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1963 PV544 rat rod

How I drove it the last 38 miles home - crane box just laying on top of the heater box. After I got home I had to yank the positive wire off the battery terminal to shut it off.

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The optical unit certainly works better than a points-n-condenser does, but one thing you can't do on a road side is coax a dead electronic sensor back to life. With points, you can do something.
 
So after working non-stop on a kitchen remodel for the last 3 months, finally got around to finishing up that Crane Fireball install. Yeah, it wasn't quite top of the to-do list.
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FWIW - In this post over here, I suggested a potential cheap way for a knock sensor placement on B20, but after reading Knock Sensing System for MegaSquirt-II, I would mount one where blowby pipe was located on a B18, and use a vented oil filler cap for blowby. Mega explains how to mount one, and some basic info.
Some background info: Testing the frequency response of a knock sensor.

There is a cheap $50.00 knock sensor board, Video, but I know nothing yet about how it works, or if it can tune in a given frequency. Detecting knock appears to be frequency dependent. There is a $550.00+ knock/timing-change detector using a Bosch knock sensor, but again, I know nothing about it.

A Bosch or GM sensor could be evaluated, but if a person figured out what the knock frequency is with a decent quality multimeter, then those carbs might be tuned better. Not much in part cost here...I don't know yet if Bosch knock sensor is tuned to same frequencies as the GM one. Bosch specs for 0261.231.173: It has a wide frequency detection range



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Back from our spring break road trip, and I have a little backlog of things to do to the PV.

First up - some super neat racecaR parts from MikeJr. - which I will try to not regret, but might. It's a 6-ish lb aluminum 6-bolt flywheel and a 7.25" Tilton pressure plate and organic disc. Probably not huge torque holding power with the organic material and small diameter, but it's a normally aspirated 2.1L B20 with 165 HP, it doesn't make huge torks. I have a mildly lightened stock flywheel in it now, with about 5 or 6 lbs gone from the outer edge, probably weighs 16 lbs or so. And taking that much weight off the flywheel made a noticeable difference in the way the very light PV drove and accelerated, I can't wait to see what a 6 lb flywheel feels like. It's entirely possible it will be too light to reasonably drive on the street, but I'm going to give it a go. (I'll keep the current flywheel/clutch handy though, lol)
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And while the trans is out, replace the M41 shifter top with a rebuilt one from Scandix. As anyone with an M40/41 knows, the slots in the lids wear out, making the shifter floppy and imprecise. I've been using sheet metal shims wrapped around the pins on my shift lever for a long while, but it's not a great solution. This should be like new again:
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And last but not least, in the middle of our spring break road trip we stopped by HiPerfAuto and Planetman out in LA and picked up a super nice PV front crossmember and front suspension arms/kingpin carriers/spindles. See the little towers that stick up and hold the inner pivots for the upper control arms? They sit close to the front subframes, and dirt can build up there and hold water. And in the salt belt, that means rust. Mine is rusted enough on one side to have started wiggling a while back, I patched it with heavy sheetmetal and a MIG, but... still wanted something better. And the sheet metal section on the lower control arms keep cracking on mine as well, another thing I've kept at bay for a long while with the MIG. This crossmember is super minty clean and rust free and powder coated.
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I might go ahead and put some WIlwood brakes on the front while I have all that apart, I got the adapters in the group buy a little while back. The 122/Amazon front discs are a HUGE improvement over the stock front drums (which are scary easy to overheat and fade), but they're non-vented, and I drive this with some pep from time to time, I think it might benefit from some better vented brakes.

Some gratuitous Tail of the Dragon pics from last year's Mountain Meet:
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(Keeping up with the Vette. They were making noise on the straights, but not going hard in the corners. Since there aren't many straights on the Dragon, the PV kept up pretty easily.)
 
Trans is out, new shifter top is on the trans.

And I pulled the bellhousing and flywheel.

I'll need to space the clutch fork out about an inch to the the racecaR clutch. I'm starting to chicken out on it though. I'm starting to get a pretty good feeling it's going to be pretty undrivable and I'll be pulling the trans again and putting he lightenet 16 lb flywheel back on. I was all gung-ho about this until I weighed the flywheel and it was just a smidge over 6 lbs. 9 lbs? Sure, I'd do it. But 6? Second thoughts are piling up neck deep.

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I’ve driven a few cars with flywheel and clutch setups like that, it should be fine. But if you want OE smooth, that’s not what you’ll get.

The organic disc will really help, as the metallic discs are a bit grabby. Depending on the clutch pedal setup, it’s either a curl the toe or slight pivot of the ankle to get through the slip point. It’s not bad, it’ll just take some getting used to. But it’ll be so worth it. The quickness in revs while shifting or heel/toe will be a real treat.
 
I chickened out for now. Put the 16 lb flywheel and stock clutch back in it. I didn't want it to be (borderline) undriveable until I pulled the trans again. I've got too big of a backlog on car stuff to do.

On the plus side - the shifter feels AWESOME. Nice tight shift pattern, like it would have been in 1963. A lot of work to get better shifting, but worth it. And probably less work than I'm going to go through on the LS wagon to fix the crappy shifting on the CD009 trans.
 
Thanks! It's got 40 year old dead lacquer paint hiding some really crappy bodgy body work. It's pretty rotten, it lived it's early life herein the salt belt. Not worth restoring, but solid enough (somehow, and with a decent amount of my own crappy patchwork) to drive around.

I lightened my wallet yesterday by buying some Wilwood brakes for the front. I got the 122 Wilwood adapters a while back, and I'm using 122 caliper mounts on the PV so everything should fit on. Vented discs will be nice.
 
Todays work on the hoopty - replacing the trans mount. On the PV, this is a pressed in bushing (looks like a later model a-arm bushing) in a cast iron housing, which bolts on the end of the trans. The trans crossmember sits in front of that, underneath the main case of the M40 (M41 in my case). And two arms reach back to bolt to the center of the bushing. Pretty graceful failure mode, the bolt goes through the housing, so mostly it just sags a little and makes more vibration. If it gets really bad, the trans case just sids down on the crossmember.

When I first got the PV, among the many dubious fixes the previous owner had done was to ignore that bushing and just put a little pad of rubber between the trans and crossmember, a piece of cut up tire. Which actually... sort of worked.

So anyhow, I replaced this 20-ish years ago, and after a couple of decades of gently being putt-putted around and certainly not being thrashed, I noticed the bushing was bad when doing trans stuff a little bit ago. So I ordered a new bushing.

The old bushing doesn't look too bad on one side:
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Separated and more chewed up when viewed from the other side:
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I tried pressing the old bushing outer shell out with a ball joint press kit I have, no luck. So I just carefully sawzalled through the shell to release it, barely scratched the cast iron housing. Then I used a brake hone on the housing a little bit to make sure there are no burrs on it that will hang up the new bushing. And gently sanded the outer shell of the new bushing for the same reason. Now the housing is in the oven at 200 degrees, and the bushing is in the deep freeze. I'm waiting 15 minutes and then they'll just slide together without a fight at all.

Lol, J/K, it's probably going to be a fight. I know it. But maybe slightly less of a fight.
 
Drove it to work today and it was just not running right. Idling roughly, popping and backfiring on the overrun, but it would clean up and run cleanly with some throttle. And some odd chuffing noises at idle.

Drove it home and looking around, found it.
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One of the bolts on the front DCOE came loose, and the o-ring on the soft mount gasket fell out of place. OK, that's about the best case scenario.
 
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