Witchdoctor Motorsports

Chapter 46

Longest Motor Swap EVAR!!!ONE!!ONE!!!!ELEVENTYONE!!

 

    Yeah. Right. This would be just a quick motor swap in the B4C. It is late 2004 and I have taken a job in San Antonio but still live in College Station on the weekends. This engine was actually in Dean!s B4C that we pulled out to put in an LT1-T56. It had about 170k on it and then we put some vortec 305 heads on it with a dual plane intake and hit the rallies with it. Gary and I pull the motor out of the rally car and Vilas does all the machine work (since Gary works there....) and in early 2005 Wendi and I put the engine together. She does most of the work and it goes together beautifully. After she gets the bottom end assembled the motor gets bagged and sits. Finally we move to San Antonio in May of 2005 and then finally, in September when the old engine in the B4C goes from a 'well it runs OKAY, but it is down on power and won't rev past 4400rpm' to 'random tick noise, low oil pressure and it is seriously down on power', I put the top end of the motor on, button up the bottom end and slap the motor in.

The above picture is Gary pulling the motor from the Monztr, and below the stock B4C engine is starting to come out.

In the above picture Hunter is arguing with the torque arm. Hunter won.

In the below picture Nick and Fertitta are getting the job done too.

 

And so it was. The stock motor gave a little in the way of a fight, but in not much time at all the original motor was swinging on the chain and put on a skid in the corner of the garage. Hunter, Nick, Frank and I were quite proud. Not even one 911 call and precious little blood loss (1 Band-Aid).

Now I could go on. But I won't. Long story short. When Wendi put the bottom end together she torqued everything. I pulled some main and rod caps to check the clearances (plasti-gauge) and they were spot on. I got interrupted and forgot to re-torque cyl 7&8 rod caps. In the shuffle to move the motor to San Antonio and then finally pull it out of the bag and put on the oil pump and pan I never re-checked them. My bad. Not that I have built TONS of engines (a dozen?) but this was my first oops. Anyway, put the motor in, fired it up, it ran for a bit then the INSTANT I heard that knock I shut it down, pulled it out and it went back to Vilas. They pulled the pan, found the problem, re-checked everything and put new bearings in it. Then I got to put the motor back in AGAIN (sure does get faster when you JUST finished doing it a few weeks ago, but thanks again to Fertitta and Nick). It fires up perfectly and is way nice. Then develops a miss in about 5 miles that turns out to be an injector. So with a late night injector dash to Austin completed (Thanks Frank Bryan!!) she is up and running and it is very nice. I sleep the sleep of the happy-my-motor-is-running man.

The above picture is the new-new engine ready to be dressed and dropped.

The below picture is a quick synopsis of the stuff you remove to swap an injector. Fun. Not.

 

In the end, I treated us to a hot Conan's pizza (best pizza, bar none!) and two waycold(tm) Cokes. Mmmmmm

In two weeks back to instructing with TDE at MSR-H, then a private test day, then the autocross season starts up again. Wh00p!