Markeb01 Build Thread

[markeb01]

Thanks for the comments Don.

Last night I reinstalled and connected everything but the hose joining the regulator to the isolator.

This morning I was at House of House in Spokane first thing when they opened. For only $18 they made me up a custom braided steel line with A/N fitting on one end and 1/8” male pipe on the other. I love that place, they do fantastic work and are really inexpensive compared to Summit and Jegs. It took about 2 minutes to install the hose and another minute to bleed the fuel side of the system. I must admit it sure looks nicer with the matching braided line compared to the big ugly rubber version:





A lengthy test drive later confirmed the big hose was the problem. Special thanks to TR65 for saving all my hard work and investment. I was ready to move on, and your input was the exact solution to the problem. The fuel pressure needle now holds steady and there is minimum drop under WOT, with no interference to engine operation.

We hit the road to fully warm the engine and save a few bucks on gas further from the house. Then it dawned on me the old gas could be part of the stuttering problem at high rpm. My tank holds 33 gallons and takes weeks or months to use up in winter. Most of the time I add Stabil, but I don’t remember for sure if there was any currently in the tank. The engine liked the fresh gas and responded with no hesitation at 5,000 rpm.

Here are a couple of videos we took today. The first one is nothing more than showing how nice it starts with the electric boost pump:

02 Cold start - YouTube

Prior to the electric pump if the truck hadn’t been driven for a few days it could be like starting a radial aircraft engine. It could take several minutes or run the battery dead in the attempt. With the electric pump the engine fires essentially on the first rotation. It’s a remarkable improvement. Also note in the video – the good looking guy walking in front of the truck is actually me, but because I’m using a cheap camera with a wide angle lens it makes me look old, fat, and gimpy with grey hair!

I goofed up again on the second video by not paying attention to where it was in the 2 minute recording cycle. What I should have done is turned the camera off and on again when I was ready to start. The result being there isn’t really anything interesting until 1:38 into the segment:

80+ mph in 4th - YouTube

This being the first ever car video camera I’ve owned I’m still on the near end of the learning curve. There wasn’t much else to see anyway as I had just climbed to 80+ mph and needed to back off.

I also realized it’s time to pull the snow tires off. On some really rough roads the studs caused the chassis to shake enough to vibrate the camera and ruin the video(s). The front mags/tires will probably go on today, but I have a slow leak in the left rear tire that will need attention before the back pair can be mounted. I’ll also work on getting a couple of walk around videos added in the next few days.

Another unexpected priority popped up last night. I was working at the clean bench when the compressor kicked on behind me. Rather than starting up, it emitted a loud sound like a 220v electric motor straining against a load. Before the smell of smoke hit me I was already heading for the compressor with all haste. It probably took 2-3 seconds to snap off the switch and pull the power cord, and by then thick black smoke was pouring from the electric motor. The compressor is a Home Depot 60 gallon upright that has work flawlessly for 10 years. It’s the nicest compressor I’ve ever owned, and when I moved to this house I not only bought the compressor I piped copper hard lines all around the garage and into the basement.

There are 7 “drops” in the garage and 2 in the basement. For every drop there is a water trap/riser at the top and a ball valve drain at the bottom. It was designed to be my ultimate painting shop, something I wanted since I was old enough to drive. Ten years later I’ve painted my truck once along with various odds and ends and some furniture. Basically the whole system was overkill, as my enthusiasm for painting cars went south along with my youth. Bottom line being depending on the cost to repair the motor I may just go for an inexpensive 20 gallon model instead. I can still hook it up to the hard line system which is very convenient for filling tires and running air tools, but my days of painting cars is pretty much over.