The Beast is going back together...hopefully!
 

As I indicated a couple weeks ago, I had a coolant leak cut short my drag racing day...Bummer. It turned out that water pressure breached the #3 primary IH runner, made a weeee bit too thin during my porting project, almost 3 years ago.

My rev limiter was bumped to 7600 rpm, which I suspect indirectly resulted in the water pressure sufficient to cause the breach... I was in the water box at the strip at the Crown Point Corvette Challenge day and the rpm flashed past the shift light and against the new rev limit before I could react in time. (Lots of power or slow reactions...I'll go with "power":p) Thinking back, I may have had signs of the beginning of a leak, but set it aside as something else.

In talking to Marc Haibeck after the fact, we hypothesized that the momentary increase in rpm raised the coolant pressure above the threshold of that thin spot, and it split. Then, while bumping the sift light going down the track, the dam broke, and my LT5 got a real steam cleaning, I can tell ya! In any case, there was a hole about 5mm x 2mm in the IH runner as result. The good news is it was in an easy place to get to - from the water side of the breach, so there was less chance of the weld leaking when the runner was restored to it's original shape.

Changing the subject...

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x...es/ZR-1008.jpg

The large radius side of the IH runner needs some more material removed so as to remove the slight oblique angle at the IH/head junction...see it?? It shouldn't take but a couple hours to blend the radius of the runner to eliminate the angle, resulting in a smooth transition into the heads. To a lesser extent, the same goes for the short radius junction too.

I'll have more pix later as things progress...

P.

Re: The Beast is going back together...hopefully!
 

Good luck Paul. Hope you get it back together soon.
:cheers:

Re: The Beast is going back together...hopefully!
 

Well, here's where the weld was laid in, on the coolant side of the breach...

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x...11019Large.jpg

So that the runner could be blended back to the original shape, without causing a leak (pressure tested by Marc, to be sure of no leaky.)

The runner in question is immediately right of the little brass plug you see, just to the left of what was the injured runner.

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x...11023Large.jpg

And, never able to leave well enough alone, the big radius going into the heads was re-touched a bit so the air column sweeps smoothly into the head port - (Locbob did that nicely by pinning the IH to the head and blending that area as one piece. Very good approach to that junction.)

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x...11025Large.jpg

(I wish I could show you more of the porting, but it is "FBI" proprietary, and Pete keeps a couple sheep in his garage for practice, just in case someone divulges one of his or Marc's secrets:sign10:)

P.

Re: The Beast is going back together...hopefully!
 

And...?

Re: The Beast is going back together...hopefully!
 

Pic's of the sheep ?

Re: The Beast is going back together...hopefully!
 

i'm getting to be a little sheepish now.
















http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z.../sheeplove.gif

Re: The Beast is going back together...hopefully!
 

Frank,i will not post a picture of my sheepy but she does have a pretty sister if your interested:)

Pete


Nice work Paul,get'er done.