This week has been a relatively quiet one in terms of physical progress - but I've been doing a lot of research / reading related to other components for the swap.  To continue the coolant crossover work I need to get my collector manifold made, which I need a lathe to do.  I do not have a lathe, so that will have to wait.  I'm thinking about joining Tech Shop to knock out that and a few other projects, including some of the powdercoating that I want to get done.

I ordered my oil cooler setup and my power steering pump this week.

Oil cooler setup consists of:

• Improved Racing cooler adapter / thermostat.  It maintains a minimum temperature of 180 degrees by diverting 90 percent of the flow until the oil is hot enough to be passed through the cooler.  Makes life on the street and on cooler days possible - no blocking off or uninstalling of the cooler is necessary. 

• -10AN fittings and line.  Went with stainless line over braided nylon for improved abrasion resistance, given that the lines will be run relatively low on the car.
• Setrab Series 9, 25 row cooler.  I settled on this based on glowing reviews from 'vette guys that road race their cars.  While I'll be on the upper end of their 400-475hp capacity for the cooler, I think for my purposes this will be plenty.  If I start tracking the car more and need more cooling capacity, then it will be easy enough to make the switch down the road.

 Power steering pump:

• Turn One F-body pump w/ billet pulley
• MFR-TUR11 -AN6 orifice / inline restrictor (bottom) w/ .093 orifice

LS pumps are notorious for overheating / squeeling / shitting themselves in general with performance driving.  This is due in large part to the fact that they flow all of the fluid required for steering assist by 900 RPM.  Anything above that introduces excessive heat into the system.

The Turn One pump alleviates this problem by reducing the flow volume to only what is necessary for steering assist.  The results are better heat regulation (improved pump life) and better steering feel throughout the engines operating range.

The orifice fitting / inline restrictor was chosen because I'm mating a GM pump to a BMW rack.  I have no idea what will feel the best given that the pump and lines are changing, so my plan is to drill out the orifice incrementally (starting at the smallest available size) until I get just the right amount of steering assist without feeling too light (overpowered). 



I also started tackling the electrical side of things more deeply.  Since tearing apart the engine harness I've identified a good portion of the pinouts and understand in general how everything communicates and gets its power.  The next step will be to understand how the BMW side did the same things, and how I can get the two sides to talk.  I started a powerpoint compiling all the different pinouts, tips, and schematics I've come across on the forums thus far.



Enough research - today I tackled the alternator in the name of getting all the parts ready for powdercoat that I want to powdercoat.  From what I was able to find on the interwebs, I believe this to be a Delco/Delphi CS130-D unit with a 105A output - though it says that nowhere on the case.

It was a relatively straight forward process thanks to some pioneering done by my buddy Fazz, but I ran into a slight hangup getting the stator coils out of the stator housing.  The OD of the laminations were a press fit into the housing, and corrosion had it locked in there pretty good.  Lots of surface area in contact to fight against.

To get it out, I applied a heat gun to the housing and rotated it slowly, spraying some WD-40 along the seam to help break things loose.  After it was thoroughly warmed up, I took a screwdriver/hammer combo (carefully) to the outer edge of the laminations though the vents in the housing and worked my way around the perimeter until it was out.  Really not the best solution I'll admit but it was really all I had to work with.  At first I tried reversing the jaws on my gear puller and hooking onto the inside of the stator laminations, but there really was not enough surface area to grab onto.  Inspecting it afterwards, there was really no damage to speak of.

I'll be borrowing an idea from Fazz and encapsulating the windings in Dolph's EB-41 electrical insulating spray-enamel.  I also found a rebuild kit on Ebay for this so I'll be replacing the bearings, brush holder and brushes, voltage regulator, and transformer/diodes while it's apart.  Should be good as new when I get it back together - hopefully it doesn't catch on fire.