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Here comes the Judge, my 69 GTO
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Finished up the engine install over the weekend… I really love how this serpentine belt set up looks but may it’s a pain to get it all aligned, but I really can’t wait to see it run…
Now you may remember that I was having issues installing the fuel rail to the carb as the fittings interfered with the body of the carb preventing me getting a spanner on them to tighten them up… so I found some new fittings that had flat sections on the shaft to allow me to tighten them up..
These all look great but they are eye watering expensive compared to just using rubber hose & worm clamps.. but it’s worth it
Then I just needed to make up the short connection between the carb fuel rail & the pressure reg on the firewall
I’m happy with how that looks for now
Also doing all the little jobs that always get left till last… like replacing the 52 year old earth straps
I also managed to find the hard to get PCV valve that sits under the intake manifold, these often get overlooked on old V8’s & just get blocked up… but that then causes an increase in pressure in the top end of the engine & it blows oil out of the breathers on the rocker covers.. this is exactly what this car used to do & it’s just a mess to live with.. plus as an added benefit I’m told that polar bears are very much in favour of PCV valves & as they can rip my arm out of its socket & beat me to death with the wet end.. lets install one
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Right the engine is pretty much in & could be turned over right now… so I’ll put a call into my engine builder to see when he can come over, I still have some wiring to tidy up & I’m going to install an overflow botte for the rad & I have some plumbing to do for the trans cooler lines still but all in all the back of this job is broken now
I’ll no longer be ashamed to pop the bonnet open at a cars & coffee meet again…
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Finishing up the last of the little jobs on this now… so tailshaft back in
Bonnet back on… hopefully for the last time
I had a fancy radiator overflow bottle laying around so I made up a little bracket & fitted that up
I decided that I wasn’t happy with the original routing of the starter wires that Pontiac use… they have this metal tube that the wires run thru for heat protection & then they are routed between the exhaust tubes
I got some 1500 deg heat resistant shiny sleeve to put the wires in
Then I unplugged all of the engine bay wiring arain & set about rerouting & moving it all about until I could comfortably run these starter wires around the back of the engine against the firewall & away from the exhaust
Then I cleaned & repurposed what was the throttle return spring bracket off the dodge
Bolted that to the gearbox & used that as the point to tie these wires too… so now they are heat wrapped & nowhere near exhaust anymore
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You can see the silver wire sleeve here as it runs along the firewall, much better I thinks
I wanted to fit the temp sensor for my transmission, it comes with a bung that you fit to the transmission pan
There is a good looking face on the side of the pan here… but the more I think about it the less I want to try to drill & tap a rough cast aluminium pan… I’ve had bad luck in the past with cast aluminium rocker covers cracking…
I went thru my larger box of various AN fittings & I found a ¼” NPT fitting that the temp sensor will screw into
Now I’ve ordered a new AN fitting that will allow me to mount this temp sensor into the outgoing trans cooler line1 -
My little AN fitting that would take the ¼” adaptor for my trans temp gauge sender turned up
The bottom outlet on a GM TH400 auto trans is the out line to the cooler, so that’s the one to take the fluid temp reading from
With the lines finished, I’ve also heap wrapped them as they do pass within a few inches of the exhaust
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Speaking of the exhaust, that’s the next & hopefully last job before I can get my engine builder to start the engine & bed in the cam as per his liking… I really wish that science would hurry up & start a project of genetically modifying helper octopuses for use in sheds… this was a difficult job to do on your own…
It took some doing to get the front sections cut to the right length & angle to allow them to slip on nicely to the X-Pipe
The section from the X-pipe back was a lot simpler to do
The rear sections that go up & over the diff simply don’t fit, the fancy aftermarket suspension that I’ve fitted foul on the premade exhaust sections that are designed for a stock GTO.. so for now the exhaust ends just before the diff, this will be good enough to run the engine & then I can take the car to an exhaust shop & get the final bit done..
All in all I think the quote from Chernobyl sums up this exhaust best… Not Great, Not Terrible…
It’s just my luck that I’m now finally ready to have the engine builder over to start up the engine & we are back into yet another lockdown here in Melbourne… so now I just wait.. I have one job left & that’s to bleed the brakes as the master & all the lines are new so all are empty..0 -
I’ve decided that for operation bleed the brakes it’ll be easier & better if I can have all 4 wheels off the car at the same time, the hoist only has one jacking plate so it’s hard to do more than 2 at a time… so I decided to push the GTO off the hoist.. it’s also a nice feeling of acknowledgement in a projects progress for me when I can take it off the hoist or off the rotisserie…
I took the opportunity to wash what is a years’ worth of shed filth off of the old girl too
I’ll get the breaks sorted one night this week so that I can call the engine builder before the end of the week… but whilst for now they say our current snap lockdown should end by Friday, I’m not holding my breath as we now have 20 cases here in Victoria & I don’t think they’ll open back up until the number is pretty much zero again..-1 -
Still in lockdown so can’t get the engine fired & run in yet… so I did the last job on the list which was to bleed the brakes, first I had to bench bleed the new master cylinder & this was a massive pain as the plastic fitting that screw into the outlets just couldn’t seal so it dripped fluid everywhere & kept sucking a tiny bit of air back in..
Then I pulled the wheels off & played the fun game of bleeding all 4 corners..
I’m still not happy with the pedal feel, so I might look at getting one of those vacuum bleeding tools, I had bought a cheap one ages ago but it’s really useless1 -
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I still wasn’t happy with the pedal feel, so I was sitting looking at the car drinking a cup of tea when I decided that I didn’t like the angle that the calipers sit at
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So I had Mrs_XB sit in the car operating the pedal & I unbolted the top of the caliper so that I could swing the top over & have the bleed nipple start bolt upright… this did give me some more air bubbles that I didn’t get previously.. but still not a great confident pedal feel.jpg?width=1920&height=1080&fit=bounds)
I then took this new angle approach to bleeding & I unbolted the master off the booster… it’s installed in the car at a 15 deg angle, which Wilwood tell me is fine & well within the fitment design, this is not a generic kit remember this is the official 1969 Pontiac GTO kit… now with the master unbolted, I gently tilted it so it was level
This gave me a bubble right away…
I then used the handle of my shortest screwdriver to push the plunger of the master in… & I saw the most beautiful collection of bubbles (short of seeing Margo Robbie in a spa bath) appear… I repeated this a few times until no more bubbles could be forced out
I now have a really solid pedal feel & I’m confident that once I can get my engine builder out to start the car I can take it for a test drive & actually be able to stop her.
As I’m using an aftermarket trans cooler I’ve gotten some aluminium blanks to cover up the holes in the rad that the factory lines would use
With the wheels off I took the time to have a play with adjusting the ride height of the coilovers
Now I know that I’ll have to redo all of this once I’ve driven the car a few miles & everything settles, same as I’ll have to redo the whole alignment too.. but I figured I needed to start somewhere, so I’ve gone for an inch drop at the front & an inch & a half drop at the rear for now.. blame John DeLorean for this & not me here, he had the car designed that it should be raked backwards so the sill panels are only level if the rear is lower than the front by ½ an inch.
I don’t think I want to go any lower, I think this stance is nice so I’ll probably stick to this… I have 2 more things to fix still but neither or them would prevent the car starting, so hopefully that will happen on the weekend now..0 -
Got the old girl fired up on the weekend & there are a few small things that I’ll need to get sorted, but that’s unexpected with a new engine install that’s fired for the first time… the biggest issue I had was the high pressure power steering line, it was too close to the fluid reservoir
The engine would kick over when rev’d & knock the hard line causing the fitting to leak like a pig
I had to heat & bend the line to get space so that it’s not an interference fit with the engine now…
I have some other small niggly bits to sort, the biggest of which are the fact that the suspension has settled & she’s too low now so I need to raise the ride height a bit.. the end of the dipstick for the trans is leaking where it plugs into the trans so I’ll replace that & then my other issue is that the law here is a max noise level of 96db when doing a 60kph drive by… I’ve currently got close to 93db just at idle.. so I need to get the exhaust redone
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I'm still finishing up the little details, I have an issue where the metal dipstick tube for the trans doesn't seat fully in now as larger AN fittings I've used for the braided trans cooler lines interfere with it & it means that when running in gear it can weep trans fluid out past the tube & all under the car.. so I've gotten a fancy flexy braided version from Lokar
This new dipstick is a much tighter fit into the box so I'm confident that nothing will ever leak past that seal, it also can be routed up to the engine bay without interfering with the cooler line AN fittings
It pops up between the head & the firewall, it's longer that the original tube too so that will make it easier to fill
It's designed to be bolted to the firewall but I didn't want to do that so I made a bracket
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The bracket then bolts to a spare bolt hole in the intake & holds the dipstick nicely out in the open
Next job is to readjust the coilovers as the suspension has now settled from me driving the car a little & it's now way too low & it hits on speedbumps etc... it even catches the exhaust now trying to drive her up onto the hoist... so I'll raise her an inch for now I think., the wheels have to come off so I can get in there with the adjuster spanner
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Right I decided to finally pull my finger out & do the last job that I had ignored because I just hate wiring & working under dashboards... that was to fix the ignition lockout switch. First up I pulled the seat out so I can lay in the car in relative comfort when working under the dash.
Then out comes the center console
The point of all this is needing to wire this little module that tells the car when it's in gear to stop you starting it... it also activates the reverse lights, every GTO it seems has this module on the side of the shifter EXCEPT 69's
In 1969 they went with one mounted to the steering column that is operated by a metal linkage on the side of the gearbox, which you may remember was fouling on my new headers so I removed it...
My plan is a simple one, unscrew this one & then make up a wiring harness to join the wires that connect to this one to the new one on the side of the shifter
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I tried to make my wiring as neat as I could, but as I say I don't really like or enjoy doing wiring on cars
I don't have the same colour wires as the originals so I just used a mix of two different colour wires & heat shrink so that I could easily identity each end of the wire
Then it was just a simple case of joining the terminals to the existing wires
One day I'll tidy up the rats nest of wires behind the gauges.. but as I can't see that mess when I'm driving it won't be today that I do that... I've tested the new module & my wiring & now the car will only start in Park or Neutral & won't crank when in any gear & the reverse light work again... so that's that job done... happy days
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We've had over a week of temps in the high 30's so I've been driving the GTO around to see how well the cooling system is running, as well as doing highway running I've been looking for slow moving traffic to get stuck in.. she seems to be running great on the temp side, I've not seen her go over 200 yet & the trans temp doesn't even register on the gauge once I'm driving
I tend to get distracted & go from project to project so I dedicated yesterdays public holiday to working on the little things left on the GTO... it was well over 40 in my shed & I will 100% have to install aircon this year, when the Challenger is gone off to paint & I have a bit of space I'll get some mates over & do some insulation & then fit AC. First job was to readjust the suspension height... I've driven the car enough for that to settle so now she's a different height at the front & rear, the rear is an inch too low on the passenger side & half an inch on the drivers side.
The fronts settled at just on 26" the rears on 25"
I took the car down to a local performance exhaust shop the other day as I really need to get the volume issue sorted.. he's happy to leave the front section that I did & just make up a removal able rear section, I'm thinking I'd rather he redid the whole thing but we'll see. I noticed when I was showing him what I wanted that the rear fuel lines had shifted slightly & they now ran in the path that the exhaust would travel over the diff, so I needed to move them to get them out of the way.
After moving
The car currently has 2 leaks that bug me... the high pressure power steering line weeps & the gearbox weeps from the speedo gear housing. I have the power steering line on back order for months now so that will have to be ignored for a while yet... but I do have an o-ring seal kit for the speedo housing, so time to sort that.
Pretty simple job (well when you own a hoist it is) you just need to remember that the housing is below the water line & you have to drain the trans fluid out first... I'd forgotten that but luckily I'd watched a 5 min youtube clip to be sure there wasn't some secret to removing this part & I laughed as the poor guy drowned himself in warm trans fluid as he didn't realise this... so thank god this was a very clean job for me armed with that prior knowledge.
Disconnected the speedo drive & unbolted the fork bracket then you can just pull & twist the housing out
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With the housing out, now it will just be the replacement of 2 o-rings & a locking ring
I hadn't ordered a new speedo drive, but this one is in pretty perfect condition so I don't need one anyway.....
The smaller 0-ring that the speedo drive shaft runs through is held in with a metal clip so that needs to be eased out first
With them all removed I cleaned up the housing & reinstalled the new o-rings & retaining clip
Reinstalled... I've just been out to the shed & I can confirm that it is still bone dry around the housing now... so looks like job done
Now as I've been driving the car a little a real issue has sprung up... it was intermittent at first but now it's a full time feature. The ignition is breaking down at 2000RPM, so I can cruise around at part throttle & let the trans shift slowly up & drive at say 75-80kph as that's just below 2000... but as soon as I hit 2000 it's like a rally car on anti-lag. I've been doing a bit of googling research & I've been rechecking a lot of the wiring etc... but I'm starting to think that it's either the coil or the actual MSD ignition box.
The MSD 6AL boxes are know for running warm as they use the metal case as a heat sink but mine is almost too hot to touch, so I think that this box is the issue. I was going to run one for the Dodge too so I've just ordered a new one so I can skip a whole section of testing & just swap out the box to see if that solves the issue. Where I have it installed on top of the inner guard is a very common spot.
I've spoken to a tech at MSD & he says that that install spot should be fine from a heat point of view... but looking around the engine bay there is a huge space behind the headlight, & in front of the wheel well, I'd just need to remove the battery to get access to this spot, but I think that if I move the new box to this spot then that would be the coolest spot in the bay for it to live... oddly enough the tech was against the idea of installing it inside the car say in the glovebox or under dash... so I think I'll make up some brackets to mount it in here
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Ok... back into this, after parking my cars aside to focus on getting the Ute project done & out of my shed I then got pretty sick with a chest infection so I've been avoiding the freezing shed (we're having a shocking winter this year) for weeks. Decided this weekend I'd just suck it up & head out there... if I coughed up a lung I'd just blow it out with the air compressor & shove it back in.
Based off my conversation with the actually helpful MSD folks my plan was as follows:
1. Undo every ground wire on the car, clean & check them (even though they are new) then test to see if that fixed it.
2. Pull off all the leads, check them, clean them (even though they are new) then reinstall them.
3. Swap out the MSD Coil that was supplied with the engine kit.
4. Swap out the MSD 6AL ignition box.
Basically I was going to redo all of my work again as clearly I'm a muppet & I've done something wrong. I then decided that step one actually should be to pull the plugs & clean them as they are bound to be fouled up now from the poor running & the misfiring above 2000RPM.
Pulled the plugs & yes they all are really fouled... but that's an easy fix.
Now whilst I had the plugs out I figured I'd check the gaps, I knew they had to be right as my engine builder is a pro & he builds race engines for teams here in Melbourne... checked what the gap should be, which is 0.045" measured the gap & they are all set yo 0.035" that's too tight of a gap, there is not enough actual spark happening in there... could it be that simple that my engine builder had a brain fart & gapped the plugs wrong?
lets see...
Yep... now she Rev's all the way to the redline with no misfires or stumbling..
Idles much nicer too....
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Right so, seems that the offending leak is coming from the pan gasket at the front of the transmission pan
I double checked that the bolts where torqued up to spec & I even gave them a little naughty quarter turn extra... but to no avail. as it's a cast aluminium pan I can't just set the ugga dugga gun to hulk mode & have at it as it will crack the pan around the bolt holes.
Annoyingly I had forked out the extra cash at the time for the expensive metal coated in rubber gasket that was marketed as will never leak or blow out
I cleaned up the transmission & pan surfaces & checked them for level, they are pretty much good, a tiny bit out on the pan but nothing that a gasket shouldn't cover
I gave another one of these rubber over metal fancy uber gasket, this time a red one for obvious reasons & that also failed & didn't stop the leak....
Then I pulled it all apart again, cleaned it all again & went with just a standard gasket & followed their destructions to the letter as to what goo to use, how much etc....
The outcome that leaked as well..... full facepalm!
The only thing I can think of now is that the pan is deforming across the front as it's tightened up... & yes I'm following the correct star tightening pattern & torque settings as per the destructions to the letter.
I'm kinda stumped & also pissed as this was a whole Sat lost to this shite.... I've ordered a new pan as 3 different gaskets haven't fixed my issue & I'm pretty sure just trying a forth at this stage is the definition of insanity
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I decided to order 2 x new pans... a pressed steel one & another cast one, they each came with a new gasket too... one cork & one rubber. Also made sure to get a new tube of the correct Permatex gasket goo as ATF will eat into standard gasket goo
Opted to go with the new steel pan for no other reason than I hope the fact that it has a raised ridge & a cork gasket I hope that seals better than two flat surfaces will
Followed all destructions, applied the goo... only did the pan up finger tight, waited an hour for it to go off & then torqued to spec... I now have to leave it 24hrs before putting any fluid in... so fingers crossed.
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Took the car for a drive to get everything hot & then whacked it back up on the hoist so I could double check that nothing worked lose & that the leak was still sorted.... seems to be fine now, except for a ting weep coming past one bolt... I have a tube of thread sealant so I'll pull that bolt out later & seal it's threads & then put it back in.
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I've been waiting on the local racecar exhaust shop to have a free slot to fit me in. As I'd said before the exhaust kit I added to it was just way to loud & droned a lot so it needed to go, but fear not it will be used as the temp system to run in the XB & then the Challenger after that.
Just got a call to say that I can collect the car in the morning now, I haven't heard it yet but the exhaust guy tells me that he has run it up in the shop with the roller door shut & it's much quieter but still sound tuff so can't wait to hear it tomorrow now.
He's fitted bigger high flow mufflers vs the ones I had on it & he's removed the X-section & just gone for a simpler blend join, he tells me that the big X cross overs make a lot of noise as the gasses aren't just blending & balancing like they will be with the new system but would have been interfering with each other & making a lot of noise as a result.
He's also angled the tips so they don't point straight down to the ground, we've not gone up & over the diff at this stage, he doesn't think it needs it... so I'll take it away & drive it a bit before deciding if I want to run it up & over the diff after all.
Think I might need to paint that tailshaft.... not that I see it often but it looks shite now under there
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Ok... so I wouldn't exactly call it quiet but it is much better than it was.. it used to idle at like 93-95 db if you measured from the back of the car now its 85-87 with spikes to 90 so I guess it should be under the legal limit of 94, but then again that is measured as a drive by at a prescribed rev limit
Sitting in the car is better again at idle now being 78-79
It will bed in & get a little quieter, the big test will be when I take Mrs_XB out for a spin in it later to see if she's happy to be in it for long drives as it is... I may end up having to go up & over the diff after all to keep her happy.
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