Project "Endless Challenge" 4l80E, dry sumped 500 wedge

[Tubbed440]

So far, I have been snowed in the last 4 days without my car, or the ability to get to it - much less the ability to get cokes and smokes.  Needless to say, today is a good day.  I can't make anymore headway on the suspension stuff until Monday.  So, seeing as how I have a ton more stuff to make for the car, I went to the store, got some cokes and smokes, and then proceeded to head to work.   Today's fab decision was between an oil pan or a fan shroud/mount.  I decided to do the fans - I don't have the right material for the pan yet.

So, here is my radiator.  It's a former craftsman truck radiator with a built in plate oil cooler.  I figure it should keep the challenger quite cool. 



I had to weld some fittings into this one for my remote pump and reverse cooling set up.



These are the returns from the block.


Plate oil cooler.



Here's the donor fans.  They came out of a 93 Ford Probe GT.  I just happened to have them laying around the shop.  They move a TON of air. 



This gives you an idea of how I'm going to put them.  This should work quite well - the radiator is a dual pass, so the big fan is near the inlet side on the first pass, and the small fan is on the outlet half (bottom) on the second pass.



Started making a frame for the shroud and fan mount.



Here's the frame on the radiator.



Here's one of the corner welds on the shroud itself...... 

[Tubbed440]

...and here is the shroud.  I'm not done yet, and I'm not so sure I like it......but it should function.  I may do something different later, I dunno.

In this pic - the frame is sitting inside the shroud.



Shroud on rad - minus big holes for fans.

[Tubbed440]

So, as some of you may remember way back in this thread somewhere......I purchased a dry sump pump.  Well, as some of you may remember, it was toast.  I sent it back and got a full refund - but that didn't mean that I still didn't want/need one......so I have been keeping my eyes open for a good deal from a reputable seller.  Well, as luck would have it, this came in the mail today.





Lets just say that the sun shines up a dog's butt every once in a while, and today just happened to be one of those days.   This is a Peterson 4 stage - 1 pump section, 3 scavenge.  It uses a gerotor style pump and suction stages, unlike the stock car products and others that use just gears.  I just got through disassembly/re-assembly and this thing is MINTY.  Looks like someone either ran it a couple times and put it up, or recently had it built.  Might I add it was a SMOKING DEAL.... 

More to come later as I am starting to make the oil pan in the next couple of days......

[Tubbed440]

Well, I was able to make a little progress tonight.  I started with this chunk of aluminum.



This is the start of my block adapter for the inlet oil from the pump to the engine - it will also hold the pump.  No other piece like this that performs both functions is currently available for a BBM.  I think it's kinda neat.

Hogging out some of the stuff I don't need.



And here is a somewhat completed part.  I still need to tap the 13/16 hole for 10AN thread.  I'll do that later.





The hole in the lower left hand corner is the pressure port that goes to the block.



Here it is on the engine.



...and here it is doing it;s job - holding the pump.



I may have to modify the brackets that are on the pump to pull it in a little closer to the block - but I'll check on that when I get the engine sitting back in the car.

[challngd73]

real nice work.

[Tubbed440]

real nice work.

Thanks.  I finally got the data from the front suspension, so I should be able to make some good progress on that in the next couple of weeks.  I hope to have something to post that's not so mundane and boring.  Machined parts are not all that exciting. 

[the_engineers]

Machined parts are not all that exciting. 

Not true at all.  Awesome work!

[NoMope Greg]

Not true at all.  Awesome work!

    

[femtnmax]

Very nice work your doing.  Plenty of creative flair.  Excellent. 
Inside the plenum of your intake manifold, I would leave the welded "rounded" corners that lead into each intake runner.  If you had a square corner by grinding off the welds, the runner would loose flow cross section area, the air doesn't like entering a squared off opening.  Notice that when doing port flow they are always making a rounded port entry out of clay.  I would think it would be best to duplicate that rounded shape at the entrance to each port within the limits of intake ports side by side.  Some experimenting with various bellmouth shapess epoxied onto the runner entrances and some dyno testing might prove out for final shape made of aluminum.  Just trying to get the most flow into each runner.   
Again... keep up the great work you doing.

[Tubbed440]

Very nice work your doing.  Plenty of creative flair.  Excellent. 
Inside the plenum of your intake manifold, I would leave the welded "rounded" corners that lead into each intake runner.  If you had a square corner by grinding off the welds, the runner would loose flow cross section area, the air doesn't like entering a squared off opening.  Notice that when doing port flow they are always making a rounded port entry out of clay.  I would think it would be best to duplicate that rounded shape at the entrance to each port within the limits of intake ports side by side.  Some experimenting with various bellmouth shapess epoxied onto the runner entrances and some dyno testing might prove out for final shape made of aluminum.  Just trying to get the most flow into each runner.   
Again... keep up the great work you doing.

Thanks for the compliments!  I've got something brewing for the issue that you have brought up, I just need to pick up some more material.  I'm planning on making some radiused pieces that fit around the intake ports that bolt in.  I hope to get to that before too long. It'll be a while before she runs though, so I have time still. 

[mopar12372]

more plz!

[ntstlgl1970]

I'm interested to see what you are going to do for the front suspension (since the motor mounts look pretty custom). Also, are you going to run a remote electric water pump (or pumps) since you are not using the stock W/P housing? I like the radiator. Definitely some cool stuff can be picked up from the circle track guys.

[Tubbed440]

I'm interested to see what you are going to do for the front suspension (since the motor mounts look pretty custom). Also, are you going to run a remote electric water pump (or pumps) since you are not using the stock W/P housing? I like the radiator. Definitely some cool stuff can be picked up from the circle track guys.

The mounts are just spool type mounts that come with the alterKtion.  I forgot to post about the cooling system upgrade when I made this thread.  I currently have another thread on two different boards, so it's hard to keep track of all this.    I had currently been working on the car for a year or so when I posted this thread, so the pics must not have made it up - and, these are real old.  At any rate, here are some pics of what I'm planning with the pump/cooling, etc.

Here is a shot of the pump and some hoses.



I'll more than likely have to move the pump to the other side.  This was done before I was given a bunch of dry sump stuff to add to the car.  The tank and lines were free, all I had to do was buy a pump and make the rest.



There you can see where the pump is mounted currently - and you can see why I may have to move it to the other side.  At any rate, with all the Cup teams down sizing, and all the Sprint car and arca teams going defunct, you can pick up some awesome parts at like half price or below, IF you are willing to take a used part and polish it up a little.

For the suspension, I keep going back and forth on what to do at this point.  The cup style upper control arm will not allow for the coil-over to sit in the place that it's at and get full travel out of the suspension.  About the only way to make it work is to lean the coil over in towards the engine a great deal - and this has an effect on spring rate.  I may just suck it up, sell the Integra 6R's and use a 4 piston Viper caliper instead.  This would keep me from having to change the upper control arm, keep the current placement of the coil-over and just make new front frame rails that sit 2 inches higher in the car.  I've got too many ideas and too many design constraints at this point, so I'm currently hitting the drawing board again to see if I can come up with something slick to do...   I do have the data back from the CMM also, so now all I have to do is use the xyz placements of the existing parts to get it all modeled up.

[Tubbed440]

BTW, if anyone wants to see some of the old pics that got lost when the board crashed, I hosted them and edited the beginning of the thread so they could be seen again.  I've gone through the first page so far - and that's it.  I'll update more stuff later.

[Tubbed440]

I've been gathering parts for the dry sump system and making some progress lately, just not a lot. I just have not had a lot of spare time to do much of anything lately - but some more stuff came in. The three weld in bungs will be welded into my new pan, which the design can be seen below.... I made the right side of the pan rail (left in the picture) wider so I can make that into a crank scraper. I'll have to actually cut that out on the mill, then mark the clearance areas and use a die grinder to make it fit close to the rods and crank. On the right side of the pan where it angles down, I plan on putting some expanded aluminum in there to help catch the oil, sort of like a built in windage tray, but not quite as close. Between the scraper and the "screen" this should keep the oil from flying all over the world in there. Some splash oiling will be needed to oil the wrist pins, but I think there will still be plenty to go around. The crank scraper is not that wide and doesn't go that far towards the crank centerline anyways.




....and the fittings are here.  This is not all of them, obviously, but I do have the rest.



These are the scavenge filters that I plan on running on the pan. It's wild that I got these from CV products NEW and cheaper than I could get used ones on E-bay!



This weekend for me will be a wash.  I don't think I'll get a change to work on this until next week sometime.  Oh well, I'll keep y'all updated on the progress as I go along.