blkws6frbrd

iTrader: (1)

I haven't posted on here in a long time but I finally got to a milestone with programming my solution for functional gauges and decided to post up my progress.

My 86 Firebird was my first car and I've been in love with it from day one. It was actually one of my dad's customer's cars and I remember being pretty little playing inside it while he was doing oil changes/brakes/tires on it. Right after I graduated college in 08 I bought a 99 WS6 and I suppose the 86 felt jealous and decided to break a valvespring. I made up my mind that the 86 was going to get an LS motor but I would wait until I had enough money/time to do it right. I ended up finding a great block/trans at a junkyard from a burned up silverado but with no harness i just stashed it away under my dad's bench. The car sat at my parents house for years waiting for the right time. Well, I took the 99 to Norwalk last year and did this....



to this



That was IT! I can't be breaking my dream car like this... I started ordering parts for the 86 as soon as I got home.

My dad contracts heavy truck maintenance for a vending service company and their trucks have LQ4 6.0l engines with 4l80e trans behind them. Just my luck at this same time they were decommissioning a truck that bent a valve so I acquired the entire engine, trans, wiring harness and PCM.

Took apart the burned up motor and cleaned up the block, pistons, rods and crank.



Bought the GMPP CNC ported LS3 heads



Custom Camshaft from Tick Performance (those guys are great!)



Complete L76 intake from GM



Did some front body work before we started fitting the engine



Dad helped me fabricate motor mounts



Used some CTS-V parts like the oil pan, water pump and sensors that i saved from a LS6 swap I did many years ago for one of my dads customers.



Got a Dana 60 fabbed up (not going to break an axle again!)

blkws6frbrd

iTrader: (1)

Did a bunch of fabrication for the 4l80e trans and torque arm. We made two crossmembers, one for the trans and one for the torque arm. We tied the torque arm crossmember into the subframe connectors.








Along the way there were many distractions...like getting this LeMans a new engine!

...and finishing the restoration of this 69 Judge...



...and driving around Mom's 71 T/A....



For a couple months all I was doing was wiring!









Cutting it down to the wire as usual! We got the engine started only one week before we were supposed to leave for Norwalk.



But I made it and I couldn't be more happy!



(Sorry my inner hick comes out at the end...kind of a running family joke)
Still had the stock truck torque converter in there so it was sluggish off the line and it has some tune issues like the 2-3 shift point is above the rev limiter. Fastest I could get it that weekend was 12.86. Not bad, but not what I was hoping for

Heres a couple back-to-back runs and I ran the same exact number! (right lane)



Got the new 3600 stall converter in October and dropped this time on the first pass out 11.92.




And now I've been working on making an Ardiuno interface with the OBDII bus to have it display some gauges that don't work now because of the swap (oil pres and water temp). The idea is so flush mount the screen into the gauge cluster and have it display those two gauges. Heres an example sketch I made just going through the gauge sweeps.


I got the OBDII interface working and the coolant temp gauge reading properly. Oil is going to have to wait unless any of you know what the PID is for Oil pressure on a 2004 Silverado?

Pocket

iTrader: (24)

Ummm, why not use a 98 CTS for the coolant gauge and a Fbody oil sender for the gauge?

98 Fbody CTS's use an analog output and the Fbody/early truck oil sender is the same style sender 3rd gens use. It replaces the later LSx oil press sensor which isnt needed

blkws6frbrd

iTrader: (1)

Yeah, but this is cooler!

I have future plans to display other parameters on the screen (like trans temp, current gear, etc) so getting through the code hurdle for water and oil is just the first step.

Jay_rich

iTrader: (4)

Nice setup and clean install!

Jay

86White_T/A305

What are you using to display your gauges in the video? I used torque pro app on my phone which looks like the same gauges your using but how did you record it to paste it in the vid?

blkws6frbrd

iTrader: (1)

Its the torque track recorder. Its an extra plugin for the torque app (same dude made it). Its pretty neat because not only can you put whatever gauge you want on the screen you can ghost google maps into the video to show where you were at.

86White_T/A305

Hmm going to have to try that plugin then.Ive been using torque for awhile now but didnt know i could record things and overlay it into my videos. I see some burnout and speed runs in the near future lol.