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how do you like the bilsteins and the eibach shocks??
I like them a lot. However, I really only have compared them to cut ws6 springs and KYBs. I'd like to get some Konis or ASTs to really compare but that's not in the budget for awhile. Realistically, the shock/struts/springs did almost as much of an improvement as the solid strut mounts and del alum control arm bushings. The front end is PLANTED.
I started the turbo build. I always mean to keep a good record of the build and tell myself I'm going to take a ton of pictures and show everyone what I'm doing but I never remember.
This is where I am at the end of an afternoon. Pulled my stainless works longtubes out, mocked up the spoolin performance forward facing headers, pulled the rad/fans/intake tube/maf. Now to order piping...
The driver side collector is CLOSE to the PS pump reservoir/return line so I'm going to look into running a remote reservoir and make a 4thgen v6 pump or GTO pump.
Interesting...what are you going to do to brace the front end? Look forward to more pictures. Need to hurry and finish college so I can start doing thing like this.
Interesting...what are you going to do to brace the front end? Look forward to more pictures. Need to hurry and finish college so I can start doing thing like this.
I'll probably end up tying some support off the bumper bar and STB. I'm still in college, probably why this is taking me a bit.
OK iansane this is just not fair! Ive been playing catch up with you for a year now and you keep stepping up your game! I just got done with most of my upgrades (L98, WCT5, C5 front brakes, front and rear c/d rotors,.....) and i still have not got close to you! LOL GOOD JOB on the car Ill post pick of mine as soon as I get it off the lift. Keep up the good work!
P.S. just so you know I'm going to do the "GS" stripes only because I grew up less than a block away from Guldstrand when they were in Culver City
Last edited by morganrush1974; May 12, 2012 at 05:24 PM.
Thanks, dude. Think of it this way, if you've only been working on it for a year you're ahead of me by a long shot. I've been slaving on this for almost a decade!
No worries on the GS hash marks. They seem to be crazy popular nowadays. Especially since dodge is using them again on a lot of vehicles.
Looking through these pics when suddenly I realized, I own (or owned) the two gen I small blocks pictured! Ian's original 305 with LT1 cam (minus the Stealth Ram) is currently in my T/A and that LO5 that he used to mock up the turbo setup was gonna be its replacement until we broke it down and realized how rusty it was.
Hey Ian, where are the pics of your "flapper" exhaust?!?!
I have a cap for when it's parked outside in the rain, but when you're moving it's going to get blown out/burned off anyways!
I'll take this post to show off the stuff I just picked up from the ceramic coaters today. 2000* coating from http://www.performancecoatings.com/ Super chill guys.
I cut up a radiator hose from an escalade to get the proper bends, chopped up some tubing for the turbo intake to get the filter over to the battery tray but I had an epiphany. My radiator/intercooler mount is WAY too low. This first iteration places the bare intercooler only an inch above where there factory air dam was mounted. WAAAAAY too low. I scrapped that air dam on everything. I'll have to spend another day or so chopping it out and raising it up quite a bit. I'm thinking since I've already fabbed the actual lower rad mount I can just make a little bracket to attach to the wonderbar and have a removable lower core support. Oh well!
I've been driving it on and off for awhile ironing out the kinks. And there have been a bunch.
I got tired of trying to get someone else to tune the car. I talked to every LS tuner in the NW and even some mail order tuners. Either they were too busy or never responded whatsoever. A bit aggravating actually. I ponied up the $650 for hptuners and got to tuning.
As soon as I started the motor the new (reman'd) power steering pump was whining like crazy. Nice... I ignored this for a bit but eventually warrantied out the pump.
After getting idle squared away I started getting into throttle a bit trying to stay out of boost. The first time I hit ~8psi or so I blew an intercooler coupler off (scaring the absolute **** out of me in the process, btw). Limped the car back home and ordered a new coupler. After hooking that back up I took it on another test drive. Well the connector for the oil scavenge pump broke (one of the pins backed out) and the oil backed up at the turbo and started pouring out the seal and into the exhaust. I was smoking out the entire street. I shut it down thinking I toasted the motor. After realizing the pump wasn't running I tested for power and found the broken connector. I repaired the connection and took it for another drive hoping I hadn't blown the turbo seals. It was still smoking pretty heavily. I yanked the down/up pipe and started the motor. No oil whatsoever. Oooo baby. Nice. However, when I started reassembling things I broken the vband for the turbo outlet. And now I wait for a new vband in the mail. Whew.
I'm not too great at tuning so I'm taking it slow. And I still have issues with my factory o2s that I can't figure out. They're stuck @ 450mv with no long term fuel trims. I checked continuity from the o2 connector to the ecm and it's good. I even made sure they were pinned to the correct location on the ecm. As well as verifying the o2 connectors pinout is correct. I'm stumped. And probably just missing something simple.
how do you like the bilsteins and the eibach shocks??
I know that question was for the OP but I wanted to comment also. I have that combo on my 89 T/A and it handles/rides amazing. I have just about everything else on the car too, bars, SFC's, etc.
The thing is my 89 handles just as good if not a little better than my 00' Firehawk with Strano/Koni's and a BUNCH of aftermarket stuff.
Sorry OP I didn't mean to high jack, just wanted to share my experience with that setup.
Wow, this thing has been a long time in the making. I sold my Camaro years ago, sometimes I wish I still had it and I'd gone through with the LS swap I wanted to do. But at least now I have my LS in a Corvette chassis! Any idea what kind of power you're making (or hoping to make)?
Wow, this thing has been a long time in the making. I sold my Camaro years ago, sometimes I wish I still had it and I'd gone through with the LS swap I wanted to do. But at least now I have my LS in a Corvette chassis! Any idea what kind of power you're making (or hoping to make)?
No idea on power output. I'll wait to dyno it to spout off digits. I did get into a little race up a freeway onramp with a ~2011 GT500 and just strolled away from him. Felt nice.
Although I still have some issues. I can't get the O2 sensors to give any reading whatsoever. I've verified pinout at the PCM and at the O2 and still get nothing. Which isn't really bad but it means I'm always in open loop, no corrective fueling and no DFCO.
Plus I overheated the motor something fierce yesterday. It was 90*+ and I was stuck idling around downtown Seattle with no place to pull over and park. Once I finally did find a place to cool off I had already hit 240*. I was really tempted just to stop in the middle of the street! When I finally limped it home the car was missing and throwing codes for missfire on 2,3,5 & 8. I really hope I didn't toast the motor. I found a huge air pocket in the cooling system. I checked compression on all cylinders (all were almost exactly 180psi) and pressure tested the cooling system with no results. I tossed new plugs in it and I'll fire it off tomorrow to see what's going on.
I was just getting ready to start ducting the radiator out the hood...
Spent some time this evening messing around with the mechanical stuff instead of wiring. I wasn't sure the overflow/coolant tank were high enough to easily evacuate the air in the cooling system. I had the tank mounted on the core support. I decided to plumb it T'd to the heater core hoses as I deleted the heater control valve a long time ago. This raised the cap even higher and now the tank isn't as turbulent. (I had the heater core hoses plumbed THROUGH the tank before.
Yes the overflow bottle is a Monster Energy drink can that I drilled a hole in the top.
And I also started work on a more permanent solution to my hood spring problem. The springs had been mounted outboard of the hood pins and to get enough lift when I popped the latches I needed enough spring that it was bending up the corners to the point of distorting the sheetmetal and leaving a large gap.
I've put off doing for awhile but it's actually pretty simple. I started with a small exhaust pipe adapter that necked down from the diameter of the spring to just a bit smaller to "support" the spring in compression as well as slotting the adapter and bending a tab down to hold the spring in place. Tomorrow I'll finish welding on a bracket to the adapter. I want to make these (one for each side) removable because they hangout over top of the end tanks on the radiator and while they don't block flow they'll make it difficult to get the radiator out later on down the road. Plus it gives me something to weld to when I make brackets for the ducting of the radiator to the hood.
So I finally (I think!) solved my cooling issues. The radiator was canted so far forward that a giant air bubble was preventing the waterpump from actually sucking up any water. The radiator would fill with coolant but nothing would flow and the car would overheat in a matter of minutes. I had to jack the passenger side up almost 3' in the air and put a special funnel on the radiator.
Once I did that, it burped BIG TIME and sucked down a bunch of coolant. This was harder to bleed than my bmw!
Anyway, now it's time to fix the missfire issue. I'm pretty sure the plug wires are getting toasted against the headers. I've gone through two sets of taylor 10.4s in less than four months. Even with heat protective sleeves on all the boots! I'm going to order the 90* boot LS1 kit which of course is almost twice what the standard kit is and hope for the best.
I'm taking the car to an All-Pontiac show tomorrow even with the missfire. Haha.
Where can I find an album of pictures of this car?
I'm absolute horrible keeping track of things. I don't have any great album of pictures other than some I have posted in this thread. That user omnipotentgoku had a thirdgen cornucopia of pictures and always was egging me to add mine but I never got around to it. I don't know if his website is still active or if he's even around anymore?
On another note, the tune is getting better and better. This thing is ridiculously fast. I surprised the hell out of a streetbike the other day. I still have a lot of work on tip in and other transitional throttle stuff. And of course highway cruising.
I had to jack the passenger side up almost 3' in the air and put a special funnel on the radiator.
Once I did that, it burped BIG TIME and sucked down a bunch of coolant.
What kind of funnel is that? It looks like it has a valve and a special radiator cap adapter.
I haven't been much in the thirdgen game for awhile. My e30 pickup truck project took center stage for a long time. Now I'm splitting time between the LSx e30 daily driver, the 4x4 lifted thirdgen and my all time obsession 'vert.
I knew I was going to get tired of the "down pipe" exiting out the hood and I finally did. Took some time over this winter to rebuild the motor mount and fabricate an actual down pipe that snakes underneath the passenger side turbo header.
It's not beautiful, but it's mostly 4" all the way and misses everything utilizing a hanger off the back of the block. It's not ceramic coated like the headers and other hot side stuff but I wrapped the hell out of it. Now I need to decide wheter I run the exhaust all the way out the back or do a side dump like I had when I was running the long tubes.
Next thing is mounting a larger intercooler I got from a coworker and extending the plug wires. I'm using LT1 wires from taylor because they give me a 90* bend at the plug and offer the coilpack socket on the other end. I tried making the MSD make it yourself kit and I just sucked. Haha.
This...might actually progress a bit now. I sold my house with the tiny two car garage that I built most of this in and bought a larger house with a fairly large shop and lift. I have space to not only do multiple projects at the same time (which is required because I'm always jumping between ideas). No pictures yet because the car isn't even parked at my new place yet.
But I did get a pair of NRE mirror image turbos and a few TIAL wastegates + BOV. The bird may be twin turbo'd sometime in 2019.
Edit; I also just realized I've had this car for 15 years. Wow.
I'd like some updated pics and power numbers - nice build
I still haven't gotten any power numbers. I probably won't until after I go twin turbo. I'll get a better tune and see if I can max out my injectors.
Originally Posted by 1MeanZ
Back from the dead!!
Seriously! I know everything is cyclical but I neglected this car a few years and it kind of bums me out. So, time to really get cracking.
I bought c7 rear brakes for a bit of a size upgrade and some red to match the fronts. I figured now with the c7 parking brake/backing plate setup I can use any or close to any big brake kit for c7 vette. Maybe they'll get cheaper since the c8 was announced. Hehe.
Oh, I also went to radwood pnw this last weekend. Wow. Such a cool show. So many crazy cars from the 80s/90s. My buddy followed me in his '95 Ferrari 355 and they let us both part in the 'radwood royalty' section with the really cool cars. (I think the ticket girl thought my car was a Ferrari too. Haha.
I also decided to at least temporarily ditch the c6 wheels. These are some random tire rack wheels I got on clearance. I wanted to switch up and run a 19x10 with 305s at all four corners. It definitely looks meatier in person.
