The Lawn Dart

[Deceus]

And it's confirmed. The tolerance here should be around .005 tops. One of the only things the machine shop couldn't check during the balance and blueprint because I didn't have the rings at the time. We didn't really double check any measurements other than the ring gap because we assumed everything was good to go.

Now for the good news: It's off by 1/64" (.015625) exactly which means the pistons are likely reusable with the right sized rings. I finally got to examine one of the exhaust valves and it looked really good. Not going to pull the rest since it's still a pain the ass even with a stand to get them out and back in. There was no play and no marks so I have no reason to believe there will be any issues in the head.



The plan is to finish disassembling the block, pick up a 320 grit ball hone, re-hone the cylinders myself, re-ring the pistons and put it all back together by the book. May stop and do some common oiling mods and replace the oil pan while everything is apart. Definitely going to install a remote oil filter kit so I don't have to dump a quart of oil on my passenger side header every oil change.

Check out my nifty organizer tray:

[D_Eclipse9916]

If you are going remote oil filter mount, use aeroquip lightweight hose and fittings. Omg the ease of assembly and working with it is worth the price ten fold. (Plus it looks pretty baller)

[Deceus]

ooof this one bearing looked ugly as hell. No marks on the crankshaft though and there's not real groove there despite how deep it looked at first.





Got the pistons out without incident. Placing one more order and then everything should be ready to go back together. Picking up a replacement rod bearing, piston rings, honing tool and a few things to make installing the pistons idiot-proof.

[Senor_Taylor]

What caused the bearing to goober up like that? I understand the oil pressure issue at the valvetrain, but what would explain it at the crank?

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[Deceus]

What caused the bearing to goober up like that? I understand the oil pressure issue at the valvetrain, but what would explain it at the crank?

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Probably just plain ole oil contamination. I do my best to keep everything clean but chances are something got down into the crank area while I was checking out the camshaft after I found the bent pushrods at the beginning of the year. Was probably a piece of the intake gasket or silicone. No big deal, I could probably polish it with some steel wool and run it but I opted to get a replacement since I'm waiting for tools to get in as well.

Been watching some of the gymkhana files. Watching the hoonicorn fly around is not helping my future financial outlook. I could never build something that insane but I'd still REALLY like to see a hellcat crate or a 6.4L hemi with a Whipple and a 6 speed in this car. Not even going to start something like that until everything but the house is paid off. More motivation to make sure my next job is a big jump up instead of a lateral move.

Need to start figuring out what exactly I'm going to do to the engine bay because this engine should go back together pretty quickly once I have everything.

[Deceus]

Soooo new oil pan is out of the question. Was only considering it since it was a worthy investment for the future stroker build. Turns out Ma' Mopar made the rear main seal on the 360 completely different than any of the other LA small blocks. I may have to get the old man to tack in a custom baffle over Christmas but the easy way is now no longer an option. Shouldn't be too hard to clean up the old pan and get a cardboard template made before then to make it quick.

[Deceus]

Gotta a long day in on the engine. Got the crank out finally now that my puller arrived. I got some practice runs in with the ball hone using the 360 block. No real risk in hurting anything there because that's likely getting bored out before I do anything with it. Managed to find a good speed to get a nice 45 degree cross hatch and hit all 8 cylinders without any trouble.



Got all the old rings off the pistons and threw a new set on to check clearance between the rings and piston. It was somewhere around .003" which is acceptable to run without any real issues. Double checked the ring gap while I was at it and that was around .024 for the 2 rings I checked which is right where I wanna be.



Threw the crank back on hoping to get the pistons back in before realizing I'm getting wayyyy ahead of myself. I need to get some kind of baffling in this pan before autocrossing it too hard. Going to add my own to the stock pan since that seems to be my only option. Got a decent cardboard template made up pretty quickly. Decided to call it night since I'm at a dead end until I get that baffling added to the oil pan. That's not going to happen until I go to my parent's for Christmas so I'll have some time to sort out the engine bay.

[Deceus]

Going to take 5-6 weeks to get my hydroboost brake assist unit. I always forget these kinds of things take forever. I should have ordered it a while back when I knew I needed it. Looks like I won't be getting the car back together until February if all goes according to plan which isn't too bad. Still going to go full steam ahead on the engine because I don't want to run the risk of too much surface rust forming on my gasket surfaces.

Talking with the guy on the phone he mentioned running a T-fitting with a cooler may cause backpressure in the return line and cause my brakes to self-apply so looks like I have some digging to do. He said I could probably get away with using something a little more non-restrictive like a trans cooler instead of an actual powersteering cooler. We'll see...

[Deceus]

Baffling is in and test fitted. Everything looks good, just needs to be welded in. Had some trouble making it fit with a flange on both sides so I ended up just cutting one side off and grinding down the high spots until it fit. Not the prettiest but it should be pretty functional. Was forming it with mini-sledge and the corner of my workbench so not bad all things considered.



Got the new rings on my pistons without breaking any so the engine is pretty much ready to start going back together once I'm back from my parent's.

[Goodspeed]

Nice work man, you're doing some serious labor up in here. It feels like in-between times I check in on this thread, the motor or car itself has been exploded apart and put back together again 5 times. Giving me reminder feels of Joey's M3 thread. Keep it up and hope the engine treats you right once it's all back together!

[Deceus]

Nice work man, you're doing some serious labor up in here.  It feels like in-between times I check in on this thread, the motor or car itself has been exploded apart and put back together again 5 times.  Giving me reminder feels of Joey's M3 thread.  Keep it up and hope the engine treats you right once it's all back together!

Thanks! Just like dating, it's pretty easy once you stop caring about looks haha. I look forward to the future RX-7 updates as I'm sure everyone else is. Hopefully all the rookie mistakes with the engine have been found and taken care of at this point. Not many places for them to hide now.

[Deceus]

Got my dad to weld in the baffle and dropped off my headers at a good coating shop in Richmond over the holidays. Gonna try to get the bottom end together soon before I knock over my crank onto the concrete floor. Got the pan test fitted today and was happy to see it go on without much trouble and fit pretty well. Was a little worried since we were relying on marks on the oil pan that I made by feel since I was reaching in through a cylinder to make them.







Will be picking the headers up on the 14th and from there it's just a matter of waiting on the brake booster before I can start really getting the car back together.

[Deceus]

Brake booster ships on Friday. I'm going to plumb in a cut-off to the rear brakes for burnouts. I'm doing all new brake lines in the engine bay so might as well do that now. Haven't touched the car since Christmas so I got a lot of work ahead of me. Right the now the battle-plan includes:

-cleaning up wiring under the hood (mainly moving the alternator wire away from sensors)
-getting the master cylinder and booster back on to measure for new brake lines
-take them back out to get the engine back together and in the car
-reinstall master cylinder and finish the powersteering/hydroboost lines with everything in place
-finish the bondo work on the hood and get it painted if it ever gets warm enough

REALLY don't wanna be working on this thing come April but working weekends and 12 hour days is going to make that tricky. It's time to pay some bills and I'm stuck on the idea of adding boost to the 408 stroker when I get around to it.

Getting $2200 back in taxes plus I'm starting a sidejob with my old boss. Going to try and not over-complicate things by throwing shit into the mix but I'd really like to throw in the Holley ignition system to work with my EFI. Haven't decided yet on whether I want to throw that into the mix or not. Would be nice to be able to dial in both fuel and spark from a laptop especially if I end taking it to get properly tuned somewhere.

[Deceus]

So not a great start but this shitshow has started none the less. Step 1 in the hydroboost install was cutting the studs off the firewall so the unit could pass through. Not sure why they had to make this so difficult. I would've just backed the bolts out of the backing plate and used the studs but the guy insisted on building me an offset unit since I'm running headers. This made it nearly impossible to get 2 of the bolts out without disassembling the damn thing.



Wasn't too bad, just slow and steady. Was drilling through at least a 1/4" of material so I started with a 1/8" bit and walked it up to 1/2".



This is where the fun began. I don't have a picture of it but the brace behind those holes made getting the nuts on a living nightmare. Didn't help I had my steering wheel in my chest and side bolsters digging into my back. The brace of course had 90 degree bends right in from of where the backs of the studs where so I couldn't use a socket. One bolt was so close to the brace, the nut was dragging against it. I got it on 1/8 of a turn at time. The others I could at least get em most of the way on with my fingers before using a small wrench to snug em up.

Got the master cylinder on and that's when the real party started.



I forgot my tandem portioning valve was also meant to be offset to the driver side to avoid heat from the exhaust. My fittings were basically all digging into my inner fender. This is where a sane person would probably just go with another solution for their brake portioning ... but nah I busted out the mini sledge and the cutoff wheel. I figured I'd probably have to run the driver side front line straight through the fender since there was no real room to run it back to bulkhead. It was like 2" away so it's too far for a coupler, too close for a line.

Of course this wasn't the end of it because the front fitting wasn't just digging into the inner fender but it was hitting the side of the shock tower. That's structural so I wasn't about to fuck with that. I decided to stop here since I could take my measurements and order the passenger side brake line. I think I have a solution for the front fitting now. I'll just remove the adapter fitting on there making it about 2" longer than it has to be and go with an adapter like this:



That 3/16" line is a lot smaller than the 7/16" fitting on it now, that should give me enough to clear the shock tower and I'll just run the other end straight to the caliper. Worse case scenario I bend it out a little bit. Found a short booster eyelet that solves the problem of switching out the manual pushrod that was going to be way too long.

[rherold9]

Well, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one wanting to burn their car down. Looking forward to when this is complete/'100%' working. A lot of time has gone into this build for sure

[Deceus]

Well, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one wanting to burn their car down. Looking forward to when this is complete/'100%' working. A lot of time has gone into this build for sure

Yeah I was pretty heated in the moment but felt a lot better once I was able to spend some time looking for parts and think about how I wanted to solve everything. Hoping to not hit too many more hurdles. The only main tasks are really just plumbing, bolting on the heads and getting the engine back in. I need to put the finishing touches on my hood as well but I'm waiting for temps over 50 before trying to paint anything if I can avoid it.

[Deceus]

Weekend of small victories:



This fitting worked perfectly. Gonna have to pull everything out before the engine goes in, so they'll be time to clean this area up a bit. The passenger side line fit well. Don't have the routing finalized but will do that before pulling the booster and master cylinder. That took care of the front brakes.



Got the brake cut-off mounted and this allowed me to measure for the rear brake lines. Went through hell getting the old aluminum bulkhead fitting out. Replaced it with a stainless steel one that should hopefully never have to come out. Got the plumbing planned out for the booster and have everything ordered for that.

Wanted to get the heads and oil pan on the engine but ran into a snag getting the harmonic balancer on. I ordered a 3/4"-16 x 4" tap bolt so I can drive it on with nut since it doesn't want to cooperate. That damn thing cost me $24 + $12 shipping from fastenal but it beats stripping out my crank trying to gun a 2" bolt on with only 1-2 threads engaged. It was 70 degrees anyways so I took the opportunity to respray the bad spots of my timing cover and oil pan. It's far from pretty but a lot better than it was.



Even got some primer on my hood that's been waiting for it since Thanksgiving. This thing is going to require a lot more sanding and touch-ups to look decent but for now I'm fine with it. The primer let me see the bad spots so that's a start. Probably wont get to this before show but I can always slap a quick coat of black over it.



Next weekend should be some pretty crazy progress. Shooting to having it moving by the 31st so I have a decent amount of time for shake-downs and dealing with any potential issues.

[Senor_Taylor]

TIL the difference between a tap bolt and a cap bolt.

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[Deceus]

TIL the difference between a tap bolt and a cap bolt.

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Yeah most of the longer 3/4" bolts I seen were only threaded the first 2 inches no matter how long they were. Not really helpful for getting my balancer on. I got the idea from Steve Dulcich, motortrend has a 16 video series on how to put together a smallblock mopar properly.



My dumbass definitely would have just hammered it on with a block of wood for padding or something. Probably would have been fine but I'm not really in the state of mind to tempt fate. Shit is already hard enough without adding to my problems trying to take shortcuts. Still $40 for a bolt was painful.

[ScottyB]

that new brake setup looks super baller. are you keeping the hood black or painting body color?