The Mule rides again (sort of) - pics.

[The Dark Side of Will]

The re-decked cylinder head. The Northstar heads don't tolerate much decking. This one has now been decked 0.022 (that I know of) and that's just touching the edges of the intake valve seats. :^/



Reasonably cool shot of both the Cometic telltale rivet and the coolant ramp out of the back of the cylinder head for the FWD heads.



Left head on and cams/lifters installed



Full frontal nudity before building up the timing drive



Close up of the timing drive compartment, including RTV squeeze-out where the case-half seals intersect the front cover seal.



Dropped the lids on and hung the front cover temporarily

[Honest Don]

I run TR6 in my Firebird. I've never had good luck with platinum though, IX is the way to go.

[The Dark Side of Will]

I run TR6 in my Firebird. I've never had good luck with platinum though, IX is the way to go.

If TR6IX's exist, I'll give them a shot next time.

[Honest Don]

https://www.ngk.com/ngk-3689-tr6ix-irid ... spark-plug

[The Dark Side of Will]

Did this last weekend... just getting around to posting:









Got this done Wednesday evening before helping a friend move on Thursday
The third attempt at modifying the sprocket. The "hole" the pin is currently in ended up about 0.280 when it's supposed to be 0.240.



Going back to the first sprocket that was modified erroneously for the fourth attempt that finally looks correct. I still get a mild chuckle out of the timing mark.



I still left out the right bank tensioner, as the one that came out of the engine felt weird as I cycled it. I dug up the one that came out of the '06 engine I disassembled, and it feels fine. I'll use that one.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Playing with flywheels and taking some measurements to design the flexplate.

PTT on the left, QMI on the right. QMI should be much easier for adding the flexplate.

Oh yeah, good thing I measured. The QMI flywheel is actually 0.837 or so... a little short even for a nominal 0.850, much less 0.890.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Time to snag an oil pump...

GM's had a couple iterations of the oil pump and the harmonic damper. The harmonic damper squeezes the oil pump drive sleeve against the shoulder that carries the crank timing sprocket. There is no positive drive of the oil pump... drive from the crank to the oil pump drive sleeve depends only on the clamp load from the damper. That's a little scary, but millions of engines work fine that way. While GM also put the LS oil pump concentric on the crankshaft in front of the timing drive, they DID make a positive drive from the crankshaft to the oil pump in that engine.

RockAuto lists the Melling M188 for the '09 DTS (FWD/WWD).





The '09 STS (RWD) gets the Melling M488. I contacted Melling about the difference. The only info that department had is that both met GM specs, which is unusual for Melling... they usually have more technical details about their products.





I just checked this morning and the '09 STS-V gets yet another oil pump... the Melling M489





The standard FWD pump is actually the most expensive, with the RWD pump being about *half* and the -V pump being a little less than the FWD. That kind of pricing is practically begging me to drop the -V pump in.

I think I'm supposed to install new oil pump bolts as well... I guess I need to order those from the dealership as Rock doesn't have a listing.

Also need to figure out if I want to do something fancy for the front cover bolts... probably not. I am considering either ARP Stainless or titanium for the external case half bolts... purely because I can.

[The Dark Side of Will]

I snagged a balancer bolt today, ordered the oil pump bolts and got the PN for the balancer.

ARP's 251-2501 crank bolt "kit" for the Ford Duratec 4 cylinder looks like it would work in place of this bolt. Its $46 from ARP and $33 from Summit... for ONE bolt
https://arp-bolts.com/kits/arpkit-detai ... ordID=1659


At that rate, I'll just keep the stocker. Now I have to look up the torque specs.

[ericjon262]

There's a kit to pin the harmonic balancer on LSx V8's to prevent it rotating on the crank snout when a supercharger is installed, something very similar could be employed to ensure the oil pump is positively locked/driven

https://lsxinnovations.com/product/ls-crank-pin-kit/

To me, something like that would be cheap insurance, especially because you're going to run it harder and faster than any OEM N* application.

[Series8217]

Wrong thread, guys

[The Dark Side of Will]

Wrong thread, guys

Well darn... how did I F@#$% that up?
Also, topic merge is being buggy right now.

ETA: Figured it out... Go into the small topic, then select Merge topics and tag the large topic... the other way around doesn't work.

[The Dark Side of Will]

I just checked this morning and the '09 STS-V gets yet another oil pump... the Melling M489





The standard FWD pump is actually the most expensive, with the RWD pump being about *half* and the -V pump being a little less than the FWD. That kind of pricing is practically begging me to drop the -V pump in.

The FWD engine already had a pretty big pump.
The RWD engine has four cam VVT and oiling needs related to that.
The supercharged engine adds piston oil squirters to the mix, which is why it might be even bigger than the standard RWD pump.

Would the supercharged engine's pump in a FWD engine be "too much" oil pump? Or just recirculate oil via the pressure relief circuit?
If I have lots of pump capacity, but not enough pressure at 8500 RPM, I can always shim the relief valve. That's actually fairly easy, as it's just a matter of popping the front cover and pulling the plug off the relief valve bore. It can be done in the car without much trouble.

[pmbrunelle]

Supposing that the relief can flow enough to regulate pressure, and that you can estimate the difference in pump displacements, you could estimate the torque loss from having "unused pump capacity".

Then, project management could decide whether the potential torque loss is worth fussing over.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Supposing that the relief can flow enough to regulate pressure, and that you can estimate the difference in pump displacements, you could estimate the torque loss from having "unused pump capacity".

Then, project management could decide whether the potential torque loss is worth fussing over.

Or I can just say I have a supercharged oil pump at the same time I talk about putting my suspension together with titanium bolts.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Also, it's not very difficult to change the oil pump with the engine in the car if I later decide I have "too much".

[Shaun41178(2)]

Do you think your engine will still be making power at 8500?

Do you think your trans will shift at 8500?

[The Dark Side of Will]

Do you think your engine will still be making power at 8500?

I have a set of CHRFab 288 regrinds on the shelf. I'll play with those and see how it works out. I'll look into getting heads ported as well. CHRF had a ludicrous speed porting package for the early heads, but they're not in business anymore, so I'll have to figure something else out.

ETA: Oh yeah, I also have one of Russ' throttle per cylinder setups from this thread: https://www.fiero.com/forum/Forum3/HTML/000025.html

Do you think your trans will shift at 8500?

Of course it will... it's just a matter of how fast. The 7.25"x0.105 clutch disks will put way way less load on the synchros than a 9 1/8" or 9 11/16" disk would.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Got to play with the V series oil pump over the weekend.

Both pumps:



Look at the width of the gerotor element in the FWD pump:



Now look at the width of the gerotor element in the V pump:



And here are the drive sleeves compared:



Here's galling on the OD of the drive sleeve:



Here's fretting on the drive flats:





Block sides of the pumps. Inlet on the right, outlet on the left. Note the small hole right next to the inlet with the groove around the inlet. That is NOT and o-ring groove. Do not put an o-ring there.



I was not going to take my brand new V series oil pump apart, but here are the guts of the FWD pump
Note that it has basically a large spring pin between the two halves and only two bolts holding them together until the oil pump mounting bolts go through both halves into the block. The FWD pump also has a nice smooth die casting, while the V series pump appears to be sand cast. The V series pump has five bolts plus the three mounting bolts holding it together.



In this photo, the inlet is on the left and outlet is on the right. Note the tiny grooves that go from the high pressure outlet around the pump housing to the hole drilled through to the groove around the inlet. I'm not sure if that acts to wet and seal the pump housing halves and the pump-to-block interface or if it's something to do with noise, stablity and/or resonance of a gerotor pump. Both pumps have the groove around the inlet, so I @$$ume they both have the groove around the joint.





GM specifies to pack the inlet of the pump with vaseline to aid in sealing so it can prime. I have never done that before. Also, my engines have not been able to build oil pressure from extended cranking. They do fine one first start as the lifter noise goes away in ~3 seconds, but did not indicate any pressure on the gauge from any amount of cranking.

This time I packed the pump inlet with vaseline. We'll see if this engine can build oil pressure cranking.

If you try to install the pump straight, the (larger than FWD) regulator boss runs into the lower crank case



If you rotate it up to clear the crank case, one of the upper bolt bosses runs into the right bank timing chain. I took this photo after I had removed the chain to install the pump, so you'll just have to take my word for it.



However, with the right bank timing chain removed, it goes right on and rotates down into place. It is temp installed with old oil pump bolts in this shot.



If you're eagle-eyed, you may have noticed "Shim to center on crank" cast into the front of the V series pump. After inspecting the unit, I determined that this is to make sure that the housing is positioned such that it is centered on the gerotor.
After carefully measuring it, I think I need three 0.059-0.060 gauge pins (or a comparable sleeve) for this. I was able to scrounge two 0.058 and one 0.059 pin. I snugged the bolts and will get either gauge pins or a custom alignment sleeve this week. Then I'll install new bolts. The oil pump bolts are 8x1.75mm (!) or so and have threadlocker pre-applied by GM.



The stamped steel front cover doesn't *quite* seat, but the gap is thinner than the gasket/seal, so this should go together just fine.



You can see the pump *right there* behind the front cover. GM really made the packaging on this engine tight in order to fit it in FWD engine bays. Whether that was a good product decision when BMW & Benz were RWD is debatable, but it *DOES* let me install the engine in a Fiero without much fuss.

[pmbrunelle]

Someone who doesn't pay attention to detail could easily install the oil pump off-center.

In production, that would require an interlock to prevent the screwdriver from starting unless the centering sleeve is in place.

Nothing impossible, just a mild PITA.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Someone who doesn't pay attention to detail could easily install the oil pump off-center.

In production, that would require an interlock to prevent the screwdriver from starting unless the centering sleeve is in place.

Nothing impossible, just a mild PITA.

Heck, GM might have a tool that mounts the pump. The tool would include the centering bushing and all necessary drivers to turn the bolts... Assembler would load the tool with bolts, sleeve and pump and just plug it to the crankshaft and pull the trigger.