Alex84GSL

She's so close! All that's left to do in the front:

-change spark plugs and re-install spark wires
(Optional: install 2GDFIS or whatever the hell it is)
-replace all fluids.

In the rear:

-Install Carter pump and fuel tank, reconnect brakes.

THEN WE'RE ON THE ROAD FINALLY!
Here's the new pics

Wackyricer-style crankcase vent


Fuel tank ready to re-install


Engine bay almost ready to go


I worked into the dark tonight. The hood is cleaned and re-installed, air cleaner on, all unused vacuum lines capped, and this is just before the battery was dropped back in


The battery's been out for two months. I'm glad she's still alive! Can't wait to crank her over once all is ready.

Alex84GSL

Start attempt #1.

The exhaust is in. The fuel system is all hooked up. The coolant and oil are filled, the shifter is installed and the spark plugs and wires have been installed in the new beast.

So this is what I'm running:
'84 GSL
'83 engine with 130,000 km
Rebuilt and mostly stripped Nikki
Blocked-off intake
Brand new rad
RB exhaust
Carter 4070
FPR and gauge

First start attempt tonight ended without the engine catching, coolant leaking a little from the thermostat neck, and FUEL SPRAYING from the carb at the washer just behind the fuel lines.


The carter sounds like it's working and the FPR, I don't know yet. I'll be looking into possible reasons for the leak.
Also the engine sounds tired when it's turning over. Not sure how else to describe it. This engine has been sitting for at least a year tho.

DarkDrakeX

Did u ever find out what that thing ontop of the engine is?? I have a 84 engine in my 83 with that thing on it not hooked to anything and was kind of curious.

Sgt Fox

iTrader: (3)

Its a condenser. In other words, its a capacitor. Typically these reduce noise on the 12V rail. This particular one (Connector C-17) is to reduce noise from the oil pressure sender. Without it, you may notice jitter on the gauge.

Alex84GSL

Great thanks SgtFox.

UPDATE:
SHE LIVES!
Running on one rotor right now though. The carb I rebuilt wasn't working for some reason, and I had checked spark and fuel lines up to the carb. Familiar territory for me now though I know my Nikkis somewhat! I stripped my old Nikki in about a half hour and put her on instead of the rebuilt one, and I now have ONE ROTOR running, the rear rotor.

Spark seems good on the front rotor a pull-out-and-visually-check; I can accelerate slowly, with the putt-putting sound of the one rotor dragging the bad one around. I manually opened the secondaries and it revved better, but still sounds like the other rotor is not catching.

So: I am reasonably sure I have fuel/air
I checked and saw spark
If it's compression I would need to rebuild, so that sucks and I'm going to check everything else first!

Is it possible my dizzy is off timing? This is how the rotor and dizzy sit with the main pulley at TDC. (Yes I advanced the timing by rotating the dizzy, I was trying to see if it would catch better)

Glazedham42

iTrader: (4)

Sounds like you may have a bad ignitor? This sounds similar to why my car did when I had a bad ignitor. There is a test procedure in the Haynes. Or you can just replace them with GM style HEI ignitors for about $20-$30. I would definitely check the ignitors, or do some swapping around with them and see what happens. It's very possible you have a bad one.

To check compression the poor man's way...... Take one of your spark plugs out of the front rotor. Crank the engine over. Listen for 3 solid puffs, one for each rotor face. Replace spark plug. Repeat procedure for the rear rotor. This will at least let you know if you're getting compression on all the rotor faces or not. You can hear if some puffs are stronger than others. If you have a bad apex seal you'll usually hear PSHH ______ _____ PSHH ________ ________. Two/three bad apex seals will be _______ _______ _____ _______ _______ ______ . Three good apex seals will be PSHH PSHH PSHH PSHH PSHH PSHH. It's a cheap, fast way to see if your 12A is a total paperweight or not.

^^ Be sure to disable the ignition system before you do the ghetto compression test. Don't wan't to start a fire.

Alex84GSL

Oh HELL.
Front rotor has bad compression. I don't have the cash right now to do a rebuild.
That's that for at least a month, I guess.

clykins

iTrader: (1)

I could be way off on this, so someone confirm this before you try, but I seem to recall that when my 7 sat for a while I had to put a little oil in through the intake to get conpression back. Might be worth a shot. Good luck.

Glazedham42

iTrader: (4)

Whoa! Don't give up yet! Could be a stuck apex seal or seals. Squirt some marvel mystery oil, or seafoam or something into the spark plug hole on the front rotor. Something that will dissolve carbon. Slowly crank the engine over by hand to coat all three of the apex seals. You will want to put in some oil on each of the three rotor faces. Let it sit for a couple of days, and then try running it again. If the seals are stuck they may break loose. If the engine hasn't run for a long time, then one of your apex seals may be stuck, or have significant carbon buildup. Give it the Marvel Mystery Oil treatment for a couple of days and see if it will break loose.

You can also remove your exhaust manifold / header and visibly inspect the apex seals thru the exhaust port, as you crank the engine over by hand. You can shine a flashlight in the exhaust port, or take a picture with a digital camera. That will let you see if the apex seals are chipped or broken, or whatever. I would do that first. If the seals are broken it will be obvious by looking thru the exhaust ports.

Don't give it the death sentence just yet though! There's still an outside chance that the apex seals need loosened up.

84stock

iTrader: (5)

Please explain exactly what your compression results are...

Alex84GSL

I did the poor man's compression test. The rear rotor, which is working, gave me a strong steady WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH. The front rotor, which hasn't been firing, was feeble, but seemed to me to be more of a strong-weak-weak. It was MUCH weaker than the rear rotor.

I bought a can of Seafoam Deep Creep, and slowly cranked the main pulley around while spraying it into the front rotor's spark plug holes. Now I'll let it sit a day or two and then try again.
Meanwhile, I've got a garage to clean and tools to organize.

Alex84GSL

Update:

I tried again today with the same results. The front rotor gives no compression still, and I can clearly tell a STRONG-weak-weak pattern in the puffs - all of which are very weak compared to the rear rotor.
Is it possible that if the problem apex seal is just stuck, I can poke it through the exhaust very carefully and loosen it?

Today the rear rotor wouldn't catch like it did yesterday, so I have a non-running car again. However I am concerned that bad gas could also be a culprit. I had about 8 litres in there that I can taken out two months ago, and left them in plastic ice cream pails. When I put them back in, I noticed they were about half as full as before and smelled a little funny. Once I tried to start her up the carb smelled like varnish!
So I got some fuel additive for old fuel ("removes varnish from lines etc.") and about 18 litres of good gas and poured all that in there along with it. That's when the engine started to catch. Now it's starting to smell bad again, and not catching again... any thoughts?

clykins

iTrader: (1)

Sounds to me like one apex seal is not sealing. I would pull the exhaust manifold and try to get at it. It sure beats tearing the engine apart. Good luck.

Alex84GSL

That's it gentlemen. The fat lady has sung.

After a Seafoam soak treatment didn't work, I used a mirror to look down through the trailing spark plug hole while slowly turning the engine over. I saw, as it went around, two silver lines (apex seals) and one black hole where the third should have been. I also saw what looks like grooving in the rotor surface. Then I checked on the old (working) engine I pulled out before, and saw three very clear silver lines. VERDICT: my front rotor has a busted apex seal.

Damn, the guy who sold it to me ($300) told me it had compression tested at 110 or 115. Live and learn I guess, I'm going to teardown the original engine because I believe the only problem with it is oil seals (it was smoking before removal.)

Thanks for all the help, everyone.

clykins

iTrader: (1)

Tough luck, man. So close. Good luck with your older engine. Looking forward to seeing a video of your car finally running :-)

Alex84GSL

Hi gents,

So I've got a 1000-lb engine stand all ready to go. My old 12a is sitting in the garage. It's dirty as all hell but it ran solid until JUST before I pulled it, when it was beginning to give a bit of oil smoke. I also think I overheated it a few times. It's sitting at 192,000 km. (about 120,000 miles for you 'Mericans)

The other engine, which I blindly threw in the car hoping that it was in good shape, is missing an apex seal and I think I saw grooving on the rotor face while turning it over and looking through the spark plug hole. So it's probably got one rotor and one housing ruined.

I'm going to rebuild the first engine. I'm watching the Aaron Cake rebuild videos, and planning to start ASAP before winter comes, and all Canadians huddle in their igloos.
I'd like to put in a street port, but this is my first rebuild. I did a basic restore/fixup job on the car this summer, and I have rebuilt a Nikki. Is a street port wise to try? Do I have the skillz?

Alex84GSL

I haven't been lazy, just working!
Since the final fruits of my summer's labour were ruined by a bad apex seal - because I was too dumb to check the damn engine before I built it into the rebuild - I let things go for a couple weeks.

Then I met the kid selling this for $400.


It's sure ugly as hell but the engine was a fresh rebuild before the starter went bad, a year ago, and since then it's just been sitting around.
I bought it and he paid for the tow.

First things first: check the starter. I didn't have the heart to tell him the only problem with his starter was corroded battery cables! It fired right up after 20 min of scraping with a brush.


God what a cluttered engine bay. AC, power steering, fuel injection and other useless things.


Obviously the horror of the fuel injection system must be removed!


Now you see it...

Now you don't!


If I thought the FB rat's nest was bad, this blew my mind. The amount of crap running around on the poor FC's engine is incredible.

Now, that engine is much too pretty to stay in that ugly car. This was fixed

in my garage with no room to work.
Look at the paint job on the irons


So right now I'm watching winter start but still not giving up on the car. I have a GSL-SE oil pan and front cover from 84Stock who also sold me an EDELBROCK 650 THUNDER SERIES. Awesome. Front cover installed so far, with a new oil seal:

And here's the front cover on


tonight was a pleasant surprise - looking into the centre iron intake runners, I think they look like they've been ported. No idea how well the job was done, the kid doesn't know anything about it.


Can you see the dremel marks at the back?

Alex84GSL

Winter comes really suddenly here in Canada! The roads and yards are white with snow and we won't see temperatures above freezing for months now. And I'm working away in the garage.

Can anyone tell me why my exhaust ports look like this?




Reattached water pump and plugged injector holes tonight

84stock

iTrader: (5)

Must've been rebuilt. Builder probably just cut the diffusers to help exhaust flow.

Here is a before and after example

84stock

iTrader: (5)

See the inside upper lip on the right compared to the left, feel yours to see if it has been ground away. This will tell you if was ported of if the diffusers were just cut out.

Alex84GSL

I'm renaming this the Kamikaze build. Reason being:



This is what it looks like outside right now
It's -20 C which is about -5 F with a nasty wind chill
My garage is not heated

But the engine is nearly ready to go go. I need the blockoff plates still for MOP and EGR valve, and need to torque the e-shaft bolt to 90 ft-lbs. Now I need to get the old stuff out of the car, but it's so damn cold I can't get the fuel hoses off my stripped Nikki. Hair dryer?

Swapping tailhousing of my FB trans to the FC trans so I can have lower gear ratios

84stock

iTrader: (5)

Old man winter has arrived with a vengeance

Alex84GSL

I'm doing the FC-tranny into FB tailhousing swap but I'm stuck on the pin under the shift lever box on the FC tranny. Looks like this



Anyone know how to get it out? The tutorial in the archive is not very helpful, I tried with a hammer and punch and now I've been trying to drill it out, no luck.

Alex84GSL

Winter has backed off and been pretty nice here for the last couple weeks, so I got the clutch on and installed my shiny new rear brake calipers. Waiting for my RB intake for the edelbrock, and my throwout bearing before I put the mutant FB/FC trans on the engine.

Shiny




This whole operation was a huge pain in the ***, old rusty parts locked together.

Spent the last couple days slotting the crossmember a little, and the mounting bracket a little more. Total should come to about 20mm, so I don't have to move anything on the trans. Main concern is how to make sure the engine is still perfectly straight.

Alex84GSL

Engine is in! Got my brother to help me after christmas. My RB intake arrived, I bought an air cleaner and tuning kit for the edelbrock 650, also the throwout bearing.



Waiting to be dropped:



In the car



2nd gen alt installed and belt tightened



When I removed the air pump from my 12a, I installed a 3L220 belt between the main pulley and the fan. Looks like it's a little loose on this engine though, I might have to go down a size:



Anyone know why?

Still to do:
-Carb
-Reinstall rad, dizzy, clip on engine harness, reconnect all wiring
-Install oil cooler (including get new oil hoses made)
-Exhaust