Sutphen,

Too late. Already made one.

Thanks. Brad.

Hey Brad, has the dyno run been done?

Patrick

Padraig,

Unfortunately, no. Trust me, I'll be on here giving report.

We are at a point of many tiny "victories", resolving issues that seem to crop up as we piece the raw water, fuel line, oil line and PS line routing back together after reworking the order of the various coolers along the route of the raw water. At this point, the raw water plumbing is done, but only temporarily, since the dyno shop can't accommodate the wet exhaust. We will be doing the dyno session with their shop headers, so well have to block off the hoses that connect to the drain valves below the distribution logs on the exhaust manifolds. A number of plans have had to be revised as the various components come together with these changes, and things are not exactly where we anticipated them. It's all coming together, but the engine being a half-hour drive away is slowing progress on these little issues. I also discovered that, the amazing toolmaker that I am, I made the oil filter block off plate fitting with the wrong threads for the AN portion. So THAT halted progress on the routing of the oil lines until I can make a new one. I am hoping to be able to do that tomorrow or Friday and get the rest of it wrapped up by Saturday. I'm supposed to call the dyno shop and confirm if the dyno is going to be open on Saturday. I'm gonna do that later today. I guess Indy Cylinder Head has a habit of gobbling up their Saturdays, and they call on Wednesday to confirm. If we're a go, It's gonna have to be a$$holes and elbows finalizing anything left to do to make that happen. There ain't much left. Fingers crossed.

Nip/tuck.....

Thanks. Brad.

Good Luck! You have put a lot of work into this rebuild.

Padraig

Padraig,

We certainly have. I keep telling the builder that, one day, we'll both look back on all of this and laaaaugh.

One of the craziest feats of this whole ordeal has been the HP harness. As I stated previously, while the builder has done a number of Merc 496s, both base and HO, and he's done a TON of builds with Holley EFI modules, this is his first time marrying a Merc 496 WITH the HP (it was his idea, though). So that was a challenge in and of itself. But, on top of that, the harness I got with the ECM was originally intended for a distributor engine. Which means it has something like four wires dedicated to ignition. Being the "let's get it done" kinda guy he is, the builder just dug in and started splicing in all the additional wires for the pinouts for all the ignition coils. He bought the connecter terminal pins and had a friend help him with the soldering (he was having some eyesight issues at the moment). I guess the guy told him, "You know, for about $500, you coulda just bought the right harness." To which, the builder shrugged and said, "But we're here now...."

He's definitely the "Whatever it takes" sort.

Thanks. Brad.

everyone always asks me why I dont take pictures of the stuff I build, I tell them "I dont ever want to look back the the pics and be reminded that I something like that because then I would never do it again"

I admire machinists they have the ability to build dam near anything. I have a friend who has a machine shop and foundry. He has helped me with custom parts and repairs more times then I can count. He has built things that range from the fireplace in Bill Gate's master bedroom to cannons for a replica square rigger sailboat. Oh...the cannons worked.

Padraig

Comped,

Yup. The builder said “I’ll never do THAT again” about the harness.

Thanks. Brad.

Told ya.
Holley would have been plug and play for the most part. Now you have a ton of spliced connections and if one goes bad it won't be easy to find, not to mention if he`s charging by the hour it`s going to cost more than a new harness.
but what do I know.
How`s that $10k budget holding up?

Dan,

Definitely an unforeseen obstacle. He is not charging by the hour. He gave me a flat rate, and we’ve discussed it on a couple occasions; he’s sticking to that. He is charging me for a couple of extras we’ve added on, but the harness is on him. He wanted to do it. Again, he’s not doing this for a living. He enjoys playing with blocks. I have no worries on the splicing. They were done right. There’s damned little more chance of them going bad than there would be for an OEM Holley harness. the aggravating thing is that I had a line on a “jumper” that would have been a direct bridge from the 555 harness to the HP, but the guy never retuned my texts after we spoke to give me a price.

About the budget…. Honestly, I think I’m still under the $10K mark, but I’ve gotta be getting close. I know all the major purchases were WELL under, but the nickel and dimes have to have added up. There have been a couple of decisions made that were not in that initial estimate, too. Honestly, I don’t really wanna add it up. The CFO does. I don’t.

Thanks. Brad.