In my quest to improve upon what the factory turned out in 91, I have changed the heater hose routing some. Evidently GM did not intend the TPI to rev to 6000 rpm with a high flow water pump. I have been through three of those silly U shaped hoses since I finshed my engine last year, so I decided to remedy the problem, Hopefully this does it.

 

Nice looking engine, Dave. The "U" shaped hose couldn't handle the pressure or velocity of the HF water pump? Are you able to peak past 6000 RPM easily?

 

Nice detail work on the engine. Have to drop my car down a mine shaft to get 6000 out of the engine. You bypass the vacuum control valve?

 

6000 is about the highest it will go and make power. It starts to bleed off about 5800. I have heavily ported my SLP runners plenum and SDPC Vortec base, and I running pro topline vortec heads. It really likes to run hard from about 2K-5K. When shifting manually in 1st and 2nd, it is pretty easy to get the revs up, and before you know a big white cloud forms out the, back and you are done racing for the day because of a 10 dollar hose.

Thanks for the compliments on my engine. I have put some time into it, but I still feel like I have a long ways to go before I can really show it off. There are some nice thirdgens on this site.

No I did not bypass the vacume control valve. I relocated it to a semi dead area by the AC dryer unit.

 

Here is a PIC

 

Vacuum control valve? Never heard the heat diverter valve called that. It is vacuum-controlled so I guess it's an accurate description.

That's an interesting set-up. You did away with the 10108509 U-shaped heater hose and replaced it with a high-pressure hose fitting. It looks almost like a part from the AC system now.

Is the demise of the U-shaped hoses common when you have a high flow water pump and a worked motor? Have others had problems when running the stock heater hose configuration?

BTW, I like the polished serpentine tensioner housing.

 

Well I have built three good running TPI systems now, and all three of those have had problems with high revs, and blowing the hose apart or off. I have not really searched around this board to see if it is common or not. I know mildly high revving TPIs are not to common, but I thing I have found a combo that is not to pricey and does pretty well.