Right on point

This is just a small update to the EBR(If you haven't been following along, it's an "AR styled" Mossberg 715T 22LR, really just a 702 Plinkster is a plastic shell).  The factory open sights on the 715T are OK, but not great.  I decided early on to add some optics.  I didn't want a scope, but I wanted something.  I decided to go with a "red dot" or "holographic" sight.  Since it's a cheap gun, I went with a cheap sight, an AIM sight I got on Amazon for around $35.  The rail it's sitting on came with the gun, and is hollow so you can still see the iron sights under the holo sight.

If you've never looked through a holographic sight, they're pretty neat.  It's kind of like having a laser sight, except that it doesn't project a dot on the target.  The big hoop has a piece of glass in it, and a reticle is projected onto the glass.  It can only be seen if you're looking straight through the sight from the back.

You can look through it with both eyes open and have nearly completely unobstructed vision.  It's supposed to help with fast target acquisition.  I've actually has it since shortly after I got the gun, I just forgot to post about it.  Even the pics are old.  It's worked very well for me in the past few years(especially for $35).

Crack? You want some crack?

I'm still not entirely sure how I want to tackle the Viper's cracked quarter panel yet, so the next stop on the Itchy Road is the hood.  The hood on this car is a case study on how not to fix fiberglass.  Since I have so much experience with fiberglass, I knew what I had to work with when I first saw the car.  But, a lot of it might have gone unnoticed to the average car person.  To the untrained eye, it didn't look too bad,  just a few cracks and some shoddy bodywork.  A little cracking around one of the headlights:

Some tiny cracks around the scoop:

And this crack right here.  This crack is very telling, and hints at the real extent of the damage.  The important key here is that this crack appeared in an already repaired portion of the hood.  It was not there when I got the car, but has appeared in the two years I've been driving it.  This is a huge giveaway that it was not repaired properly the first time.  I automatically assumed when I got the car that I would have to redo all the work that had been previously done. This crack confirms it. 

If you remember way back, I painted over the striped portion of the primer spot with Plasti-Dip.  It was a surprisingly effective way to hide the primer.  With the stripes unbroken, the casual passer by didn't notice the primer.  As I explained a bit then, aside from the zero prep work Plasti-Dip requires, one of the main reasons I used Plasti-Dip was it's easy removability.  When you decide you don't want it there anymore, you literally just peel it off:

Under the Plasti-Dip, you can see more of the previous repair.  Like the crack on the front edge, the sink marks weren't there when I got the car.  Remember last post when I said standard primer surfacer shrinks?  Here's visible proof.  Standard two part urethane primer surfacers are still 25%-50% solvent, and it can take months for all the solvent to finally evaporate and for the primer stop shrinking. The thicker you put it on, the more it shrinks (which is why I love the virtually shrinkless Duratec).  If you were to rush into paint, you'd now have these giant sink marks in your nice shiny paint. 

That pretty much covers the top of the hood.  The bottom side is also cracked.  Even if I didn't have the visible cracks on the bottom of the hood, the crack appearing on the front edge tells me there's structural damage to it that needs to be fixed.  So, off the hood had to come.  It's not overly heavy, just big and awkward.  You have no idea how hard it was to not drive the car through town like this...

Like I said, the bottom of the hood is cracked.  But, it's not just cracked, it's cracked.  I pulled the hood liner, and it's a good thing I did.  The bottom of the hood is covered in cracks, many of them in the previously "repaired" areas, and many of them hiding under the hood liner.

One of the previously "repaired" areas, cracked once again.

 Just above where the hood hinge bolts on.  Both sides are cracked in this area.

The cracks in the end of this groove are directly under where the top side of the hood cracks from improper closing.  I can't help but wonder if the groove creates a weak point that makes the hood flex more there and crack.

Another one of the previously "repaired" areas, with new cracks.

You can just see a horizontal crack just below the hood latch hook in a "repaired" area.

And this one way up here towards the top of the hood, for no apparent reason...

Many of the cracks are visibly bright white, so they're easy to spot.  They're white because the broken edges of fiberglass vibrate against each other while driving, creating dust which then migrates out of the crack.  But, not all cracks are so cooperative.  There's an easy way to check for the less visible cracks too.  A simple wipe down with mineral spirits will do.  Wipe down the panel with a heavy dose of mineral spirits, then wipe it mostly dry. As the final bits of mineral spirits evaporates, any hidden cracks will seep mineral spirits onto the dry panel, making any small cracks show up.  This is another one of the "repaired" areas:

All in all, there were 27 major cracks visible on the bottom side of the hood, and dozens more minor ones.  Many were in areas that had already been "fixed."  This is why when working with fiberglass, it's imperative to find a bodyshop that knows what they're doing.  Had this car been finish bodyworked and painted, it would now need to be done again, and $10K worth of body and paint work would have basically been thrown away.  Based on what I had seen with the hood on the car, I had expected the bottom of the hood to take a weekends worth of work.  Turns out the damage is far more extensive than I thought...

The long and itchy road

I've been putting this off for two and a half years.  I have to fix the body on the Viper.  It's not a huge task, but a big one.  The fiberglass bodywork is cracked in several places, some of them quite severely.  An attempt had been made by the previous owner to fix the hood, but(unsurprisingly), the repairs cracked.  That's not unexpected, I assumed that I'd have to grind out and redo that work anyway.  The body damage is what made this car so cheap(relatively speaking anyway).  To pay a shop to do the work would likely be $10K plus.  Conveniently, I used to build kit cars for a living, so I know a thing or two about working with fiberglass.

The plan is to get the primary bodywork done this year, then paint it next summer.  I have a good reason for this.  Bodywork of any type will shrink a bit, fiberglass especially so.  By waiting to paint it, the fresh bodywork will have several months to fully cure and shrink as much as it's likely going to.  To prepare for bodywork, I haven't waxed the car all year, and I washed it repeatedly with Dawn dish soap.  This should have left the surface free of wax buildup that would cause problems down the road.  The repair area also gets wiped down with Wax and Grease remover.

I decided to start with the easiest repair since it didn't involve actually taking anything off the car.  The passenger side quarter panel had a crack in the forward edge.  It doesn't really look like much, just some chipped paint and a hint of a crack:

But, it's more damaged than it appears.  Using just a pick and a knife, I broke out all the loose 'glass surrounding the damage.  This is just the stuff that was already broken loose from the underlying fiberglass.  You can see how much was actually damaged.

Up next is the best(or worst) part, taking a grinder to one of the best sports cars America's ever produced.  To repair cracked fiberglass, you MUST grind out the whole crack.  You can't just bridge across it with more fiberglass.  If you do not completely grind the crack away, it WILL show up again down the road.  I used my trusty Harbor Freight 7" grinder with a 24 grit disk.  It's an astonishingly good grinder for what it cost, and has served me very well over the years.

You want to grind the crack completely out, and grind back the surrounding area where you'll be laying on new 'glass.  With a grinder this big and a disk this aggressive, you've got to be careful not to grind too far. 

Then we have to lay in some new fiberglass.  Body filler alone, even fiberglass reinforced filler, wouldn't be strong enough and would likely crack again at some point.  We also need to re-bond the fibers that have broken loose but aren't broken off, and bondo alone won't do that.  Additionally, the Viper's body panels are made from SMC.  It's still fiberglass, but a slightly different kind than you're used to.  Because of this, you can't use standard fiberglass resin, it won't stick well.  According to Evercoat, it's because of the mold release built into the SMC's resin.  You either need to use epoxy resin, or an SMC specific polyester resin. I'm using Evercoat's SMC Fibreglass Resin.  You also want to use fiberglass mat, not the woven cloth.  The reason is that if/when it does shrink, you won't really notice the random pattern of the mat.  If you use cloth and it shrinks, the square weave showing through will be very obvious.  I put on a few layers of 'glass, adding more to build up the corner that was ground away.  The tape comes in handy here, it'll help keep you from getting resin on things you don't want resined.

The repair goes all the way to the unground paint.  Normally you wouldn't want to put resin over shiny paint because the resin won't stick well to it, but it doesn't matter in this case because that whole area will be ground back past that point anyway.

Up next, we get to use one of my all time favorite bodyworking products.  My most favorite is SEM Color Coat plastic/vinyl/fabric paint.  My second most favorite is this stuff, Duratec primer surfacer:

It's made specifically for fiberglass, and is essentially a sprayable catalyzed gelcoat(it also works fantastic on metal too).  It's basically fiberglass resin with a lot of solid binders in it, and it catalyses with fiberglass hadener. Unlike most primer surfacers, it has virtually zero shrink.  You can basically put it on as thick as you want, and it will work just fine.  Duratec even says a build of .040" is acceptable.  At $100/gallon, it's comparatively cheap too.  Because it's made specifically for fiberglass, it will help seal the fresh 'glass better than most products will.  Using my trusty grinder, I ground down the new 'glass until it was below my final surface height, then covered it with Duratec.  I didn't spray it on for this part.  Because it doesn't shrink, and most of it will get sanded off anyway, I put it on with a brush.  Seriously.  It works just fine that way and is much easier to deal with(less masking, less cleanup, etc).

One of the reasons I love Duratec is that it sands super easy and doesn't clog the paper.  After knocking down the high spots in the Duratec with 80 grit paper, it was on to bondo.  Like kleenex and sawzall, bondo, even though a brand name, has become the generic term for body filler.  Bondo brand bondo is actually one of the worst fillers on the market.  Granted, it's better than it used to be, but it's still not great.  It sands like a rock, it absorbs moisture like a sponge, and it cracks easier than most other fillers.  For just a few more bucks a gallon, you can get much better products.  I'm using Evercoat Rage Gold.  It goes on smooth, and it sands like nothing.  I roughed it in with 80 grit, then finished with 220.  The Rage Gold sands well enough that I didn't need any intermediate grits.

When doing bodywork, you always want to use the longest sanding block possible.  Too short of a block can leave waves, and avoid hand sanding at all costs because you'll leave waves and finger grooves.  I used primary an 8" sanding block for this small area.  If you're new to bodywork, do not use power tools.  Making panels flat with a hand block takes skill and practice.  Making panels flat with power tools is nearly impossible.  It's far too easy to sand too much off with power sanders, and you're likely to get waves and ripples that you won't be able to feel, but will see in the final paint.  You can see in the pic that our repair area is spreading too.  The repair needs to be feathered out into the non-damaged area to get a perfect blend.

After two coats of bondo, I was satisfied with the repair.  Body filler will absorb moisture(which is why you should never wet sand it).  It's less of an issue on fiberglass because the underlying panel can't rust, but it's still an issue.  Many 2K primer surfacers will absorb moisture too.  Since we don't want that happening, and the car won't be painted until next year, we once again turn to our good friend Duratec.  It's completely waterproof, and will seal the bodywork.  This time though, I did spray it.  You'll notice I sprayed out past the repair and over shiny paint.  Normally, you wouldn't want to do this, because the primer won't stick well to the shiny paint.  But, this isn't a usual case.  When I do the final bodywork just before paint, it will be block sanded down closer to the repair area, and the whole panel will be primered.  The Duratec now is primarily for protection from the elements.  You can see I did much more making this time too.  My HVLP guns don't have that much overspray, but it's easier to do a little extra masking than clean off overspray.

Another thing with Duratec, since it's catalyzed like fiberglass resin, you MUST IMMEDIATELY CLEAN YOUR PAINT GUN.  When properly mixed, Duratec sets up in 20 minutes or so.  Once it's set, it's set.  Unlike standard 2K paints and primers, there is nothing that will dissolve it.  If it sets in your paint gun, you'll be buying a new paint gun.

With the Duratec set, I could unmask everything.  I'm left with a repair that's 95% finished, and completely weatherproof so I can still drive my car.  It took me a weekend of not working very hard to do this repair.  The hood and left quarter are next, they'll be much more involved...

Dinged Up-date

It's been a busy few weeks for the Dinged Up Dodge.  It started with the whole cam sensor thing where I took apart a perfectly good running car for no other reason than to test a theory.  While playing around with the cam sensor, I discovered something much more potentially disastrous than a cam sensor that might some day go bad.  I had an intake leak.

Intake leaks are actually pretty easy to check for.  First, I heard some hissing from the middle of the intake in addition to the throttle body hiss.  Then, I sprayed the seam between the intake and the heads with some brake cleaner.  If the engine changes speed when you spray, it's because the brake cleaner is getting sucked into that cylinder.  Anything aerosol will work, the engine will either speed up or slow down, depending on how flammable your spray is.  In my case, the center cylinder on the driver's side was leaking.  There was a very definite RPM change when spraying around that port.  I don't know how long it had been leaking, but it could have lead to a catastrophic failure if it wasn't addressed.

As it turns out, for a huge engine in a small car, the intake comes off surprisingly easy.  The hardest part was actually lifting the intake off the car by myself.  It's not heavy, but it's awkward because you don't have a fender to lean over like you would a regular car.  Here's everything that you need to take off except for the cowl(which comes off with just four screws after the wipers are removed).  The whole intake/injector wiring subassembly just unplugs from the main harness, so even the wiring can stay put.

As soon as I lifted the intake off, I spotted the problem.  The original intake gaskets were cracked.  They didn't tear when I took the intake off, they were already broken.  You can see a chunk of gasket stuck to the center port, the rest stayed on the block.

Here's what the port on the head looked like with the rest of the gasket removed.  You can see the carbon tracks going across it.

The thing is though, it wasn't just on the center cylinder.  Most of the cylinders had similar tracks.  The center cylinder on the driver's side was the only one actively leaking, but any of them could have started leaking at any time.

Thankfully, modern gaskets are generally non-stick, so other than the carbon I didn't have to do much gasket surface scraping to get everything cleaned up.  Also note the rags stuffed in the ports.  It's important to keep crud from falling into the engine.  You don't want to have to pull a head because you accidentally dropped a bolt.

I went with Cometic gaskets instead of factory gaskets.  They are supposed to be the best, and they're actually pretty cheap.  They also are made to go on dry, no silicone like the good old days.  After getting everything bolted back together and torquing the million intake bolts in sequence, it fired right up.  A quick check around the ports with more brake cleaner showed no more leaks, and life is good.

I wander what's going on...

I had that wandery feeling in my Beetle.  That's to be expected in a 46 year old car though I suppose.  I have, at some point in the 19 years I've had it, replaced all of the front suspension and steering joints, and all related bushings.  Well, almost all related bushings.  There was one original rubber piece left on the front of the car, the rag joint between the steering column and steering box.  From about the late 50's on, most cars use a rubber joint here because it dampens road vibration so you don't feel it in the steering wheel.  Old American cars are made in such a way that when the rubber fails, the column and box are still mechanically locked.  Your steering will be very, very loose, but you will still be able to limp home.  The VW isn't like this, there is no mechanical failsafe backup.  If the rubber lets go, you've got no steering, at all.  So, I decided I should probably replace the coupler(particularly since it's a $10 part).  It only takes 4 bolts, and is much easier to replace than when I did the same thing on my Corvette.  Here's the original coupler on the left next to my new one.  You can see the cracks in the original rubber that cause some extra play in the steering.

Installation is super simple.  Take the four bolt out, slip the old rag joint out and the new one in, and reinstall the bolts.  It's even reasonably accessible after you've taken the wheel off.

The other thing I wandered...er...wondered about was my engine.  One of the first real mods I did to the car was add a full compliment of VDO gauges.  They included the standard tach and oil pressure, but also oil temp, cylinder head temp, and boost.  Back when I was still running the supercharger, they all worked.  But for the last 5,000 miles or so, I've been running a stock 40HP engine.  Since I put this engine in, the oil pressure and oil temp(and boost, obviously) gauges haven't been hooked up.  I'd broken my oil temp sender taking the blower motor out, and I never replaced it.  Because of this particular engine's configuration, my VDO oil pressure sender wouldn't fit either, so I had no oil pressure readings.

I decided to finally do something about it.  The oil temp sender is the easiest to install sender of any I've ever used.  It simply replaces the oil drain plug.  That's it.  I know it seems like a bad idea to have a wire hanging off the bottom of the engine, but I've done my share of "off roading" with this car, and I've never once had the wire catch on anything.

The oil pressure sender was a whole nother ball of wax.  On late model air cooled VWs, the oil pressure port stick sideways off the engine, so the VDO sender screws right on.  This engine has the port sticking straight up, and right next to the intake manifold.  It also uses a straight metric thread while the VDO sender is a standard 1/8" pipe tread.  So, I needed an adapter to go from the metric thread to standard, and an elbow for clearance.  Autometer provided the adapter, Ace Hardware the elbow.

The problem with that is that the whole thing is too tall and can't be screwed in because it hits the intake manifold.  So, since both fittings are brass, and brass solders very well, I decided to just make a fitting that fit.  First, I cut the threads off the 1/8" pipe elbow, and filed the stub down to where it would just slip into the adapter's female threads.

Then I soldered them up.  It's pretty quick work with a torch, and there's so little pressure in the system that even standard electrical/plumbing solder is more than strong enough.

The new adapter is just barely short enough to clear the intake and thread in.  Here's where it sits on the engine(the little bit of clearancing on the intake is from when I'd initially tried to get the sender to fit when I first put this engine in years ago).

And with the port now turned 90°, the big VDO sensor fits just about perfectly between the intake and distributor.

And with that, all my gauges work the way they're supposed to.  Except for the boost gauge.  I'll put that one on the list ;)

Gen II and Gen III Viper cam sensor replacement

It recently came to my attention that cam sensors were no longer available for the '96-06 Gen II and III Vipers.  They were a V10 specific part that Chrysler discontinued, then the aftermarket abandoned.  There are a very few sensors on the market, but they're expensive and availability is very spotty.  So, me being me, decided I could come up with an alternative.

There's nothing special about a cam sensor.  It's just a three wire(5V in, ground, signal) hall effect sensor.  It works by sensing the magnetic difference between a raised ridge and a low area on the cam gear.  Knowing that, I set out to find a replacement sensor.  I figured if I couldn't find one that fit, I would just machine up an adapter.

As luck would have it, there is an available sensor that fits the hole in the block.  It's the sensor from 2000-2008 Dodge 3.7L, 4.7L, 5.7L, and 6.1L engines used in Rams, Dakotas, Durangos, and Chargers.  It also fits a few Chryslers, and a ton of Jeeps.  They used this sensor in hundreds of vehicles, and is is readily available through any parts store for around $25.  The specific application I gave the counter jockey was a 2006 Dakota 4.7L.  It's BWD part# CSS635.  This sensor doesn't just fit the hole, it's exactly the same diameter as the original.  Even the electrical plug is the same.  The only problem with this sensor is that it's meant to attach differently, so the bracket is wrong.  Here's my original Viper sensor(grey) next to the new Dakota sensor(black):

It looks quite a bit different, but dimensionally, it's actually very close to the original part.  It's even already got a groove towards the front to move the o-ring into.  This sensor is so close to the original that all we need is an adapter bracket to attach it to the Viper block.  Unfortunately, the tab sticks out right where the bolt on the block goes.  So, we can't use the hole already in the bracket, there's just not enough room for the hold down bolt.  We need to get the sensor tab away from the Viper's mounting bolt, and give the sensor the depth adjustability of the original.

Here are the supplies you'll need to get.  All are available from any hardware store.
 3/4" x 3/4" x 1/8" aluminum angle
10-24 x 1" socket head cap screw
10-24 locknut
#10 x 1/4" spacer
one #10 washer

First, a hole needs to be drilled in the tab.  I'm using a 10-24 allen screw and this is just a clearance hole, so the hole gets drilled with a #9 drill(13/64" is close enough if you don't have a number drill set).  The location of the hole isn't critical, the bracket we're going to make has a bit of adjustment built into it.

 Then, we need to do some slight clearancing of the plastic molded over the tab.  A large flat file makes short work of it.  What we need is just enough clearance for the spacer.

You don't need to file off much, just enough so that the spacer will sit flat on the tab:

One hole, and some filing.  Other than moving the o-ring to the other groove, that's all the modification the sensor needs.  If you choose, you can cut off the outer portion of the tab through the original bolt hole.  It's not necessary, but will give you a little more access when it comes time to bolt it to the block.  I chose not to.

With the sensor modified, all we need is the bracket.  I used 3/4" x 3/4" x 1/8" aluminum angle.  The bracket is very simple, it's just a drilled hole and a cut slot.  There is a little bit of fudging room, so if your dimensions don't exactly match mine, it should still work.

A hacksaw, cutoff wheel, or Dremel will work for cutting it out, and the same drill bit used to drill the sensor tab is used here.  Here's how it attaches to the sensor.  You don't want the bolt tight just yet, just a little snug.  You want to be able to pivot the bracket a bit to get everything aligned.  You can see here too where the o-ring gets moved to.  This is my first "see if it will even work" bracket, so it's not overly pretty. 

Now, before we go installing this thing, there's a very important step that can't be missed.  Since the sensor is depth adjustable, we have to make sure the camshaft is positioned correctly.  The pickup ring on the cam gear is basically a ring, half of it down low, half sticking up.  If you don't have the cam in the right place and you're in the "low" portion of the gear when you set the sensor depth, the raised portion WILL break the sensor off as soon as you crank it over, and you WILL have to remove the oil pan to get all the pieces out(ask me how I know...).

To check where the cam is, you'll need a small ruler.  A standard 6" machinists scale(available at most hardware stores) works great.  You need to measure from the face of the block to the cam gear.  I'll just steal a picture from my service manual for this one:

There's one last thing we have to do before installing this thing.  As I mentioned, the Viper sensor is depth adjustable.  Ideally, you want a .030" gap between the sensor and pickup ring.  Too close and it could rub, too far and it won't pickup properly.  Originally, there was a paper shim glued to the face of the sensor.  It set the gap and got peeled off as soon as the engine was started.  Since the Dakota sensor isn't supposed to be depth adjustable, it doesn't come with a shim.  You can't buy a single shim(because who needs just one?) but a whole box of them is only $5 (Napa PN ECH CSS639, Standard PN PC339 crank and cam spacers are the same part).  They're also available on e-bay.  Since I have a digital caliper, cardboard, and spray glue, I made my own.  Turns out that two layers of cereal box is exactly .030" and 3M 77 spray glue is sticky enough without being too sticky.  Don't worry about the shim floating around in the oil pan.  Because of the Viper's pickup arrangement and pan baffling, the disk can't get sucked into the oiling system, and should be flushed out at your next oil change.

Now the fun part, actually installing the sensor.  It's on the front left side of the block.  I had mine in and out so many times I got pretty good at it.  After removing the airbox and intake tubes, I found that it was actually easier to get to the sensor from the right(pass) side, reaching in under the oil cooler.  Stubby wrenches are a big help.  Lubing the o-ring with some oil helps too. The spacer shim will set the depth, you want just light pressure against the cam gear.  Once you get the sensor in place, you can get the bracket lined up where it needs to be and tighten the bracket bolt and hold down bolt. 

Plug the plug in, put the airbox back on, and that's it.  If you've done everything right, your car should fire right up.  If you hear a "crunch" as soon as you hit the key, you've probably broken the sensor off(oops...).  I've currently got this setup running in my '97, and it's been working perfectly.

This will fit '96-'06 Gen II/III Vipers.  It may also work on Gen Is, but I'm not sure.  The Gen I sensor is slightly different, but I'm not sure what's different about it.  I think it's just the plug, but I'm not sure.  If it is just the plug, this will work on Gen Is too, just splice in the proper pigtail for the new sensor.

The last thing I'll say is that I wasn't kidding about checking the block face to cam gear depth being the most important part.  If you get it wrong, you WILL break a sensor...

A minor update:  The whole point of making the bracket the way I did was so that a guy could make one for himself in his garage without special tools.  Since there are people like me who have access to greater means, I decided to draw up a CNCable bracket.   It's still dirt simple and can be machined entirely in one setup, except for the purely cosmetic radiused corner on the bottom left side.  It eliminates the need for the spacer, washers, and locknut.