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Well, that was a new experience tonight – my first night as floor manager. There weren’t too many people on, being a saturday, but there was some fun to be had. There were call queues up the wazoo, and then times when there were no calls at all, I got to give some E-Time (where you can have the rest of the night off – you don’t get paid, but you get to go home) and did some manager-style stuff. New experience and all, means I’ve got another skill.

So, the parts were taken to Bryant Engineering today. Block, crank, flywheel, rods (with old pistons still attached) and the timing cover (with bolts attached) were all dropped off, ready for them to do the work.

Here’s a list of what’s getting done:
Block – hot tanked, crack tested, decked, bored, honed.
Crank – hot tanked, crack tested, ground, polished, balanced.
Rods – crack tested and checked for straightness and shaped, then shot peened and balanced.
Flywheel – machined for flatness and balanced.

I’m going to call them on Monday to see if I can go and check the flywheel for size, to make sure the clutch that I’m planning on buying is the right one – stupid me, I forgot to measure up the flywheel to make sure it’s the right size. I’m going to be sending an email off in the next little while to the guys at gimmecarparts.com.au to see if I can get a price on an ACL rebuild kit, so that when the crank sizing is found, I can order a whole kit and hopefully drop the price a little. That’ll incorporate a full set of gaskets, bearings (big end, rods and cam bearings) and piston assemblies. Assuming the bores aren’t terribly bad, I should be able to get one size over standard and be right, going with chrome moly rings to give a little bit more reliability.

Called three places today, all reccommendations from friends and on the hotgemini forums – Bryant Engineering (Brisbane), Donnelly Engineering(Gold coast) and Precise Engine Rebuilds(Gold coast).

I was looking to get the engine bored, hot tanked and crack tested and decked. The crank needs to be ground to the next bearing size, crack tested and cleaned up, the rods checked for cracks, straightness and then resized if need be. After all that was done, I wanted the entire engine balanced as a unit, to make sure I’m not going to have issues on that front.

Bryant were first, the guy I talked to was really friendly, asked me what I wanted to do and so forth, and told me what they would reccommend and then do etc, giving tips on what would make for a better job. He then passed me through to someone that worked out the quote – their price for the whole job worked out to be about $650 (I rounded up to the next fifty, it was about $620, but I always allow for extra labour)

Donnelly were next, asked for what I wanted, got the prices, the guy didn’t seem too interested in offering advice or explaining what they would be doing, and I don’t think they do much in-house – the crank would have to go away to somewhere in brisbane, the rods would have to go to another place in brisbane, and then when that was all done, the whole engine assembly would have to go to brisbane again. Seemed like there was going to be a lot of extra time involved, since the parts would spend half their time going from the coast to brisbane and back. Donnelly’s price was about $700, of which, $310 was for the engine balance, and that price was a guesstimate since he wasn’t going to be doing it himself.

Precise seemed not to be terribly interested in getting my business – I guess as a consumer I’m used to having things offered to me rather than asking for them – tradies not being used to having to do it won’t do it. They were basically the same as Donnelly, only they didn’t seem to have to send things away as often – the quote ended up being about $750 from them.

As usual, it could just be my experience with the above mentioned companies, but I’m going to go with Bryant. Not only are they a 15 min drive from my house rather than about an hour, they were 50-100 cheaper, and seemed friendlier. Now all I have to do is save up the money to buy the parts that I need before they can do the work and the balancing. At the moment I’m looking at ACL duralite pistons with chrome moly rings, duraglide bearings and I don’t know what clutch yet – probably a daikin because I’ve heard good things about their heavy duty ones.

Here’s a useful link for people trying to brush up on the Australian Road Rules(pdf) last updated circa 1999 – this is listed on the NSW Road Transport Authority webiste.

Well, I finished the first stage of the build of the megasquirt yesterday – soldering up the main PCB. I’d finished the relay board the day before, but that was only a minor achievement, since it’s basically a big group of connectors. The megasquirt itself seems to be working fine – tests ok on the PC hookup and so forth. I guess the test will be when I actually get the proper stimulator – the one I made ended up being a piece of junk and not work, so I gave up, because it’s only a few days until the person that has the real stim comes back and we can use that to test the ECU properly. I’m rather proud of myself – it’s a rather complex little pcb, with a LOT of parts to solder on, and for it to work seemingly fine first go is quite an achievement for me. Normally complex things that I make/solder/otherwise have a tendency to blow up. More information soon – I’m going to be pulling the crank out of the engine, and taking the block somewhere to be bored out a little so the piston packages can be sourced, the crank reinstalled with new bearings, and then the engine can be put back together. I’m quite excited!