2F Hydraulic roller lifter project

[frontrange]

Well I talked with a bunch of people in the cam business, there's no shortcut, I need to cut my own blank - end of story. No surprise there. The good news is I got a program done to cut the distributor gear and tested it "cutting air". Tomorrow I'll pick up some ittty bitty carbide endmills that match the tool path program and try cutting some machinable wax to see if everything meshes properly.

The bad news is the steel alloy I need to use is going to cost me an arm and a leg, over $300 w/shipping. So I'd better not make any mistakes or the costs are going to really rack up fast.

 

[handcannon]

First, I'm impressed with your abilities and available machinery and the way you seem to think outside the box.

Second, I'm not a machinist so I may be way off base here. But, can you use something like UHMW as a test bed for machining? I know UHMW has a lot of flex to it so maybe just a short piece, or multiple pieces for different processes, and not a whole cam blank.

Don

 

[frontrange]

I often use cheap material to prototype, but the cam is too long unless the material is very stiff, UHMW doesn't fit the bill and doing it in pieces is less useful than you'd think. I already tried that when mocking up the head and basicly wasted a lot of time and materials. You might think "Why not just use a wood dowel? Cutting wood on a mill generates static like crazy, plays havoc with the electronics if you talking about a CNC mill.

Anyway, I've been laying in bed staring at the ceiling and I'm now convinced all these race car guys are upselling me on the type of alloy I need to use. Maybe they all just think they need to have space age tool steel in the engines for bragging rights, I don't know...

What I do know is an iron cam was spec'd by Toyota and seemed to have worked pretty well for a lot of years. I timed every lobe on a used cam and by the time I got to the back lobes they were retarded by about 3 degrees, no tool steel cam would twist like that without snapping so its pretty clearly not some wonder alloy.

I also am pretty sure if I made it out of a lesser alloy, I could easily spot a problem before anything bad happens. The rollers don't cover the entire width of the lobe, so wear would be evident there. I can check the lobe timing for evidence of twist the same way I did on the OEM cam. Not that I want to pull a cam out every few thousand miles, but I don't need to. I can just send samples Blackstone lab for oil analysis. If there is abnormal internal engine wear, they will find it early on and then I can tear things down and inspect.

Anyway, unless someone has a really good reason why I should make a cam out of unobtainium, I'm going to use chromoly 4120. That has to be a lot tougher than the original cam, and I can case harden it if need be.

 

[mtweller]

Any update on your project(s) @frontrange?

Ramon

P.S. Here is a short video of the Megasquirt running on a cheap Samsung android tablet, now via bluetooth, not the USB cable in the video. Thought you might like this.

 

[frontrange]

Sorry for the lack of updates, I live in Colorado and it's just been too cold to do anything in the garage - But spring is coming soon!

I have done a bunch of work on my digital dash though. I have 4 analog gauges and a center color LCD screen programmed and working, it is looking very cool. Once things warm up here I'll post some more progress. I'm taking advantage of the down time to tool up the inside shop.

The CAM is programmed, an engine is ready. I'm just waiting for some global or at least regional warming...


Edit - just looked at your vid. That looks really nice. Damn you. Problem is I can't find a big graphics display that will fit in place of a FJ cluster. Any ideas?

 

[Coolerman]

Sorry for the lack of updates, I live in Colorado and it's just been too cold to do anything in the garage - But spring is coming soon!

Dude, engineer a heater for the garage! I put a wood burner in my 24' x 40' shop last year. Now I can work even in the low teens once the fire gets going. Problem is sees me in the shop and asks, "Can you build me (insert whatever here) while your out there messing with that old truck?

Glad to see your still at it!

 

[JohnnyC]

Problem is sees me in the shop and asks, "Can you build me (insert whatever here) while your out there messing with that old truck?

Glad to see your still at it!

that's because as far as she's concerned you are doing 'nothing' and the one thing a wife hates more than anything else is see her husband doing nothing

X2 look forward to seeing more

 

[frontrange]

I had a heated garage in the last house, but then my machine tools were out there too so it made sense.

I bought this house because I needed more shop space, so I converted a large rec room to be my new shop. Now the garage is just for storing cars (imagine that), heating it wouldn't be worthwhile.

 

[cruisermatt]

Did this ever get finished?

 

[frontrange]

It took a different direction...

I decided I wanted to turbocharge the engine after all. Then I started to think I wanted to get the engine dyno'd with the turbo and intercooler, and then drop in the hydraulic lifter bits and get another dyno run to see exactly how much benefit I would get (aside from the elimination of valve adjustment) out of the lower friction roller lifters and higher duration cam profile.

So the bottom line is I completed all of that work some time ago You can find pics on risingsun4x4.org, but have been buried in the details of getting all of the rest of a FJ40 that was stripped down to the frame back together (which includes the fabrication of a ton of other parts unrelated to the engine) and now I just about have everything back together and ready for the first dyno run. I had really hoped to get the truck back on the road in time for CM, but I just couldn't quite make that deadline.

So just two weeks ago I rolled the freshly painted and reassembled FJ40 out of my garage for the first time since March of 2002, and I'm now painting the last of the hardtop parts and the newly arrived custom wheels from Stockton. The weather has been lousy here in CO (it snowed AGAIN today), but as soon as I get a break, it will be started and the megasquirt tuning will begin. I have a built and mounted Megasquirt ECM and tested it for functionality using a simulator, but the initial tune hasn't been started yet so I'm not sure how long that will take - having never done it before.

BTW, I built a port injected intake from a 2F intake as part of the turbo/intercooler work some time ago, all of that is now part of the reassembled engine in my newly reassembled FJ40. Sorry I don't post any pictures here anymore, I had trouble with all of the pop-ups that started to appear on this site, including one that my computer's virus protection warned was malicious, so I just stopped coming here at all. My progress is now just posted to the local club site @ rising sun.

If I don't blow things up with the new tune and manage to get it dialed in right, I'll be able to drop in the hydraulic lifter parts and get back on track with that aspect of the project. And in a nutshell, that is where everything stands.

 

[Spike Strip]

Just pay the 20 bux for a silver star and all the pop ups go away. The cost of maintaining a valuable site like this has to from somewhere, though I do agree when I've visited without logging on, the ads are excessive.

 

[simps80]

Couple of pic of my turbo charged, intercooled 2F - Rising Sun Member Forums

its a great thread and awesome work!!

agree about ads.....
even with what amounts to almost a mandatory star..the background ad service loading makes this site timeout a lot.
shame.

 

[cruisermatt]

Wow. I figure it fizzled out like most of these hyper-ambitious projects do. Glad to see you actually pulled through. Awesome.

 

[JohnnyC]

Was thinking of this build and see at rising sun it stopped in 18’ … frontrange has been off mud since 20’ … anyone know of progress? @frontrange

 

[JohnnyC]

I assume still no progress or was there that we are unaware

Would love to see the hydraulic lifter and how it panned out after the turbo… it it got that far

@frontrange