True tales of the Super Snipe (Page 8 of 10)

OK, here you go:

He parks out by the fence to avoid getting his precious Land Rover scratched or dinged.   When he looked out the window and saw my POS parked next to it, he looked like he had seen a turd in the punchbowl!   

Needless to say, the production workers loved it.

Yeah, but then people wouldn't see the giant Lemons sticker nor the slow moving vehicle sign.

Episode 22: Mix and Match

Although this is being written after the 24 hour race at Buttonwillow (June 30), it covers events in the last half of May, 2012.

When we last left the engine rebuild, the '59 engine was completely torn down and ready to put back together.   But I still needed to finish stripping the '64 engine to find which parts were the best to go in the rebuilt engine.

I discovered that a couple of the pistons in the '64 had broken rings (not from me trying to remove them), and most of them were frozen in their grooves.   I finally got them all out without breaking any more, but it was a bitch of a job.

A ring groove cleaner didn't work for me, so I wound up using pieces of broken rings.   My fingers were really sore after doing the pistons from both engines.

I now had the parts from two engines spread all over my patio, each one labeled with which engine it had come from.

Besides the broken piston described earlier (Episode 19), I found another piston from the '64 that has a small chunk missing from it.   That engine sure had a hard life!

With two of the pistons in the '64 too damaged to use, and the '64 block enough different to preclude using some of the better components, I made the decision to use the original block and pistons.   After that, it would be a total mix-and-match.

The crank and bearings in the '59 were an almost total loss, so those parts would come from the '64.   Despite the horrible condition of the pistons, all the main and rod bearings looked beautiful.

After all my earlier problems, I was totally paranoid about lubrication.   I queried you guys about the best assembly lube to use and was impressed with the reports of Royal Purple Assembly Lube.   It's expensive ($18 at O'Reilly), and I used it generously on every bearing.   For the cam lobes, however, I stuck with the traditional black moly assembly lube.

Both cams looked good, so I stuck with the original.   The solid lifters, however, were a different story.   Some of them had pitting that indicated that the case hardening had worn through or otherwise failed:

Although everyone told me that it was important to put each lifter in its original position, they also agreed that I should use the best lifters I had.   I replaced the worst lifters from the '59 with the best ones from the '64 until I had the best possible set.   In a perfect world, I would have searched for new compatible lifters, but I was behind schedule.   Does anyone know if it is possible to buy lifters by specifying diameter and length?

With a large assortment of worn and broken piston rings, I was facing some hard choices, when suddenly a miracle occured: a set of brand new rings appeared on ebay!   A few days later I was installing them.   Having learned earlier how fragile rings are, it was with fear and trembling that I installed them.   Richard's ring expander tool was invaluable for this.

I had cleaned up the cylinders with a ridge reamer and lightly honed them, so now the question was how well the rings fit. Before installing them on the pistons, I fitted them in each bore and measured the end gap.   At the very top of the bore (where the ridge had been) the end gap was 0.009".   Just below that (where the wear was maximum) it varied from 0.015" to 0.023".   Nearer the bottom of the bore, it was back to 0.017".   A bit over spec, but a lot better than the 0.040"+ (in some cases a lot +) that I had been seeing!

I also checked all the bearing clearances and end float, and everything was well within specs.   Mains are 0.002" and rods are .001" to .0015".   End float of the crank is .003", right in the middle of the specs, and the cam end float is between .003" and .004", right on spec.

The clearances were checked with Plastigage.   For those unfamiliar with it, it is a precision small-diameter plastic rod that is placed between the bearing and journal, then torqued to spec and removed.   The width it gets squished out to is then measured with the provided scale, giving the clearance.   This photo shows using both the red (.002 to .006) and green (.001 to .003) varieties.

Running short of time, I still had not ground or even checked the valves.   I decided to do a redneck check and see if I could get by without a valve job.   I set the head on its side and filled the intake ports with solvent.   An hour later, they were still full to the brim.   Repeating with the exhaust valves gave the same result.   Good enough to take a chance with.

Crazy Mike had spotted a head gasket for sale on a site in the Netherlands, but I still had to make many others.   Some of them were easy, but others took a bit of work:

Even though they looked extremely clean, I disassembled, cleaned, and re-assembled the rocker arms & shafts.   I'm glad I did, since one of the rockers was almost frozen to the shaft.   I used a diamond file to clean up the shaft until the arm moved freely.

I had intended to finish the reassembly by Memorial Day, but didn't quite make it.   However, a few evening sessions later and it was done, except for accessories like the generator and starter.

After all this, however, I am still disturbed by the letters POS stamped on the block.   Whatever could this mean?   

Next: The Home Stretch

I take it the Super Snipe:

1) Lived.

dos.) Won IOE (congratulations!)

iii) Finished the whiole thing

quattro) Will come back to race again.

Outstanding!

Alan, if you want to try a nice pair of side-draft carbs, this set of Hitachis is yours for the asking. I think they came from Datsun 510. I got them from my mother's garage when closing out her estate. I'm not sure why she had them. They're about the right size for the 240Z she had at the time, but they came on a manifold that is obviously for a four-banger. You and Spank could cook up a pair of 1-into-3 manifolds and make it rain nickels!

You're right, they do look a bit unrefined on the outside. But in my experience, Japanese copies of British and European automobilia are almost always superior to the originals.

But I have to agree, improving the steering and suspension should have a higher priority on the action list.

Thanks again, Bob K.

My vote would be to sort the suspension and steering, then a manual trans.

I bet the Zenith carb can actually be rejetted to work adequately- you should grab the manual and unscrew the main jet holder and clean it, and then find some number drills and go to town on the main jet until it will pull cleanly with an open/high flow air cleaner.

I think the idle/transition was decent, though the idle can still be improved.
Unleash the full 120hp on tap, then start looking at crazier fueling.

Bob, I'm as big a fan of Hitachi SUs as they come (may my 240Z rest in peace) but those are '73-74 240Z carbs. The ones that made the factory throw in the towel and go EFI. They probably got yanked in favor of the far superior '70-72 Z carbs. The "tuna can" edge at the top of the dome gives them away- early Hitachis are shaped just like real SUs.

Thanks, Rob, that's interesting! I'm sure you're right, of course, but it does make the four-cylinder manifold (two intake ports per carb) they came on a bit more of a mystery. Probably some mix'n'match mess her mechanic bought to try to keep the old Z running.

Thanks, Bob K.,

I actually mentioned this very TBI unit to Type44 at Buttonwillow when talking about Snipe upgrades. But TBI doesn't really net you any additional power, it just swaps the vacu-mechanical gremlins of a carburetor for the electro-mechanical bugaboos of sensors and computers. Fuel Injection can lead to more power if the motor is tweaked and given a big ass cam, but I doubt a performance cam for the Snipe six will be forthcoming.

3 side draft 1bbl carbs (Jaguar? Datsun? motorcycle?), or the self contained side draft injection units Marc used on the radial MR2 would allow a lot more air to get in. Plenty of room under there to fabricate 2-1 manifolds out of exhaust tubing. The exhaust side already consists of two 3 into 1 cast iron manifolds and a cast iron Y bolted to it. Ditch the Y and put on 2" duals with glass packs exiting in front of the rear wheel.

I would think those are the easy upgrades giving you a much better top end without losing much on the bottom.. A little more compression couldn't hurt either

For some added top end oomph, you can also retard the cam timing. Used to do that on Fiats a lot, the engine didn't want to idle too great but at higher RPM it would wake up. Advancing the cam timing has the opposite effect.

About going with that TBI: after many moons of rassling carbs, it finally occured to me that fuel injection replaces all my guesswork and screwdriver twirling with a magic box containing a very small and very intelligent mechanic who does all that for me. I don't have to carry boxes full of brass, read the air temp, humidity, air density, phases of the moon, driver's sock size etc and then make a SWAG from that, only to have it all change in 1/2 hour when it started pouring down rain. That's what he's there for. That's why we went from a carbed 351W in a T Bird to a 1.5 FI 4 banger in a Civic; we not only started finishing without working on the damn thing all the time (thus leaving more beer time), we started finishing better.

For that matter, there's no reason a larger TBI from a 3.8 couldn't be adapted to the Snipe intake with some fabrication of a adapter plate welded to the intake. For that matter, no reason it couldn't be done with 2 or 3 of those TBI's, maybe the ones from the Escort 1.6's. Now that would look pretty cool.

The Astro, S10 and van rear ends will be the easiest and are a dime a  dozen,the s10 being 7.5 ring gear you will huge gear selection.

Any 1500series full size chevy/gmc pickup rear will be hard to find without paying a premium as they are a high demand item.