked badly from #7 (ill-fitting piece of junk) and makes a tick every revolution.
Need to remove steering shaft connector bolt thingo and grind it down a bit - hits exhaust header under accel/decel in corners. NOT ideal.
Exhaust clangs on floorpan and/or diff over big bumps... hoping complete rear bump stops will at least partially fix this.
One exhaust hanger tab at the rear snapped its weld.
Still haven't replaced the torn transmission mount yet.
Going to piss off the mulberry interior, it's too hard to find parts for and I am admitting defeat. Bought a Calais to donate the majority of its interior. Annoyingly I had a Calais interior in this once before.
Need to fix rear left power window, it's stuck at the top.
Need to clean and fit Calais-spec boot carpets
Need to hook up heaters.
Need to mount ECU somewhere, NFI where I'll put that yet. Been sitting in the pass. footwell since I put the engine in.
Need to swap warning light panel... every time I select reverse gear, "Press Remote" lights up, lol



I can't be bothered typing any more... but trust me - there's more.


I'm away with work a lot this year too so I don't know how much will be getting done in a hurry.. up side of that is I'll make a bit of extra money and I won't be spending anything while I'm out hating life in the heat/rain/suicide weather of Townsville.

[savage1987]

M4H02496 - YouTube

M4H02497 - YouTube

A little bit off where I would have liked it, but different dyno different day I guess.

[savage1987]

Well it's been a while since anything really significant happened with this car. I've just been driving it around and enjoying it.. bullying VE HSVs is pretty fun always surprises the hell out of people. Really though, for the most part the car is doing exactly what I built it for - a comfortable streeter with enough kick to put a smile on my face.

HOWEVER:
I've had a hard time finding parts for this mulberry interior, the body is starting to show its age with a load of creaks and clunks that never used to be there, and a serious need for panel and paint work is starting to loom on the horizon.

I'm pretty excited to have gone some way toward fixing all three of these things in one hit - after some discussion, last night I bought myself a Christmas present. A lot of you should be familiar with VN_Luke's gorgeous red VN. VS firewall, VR Caprice interior, smoothed engine bay, low kilometres and fresh paint.

This is unlikely to be a quick process but I am looking forward to getting stuck into what's shaping up to be a bigger job than doing the conversion was in the first place!

Here's what she looks like, for anyone who hasn't read the build thread..