Ownership Verified: 1967 Ford Fairlane 500

I am thinking that it is time for a compression test. That much blow by can only be caused by worn out rings.
 
Stupid me, the catch can does indeed hold nearly two pints, but that's not including the filler material I put in it for the oil to condense onto (I filled it with a stainless steel pot scrubber that I pulled apart) with that in mind, actual fluid that I get out of it is more like 3/4 of a pint to a pint.
That still seems high for me, but I don't really have a point of reference for how much oil should be coming out of a open unrestricted (no baffles) system.

I don't have a compression tester on hand, but I'll check it next time I go to my parents place.

I'll drain the can when I change the oil this weekend and I'll run it 1000 miles before draining it again. At that point, I'll have a better point of comparison against other typical engines.

Its also worth noting I suppose that this engine spends most of its life above 2800 rpm. 80mph cruise is 3000, and I do so very much love the sound at 6100 rpm, so I find occasion to take it up there as often as possible :mrgreen:.

Point being I bet there's quite a lot of oil splashing and misting about inside the valve covers just from normal operation. After all, manufacturers put baffles in their valve covers for a reason.

Time will tell if its really that far out from normal.


Thanks EyeMWing. It sounds pretty good in that clip, and I'm sure that like some of my older videos, that one doesn't really do it justice.
 
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There was also some awesome video my friend filmed (don't mind the wheel-hop, but I suggest you watch the whole thing, its 45 seconds of awesome.)

Ah, c'mon, all live-axel cars hump, it's the habit of one. Altho, it is some nice goodnight porn to end a day with <3

Funnily enough I also have a scruffy car of 1960s design sat on satin black steelies with General AltiMAX tyres and no wheel trims! Sadly I don't think a 302 will fit... :lol:

DO IT Just get an engine and swap.


No, seriously, Windsor block is barely same size as Buick 215 (aka Rover 3.5) and there are some good examples of thoose married nicely with dollies. So shutup and get cracking, i'm totally voting for you on that project *brofist*
 
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So, Casting.


I started by milling out a foam pattern, and placing it into a box, called a Flask, and packing it with Oil impregnated sand.

The round steel cylinder you can see here is the top of the Sprue (or fill spout) Underneath that cylinder is a 2x2 foam rectangle running down to a .75 x 1.5 foam bar running horizontally along the bottom of the entire part (the runner) and into 5 .75 x 1.5 squares that connect the runner to the part (the gates)
On the other side of the part, near the top, is a large volume of foam that runs the length of the part. This is the Riser, which serves as a volume of excess molten aluminium. This excess volume not only provides a gauge to see if the part is full, but it also provides a reservoir that the part can draw from as the part cools and contracts. It helps eliminate shrinkage related issues.





With the part packed, we started melting some ingots of A356 Aluminium inside the Crucible, until said crucible was full of molten aluminium.





Once the aluminium was up to ~1300?F, we poured.







Then I waited till late the next afternoon, and pulled the part out of the sand:










There were a few issues with the casting that are not repairable, which means that my design is going to have to adapt so that I can mill the issue spots away, but there was one big issue which was repairable.
All along the bottom edge (relative to how it will be installed into the car) there is a series of waves in the part between the gates due to the sand not being packed tightly enough in that area.
The following Monday after casting, I took the part over to a local company, Agrinautics, that does a lot of casting and heat-treating of aluminium to get their thoughts on how to fix the waves. Upon my arrival at Agrinautics and subsequent description of the problem, the shop foreman there (who is good friends with the Machine shop teacher at SUU) took the part back to his band saw and started cutting off the riser and sprue assembly's from the part, so we could get a better idea of the issue.







Then we took the part back to his press, and just cold pressed the waves out of the part. Supposedly, because this is a fresh cast part, that has not been heat treated yet, it's actually safer to cold bend the metal that it would have been to press it hot.







We did get some stress fractures in various areas, but nothing that could not be welded back up, and due to the nature of how I am going to have to adapt my design, the welds will not be an issue.

Another student at the school has been working on a 3d scanner project using a variety of methods, so I took the part to him after fixing the waves in the part, and he tried one of his experimental tools to try and 3d scan the part, so that I can use a scan as an "envelope" to create a more typical 3d solid model within (and use as a base to write my CNC programs with) The Scans are going to require some post processing, and if I cant get them to a state I can work with, he is going to try and scan it with a different, Kinect based system.

In the meantime, the part is back over at Agrinautics for heat treating, to make it more machinable.


Overall, despite the casting having some flaws, they are all recoverable, and for a one-off part, I dont mind.

I'm pretty damn pleased actually. :mrgreen: This is going to work great and look absolutely awesome. It's a very satisfying thing to personally take a vision from within my head, and go through the entire process of design, CAD, casting, and machining required to make the vision a reality.
 
For a minute there I thought you might have the garage I want. Are you going to use that as a form to make another part, or is this going to be the new dash?
 
That is his dash cluster.
 
Neat! I wasn't expecting that when I popped in this thread.

Wouldn't that be a "tad" heavy?
Not like it's going in a Lotus or anything. :D

It's just the rough casting, I'd imagine a lot is going to milled off.
 
Thanks everyone. As GRtak said, this is going to be my new Instrument cluster.

This is going to be the final par, that I call the Bezel. The bezel will mount into a interface bracket that will fit into the cars existing instrument cluster hole. I've been calling this interfaceing bracket the "Clamshell"

The gauges, warning lights, turn signals, and factory style HVAC label lighting panels will all mount to the clamshell, which will be made out of 16 gauge (.059") sheet steel.

The clamshell assembly will then mount into the car (looking much like my wood instrument cluster does now, just steel) and the bezel, which will have several studs inserted into the back of it, will mount into the clamshell.


The finished assembly, hopefully, will look something like this:

(this includes the change to my design necessitated by the casting flaws)




and here's a parts blowup (not including hardware)




The little medallions that go in the 5/8" indicatior holes will be 3d printed at the school, and there's room for a few extra that are not being used yet.

As Tigger correctly stated, this is a rough casting, all but two surfaces on it are going to be machined. The final machined piece, according to Autodesk Inventor, should be in the neighborhood of 11.5 lbs, or 5.2 kilos.

Its still heavy, but it's not a race car, and I probably saved at least that much weight when I switched to a manual transmission anyways. :D (the toploader is lighter than a C4)
 
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It's okay. The solid shaft steering wheel will keep his face off of it in an accident. :p
 
:lol: lol

No, seriously that's a cool thing to be made (almost) by hand.

And who really cares about what to be bitchslapped with... concrete-hard airbag, ABS plastic, rollcage piping or a good'ol polished steel. If belts can't keep you off it - it's a fatal accident anyway. (when luck comes to action)
 
:shock:

gas monkeys, west coast customs, other craps shows... professional shops that don't do anything but order parts and bolt them into place
and here you are casting solid aluminium dashes in your garage!? wow! :)
 
Just a small update on my valve cover baffles that i fabricated and installed a month and a half ago.

Since the baffles were installed in my valve covers, I have driven 2500 miles. I've done an oil change, but not drained the catch can.

The gauge indicator on my catch can (a clear plastic tube) is still clear and empty. Usually I would have had to empty it at least twice by now, so I call that problem solved. :mrgreen:

Not excessive blowby at all, no damage to the rings or the like, just a simple case of too free-flowing a crankcase ventilation system combined with too much time at high RPM

Now I can let the engine sing at 6000 RPM with no worry's of blowing all my oil out the valve covers.


Winning. :D



In other news, I am about to head up to my parents place to install my (Now Completed) Instrument Cluster, but more on that once it's installed, and I can do a full writeup.

I've already written a 30 page report on the project for my class, (despite the Professor only requiring a 5 page summary) but luckily I have already written the first half of my tale here, so now I just need to finish it up. :)

More on that next week.
 
No 56k: Massive Instrument Cluster Update

No 56k: Massive Instrument Cluster Update

So, this is going to be a long one, and very picture heavy.


I'll start with what I did just after making my last big post on the topic, with a small issue the Fairlane had, unrelated to the instrument cluster.

The Fairlane was due for inspection and registration renewal that month, and the horn was no longer functioning, so I had to fix that before I could get new tags for the car.

I started by pulling the steering wheel and trying to find out how the horn was supposed to work. This meant pulling the wheel assembly to pieces.

First up, this is what the end of the column looks like, fairly standard 1960's Ford:





You can see two brass contacts on the right side of the column. One of these is a +12v hot feed, and the other runs to the horns which are grounded through the chassis. Bridge these contacts, and the horn sounds. That much of the system was functioning as designed, so I determined that the issue was in the wheel itself.

Now the wheel assembly consists of 8 major parts, the wheel itself, the horn ring, two metal contact rings, and a plastic insulating ring, two brass contacts, and a plastic decorative ring.

The back-side of the wheel:





The metal contact rings and insulating ring assembly:





And the exploded assembly:





When you press the horn ring, the bottom of it would touch one of the two brass contacts (both wheel-side contacts are attached to the same contact ring) and the top of the horn ring would touch a metal post that is sticking up from the larger ring.

I was able to determine that the post sticking up from the larger contact ring was no longer making contact with the horn ring.

Unfortunately, I was not able to bend that metal post into such a position that it would only touch when the horn ring was pushed, so I chose to go with an alternate solution, and install a horn button into the wheel. Connecting the horn button to one of the wheel-side brass contacts was easy, just a simple ring terminal, but it was more difficult to attach the other side to the metal post. I ended up soldering the wire to the post, and putting a connector in. A few plastic washers and a nice horn button later, and I had a functioning horn once again.























Now, on to what you're really here fore, the custom instrument cluster:


With the waves pressed out of the casting, the cracks welded up, and the casting heat-treated and aged, it was time to start milling it. I put the casting into the schools HAAS Tool-Room mill with the intent of creating a few flat spots to use as datum?s while dialing in the cluster in later processes.

I dialed in the part using the top and back of the "legs" to zero it out, and ran a single pass along the front of it:





As you can see, it cut deep on one side, and not at all at the other. I stuck a dial gauge into the mill, and determined that the entire casting was twisted along all 3 major axes, as well as pretty much any and every imaginary axis you could imagine... I was going to have to take a lot of material off...

I dialed it in about the "Z" (up-down) and "Y" (forward-back) axes as best I could (ended up being +/- .050) and cleaned up the bottom and lower-front surfaces.











I then wrote a quick program in MasterCam X7 to use a 3/4" ball end mill to rough in the 45? angle along the front face. The first pass would have ended up taking way too much material in places (perhaps as much as 3/8") so I had to move the Z-Offset up more than .300" and take multiple passes to get the surface even remotely cleaned up. The program ended up taking a full 7 hours just to run, with me standing next to the mill the whole time, manually brushing coolant onto the part.













Looking back on it, I should have run the whole thing on the schools other mill, which is an enclosed coolant machine, but when I put the part onto the Tool-Room mill, I thought I was only going to mill some datum?s into it, before moving onto the bigger machine.
Once I started though, there was no stopping till I was done roughing in the front face.













Finished roughing it in:







Once I had the front roughed in, it was time to mill the details into the back. I pulled the part out of the Tool-Room mill, and used the schools equipment to try and measure the offset on the front. This was necessary so that I could create some notched soft-jaws to hold the part securely in the other mill.





With the custom soft jaws made, I put the part in the mill, and set up the 8 tools I would need to run my program. I would start with a 1" roughing end mill (the brass one) to remove some extra material towards the outsides, before moving to the professor's personal ($800 :shock: ) 3" facing mill to face the back. Next up was a long 1" end mill to open the gauge holes to the final diameter, then back to the 1" roughing mill to make the pockets around the gauges to for the gauge bezels to sit in.
Then a 3/8 end mill to create the pocket for the HVAC lighting panel and the viewing slots for the same.
Finally, the spot drill, 5/8 drill, 5/16 drill, and 3/8-16 tap for the warning light holes (5/8) and the mounting holes (3/8-16)







With the tools in, and the offsets set, I simulated the program on the controller one last time:





And pressed the scary green go button from which there is no return:





Ends cleaned up:








First depth on the facing:






Time to mill the gauge holes:



And done:




I had to re-run the first two tool-paths (the cleanup and the facing) several times at different Z-depths (.050 at a time) till it cleaned up enough of the back to be happy with it, and then I had to stop the gauge bezel pocket toolpath early, before it could run to the full programmed depth, otherwise it would have milled right through the part in places. (That web at the bottom was quite a bit thinner than I designed after cleaning up both sides of it) This caused me problems later of course, but it couldn't be helped.

Inspecting the part that evening. It was 5 full days of milling to get to this point:

























Then it was back to the mill to clean up the front side.

This was a rough one to dial in, but eventually, I got it in.





With the part oriented this way, I "manually" milled this surface with the 3" facing tool using the handle-jog mode on the mill.

Then I rotated the part 45? to do a final clean on the bottom edge.

Dialing it in:





And finally I rotated the part again, and cleaned up the outside border (no pics, it was late and I was in a hurry to finish before the shop was closed)



With the outer border cleaned up, the milling process was officially completed for the bezel:











I never could clean up that spot on the front between the two big gauge holes. I would have had to go too deep to take that out, but I was hoping that with some sanding, sand-blasting, and more sanding, it would be less noticeable.







I also could not go deep enough when I was facing this back side for this corner to clean up, not without making the bottom web even thinner than it already was. Enough of the back was surfaced flat to make this irrelevant though:







The final milling processes on the front revealed some additional casting flaws, but again, nothing I could do about them now other than accept them and call it "Character" ;) .








With the milling done on the bezel the next step was to take the part over to Agrinautics, the same company that helped me out with fixing the waves in the casting, as well as heat-treated it for me, and media-blast the part in their blast cabinet.

No in-process pics, but here it is finished:





I then used a red scotch-brite pad to scuff the front surface, and give the bezel the finish I wanted before clear-coating it with a satin clear.






At this stage, the bezel was 100% complete, and it was time to turn my attention to the mounting clamshell.


I hand-cut the clamshell out of 16 gauge steel using a cut-off wheel for the outer profile, and a drill-press with a 2" and 3" hole saw for the gauges. I used a Uni-Bit (step drill) for all the smaller holes. I located all the cuts using an Engineering Mylar that I printed out at work.


With the profile cut, I put the part in the schools sheet metal brake, and put in the necessary bends.














I attached the clamshell to the bezel, and put the whole assembly back into the mill so that I could open up the gauge holes to the final size & location.










And the cluster was, more or less, done!





All that remained was the installation.









I started the install by match-drilling and clearancing the clamshell so that it could fit into the car:













Trial run with the speedo, indicating that some clearancing of the car was also necessary:









Of course, I couldn't resist sticking the bezel in ;)







I also customized the 4 nuts that go onto the studs protruding from bezel. I used JB-Weld to attach some collars (made from an old aluminum tube I had around) The collars make it easier to start the nuts on the threads, as well as offset the nuts away from the clamshell for the one stud that is around the cluster of warning lights. Necessary because around those warning lights, there is not quite enough room for the nut.







Then it was time to wire up the cluster. This took an entire day, just to make the harness. I created a wiring diagram in AutoCAD, and had all the pins and connections mapped and laid out, so I was just a matter of the grunt work to put the plans into effect. Not shown is the Molex Mini-Fit Jr 20 pin connector (the same used on older ATX motherboards) that went on the end of that harness, as well as onto the car side of the harness.
That was a long day...











Now, remember where I said that I couldn?t mill the gauge bezel clearance pockets deep enough and that it would cause me problems later? This is where those problems really came to light.

Because those pockets were not deep enough, the bezel was not sitting flush against the clamshell. I had used some jam-nuts at the base of the 4 studs to even offset the bezel the correct distance, but this caused there to be a 1/4" gap between the bezel and the clamshell.

For the most part, this is not an issue. The LED lights that I am using, due to the nature of their design, sit deep enough into their holes that light leaking out around them is, more or less, a non-issue.

But, around the HVAC panel, which has a LED packed sheet-metal reflector on the back side of the clamshell, and a panel inserted into the bezel, there was an issue.

That 1/4 gap was allowing a massive amount of light to leak out from the reflector into all the warning light holes, Not good.

My solution was to create a foam filler (attached to the clamshell with RTV silicone) to block the light leak.







Ugly, but you can't see it, and it's effective.


The last thing I had to do was run my wires to the signal senders for the various gauges. Doing so also instigated me to clean up my under-hood wiring harness. The routing is much cleaner now, and all I need now is some harness tape or other method of covering the harness.











And now it's finished.
W/O Dashpad:


W/ Dashpad:































Some last thoughts.

I love it. :mrgreen:
This thing is so cool to look at while I drive, and though I don't have any pictures of it yet, the night illumination is flat out sexy.
That big high quality tachometer is a delight to watch dance around, and visibility on the other gauges is acceptably good while driving. The nature of this design does occlude the visibility on the gauges a fair amount, but that is an acceptable price to pay for something so very sexy.
All the warning lights work, and it's an novel experience having a light that tells me the engine is cold (an OEM functionality, but the wire was broken before I bought the car, so it's never worked before)
The LED turn signals are obnoxiously bright though.

Also, I was not able to install the sender for the oil temperature gauge (last one on the right) due to not having anywhere to put it.
I am trying to decide between buying an in-line oil filter adapter designed to feed an oil cooler and routing my temp sender into that, or waiting until I buy a baffled Road Race oil pan, most of which have oil temp bungs in them.
I need the road race pan anyways, since under... Enthusiastic driving shall we say, I tend to loose oil pressure.

I could also drill a hole in my current pan and weld a bung onto it, but I am concerned about doing that in-situ, and I really don't want to pull the engine again so soon.
 
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Yay machining :D

Other than the imperfections it turned out great although I thought it would horizontal lines like the rest of the interior.
 
Great work man. If I pulled something like that off I'd have trouble keeping my eyes on the road and not the dash. :lol:
 
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