The "rebuilt" plenum and runners that took me about a month to complete between a fulltime job, family, sleep and nagging girlfriend were finally put on the car today.

The 140,000 mile plenum was completely scrubbed inside to remove 23 years worth of caked and baked gunk. Same was done for the SLP runners because they didn't look very pretty either. Plenum was port matched and siamesed since the previous owner was apparently a bolt on fanatic.

Cast finish was removed from the plenum and runners using a dremel tool and then finished with 100, 150 and 220 grit sandpaper. If you wanna chuckle at the idea I guess you could say I "ported" the felpro gaskets to match also.

Plenum and runners were painted with 250F gloss black VHT epoxy paint and then finished with 550F VHT clearcoat. Grooves in plenum were filled with 900F VHT caliper paint.

All in all I think it turned out damn good. There were some imperfections I obsessed over while the parts were hanging from my deck receiving their colors, but once you pop the hood honestly It's negligible.

As soon as I get the car back in a week I'm gonna paint the throttle body top plate to match (black and red lettering), then cruise to my local chevy dealer and order an aluminum plenum extension and paint that to match also. Fuel rails will eventually be painted matching red and at this point I'm not sure if I'm gonna paint the baseplate or leave it polished aluminum.


I'm bent on keeping the TPI setup so I might as well spend some time making it look not so white trash. Two other major modifications are going to be an edelbrock hi-flo base and a 58mm holley throttlebody. Then I think I MIGHT be able to shut everyone up about how restrictive TPI is, at least for street use. But that's exactly what my aim is for. Low and mid end torque.

Tell me what you guys think. Much better pics coming in approx a week.

 

looks great man good job!

 

Thank you

It was only while I had everything in my hands did I notice that one of the 4 previous owners had done a coolant bypass on the throttle body. So at least "some"thing was done right (Except he forgot to block off one of the holes. Probably a resident arachnid or two living in there by now ),

 

Sweet! I like it. I wanna see it when it's all done though

 

looks good i like the paint on it keep it up

 

Penum looks great. Good job

 

thats look damn good, seems way too good for an every day driver hope mine would good as good one day

 

It's not perfect. There are a couple things I wish would have taken better. Fort example this paint is VERY touchy about doing wetcoats and ran in a couple places. The plenum, not so bad. Runner number 1 only in one spot(exactly on the spot the camera focused in on come to think,so you can't even see it), but I repaired that on the fly by very carefully using a BIC pen as a steamroller to flaten the run 10 minutes after it was sprayed, then applying 2 or 3 more coats over that in that one localized area. By the time the third coat of clear went on, you were clueless as to what happened.

Runner number 2, ran in several spots because I was completely out of time for other days to spray and had exactly an hour and a half to prep the piece, hang it, apply 3 coats of black and one wetcoat of clear before work, then hang it in the basement to cure until I got home to bake it. I'm not too mad though because the runs weren't bad and the clearcoat pretty much even things out. The only way you can notice anything is if you hold your face a foot from the engine and start looking from different angles.

The stripes on the plenum didn't take as evenly as I'd have liked because I stupidly used masking tape and an exacto knife to mask off the black before I sprayed the red. While I was spraying, the masking tape decided to fuse itself to the black paint and left a disfigured mess when I tried to peel it off @_@!!! 10 minutes of spraying of touchup with a Q-tip and the can fixed that. And again, clearcoat works wonders for evening out imperfections.

All in all though once I saw the setup as a whole sitting atop the engine, these things stick out much less than you'd thought they we're. They almost seem to disappear as your now focusing on the engine as a whole and everything goes with the flow and blends in.

 

Hasn't been a week yet, but where are those additional pics? I wanna see 'em.

 

I would have gotten them today but I was in a hurry.

I'll snap some more monday when I'm down there to get the new starter in the car and attempt to crank the new engine. Hope it isn't seized out of the crate