1960 Super 90 - 1883cc EFI build

[bleucamaro]

I originally posted this on another forum, and a member here (onboost) had asked some questions about the car and said it would be a good idea to repost the build thread here, so here it is.

A few years ago, we acquired a 1960 Super 90. It was purchased from the widow of a man who had begun restoration on it. To make matters a bit more complicated the previous owner also owned a business making interiors for very early 356's. Being a 356 guy, there was alot of parts there, and their sons had the duty after he passed of "organizing" the parts. Unfortunately, they aren't "car guys" and a lot of the parts that came with ours belong to some other cars, and we also ended up missing quite a few parts, so we either had to source new, find used, or make our own. This car was the epitome of a basket case. We brought the car home on a trailer, both it and the truck packed full of boxes of parts. Fortunately for us, the hard work had all been done. The body and paint were both complete!

Here is the car as it was when it arrived home:










After the car arrived home, it sat for several months until we had completed the new shop, and had a place to work on it.

After the shop was completed (summer of '07) the car moved in. The first steps were to strip the front suspension and do the undercoating and painting of the underside of the car, including wheel wells, etc.



And to organize the parts.



The next step was to remove the transaxle and check it over. When we pulled it, it was bone dry in the car and we don’t know if it had been rebuilt and not filled, just emptied, or what, so we brought it to our local 356 hero, Ted Blake, to be looked over & overhauled. He replaced the throwout bearing with one from a 911, replaced the boots, covers, cleaned it up, etc. In the pic below, note the fancy-pants axle holder upper my dad made (If the axles droop, they can damage the unobtanium plates that hold them in (Ted built us some much heavier duty plates to cure this). Much more ancient technology than CV joints.

[bleucamaro]

Here is some progress on the front suspension, the rubber stops are in.


And, after the front brakes went in:



These are a sign of things to come:big frickin fuel lines and earl's fittings?.




And this is after the rubber bits showed up.



And after we stripped the pedal assy had it powdercoated, then re assembled.


And then a pic from the engine bay looking forward, with most everything run from the tunnel (for those not 356 familiar nearly EVERYTHING runs through the tunnel, which is fully enclosed).


The next step was to fit the brake master cyl, a dual circuit unit from a 911.


Then we fished the fuel lines (did he say fuel lines?), throttle cable, and shift rod through the tunnel.

[bleucamaro]

Dad undercoated part of the inside of the doors to help prevent future rusting and installed the window mechanisms:


And rebuilt the striker mechanisms and reinstalled them:




The brake drum "snouts" where the wheel bearing cover presses in were rather beat up, so we welded them and turned them on the lathe, then gave a scotchbrite finish. they look WAY better now, and look great with our new aluminum West Coast Haus wheels. The wheels are pretty light, 15"x6" and 11lbs.




More to come in the next post.

[bleucamaro]

Continued from the first post.

The car has the transaxle re-installed and the rear suspension is done, along with all the brakes.


And the hood handle and badge were installed.


The trunk was painted and prepped for gas tank install.


And the gas tank was modified to accomodate the new fuel fittings, and then painted.


The tail lights and rear badge was installed.



And the front grilles and turn signals were installed. The grilles still need a little adjustment in the fit, but pretty close right now.

[bleucamaro]

And most recently, the side trim "deco's" have been installed with new rubber, and the bumpers are being prepped for install with new decos. Also, the headlights were installed with new lenses and housings, and the last pic, of the Reutter badge.

[bleucamaro]

Since the last post, a lot has happened. The tachometer, speedometer and axillary gauges were sent out to be rebuilt for conversion to electric and 12v, the speedo was just cleaned up. For less money, I think we could have gotten a 904 combo gauge and new tach. . . well we actually did get a new tach, but the old one was cleaned up while it was there.

Also, the car went to the upholstry shop to get the new dash, headliner and door panels installed. The seats were also redone, and because they weren't done right, they're back at the upholstry shop being re-redone, so I don't have any pictures of them.

Since the car got back home, we were able to install the rear side windows, and sound / thermal insulation on the firewall and rear seats.

Also, the engine is down with Walt at Competition Engineering getting machined. We'll do the final assembly here once he's done.

I also tried ordering the ECU last Friday, but the supplier can sometimes be difficult to get a hold of.

The fuel system was done, but after much deliberation, we are re-doing it, so that it will be a much safer setup (both for the occupants and for the engine) – originally we wanted to use the tunnel for fuel lines, and draining from the tank at the factory petcock location, with the fuel pump in the smugglers box. We thought better of this, not wanting 45+psi of fuel running through the car. We changed the setup to run the fuel lines (feed and return) under the car, with the fuel pump under the trunk near the front torsion bar assembly.

Here are some quickee update pics of the interior.

[bleucamaro]

We had some of the interior work done at Ted Blake's, a local and very good 356 specialist. They also put in the windshield and rear window, as well as assembled the parking brake, and a bunch of other stuff.





The engine also was assembled. sorry I didn't take any pics of the bits before assembly.

[bleucamaro]

And as we made more parts, we were able to assemble more to the engine.








And this last pic shows my other project. Hopefully it will be ready for shakedown in a couple weeks.

[bleucamaro]

Serious Progress!

An in process shot of installing some more heat shielding. This was applied all the way across, then the loose strands trimmed.


And everything out of the way, ready for the engine.


The engine is now officially in!

Last weekend, we pulled the engine off the engine stand and set it onto some wood blocks, the idea being that we'd slide the floor jack under and wheel it away.


The jack was too wide, so we had to lift it once again, but no biggie, its pretty light. After it was on the jack, I guided it in as my dad lowered the car over it. I think it would have been quicker to go old-school and just use jack stands.



And voila, its in!



I connected up the sensors, injectors, and modified the wire harness in a couple spots as well. no photos of that yet.

[bleucamaro]

Its Alive!!!!!!

Did the cam/ valvespring / header coating break-in today. Also started some preliminary tuning. Hopefully I'll get to do more on it tomorrow.

A side note:
During the pre engine start check and troubleshooting, we found a fuel leak and traced it back to a bad “Y” fitting, a cast aluminum piece that had some porosity causing fuel to leak through it. Didn’t let that stop me. I threw a block of aluminum on the trusty old Bridgeport and whittled out a new one. After that it was ready to start, and it did!

we took it for its first drive today. Just up to the gas station and back. The verdict is that the brakes need adjustment, and bleeding. So far the tune process is going OK. I want to get the thing on the road so we can dial it in. Right now its running about 11:1 - 13.5:1 AFR, but centered around 12.5:1. More time on the road will refine this and let me lean the car out, but I feel confident it will be OK to drive under light throttle. The acceleration enrichment needs the most tweaking, but its getting there.

Here are some pics after its first drive.






In April, we left Sacramento, south bound on I-5, headed to San Luis Obispo. The new 1883 engine had less than 5 miles on it and the car had not been driven on the freeway since the complete rebuild. I rode shotgun with a laptop in his lap, tuning the fuel maps and ignition curves as dad drove. The car performed great, but final tuning on the EFI will need to be done on a chassis dyno. Look closely in one of the photos, you may be able to see us at 110 on I-5. Now thats the way to break in a new car. (Oh, wait... that's 110 KPH!)

FYI, the steering wheel is an original Les Leston that was given to me in 1971. I finally found a proper home for it. We machined the center of the wheel on the Bridgeport to fit a Nardi hub.

More Pics to follow.

[onboost]

bleucamaro,

Thanks for posting as this is an awesome build! I hope you don't mind my contacting you in the future as I think I'm looking to go efi on my Outlaw as well.

The GT1 Corvette looks like fun too!

Paul

[carrera79]

thanks for sharing
great job, please tell us more about EFI !!

I also put an alternator on my car, did you buy the stand from Emory ?
I got it from him, but the stand was not straight, so i had to milled it !

here you have some pics :

Moteur 356

fred

[bleucamaro]

Paul, feel free to contact me with any questions you have. I’ll send you a PM.

Also, I don’t think I put any specs in the above posts, so here we go:

Crank Case: Stock Super 90 – Machined to accommodate LN Nickies Cylinders
Crankshaft: Stock Super 90 – Was inspected and in good condition. With good torque, there’s no good reason to wind the motor out.
Cylinders: LN Engineering “Nickies” Aluminum Cyl’s – 90mm bore
Pistons: JE forged aluminum, custom shape per LN Engineering.
Heads: Super 90, well worked over by Comp. Engineering. De-shrouded, ported, bigger valves etc, Ti retainers, bigger springs, factory rocker arms.
Cam: NeuTek SX-2 – everyone we talked to said the SX-3 would be too big for the street, but their experience was on 1720’s and smaller. Larger displacements tend to make big cams feel smaller. I’m wishing we’d gone with the SX-3.
Induction: Port matched Solex manifolds topped with TWM 45mm throttle bodies and the stock air filter/spark arresters (machined to fit).
Exhaust: Bursch header and muffler.

Oil System: Converted to full flow, with remote filter located in fender. Provision for Accusump Pre-Oiler, Billet Aluminum oil cooler. Two temp sensors, one for the gauge, one for the ECU. We wanted to have the availability to add a thermostatically controlled front oil cooler, but it is completely unnecessary. As it is, the oil does not get hot enough. I want to see oil temps in the 210-220°F range and we are lucky to see 150°F. It runs REALLY cool. I’m working on a partial fan block-off plate to help get it up to temp.

EFI modifications: The EFI system we’re using required a few additional sensors, including a crank position sensor, air temp sensor, MAP(manifold absolute pressure) sensor, TPS (throttle position sensor), and O2 sensor. For the crank position sensor, I used the location of the stock fuel pump and machined a cover and bracket to hold the sensor aligned to a 58 tooth (60-2) trigger wheel that I match pinned and brazed to the crank pulley. The MAP sensor is on-board in the ECU and all the vacuum signals from the 4 intake runners need to go to the sensor, but to smooth the intake vacuum signal a vacuum plenum/manifold was required. Fortunately the throttle bodies came with a provision for a TPS. The base of an air cleaner was machined to allow the air temp sensor to be installed. Also an exhaust bung was welded in to install the wideband O2 sensor. Our ECU was carefully chosen because it was important to me to have sequential injection and not have a cam position sensor as well. This ECU does this by using a fast enough processor to measure the acceleration of the piston so it knows if it is on a compression stroke, or exhaust stroke.

On the fuel system side, it was completely rebuilt. The stock tank was modified, with the petcock location sealed and 2 bulkhead fittings added at the top with a pick-up line and a return line. The pickup line runs to an electric fuel pump mounted under the trunk and the pressurized fuel is then pushed to the Y-block, which splits the fuel to the 2 fuel rails and injectors. The lines come back together and through the fuel pressure regulator. Excess fuel is returned to the gas tank.

The ignition is completely digital and completely capacitance driven. In place of a distributor we have the 2 coil packs. The ECU allows me to adjust timing not only based on engine speed, but engine load, temperature etc.