Rich's 87 GLHS SRT4/568 Engine Swap

[rbryant]

I'll dig for the old pics of the crack/welding and take some new ones of my new (now round) intake manifold

Rich, 4" tube is super strong, it's what I use for my IC end tanks, if your sheet is just a short (narrow) strip, you want have any problems. Remember Shad, it's not the 30PSI or whatever boost, it can handle that no problem. It's the 1500 bazillion PSI it sees when you get a backfire pop Strange how I didn't get any deformation (or backfires presumably) for 8+ years but when it hit the track in Vegas at the Team Shelby event, that's all it did was pop Admittedly I had some tuning issues...

Hmm good point.

If this happens then perhaps and becomes a problem a 30-40psi pop off valve would be a good idea.

-Rich

[johnl]

Hey Rich - just saw this thread. Simply beautiful. I am awed by the work and the thought that you have put into this project. Also, I thank you for documenting it.

Alan's plenum is basically a rectangular box - which shape maximizes the internal volume for the space available between the Masi head and the L body core support - front to rear, and the hood and distributor, top to bottom. I'd of done the same. The problem though is that flat panels, as opposed to curved panels want to balloon and flex into the shape of a curve. So. . . . it flexed and flexed and after many cycles, it cracked.

Your half circle on top of the runner plate will be fine. The half circle can't flex and the runner plate is reinforced by the runners/weld and the seam welds.

In hindsight, a box plenum, such as Alan's needs thickness or ribbing, internal or external, to stiffen the flat sections.

[Austrian Dodge]

nice work, rich! looks like 2009 is going to be a 2.4 year

[glhs0426]

Did you use the 95-00 Stratus "plate" that bolts to the side of the block as the basis for the right mount? I need to start making the mount for GLHS441 because when he blows up the TIII again this year I'll be hard pressed to help him put another engine together.

John

[rbryant]

Did you use the 95-00 Stratus "plate" that bolts to the side of the block as the basis for the right mount? I need to start making the mount for GLHS441 because when he blows up the TIII again this year I'll be hard pressed to help him put another engine together.

John

Yea it is just the stratus mount bracket and a TMN (toomany neons) adapter.

I will make a better adapter that uses M10 bolts from the top side instead of the 5/16 bolts that it currently uses (through 5/16 bolts thorough the m10 threaded holes on the bottom.

-Rich

[rbryant]

Here are some intake manifold pics.

It started out as a 4" half round welded into a taper. After a fight with my radiator it now has a flat front side too... Oh well I am willing to make compromises in order to fit full radiator/fan and have everything fit.



Mike says Hello...


We also made a custom waterbox so that things would fit and I could use a standard GM smallblock swivel waterneck...


60mm Jeep Cherokee TB. You can also see that the runners were cut and rewelded with a taper in them. It is about 4 degrees. I didn't plan on them being quite this short so it is probably mute but it is still cool to say I did it I guess...

You can also see the tip of the 72" Lokar custom braided throttle cable that I had to buy... It has the quick disconnect end that the Jeep uses and had a clevis end on the petal side that fortunately could be removed to have a stock style ball so everything seems to work out great on that other than the $75 pricetag... I thought about making a custom one from some bike brake cable, etc but decided to just take the easy route and save soem time instead of saving $40 or so.


75lb injectors and about the best angle we an do to clear the plenum



And a couple of my modified Holset compressor side before the polishing that will be done...




It is nice to set your own angle to avoid extra 90 degree Silicone fittings...



The manifold rail and injectors are now off to the machine shop to get the flanges resurfaced, the injector bungs placement holes made, and we will also add some fuel rail attaching hardware.

As a side note the fuel rail is a TU 2 piece rail minus the brackets (I had it and it fits pretty well).

We are going to take about 1/8" off from the intake mani flange so I will have a small amount of clearance on the fan...

-Rich

[2.216VTurbo]

Good pics That manifold looks plenty strong, like was mentioned, mine is a big flimsy box Sigh, hindsight and all...

[rbryant]

I think the solution to the power steering pulley clearance is to slot the mounting bracket and use a 3 rib belt. In fact 2/3 holes were already slotted from the factory on the bracket I have.

if I slot the bracket I can simply use the outer 3 ribs on the PS pulley and the inner 3 ribs on the crank pulley. Hopefully 1 rib to the driver side is enough because I don't think they even make 2 rib belts (but I guess a sharp utility knife might be able to solve that issue afterall it is just a dedicated PS belt and isn't shared with anything on the stratus accessories.

-Rich

[t3rse]

something you may want to consider...note the corner intake mounting holes are bored to accept dowels in the intake to ensure alignment

[rbryant]

something you may want to consider...note the corner intake mounting holes are bored to accept dowels in the intake to ensure alignment

That is a cool idea.

There is a story on my intake. Originally I had the holes cut to barely fit the bolts through and then I port matched the flange to them so that it could only go on one way. (a nice advantage of full custom)

I had a prototype that had larger bolt holes that I gave Mike to use because I didn't need it and then I had the good matched one.

He ended up accidentally selling my good one and left me with the prototype... Oh well I will just have to make sure the bolt holes are centered when I put it on or I could use your trick. I didn't want to wait for another to be cut so it will have to be good enough.

-Rich

[rbryant]

Good pics That manifold looks plenty strong, like was mentioned, mine is a big flimsy box Sigh, hindsight and all...

Man you are being pretty hard on the manifold. It looked very nice to me.... Mine is built the way it is for space considerations more than anything. The half round piece was trimmed A LOT from where it started... It is also not going to be that big of a plenum and has super short runners all in the name of making it fit.

-Rich

[turboshad]

The intake looks sweet. They are definately some short runners but with the 2.4 16V you should be able to wind it out more and hopefully take advantage of that. I'm sure you could have gotten away with a slimmer rad to get some plenum back also but like everything else in the omni engine bay you have to pick your compromises. All in all it looks good. The one thing you want to watch with the water neck is that the fill cap is the highest point. Otherwise there is a possibility that you may have troubles getting all the air out. All speculation of course. Keep it up as I know you are going to love driving it around.

[rbryant]

The intake looks sweet. They are definately some short runners but with the 2.4 16V you should be able to wind it out more and hopefully take advantage of that. I'm sure you could have gotten away with a slimmer rad to get some plenum back also but like everything else in the omni engine bay you have to pick your compromises. All in all it looks good. The one thing you want to watch with the water neck is that the fill cap is the highest point. Otherwise there is a possibility that you may have troubles getting all the air out. All speculation of course. Keep it up as I know you are going to love driving it around.

The radiator could be slimmer but overall the shroud is very thin so the overall space is similar to a stock rad. Of course if I went with the same shroud on a thinner rad I could probably get back about 1" of space. Given the 115 degree days here in Phoenix I would rather have the short runner intake and not worry about overheating... In a colder climate I would have done the opposite.

The other option is to run a 13" scirocco raditor where I would have another 3" of space on the top. Those are only supposed to handle about 300hp according to their specs and I already had this rad from when I had the space on the 8V engine and we made everything fit so I am happy with it.

Good point on the fill cap. Bleeding it out every time I add water might be a pain.... I will take a look at that issue and see what I can do about it. Thanks for the feedback!

-Rich

[johnl]

With my GLHS and with the Ramerati, both of their radiator caps are at the highest points.

I STILL find that, to really drive the operating temps down, I have to check and re-check and re-fill and re-check and re-fill for five or six cycles before I can get ALL of the air out of the systems. They just take driving and sloshing and heat cycling to push all the trapped air pockets out of the system. It makes a difference.

[rbryant]

With my GLHS and with the Ramerati, both of their radiator caps are at the highest points.

I STILL find that, to really drive the operating temps down, I have to check and re-check and re-fill and re-check and re-fill for five or six cycles before I can get ALL of the air out of the systems. They just take driving and sloshing and heat cycling to push all the trapped air pockets out of the system. It makes a difference.

With the 8V engine I always used to top off the coolant into the plug in the top of the waterbox with the fill cap shut. I always found that more reliable than filling from the filler cap. It is pre t-stat so it does a better job of filling the engine up on the other side of the water pump.

I can change the waterneck to be a filler cap (as long as it clears the hood which is close as it is) If that fails I will just put an inline filler cap in or something.

-Rich

[t3rse]

with a hole in the T stat it doesn't matter which side you fill it on as long as the fill point is the highest point in the system and you allow time for the air to escape before assuming it is full...you could tap the top of the neck you made and put a 1/4" plug or even a valve to bleed it, if necessary, because in all reality, how often do you mess with coolant once the car is running right?

[rbryant]

with a hole in the T stat it doesn't matter which side you fill it on as long as the fill point is the highest point in the system and you allow time for the air to escape before assuming it is full...you could tap the top of the neck you made and put a 1/4" plug or even a valve to bleed it, if necessary, because in all reality, how often do you mess with coolant once the car is running right?

Yea it is usually a one time fill. The big thing that I can think of is that if the car did happen to boil over you would have to repeat the process. The easiest thing might be to just leave some slack in the heater core line and then put in a flush adapter. Whenever I fill it I could simply lift it up above the waterbox level and fill from the flush adapter...

I might see about putting a filler cap on the waterbox like the 2.4 engines have stock. I couldn't use the PT one because it was too tall and also didn't fit very well so we made a custom one. There are plenty of boxes from summit that fit my setup because I used a standard GM smallblock flange to give me lots of options...

-Rich

[glhs502]

Hey Rich any updates?

[rbryant]

Hey Rich any updates?

Not really. I am remodeling a bathroom and playing in two different baseball leagues so my time is limited lately.

There was talk of the manifold guy coming by tomorrow to do some final mockups before welding in the injector bungs on the manifold but I haven't heard from him in a few days to see if it is still on.

-Rich

[rbryant]

So it looks like the t-stat is going to be on the driver side out of the freeze plug hole. That eliminates the route problem with the top coolant hose and also puts the waterneck below the radiator fill point.

I will try to get to it this weekend and show how the details of what I am doing.

-Rich