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THE BUILD -
Part 5 |
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the Engine and Engine
Components |
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| Well,
simple it is! The engine is one of those parts that we
just don't want to mess around with. We kept our promise
to ourselves to use the simplest engine out there...the GM 4.3
liter - Vortec V6 out of a 1999 Chevy S-10. I picked one
up at a local junkyard with the longblock, harness, and computer
for $800. It had just under 15,000 miles on it. Of
course, we'll not be using the harness as this is a
"stand-alone" engine, so we'll be adding a Painless EFI harness
later on in the build. The first thing was putting the engine
into the chassis. Without putting the accessories on it,
Bender went with the plan of locating the front of the engine
pulleys 12" behind the centerline of the front axle, and 7" off
to the right of the front/rear centerline, but twisted so the
centerline of the crank would extend through the rear pumpkin,
which was located on the far left side of the crawler. Is that
confusing??? Well, to make it easier to understand, the
engine is way back in the chassis, off to the right side, and
twisted diagonally to make everything fit, but still be
balanced. |
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| First
thing we did was to fit the starter. The Chevy Vortec v6
is basically a Chevy Small Block 350 with two middle cylinders
cut out so the high majority of engine accessories cross over
from the most popular v8 to the most popular v6. The only
problem is, SOME of the parts don't cross over, even from one
350 to another. One of those parts was the starter.
We ordered an ultra-light PowerMaster XS-Torque starter with the
infini-clock system that allows us to rotate the starter for
exhaust/frame/link clearance. Upon receiving the starter
from PowerMaster, we were stoked to see the quality and the low
weight (just a few pounds) as well as the nice look and
electrical connections that are much nicer than on traditional
starters. As Dallas tried to bolt it up, he soon looked
over at me with a question in his eyes. That question was
WHY did I get the standard bolt pattern when it is an off-set
bolt hole engine block??? I didn't have an answer beyond
pleading my nin-com-poop-ness. The picture below shows the
"in-line holes" of the starter we ordered, but the red "x" shows
where the right hand hole should have been in the "offset holes"
version of the same starter. |
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| Well,
after ordering the proper starter, we moved on to the front of
the engine block. First, we removed the old heavy water
pump and mounted the Dedenbear crossover plenum where the pump
used to be. As we'll be using the remote mount water pump
from Dedenbear, we need to get the water out of the block and
into a hose heading toward the 2.5 pound electric pump.
Talk about a weight difference in water pumps! Putting the
crossover tube up to the block, we found that the plastic timing
chain cover bolts stick out about 1/4" further than the metal
timing cover bolts found on a Chevy 350 block. That was a
surprise but matt came to our rescue by cutting some 1/4" plate
into spacers in the same shape as the gaskets. Again, we
were thankful for the plasma / solidworks setup there at Blue
Torch Fabworks. |
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| With
the crossover tube mounted, we moved on and worked on the
mounting of the PowerMaster Alternator. For that, we
picked up a pre-built low slung mount from PowerMaster. It
was a quick and easy bolt-up and made the install of the
alternator a piece of cake. As we are removing the
standard water pump, we chose the "short water pump" style that
puts the alternator closer to the engine, in turn making the
mounts stronger. It took Dallas about 10 minutes to install the
mount and alternator...how nice is that!?!? |
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about the alternator. Also, because we spend most of our
time at or just above idle, we had a smaller pulley installed to
"overdrive" the alternator and charge the batteries even at low
RPM's. This pulley is an option through PowerMaster. Now
that we had the alternator in, we had the pulley in place to
judge our power steering pump mounting by. For P/S, we
chose a hot rodded "P-style" pump from
West Texas OffRoad.
Matt set us up with a "Spam-Can" style on-pump reservoir that
had two AN -10 male fittings welded on in 2 different clockings.
We had him do that so the pump could work on the RockIt I, the
RockIt II, or the RockHer II. That pump will be fed by a
filtered "cooling" reservoir from Sean (aka Station) at
Performance OffRoad Systems. Dallas placed the pump close to
where he wanted it and Bender helped him make a paper template
of what the bracket should be (pic 1). They took that
template to Matt, he drew it up on his computer, then sent it to
the CNC plasma (pics 2 & 3). Before the plasma actually cuts the
plate, Matt watches the plasma torch run through the cutting
cycle to make sure it is cutting the approximate pattern. (pic
4) While the torch head is moving, the computer draws a
simulation of the cut over a silhouette of the drawing Matt
originally made. |
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| Matt
then turns the CNC Plasma loose and Bender is drawn to the
pretty light ;-) The bracket was then sanded and
installed. |
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| It
didn't fit exactly as we needed...the P/S pulley actually hit
the upper link arm on full compression. No big deal, just
change a few measurements in the SolidWorks program and in a few
minutes, you have a new part that clears by 3/8" but is as low
as possible to make the flow smoother with the remote reservoir
being completely above the pump. We'll show the remote
reservoir later. |
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Dallas told Bender how far he needed the
bracket spaced away from the engine block and Bender cut some
spacers. |
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| The next step was to
build a bracket to keep the pump from moving fore and aft.
Dallas cut one out of a paper template, Matt worked his magic,
and Dallas bent it and fit it up by welding a small tab on the
motor-mount (the engine side of the rubber mount) so the bracket
can be removed if needed. |
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Later, an idler pulley will be added as well
as the original Crank pulley will be swapped out for one that
fits tighter to the block. The ones that come stock, stick
way out to reach over the tall water pump. We'll cover how
that section is finished later.
The next step is one of the coolest of the
entire build...Bender's headers! He really has made a name
for himself with trick headers...this set shows exactly how he
does his amazing work.
To start, he needs header flanges. Of
course, finding header flanges for a Vortec v6 is not exactly
easy...well, it turned out easier than I thought...Bender just
walked to the next room and found them on a desk...actually, on
a desktop...Matt's computer desktop to be exact. Matt
pulled it off again and within minutes, a pair of perfect
flanges were bolted on the engine block. |
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| Take
note, that before these headers were built, the engine cover (aka
DogHouse) was built and we'll cover that in the
Build Part 7 - the Interior For the headers, Bender
started with a bunch of 1 1/2" diameter exhaust tube "U bends".
He held them approximately in place and "eyeballed" the cut
lines, cut them into the shapes he needed, and tacked them into
place. All the while, he kept putting the doghouse in place to
be sure everything fit properly. I'll let the photos tell
the story. |
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Now, looking at the last photo, we have the
issue of making the collector to get the three exhaust tubes
into one. You could buy a collector, but again Bender will
show his skills and work together with Dan to build their own.
Keep in mind, the idea is to start with a 3" diameter tube and
build the collector that will fit over the three header exhaust
tubes. To make that possible, Bender built his own tool to
shape the collector. |
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From there, we'll rely on the photos to tell
the story about how the collectors are formed. The heat
was required to stretch the 3" tube far enough as just smashing
it would leave him short of room to fit all three tubes inside. |
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The finish-work is then done to make the
collector wrap the tubes closely so minimal welding and filling
is needed to get a complete seal. |
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Now the collector flanges and crossover tube
(the junction of the two large tubes) are added and the final
header system is complete! |
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You saw the nice radiator in those last two
pics didn't you? That is a custom radiator from
Ron Davis Racing
Radiators that arrived just in time for us to fit the
exhaust around. Here's a few pics of the radiator just off
the UPS
truck. Notice the in and out are on the same side.
That forces the water to do two passes through the radiator,
actually cooling the water better. Notice the fill neck on
the same side as the top hose. If you were running a
standard engine-driven water pump, you would NOT want to do that
as the "surges" caused by the revving engine force water past
the radiator cap into the overflow. Because we are using
the Dedenbear remote mount electric water pump, we'll have
consistent water flow that avoids the surge. The radiators
from Ron Davis are available with a custom electric fan and
shroud that gives maximum flow. After dealing with the
aftermarket electric fans in the past, we decided we'd rather
try the ones Ron Davis promises puts out far more efficient
airflow. Regardless, the finish-work on this is amazing.
The only thing missing was the fancy Ron Davis painted
logo...they're sending us a paint template so we can add it to
show the quality of radiator we're running. The last pic
shows the sideways mounting we'll go with. |
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We'll get back to the radiator mounting later
on.
While Bender was finishing the header system,
I went to a local exhaust distributor and picked out a small
muffler. This is a "10-series" fully welded muffler with
2.75" inlet and outlet. We cut the in/out ports where they taper
up to 3" and go into the muffler. Cutting it this way allows you
to butt weld the muffler at any angle and makes the whole
package shorter...does that make sense??? If not, oh
well...here's the pics of the muffler and the completed exhaust. |
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As you see, the exhaust exits out the front.
If it exited out the back, we'd lose space in the belly from the
exhaust tube running through there. Eliminating the tube
running through the belly (next to the SuperGlide Tranny and
Lovell transfercase) we have enough room to put in the battery
and fuel cell where they should be...low and in the middle of
the chassis. That clearly helps the balance and CG (Center
of Gravity) of the crawler. |
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I'll continue the Engine section with the
engine rebuild details (James from BTF will do the rebuild
himself), the Painless Performance EFI wiring harness, and the
Ron Davis Radiator install later on. These things were
held up until we were sure of the positions of each component.
Now that we know where the components go, we were able to place
an order for the interesting plumbing fittings and stainless
braided hose we'll need from Russell Performance. |
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Back to "the GROWING BULL" menu |
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Forward to the next story - "THE BUILD part 6 (the steering)" |
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Blue Torch FabWorks, Inc
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RockCrawling Team
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