DIY oil pump of happiness

Just want to share a little side project we worked on today.

One thing any DIY auto enthusiast would be familiar with how hard it is to change gear oil without a good way to put the new gear oil into the transmission or differential. I personally have tried it all, from using a cumbersome funnel with a hose attached to it, using a little oil can that would need to be refilled 20 times, to the extreme of jacking up the car on one side to tilt it so that I could load gear oil for the differential from the axle side. While we were servicing our van the other day and fumbling with the funnel and hose thing again to fill the transmission, our ambulant mechanic told me about a pump he made that makes the job much easier. So using only scrap materials we had around the shop we got to work and made our own version.

We used an old power steering pump that I had acquired for a project that did not push through (power steering is for the weak.) It stands on a small frame made of scrap angle bar. We welded a metal rod to the pulley to serve as a crank handle. A soda bottle (7up I think, but any will do) was cut in half to form a funnel and fixed to the input line to serve as a reservoir. A hose connected to the output end of the pump leading to whatever needs to be filled with oil. Just remember to butcher the check valve from of the output side of the pump so it'll flow unrestricted. It works quite well. (ignore the oily mess on the floor that was from something else.) I have not had the chance to measure the output yet, but with some vigorous cranking it made short work of pumping 3 liters of gear oil into the transmission we were working on.

It feels nice to get something out of nothing and I can't wait for the next opportunity to use this thing again! 

SK Racing Carburetor

As mentioned in my previous entry I have started getting parts to rebuild my 4G33 engine. I had actually sold the single side draft Weber 40 DCOE that I had been running on the car since since 2008. Not that I had any thing to complain about it, it was an excellent carb and a great all around setup. So initially I had started searching for twin Webers for the new engine setup and it was then that I came across something I did not even know existed.

SK Racing carburetors.

I won't be surprised if it's something most people are not familiar with. From what I can gather about the history of the carb, It was made by Mikuni Corp. (makers of the Solex PHH side draft carb). Development started in 1983 and it was first sold in 1986- a time when the trend was shifting to fuel injection. By the time this carb was available, the market it sought to cater to was all gone. Only a few would have been sold and as such it is very rare.

What the carb is though is very interesting. Being so late in the game, it is actually considered to be the ultimate side draft carb. 'Development' of this carb actually meant taking and combining the best features of the three most popular side draft carbs; the Mikuni Solex PHH, the Weber DCOE and the Dellorto DHLA.

The Mikuni Solex PHH is actually credited as being the best side draft carb of it's time. Being more stable and better able to hold it's tune than a Weber DCOE. But, because of the fact that the carb was phased out and was never as wide spread as the Weber DCOE, parts like jets and venturies are very hard to come by. And a performance carb that can't be fine tuned is pretty damn useless. The huge appeal of the SK Racing carb is that it is basically a Mikuni PHH body, so it will be more stable and hold it's tune well (think; Japanese build quality and reliability) but it uses the easily available jets (air, fuel, pump and idle), emulsion tubes and venturies of a Weber 45 DCOE so fine tuning it is not a problem. On top of that it has the externally adjustable float level and accelerator pumps of the Dellorto DHLA to be able to fine tune it even better than a Weber. So really, it has the best bits of all.

The SK Racing carb was also designed to be sealed and that it can be pressurized up to 16PSI to be used in a blow through turbo setup.

Another good point is that it uses Metric bolt threads. Those familiar with working on Weber (and pretty much anything Italian) will be familiar with the problems brought about by the fact that Italian bolts are neither English nor Metric which makes it a pain should a replacement nut, bolt or screw be needed.

In 1991 SK Racing was renamed to OER Corporation and is still around today... And so are these carbs. Still available new (and unchanged from the SK) as the OER Racing Carburetor at a cost of around US$500 each.

This is the set I got. Twin 45mm SK Racing carbs with a Sanyo SK manifold for a Mitsubishi 4G3x engine. It's a matched pair with a matched manifold.

The only thing lacking is the throttle linkage and velocity stacks but those should be easy to sort out later. I have already thoroughly cleaned and oiled the carbs (the pics were taken in the condition I got the carbs in). I can't wait to get these running with the new engine setup. I can already imagine the induction noise these will make.

To engine swap or not

It's been a while since I updated the blog so I guess it's time for a diary entry of sorts.

Earlier this year, April to be exact, the night I shot the photos of the Gemini Diaries meet I also managed to blow the engine of the '79. Detonated the #3 cylinder and seized the pistons so thus requiring another full engine rebuild.

After spending a significant amount of money building the engine two months earlier I actually lost interest in it for a while. So much so, that I sold some of my parts; the Weber carb, the race headers and a few other bits. Then, I went out and purchased 'the easy way out' a 4G93 DOHC Turbo engine, along with other related bits needed to swap it into the car. I started doing research as to what it would take to swap the engine in properly converting it from it's front-wheel-drive / all-wheel-drive orientation to rear-wheel-drive for the '79. While not exactly being a simple straightforward bolt on job I managed to figure out how to fit it in (something we'll discuss in detail in a future entry) but for some reason I found that I was not 100% committed into the project so it actually sat for a few months. One reason why this was the case was that I did not exactly have THE engine I wanted. I had a better one... I really wanted a 4G92 DOHC MIVEC engine, 1600cc 175HP stock so while the engine I had was better; 1800cc, turbo, 205HP stock (with more tuning potential) that fact did not really sit well with me. Those who know me well will know that I have a fetish for high revving naturally aspirated engines. So while I actually had a better engine, it did not tickle my fetish and I figured it would be a pain to balance the car later. Another reason was that the new engine was HEAVY!! I originally wanted a 4G9x series engine instead of the more popular 4G63 DOHC engine because of the fact that it would weigh less. Yes, it does way less, but it's still far heavier that the 4G33 Saturn engine I was used to. Without having to get into the numbers, two people car easily lift a complete 4G33, yet 4 people will struggle to lift the 4G93 DOHC. I didn't need to weigh it to know it was going to be too heavy to keep the car balanced properly. Finally, what really killed it for me was that I could not figure out how to fit the engine in the car without cutting up the firewall to clear huge new engine. Clearance issues with the cam angle sensor and a few other bits would have required a chunk of the firewall to be removed to fit in the engine. So, after that realization I made a decision and sold the 4G93 Turbo engine.

For sentimental reasons I decided to bring my 4G33 back to life. One more time. I figured I owed it as much given that it has been a reliable partner all these years and still after what it has been through it managed to get me home safely before totally seizing up. There was also this nagging feeling I had that despite what we had accomplished in the past there was still more potential left in that engine. I immediately went to work acquiring parts (mostly to replace that which I sold) to bring my old engine back to life. I had the '79 towed to my workshop and pulled down the engine and took it apart to see what work needed done. As of this writing the engine block is bare sitting on the engine stand waiting to be sent off to the machine shop to have the damaged cylinder bores repaired and to be fitted with new pistons. Having sold my carb and exhaust earlier was actually a good thing. My previous engine build was constrained by the fact that I wanted to retain the same carb and exhaust setup, now that I have a new set of much bigger carbs (note the s!) and will have a new exhaust made I'm free to push the engine build to the next level. I will get into the details of this as we go along.

So, that's the whole long story of how I ended up again where I started. Strange as it may seem to some, in my application doing an engine swap would actually be a cheaper, easier alternative than what I'm planning to do. It would also be more efficient, more powerful and ultimately be faster yet it's because of those facts that it was never that exciting for me... At least in the case of my '79 and with what I could do with my current engine. I did decide to do a different engine swap project, dropping a 4AGE 20-valve engine into a AE92 Corolla. But that's another story for another day.