Some action over the winter

As we are all excited for the spring and warmer weather, I thought I would share some activities from this winter before we get overwhelmed with our Scuderia Alfa, Lancia, and Maserati.
Since I have a baby on the way I decided to upgrade from a car that had never heard of air bags or working heat to something a little more practical. By practical I mean a 2.8L V6 turbo with 6 speed transmission and electronically controlled AWD. Stock the car weighs roughly 3200lbs and has about 250hp. Just to be sure that my kid will never be late to day care I decided that 250hp wasn't enough. I bought the VTuner stage 0 package, this comes with all the software so that you can adjust everything possible but it also comes with a custom made map with an output of 300 to 320hp.
Here are some pics of my 2008 Saab 9-3 aero sport-combi, I think I should make a goal of being able to hit 60mph before you can finish saying the name of the car :-)
Bob

Finally!

Eh, don't get all excited and think that title means we just got back from a stage rally in our fully reworked Scorpion. It's really more an expression of relief that we actually managed to get back to work and accomplished a task or two. Note just how excited Derrick looks ->

The first item on the agenda was to finish up the brake work we were hacking our way through. Luckily we managed to accomplish this without too much trouble. I think the biggest SNAFU was attempting to get the handbrake cable reattached on the passenger side rear caliper. I had foolishly taken it off and re-compressing the spring on that sucker was like pushing on a rusty, angry rope. Awesome.

Anyhow, the Black 1976 now has new rotors, pads and soft lines to go with the new master cylinder. Here's a shot of one corner. Nothing astounding, but sweet nonetheless:

So with the brakes physically installed, the next step was to bleed the system. Sweet baby Jesus did we try to bleed. We bled, and bled, bled some more. Then took a break and came back to resume with the letting of blood... well, bleeding at least. Finally we managed to get what appeared to be a reasonable pump's worth of fluid (sans bubbles) per pressurizing pedal pumpage.

Oh, I just remembered. Far less dramatic was the bleeding of the clutch. That was pretty straightforward.

Our next task was electrical. Holy crap was that annoying and time-consuming. I shan't go into the gory details. The long and short of it is that we've got some voltage loss on the passenger side turn signal indicator. We get solid voltage on the driver side, and we get solid voltage on both sides when we use the hazards... However, we tried a spare steering column (one of the perks of having 6 cars lying around) and the problem remained. Thus the issue is somewhere in the car part of the wiring vs. the column switch or column wiring. Also, do to some... unique wiring modifications by the previous owner, we're spending a lot of time trying to figure out what's actually connected to what versus proper debugging.

Anyhow, the weekend culminated in us moving the Black '76 up and down the garage a few times using, get this, it's own power. Yes. It engaged 1st gear, had usable clutch uptake/actuation, a stable idle and throttle response, and some manner of brakes when we got to the end of the garage. It then did it all in reverse. Quite gratifying... though it did highlight that we need to do yet more brake bleeding.

We've got a video of the "driving", but I've not got it off Ange's phone yet. I'll try to figure out how to post that sucker soon. I'll leave you with this shot of our flock:

Since September? Really?

I just sorta realized that nobody had posted any sort of update since early September of '09. That means nearly 8 months.

To be fair, I think we've only had one working session on the Scorpions since then, and it wasn't horribly productive. So it's not like people are missing out on anything... if anyone reads this that is.

Our only progress was that we managed to not freeze to death via the purchase of a kerosene heater and that allowed us to get bit of brake work done. If I'm not mistaken, that means we need to still:

1. Finish brake work
2. Electrical debugging
3. Timing belt
4. Collect underpants
5. ???????
6. Profit

Anyhow, it's seemingly spring out and that means we should be able to make some progress on not only the Scorpions, but the Alfas and Maserati. I hope so, at least.

Work Resumes, Briefly

So after what seems like ages, Ange and I drove out to Boiling Springs early Saturday morning to visit with Derrick and Sarah and get a little Lancia labor under our belts. The main focus of our efforts was to get the pedal box rebuild completed and then reinstalled.

Step 1: We needed to repair the threads on the stud which extends off the clutch pedal. Somehow during disassembly, these threads had become mangled and we weren't able to get the retaining nut to catch and thread. This would basically have left the pedals free to work themselves out of the pedal box if not corrected. Luckily I managed to get the proper die to take and we re-threaded the bolt in somewhat short order.

Score: +1

Shiny New Distraction Step: I purchased some nice Magnecor plug wires from Jon at Midwest 124 while at the FLU National Convention (which reminds me, I've got pics to post...). These are really lovely and we wanted to install them so that, once the pedalbox, steering column and related wiring was complete, we'd have a nicely running Scorpion.

Well, things rarely go 'according to plan' when you're working on a vintage Italian car. The old plug wires were seemingly welded into the distributor cap as the corrosion was so great. Attempting to extract these distributor ends resulted in ripping the contacts off a few of the plug wires. This left us with new plug wires and a distributor that looked like hell, and the functionality of which both Derrick and I questioned.

Our first option was to use a distributor off one of the oooh.... 5 other Scorpion we have littering the garage floor. We soon realized that the dizzy on Black is different from the others. While annoying in the heat of the moment, it's actually an 'upgrade' from the points system used as OEM from Lancia. But that forced us into trying to clean up the old dizzy. This process went less than 'well'. Eventually we got frustrated and had a good laugh over the proposed "we should just go get a new one at AutoZone" joke. Turns out that the joke is on us. We were able to use the AutoZone parts counter computer to correctly identify the distributor cap used in the upgrade as one off a 1980 Fiat Brava 2.0L. Then, in a shocking turn of good luck, the parts counter guy said some magical words: "Huh, it looks like we have one in stock." I'm sure I shed a tear of joy.

The rest of the plug wire install went fairly well. The only other SNAFU was that, in addition to the upgraded distributor on Black, the location was also changed from being powered by the intake cam to being powered by the exhaust cam. This meant that the coil-to-distributor wire in our new Magnecor set was too short. Blast! Luckily the original wire was in OK shape, so we reused that for the time being.

Score: +2

Step 2: I added new connection ends to some of the wiring we'd been forced to cut when removing the steering column. Seemed to go well...

Score: +3

Step 3: Reinstalling the completed pedal box. Ugh. This was a bear. First, getting the input lines reconnected was going poorly. Luckily we give up on things quickly and this had us questioning our materials (along the lines of "There's something wrong with these nails!"). When realized that the new brake master cylinder input ports were larger than the old ones and this was causing the original input lines to be too tight. We swapped the input ports and away we went! The pedal box went in pretty smoothly after that. The steering rack was next, and that went in somewhat easily.

Score: +4

We then tested out our work by firing her up. All seemed really well until we attempted to use demonstrate the brake lights and the turn signals. Seems something in the electrical system isn't quite right. I'm fairly confident in my steering column work, so I'm not sure where we should be looking. Perhaps a relay?

Final Score: +3

(Sorry for all this verbiage and no photos. We'll do better with the photography in the future.)

We Break the Brakes

A weekend or so ago, Ange and I took a trip out to Carlisle to visit with Derrick and Sarah and to spend some time with our Lancia brood. Our aim was to replace the brake master cylinder in order to get some actual hydraulic pressure into the system. As it was, the master cylinder was completely blown.

The Scorpion shop manual seems to indicate that you must remove the steering rack in conjunction with the pedal box. So... that's what we did.

It wasn't terribly straight forward, but that was partially due to our inexperience with this type of extraction. Looking at it with the benefit of hindsight, it isn't all that challenging. So for future reference or for the edification of anyone reading this who's embarking on a similar bit of work, don't bother taking out the whole steering assembly.

There are six fasteners which secure the pedal box. Two are nuts (13mm, I think) which are accessible from within the trunk. The other four are accessed from within the cabin. These basically hold the pedal box to a metal plate which acts to join the steering assembly to the pedal box and hold both of those items to the structure of the dashboard.

Two of the four cabin fasteners are nuts (13mm, I think). These connect the pedal box and steering jacket to the dash mounting points. The other two (the two closer to the front bulkhead) are a bit interesting. They are round-headed bolts which have no keying (no hex or philips head) that thread into nuts which are welded to the back side of the pedal box. We had to use vise grips to grasp the round heads and rotate them off. This strange design "feature" was not a favorite of ours. Much cursing was involved. So we replaced these with M8x1.00 25mm bolts (Derrick, correct me if I'm wrong). I also ripped the head off one of the dash mounting point studs. We replaced that by drilling out the remaining stud and substituting an M8x1.00 45mm bolt.

Oh, there are also the three brake hardlines which run from the pedal box, through the bulkhead and off towards either the rear brakes directly or the brake booster. The brake lines were 10mm and something else....Derrick? Also the bulkhead fixtures connecting the hardlines on the pedalbox side to the hardlines on the truck side...those were 19mm and 24mm (I think).

Hopefully that makes sense when being read.

Anyhow, once we managed to extract the sucker, we realized just how badly off it was. The brake MC had most definitly spilled its guts all over the pedalbox.

The picture doesn't due it justice. It was a real mess. The brake fluid had eaten away or weakend the bond on much of the paint and there was a pretty decent amout of surface rust. Given the amount of effort to take it out, we decided it would be best to replace the clutch MC at the same time. We also wanted to restore the pedalbox and pedals as much as possible, so we have a nice, clean set of stuff to reinstall.

So we disassembled everything and set about cleaning, sanding, priming and painting.

Ah, during this whole process we realized two things. 1) I had ripped one of the welded-on nuts right off the pedal box as the round-head studs confused and frightened me. My natural response was anger and the liberal application of my massive and powerful physique. 2) Someone prior to us seems to have done the same thing to one of the pedalbox studs that allows mounting to the bulkhead.

So we pulled a 'spare' pedalbox out of Red and set about refurbishing that units for use in Black while we enact repairs on Black's pedalbox.

Here's a shot of the pedal box refurbishment:

We essentially washed the pieces with some dish-detergent, and then sanded them all down. We hit them with some primer which claims to be specifically formulated for 'rusty' metal. Once that had time to dry we sprayed them with the final coat of paint. The first box we did in a nice gloss black. Then Derrick channeled his inner fashionista and did the second set of parts in a dashing silver with a 'hammered' texture. It goes well with his favorite handbag.

The replacement clutch master cylinder was due to arrive last Thursday. So hopefully Derrick has gotten some of the reassembly work done and can give us an update on that work.

I leave you with this shot of Derrick enthusiastically supporting the refurbishment.

Some nice Pics

James took some nice pics of the Maser while we had it out to play.

You can see the new spoiler that I added to the Biturbo.

It wasn't all fun and no work; we did get the water pump for the air-to-liquid intercoolers connected and filled the system up.








I also took the GTV6 out for a spin and it was fantastic, as usual.

Machines

Sorry to keep you waiting - this is too much of a contraption to not be seen (pics from pbase.com).

800 HP AWD Ford Fiesta - Pike's Peak