Ya, a squeeze of silicone in there should do it...what happened with the valve covers. I take it that they don't fit and you have to use the EP parts?

Yeppers, the Volvo passenger side valve cover is longer than the Eagle so that it covers the counterbalance bulge on the timing gear. I could still use the Volvo driver's side cover, but the Eagle passenger side cover doesn't have a crankcase vent, and neither does the Volvo driver's side. Got to use both Eagle pieces, and I hope that the DS crankcase vent doesn't interfere with the intake pipe, otherwise I'll have to add some sort of vent to the PS Eagle one and use the Volvo DS cover.

Another placeholder for me:

http://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?t=72756

More parts incompatibility issues this weekend.

After grinding down the front cover and splashing more paint on it, I got the front pulley installed.


But then when I bolted the alternator on I discovered that the front cover and the alternator belts interfered. Again, the Eagle has a serpentine belt and I bet on the wrong horse, and went with the Volvo's V-belts.


A quick grind, more paint, and here we go.


But... the damn passenger side cam cover bites me again when I installed the dipstick. The Volvo one has a boss to bolt the dipstick tube to.


But with a little help from an A-Dapter kit, we had that engine running just like a song.


Ever wonder what $250 worth of knock sensors looks like?


And one of the more complicated water pumps in the industry. Cold water inlet, heater return, and cold water discharge on the bottom, with two hot water inlets and hot water discharge up top.


Here it is installed. Another logically unconventional (or is that unconventionally logical) things about this engine is that the cold water enters the back of the block (via the black cast Y-pipe) and flows forward to exit out the front of the heads. This eliminates short-circuiting and the temperature differential problems that plague conventional front-entry / front-exit systems. The water for the heater comes out of the passenger side head (another problem I had, in that the Eagle heads didn't have a nipple for this so I had to drill/tap one) and returns into the black 3/4" pipe that also returns the hot water from the oil cooler. You can probably figure out the rest.


And the oil cooler. It was buried under filth so I never knew it was so pretty!

Perty indeed.

Really enjoying this build, and crossing fingers and toes everything works better than expected and you can enjoy the bertone a bit this year!

Thanks Athal, I'm hoping so too. I've put a couple things away for next winter 'cause I'm gonna have enough to do to finish what I've started here. It won't be perfect, but that'll have to do.

will it be boostable down the road as you were initially planning, with all the tweaks you're having to do?

Anything can be done, I guess. It would be lightly boostable, provided I change engine management and exhaust and such. I doubt I'd go that way, what's more likely is that I end up changing the transmission for something more shifty. It's just not in the cards for this spring.

With the thought of saving time in mind (and preventing things from getting out of hand, 'cause after all I have another couple of "build projects" on the go), I've cut or postponed a couple things from Project Bertone. One of the ones I'm struggling with are the headers.

Being that I've bought the bends and the material for the flanges already, the lion's share of the expense is taken care of. However, by the time I build the flanges, run the tubes, weld it all out, and hand-form the collectors and cones (none available in the sizes/material I need), I've got another 3 weeks to spend at the pace I move. The potential horsepower gain is unknown: John Lane says that headers are a "no BS 30 horsepower gain", but that's over the awful stock exhaust manifolds. I don't know how much of a gain it would be over the somewhat better Eagle manifolds. In flow, there would be some gain, but the stock manifolds won't extract worth a damn.

One of the unquestionable improvements that the headers would bring (in my mind, anyway) would be the sound. The V6 breathing through equal length, properly-sized tube headers into a free-flowing exhaust... that would sound mighty nice. I'm afraid that it would sound like a late-'80s V6 Cavalier with the manifolds. It's probably worth the 3 weeks right there.

Not sure about durability/reliability/access, though. The Eagle manifolds are better than stock by far due to their upswept design, and if treated properly they could be used in both naturally-aspirated and in future-turbo form, as Athal suggested above. The headers... probably not unless I get REALLY fancy. I still want access to things like the starter and the oil filter too, and the Eagle manifolds would give GREAT access to those, but fancy future-turbo headers wouldn't if designed with equal lengths, not that equal lengths are terribly important in a street turbo header, IMO. Also the Eagle manifolds won't need maintenance or repair, ever.

So no real update, just more of an emo blog confession post.

headers, headers, headers...

If you don't, you'll always wonder. Plus, you can always throw the eagle manifolds on later if you want to turdo or something.

If that thing sounds like a cavalier you will promptly push it off a cliff...

Dumb question time, what mtce. do headers need over the stock manifolds? Isn't a header just a manifold with matched/tuned lengths, ID's etc.?

Maintenance may have been the wrong word. Headers can be problematic with leaks & stuff, potential cracks, braces & stuff, that sort of thing. Cast iron manifolds are typically bomb-proof.

Gotcha, thanks!

Nothing wrong with stages...get it running and test with the EP manifolds then do headers later. Pushing it off a cliff is a little drastic.