We found the issue!!!!
Coty called it over the phone the other night before he came over!
I re-rented the install tool again for the 4th time yesterday and removed the balancer....HOLY BLEEP!!!...The problem was very clear to see.
The weight in the balancer was acting like a lathe bit cutting a piece of steel!!!!!
As you can see in the last pic... at about the 12:00 position, the balancer weight was digging into the timing cover hub hard.
I used a Q-tip soaked in mineral spirits to
CARFULLY remove the aluminum shavings so as to not let them fall into the cover.
(the magnets in the pan will NOT pick up aluminum, so there was special care to remove them.) After all cleaning was done, I took my
dial calipers and measured the depth from the pan hub to the gear face and came up with .575-.583
I then measured the distance from the weigh to the end of the hub on the balancer and came up with .560-.563
This automatically told me that there was an interference of .020 not including the .004 of movement from the crank itself!
After I had cleaned everything well.. I installed a .125 shim that I made up, to go between the hub and the gear. This allowed
the balancer to seat up against the timing gear without touching the timing cover.
As I was tightening the center bolt, the motor started to turn at about 30ftlbs easily !!!
Coty actually held the flexplate in place to stop it from spinning so I could get the required 60ftlbs on the bolt.
At that point Coty and I drank a beer and talked about how BAD this could have been had we not fixed it. WE made a few jokes and got back to work with what was needed to fire up the motor.
After the punch list was finished we began to try and figure out the new Super Sniper EFI settings.... We answered all the questions the software was asking for. There was a series of things like slowly pushing the accelarator to the floor to set the TPS and turning on and off the ignition switch to upload the info into the ECU.
We found that I need to download what is called a GLOBAL FILE from Holley so we can reconfigure the software to run E85.
(I will do that today).
Because we we using E85, we set the idle A/F to 12.5 and the wide open to 8.2 just to be safe and see if the motor would fire.
At this time it was 9:53 in the evening.... I told Coty is was late but I think the noise ordinance started at 10:00 P.M
I could tell he was itching to hear this motor!!!! I looked at him with a shit eating grin and asked if he wanted the honors of the first fire.
WELL... He had his BUTT in the driver seat before I finished the question and replied to me HELL YEA I DO!!!!
I told him that we could not break it in tonight cause it was too late but I would like to hear what it sounded like for a minute.
Besides... I was fully aware that the fuel settings we're not correct yet and did not want to go lean with that E85
I staged the 3 fire extinguishers around just in case... Coty hit the start button and That motor fired before it made 1 complete revolution!!!!
IT WAS AS LOUD AND RYTHMIC AS AN OFFSHORE RACE BOAT WITH BBC'S !!!!!!
I was standing about 6' away from the truck and the exhaust notes coming from the collector extentions where pounding onto my chest!!!
( the truck is tall and the pipes are about 4' off the ground pointing straight out the side in front of the door). I looked up at Coty and he
had a smile on his face that you could not buy!!!
We only run the truck for about 1 minute before shutting it down.. I figured if the neighbors weren't upset yet... they would be if I kept going!!
Everything looked good and Coty said it had great oil pressure. We had one fuel fitting that needed to be tightened back at the rear filter.
Valve train was spot on and sounded great! Though that A1000 fuel pump sounds as loud as a small aircraft sitting under the box of the truck.
It echo's off the bottom of the box floor and sounds like it is in a can. I will improve on the mount later.
Overall... we were happy with what we seen for the first minute... tonight I will set up the camera and do the official startup and break in
after I get the new downloaded software from Holley installed. ( I will be starting a new thread on the E85 and the sniper set up )
I am not going anywhere... BUT .... I want to say
THANK YOU !!!! to EVERYONE who helped make this motor get to where it is now!!
RICK's efforts in producing those different SIM's really made all the difference I believe.!!! I felt bad cause Rick did about 10 different combo's
before we came up with a final plan!!! Well Rick... it paid off!! Thank you!
Can't wait to get the video made tonight for you guy's!!