Took a Drive

My fiancée, Dana, and I took the relatively short drive to see the Civil War battlefield site, Antietam. Most of the trip was on the highway, but we did get to see a few twisty roads. I did the other tourists a favor by keeping it off the floor through the park.

Roof Rack Redo

The roof rack that I built from used wood and some cheap brackets was starting to look a little worn. Aside from sitting a few inches too high for most tastes, the indoor-use polyurethane coating that the wood came with wasn't holding up to the wind and rain. So, I disassembled it.

After replacing two of the slats with spares, I sanded and coated the wood with Helmsman Spar Urethane to keep the UV rays at bay.

I didn't sand all the way down to remove all of the weathering. I suppose I'm trying to keep in the well-worn patina theme in which the 1600 comfortably sits.

I also came up with a hardware solution to drop the roof rack a few inches that required griding down the aluminum brackets.

So, after several coats with sanding in between, it all went back together.

Also, I replaced the set screw (bolt) in the shifter with a small, headless set screw.

Now all I need to do is install air conditioning and build a console so I can tidy up all of those wires!

Temperature Stabilized

I think that I finally have the temperature stabilized where I want it.

After installing a lower temperature thermostat (I can't remember the opening temperature) and manually turning the electric fan on and off, I have the temp gauge needle in the safe zone. I just need to wire up the temperature switch on the radiator. I'll still keep a manual switch on the dash, but the radiator temperature switch should work just fine.

I still need to modify the cluster for an input button for the electronic speedometer.

Teething Issues

After limping home, I continued the attacking the problem of overheating. With the stock 2002 temperature sender and gauge, the reading looks like this:

While there might be an electrical issue that makes the reading a tiny bit higher than it should be, the M42 just runs hotter than the M10. Also, the sender on the M10 is in the water neck, while the M42 has the sender in the head. 

I borrowed an infrared thermometer and checked the hose temperatures after driving around with the fan on. The results are as follows:

Temperature of top radiator hose: 185F (85C) 

Temperature of bottom radiator hose: 132F (55.6C) 

IR gun pointing at the temp sender up under the intake: 183F (83.9C)

Looks good to me. I might buy a new sender, just to see if that changes anything, but it seems to be happy at the moment. I'm also going to try out a new thermostat with a lower temperature setting.

Vintage Fail

After bleeding the coolant system for the fourth time, quickly installing a small amplifier and some speakers and retightening the exhaust, we set out for Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where the Vintage would take place. Around town, the temperature seemed to stay at a steady and comfortable place on the temperature scale. We made one stop and then fought our way through the tourists to leave the city. Once on the highway, the car really showed me what a good idea the M42 was.

It hummed along for about 30 miles before I noticed the temperature slowly increasing in a way that might suggest that it was hotter outside now than it was a few minutes ago and the engine's temperature increased in turn. But it kept rising. Eventually, it was close enough to the red to demand a roadside stop. So, we stopped. After a quick cool down, we were on the road again, only to stop 5 more miles down the road, and again in another few miles. By now, I had posted a message on www.m42club.com and made a few calls to Jake, who pioneered the swap and fabricated my mounts. The consensus was that I still just didn't have all of the air out of the system.

So we located an Autozone about 10 miles away in Warrenton, VA (isn't technology grand?) and inched there, a mile or two at a time. In the parking lot, I spent the next few hours attempting to rebleed the system and swapping out the 12" electric fan for a 16" unit. After a test drive, I returned to the Autozone parking lot a broken man. I had no idea what was wrong but I knew that I wasn't going to make it to Vintage.

After a few phonecalls, the Ivy Street Red Car Gang braintrust concluded that the only thing left to do was replace the water pump and thermostat. Steve from Blunt Tech overnighted me a new water pump and thermostat to the Hampton Inn in Warrenton, where Dana and I decided to stay. That night, I tore the engine apart in the parking lot. We also blew a small hose on the way over that was conveniently located under the intake manifold and required its removal. 

Here is the carnage:

Blown hose under the intake:

Working through the grille:

...I was able to remove the water pump:

I bent up the impeller while trying to remove it and I might have broken the casing, but the important thing to note here is the scorched shaft. I imagine that the impeller slipped a little at low speeds, but then began to really slip (and burn) when things warmed up, expanding the metal of the impeller. 

So, after a full day of reinstallation and slow, tedious coolant bleeding, we stayed an extra night in Warrenton to make the best of things and babied the car for the 40 miles home.

Maybe next year.

Since I didn't have them loaded up for the last post, here are some shots of the exhaust manifold:

I had a rusty equal-length 2002 header welded to an M42 flange. It took an extra trip to the muffler shop to get it to fit, since I couldn't ge the car there, but Jay at the Meineke on Richmond Highway in Arlington, VA deserves any business teh locals can give him. The clamped-together section will get welded together soon and I'll probably wrap the whole thing in header wrap.

And say "Hello" to Dudley:

Like a Banshee

Dudley and I bolted the exhaust up, tightened the suspension up and aligned the steering last night before easing it out of the garage for a test run at midnight. The exhaust note is decidedly different than the M10.

The 1600 howled down the Beltway, pausing only for quick-throw gear shifts.The new suspension feels wonderful.

Then, the plastic to which the top radiator hose crumbled and emptied the coolant at a stoplight. We let it cool and nursed it to a gas station, where we filled the unsealed system with water and babied the car home.

Last weekend, I put a gallon of water into the coolant system to see if a slightly bent part of the aluminum one the salvage yard radiator was leaking. A slow but steady drip told me that it was. I immediately ordered a replacement, but, not knowing if I would get it in time, we sealed the radiator with some epoxy-like radiator sealant, which worked. So, had the salvage yard radiator not leaked to begin with, I would never have ordered the new radiator, which arrived yesterday. Enjoy the irony.

Still to do:
Replace radiator
Install switch to override the fan relay
Secure ECU cabling
Readjust rear brakes
Wire and calibrate speedometer (which looks awesome, by the way)

Electronic Speedometer

One of the reasons that 2002/1600 guys tend to stay away from the M42 swap is that it necessitates the use of a transmission that doesn't have an output for a mechanical speedometer. The only option with an M42 is to fit an electronic speedometer. Of course, many 02ers aren't crazy about the addition of a universal speedometer in their vintage looking cluster. 

So, with some help from Tom at 02 Again, I came up with this:

I still need to test it, but it's looking good.

Otherwise, I'm just waiting on my exhaust guy to finish a header modification. After that, I can align the steering and torque down the suspension.