Cool Mosport video

Here's a cool short video of all the 944's drifting through Turn 3 at the Mosport races earlier this year. #88 is in the middle of the group.

Nuts and Bolts revisited

The Summit PCA club race is shortly in the future. The car is safely tucked away in the trailer so I'm turning my attention back to the motor rebuild. Since I'm not in any hurry to finish the motor - I'm keeping the street motor in the car for the rest of the season - it's time to get back into my electroplating adventure.

When I last left it, I had done several batches of nuts and bolts, but the results really didn't meet my standards. Time for some serious attention. I upgraded some of my equipment, got a big heavy duty controllable power supply and built a workstation. Last week and weekend I spent time varying parts of the plating process to see if I can come up with a repeatable process with good results.

First step is getting a good working surface suitable for good plating. Like painting, surface prep is probably 50-80 % of the real work. No fancy glass-beading process here, just me and my bench grinder with a wire brush. Since the cadmium surface that was left of some of the bolts was highly toxic, I choose to wear a respirator while grinding the crap off.

Bolts, nuts and washers in their original glory

After wire brushing

Wire them up to conduct electricity. This is a pain in the ass if you have 20 washers and  nuts.

Dunk in a bucket of diluted muriatic acid to remove any rust for about 2 minutes

Degreaser step

 I dunk the parts for 10 minutes in a degreasing solution at 180 degrees. I use a crock pot I bought for $10 new at the local Walgreens.

30A constant current power supply

Finally, hook up the parts to the power supply and off to the plating bucket for about 20 minutes.

V1 of the plating bucket

The plating bucket has a special solution to facilitate the transfer of zinc ions to the parts. You can see the zinc plate at the bottom right. It gets hooked to the positive lead of the power supply. I hang parts from a copper tube that's connected to the negative terminal of the power supply. That elongated round tube is a heater which keeps the temp about 105-110 degrees. The square box is an aquarium pump which agitates the solution. As the zinc migrates from the anode plate to the parts, the parts give off a little hydrogen gas. The pump keeps fresh solution flowing over the parts to keep the plating going.

I plate for about 10 mins at 1.5 amps, and then flip the parts around and go for another 10 mins. The flow of zinc is directional, only the parts that can "see" the anode get plated. The backside doesn't, thus the flip.

When the parts come out of the plating solution, they should be nice and shiny. Next a 15 second dip in my yellow chromating solution - nasty toxic stuff, must wear my respirator - and a quick rinse in distilled water and here's the result.

Oil pan bolts

Here's a comparison between some original bolts and the final result.

Just like me, they clean up pretty good!

So, how's the process working out? When I started out, maybe 10% of the time would I get something ok or reasonable. After this weekend, I'm about at 50-60% of the time I get great results, and the rest just ok. So I'm making progress, but there's more work to do.

Here's some timing rollers hardware. This is an example of when it goes right. The original plate was dull and oxidized, slight surface rust, the bolt head rusty. Look at it now.

Latest news

Ok, it's been a while since I updated here, so let's get with it.

When I last left, I had a great series of 3 races at NJMP, but ended up pushing the car into the trailer since it was not working at the end of the weekend. Pouring more water into the system just resulted into a large puddle of water under the car so obviously, some work was needed.

Further investigation revealed that the big polehole bang resulted in my radiator fans to flex at the same time my radiator did, resulting in the big pointy screws on the fan mounts putting a nice hole in the radiator: the source of my overheating woes.

A new turbo radiator and hoses from Lindsey Racing took care of that issue. But the car didn't start and didn't sound healthy. My guess is the head gasket went, and what the EMT crew thought was fire as I coasted into the hot pits was really steam escaping. Since I was watching the gauges and immediately killed the motor, there was no signature massive cloud of steam that usually occurs.

A few hours of work, and while the head gasket may be gone, the true reason was revealed. I had wildlife living in my motor. Not squirrels or snakes this time, but cranes.

I didn't think cranes were native to Pennsylvania

Pretty fertile conditions for waterfowl

 Normally I'd have this fixed in no time, I can do the top end without looking at the shop manual anymore. But it became crunch time at work and the car sat idle for a couple of weeks. Just no time to work on it. I missed the PCA race at NJMP Thunderbolt,but with hurricane Irene blasting the track, I didn't feel too bad.

Last weekend I finally had some spare time and headed back into the garage.

Pretty, shiny head back from the machine shop.

The machine shop worked my head, new valve guides, and needed to slightly shave it to get it back into spec. It was just a tiny bit warped from the heat. They also dunked it into their parts washer for 24 hours to remove all the fine quality leaking street motor sludge.

Since the head gasket was most likely the original, I can't be too unhappy that it let go. The motor has over 120K miles and the odometer didn't work. So I guess we got our money out of it. Time for a new one.

A few more hours of work and it was time to fire it up, which it did immediately. Note the traditional smoke offering to the car gods from the spilled oil cooking off the headers.