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Various issues, cause for concern?
Over the past few days I've fired up the engine quite a few times. I wanted to hear the engine roar to life, but I also wanted to heat cycle it, bring it through some revs, let the radiator fan kick in a few times, and other motions to check for issues. I've noticed a few things:
The thing of interest was that the car takes a second of cranking to start from cold. When the engine is hot it starts back up almost instantly, but when it's cold I have to keep the starter cranking for about a second before the engine burps and little and then come to life. Is this normal? I've seen my friends' corvettes take longer to start up from a cold state and I intuitively understand that a bigger engine takes more power to start. I just want to make sure this isn't some cause for concern.
I had the front of the car elevated so I could take a look at the car from below as my friend did small revs and sustained RPMs. The engine and exhaust clearance looked good, and when the engine is revved hard it doesn't pull or knock on anything. Nice! While I was under the car I did near a periodic squeaking noise. By shifting my body around under the car I pinpointed it to the clutch. I asked my buddy to engage/disengage the clutch over and over again which helped me verify that the squeaking sound was only there when the clutch was engaged. I wonder what it is. It's very very faint.
So far after driving it around the block plus a few heat cycles, I've never noticed a puddle of anything on the floor. I did, however, notice some oil and coolant seepage around the pressure and temp sender fittings.
The coolant seepage is visible with the pipe thread sealant. The seepage looks really, really, really slow. I don't really know what to do with it right now aside from monitoring it more over the next few weeks.
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EDIT: Another thing I realized is that my coolant is very neon yellow... not green or blue. How did that greenish blue liquid get there!?
The oil seepage shows from the bit of oil near the T-fittings. I think it's leaking from there before I honestly can't figure out where else it'd come from. I don't see any obvious leaks anywhere.
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For the oil leak, I suppose I could get new higher quality fittings and redo the the "T" section during my next oil change if the leak is small enough to hold out. Currently my next steps is just continuing observation. Does anyone see this as something more serious that I need to take care of right away?
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Thread sealant oxidizer oxidizing brass under heat?
Ok so, the more I think about the greenish gooey stuff on my brass fittings the less it makes sense. Nothing liquid in or near by engine is green or blue. Coolant is yellow. Oil is, well, oil coloured. Brake fluid is deep yellow. The greenish hue on the thread sealant doesn't appear on just the water-temp sender fitting. It shows on the oil-pressure sender fittings as well (see picture below), so it can't be coolant.
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This may sound silly and I'm not a chemist, but I wonder if it's something in the left over thread sealant oxidizing the brass fitting it came in contact with. Copper oxide is green (brass is copper + zinc alloy). The oxidization process could be accelerated by both the exhaust header heat and heat from the water/oil that the fittings come in contact with. Try as I may I could not find any info on what exactly is in loctite PST. I know it's an anaerobic adhesive sealant with PTFE but not much else. The actual composition of loctite PST is probably a guarded trade secret or something.
If someone reading this IS a chemist I'd love to know if what I wrote above makes any sense at all.
Regardless, took another brass fitting I had lying around, smeared some loctite PST on it, and secured it around the same area. If that also turns green after a few heat cycles then perhaps there isn't much to worry about after all.
Power Steering Rack Noise
There's this distinct noise from my steering rack whenever I turn the wheel all the way to the left or all the way to the right. It sounds like turbulent fluid flow (kinda like the sound a shower head makes around the bends). From what I've read this is "normal" noise that's caused by pressure build up when it can't turn anymore. The noise is really loud tho, much louder than that of my daily driver. How can I tell if it's normal or of it's something I need to look into?
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Misc Update: Dashboard wiring, fusebox spacing, and COLOUR!
It's been a while since the last update. I assure you I haven't been sitting idly by twiddling my thumbs! Well, I maybe have done a lot of that when going back and forth between the choice of colour... but you must understand that right?
(disclaimer: I know colour is a very subjective thing. Below are Dan's opinions. :p )
My nightly Google Images and Instagram browsing sessions usually end with me starring blankly at the wall trying to imagine what the colour would look like on a cobra. Being a youngster myself, the "dream cars" of mine are relatively modern. Modern cars can look real nice with flat colours, but the same flat colours don't jive too well with the classic body of the cobra. Porsche's "python green" is a great example. On a modern Porsche it looks super slick with black trim and components, but won't look very good on a cobra.
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Another idea I had early on was a "coffee" brown colour with bronze stripes. Googling "brown cars" quickly made me realize the other unsavoury things it looked like... so that idea was decarded. A lighter brown looked pretty good, but it wasn't the "coffee" colour I wanted.
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The two finalists were "Bay Side Blue" of Nissan GTR 50th Anniversary Edition and "Isle Of Man Green" of BMW M3 Competition. They are both "deep" metallic colours which totally fits the cobra. I'm not a BMW nerd myself. One day while out and about I saw an M3 competition with the "Isle Of Man Green"; it instantly turned my head and drew me in. I didn't even know it was a BMW at first, I just loved the paint so much.
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I'll leave the final decision as a surprise. I'd be happy to have my car in either of those two colours, but I did end up liking one more than the other. Stay tuned!
While all that was going on I cleaned up some ugly wiring behind the dashboard. I trimmed out the sender/choke harness as well as the extra wires towards the dash harness. I'll be using the electric choke Hot On IGN wire to power the reverse lock-out module, but more on that later.
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I also drilled out the rivets holding my fuse-panel to the driver-side foot box. I'm going to make it removable with enough free-play so I can plug-in/pull-out the windshield bracket pin. Still debating if I want to switch out my clutch line fitting to a 90 degree one to move it out of the way, but it seems fine the way it is now so I'm not too concerned about it.
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Trunk Accessories: Power Routing and Trunk Cubby
Time for a trunk cubby! There's the popular breeze mod, but I wanted one that's smaller with USB and accessory power plugs inside it for convenience. That way I can plug my phone in when I drive to charge it, and perhaps to power a speaker set too!
For future-proofing sake, I decided to route a set of BATT, ACC, and IGN hot wires to the rear. This way if I decide to add anything to my trunk in the future I can choose between all 3. For example: something like a cubby light will go on ACC, while a GPS tracking module will go on BATT. There are a few unused wires in my build so they were perfect for repurposing. I routed the heater wire to the back as my ACC power wire, and the ELEC. CHOKE wire to the back as my IGN power wire. I already had a cable that goes from the switched end of the my battery cut-off switch to the back, so I just cut that back open and routed the 2 new wires through it. Now in my trunk there are 3 holes: one for an additional rear brake/reverse/turn light bar, one for the reverse lockout module, and the third for power wires routed from the front.
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While I'm at it, I routed and connected the American Powertrain ELUN-10013 reverse lockout module. The idea here is for a little box of electronics detect when the vehicle isn't moving and activate the solenoid accordingly. Saw on on several other build threads, so I decided to use it too. The instructions of the lockout module mentioned VSS signal and VSS reference, but after asking in this thread I found out it doesn't matter which way you connect it for the T56 since it's just a variable reluctance resistor. cool.
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After routing the harnesses and sealing/securing them accordingly it's time to silicone and rivet the back wall panels. One last look at that beautiful rear end and suspension from the cockpit. Gonna miss this phase.
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To get started on the cubby, I once again used some cardboard to mock out the shapes of the panels I need:
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Next I needed some aluminum panels to make the panels. I looked through my spare panels and couldn't find ones big enough for the whole cubby. SJDave asked around and told me about Campbell Metal Supply just a short drive away from my place. I went there and bought a few 1x4feet sheets of 5052 aluminum for half the price of what home depot sells them at. Woo! Guess who's never buying sheet metal from home depot ever again?
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I transferred the cardboard shape onto the aluminum sheet, added tabs for attachment to the main panels and bent them with my bigger sheet metal brakes. I borrowed it from a friend who didn't need it for a while. It was a little awkward to use but it got the job done.
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Trunk Accessories: Continued Trunk Cubby Work Pt. 1
I test fitted the panels in the approximate location. I didn't want it to be too close to the roll-bar mounting points because I didn't want it to be a pain to install the bars. I left about an inch of space from the bar on each side and looked pretty good to me!
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Next I temporarily installed the cockpit rear wall and drew some guiding line on it to figure out where the boundaries are. Then using a large diameter hole saw and an angle grinder I made a hole in the rear wall.
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If you need on the two sides of the panel under the seatbelt holes you'll find some extra holes. I drilled those holes to make seatbelt assembly and disassembly easier. I realized that with the cubby, trunk lid strut, and a bunch of wires in place it's gonna be real tough reaching the seatbelt mounting points from the trunk opening once the body is on. I drilled holes just big enough for 3/4in sockets to fit through. It'll make seatbelt install/uninstall way easier. (verified later to be true. :) )
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As for trunk cubby fitment it was excellent.
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Trunk Accessories: Continued Trunk Cubby Work Pt. 2
with the panels fitted and tested, I closed up the box by making a rear panel. Again, just some sheet aluminum and a sheet metal brake. Some DIY fabbing :p
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With the cubby all drilled and secured with clecos there isn't much else I want from the cockpit back wall. I added a fire extinguisher mount with quick release right under the cubby opening. It's a pretty sleek system! You pull the pin and the fire extinguisher comes right out. I especially love the huge red "PULL TO RELEASE" tag. Makes it look freaking awesome. The parts are H3R Performance MaxOut Fire Extinguishers MX250R and H3R Performance Quick-Release Fire Extinguisher Mounting Brackets NB300.
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Seatbelt installation was super easy thanks to the rear wall holes. When I do my rear wall carpeting I'll find a way to cover it up while keeping it accessible.
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Ignition Panel Box: (not so) incremental improvements.
In post #188 and #189 I detailed the making if my ignition panel box. It's a little box with a slanted surface that matches the slant of the dashboard with a bunch of switches on it for ignition control. While it looked good, my initial design was one that prioritized saving panel material because I simply didn't have much of it left at the time. The resulting box works, but is rather flimsy as it's missing 2 faces a normal rectangular prism. The structural rigidity just isn't there. What's worse is that the ignition control panel has these super beefy switches that take a lot to toggle. With the flimsy box I could feel the whole thing flex every time I toggle those switches. Yuck... didn't feel good at all.
Now that I've just bought a few shiny sheets of aluminum, I decided to remake the box. This time much studier than before. I copied the dimensions of the old box onto a blank sheet of aluminum, cut it out, and folded it with the help of my press brakes. There were areas where two corners met which were super tricky to get right. For those corners I used a hammer and my vise's various jaw surfaces as makeshift anvils to hammer them flat. Worked out pretty well in the end.
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With 3 faces made from a single sheet of aluminum it was much sturdier already! I completed the box my making a top and bottom face. The rear will secured onto the firewall, so no face needed there.
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I added screw holes to the firewall along the edge of the box using rivet-nuts and secured the box to the firewall. I'm SUPER happy with it. The new box wouldn't budge a bit! Now the switches feel like they are literally attached to the chassis itself. Big win today!
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