Skinny Neb

iTrader: (2)

Here are some of the missing pics from the previous post,
if anybody has trouble seeing them,
let me know.

Also, I've decided to rip the 9 inch and bilstein shocks out of the Camaro before I sell that mistake of a car.

Motor mount/fixed



Shifter/fixed





Slicks

As the car sits now. Worst table ever.

Skinny Neb

iTrader: (2)

Little bit of an overdue update, but the car has been running for a couple weeks now with the 385.

We thrashed and thrashed from the beginning of October to get the car driving by the 15th for a certain deadline I'll talk about in a bit. We ran into a couple minor inconveniences that took a little time (like a wheel stud coming loose in the left front, with the wheel still on), but all in all got the engine in the car and fired up in just a couple days, and it sounds HEALTHY in person, the video doesn't do it justice.

On October 15th (remember that deadline I was talking about?), I had set up a surprise couples photo shoot with my girlfriend that she had NO idea about. I even had my boss "call me into work" so I could get everything set up at my location, and her mom pick her up so I could come back and get the car for it's very first drive. I was successful in catching her completely off guard, but she handled it great and we went on taking some pictures together, before I got on one knee and asked my now future wife to marry me.



Eyes closed for dramatic effect.


Panties hanging from the mirror.. for.. dramatic effect?


The flag I was waving around like a jackass when she first met me.



The following week we did some quality improvements on the car, such as added some fuel to the front barrels of the carb, installed a wideband (temporarily for now) that a friend forced me to borrow, added a cheap $40 O'Reilly's tach because the factory one is only good for 6K while I'm shifting at 7500 naturally aspirated, and ground down my 4th gen calipers to fit my 28x10.5-15 Hoosier slicks.




Since then, I've been driving the car around a bit, as well as took it to the local cash days where I went out first round against my buddy's Nitrous Big Block Chevelle. The car is doing well for the money that's in it, but it still needs quite a bit of work to get where I want it. Over the winter I plan on re-doing my gauge cluster, swapping the 10 bolt for the 9 inch in my Camaro, maybe going with a higher stall converter, and adding a couple hundred shot of spray. All it takes is money!

Jbuchanan

Congratulations!

Big&BadGTA

iTrader: (1)

Cool ending.

DynoDave43

iTrader: (11)

Congratulations on your engagement!

Car sounds good.

maks10

Congrats man!!! Cool pics and nice work

QwkTrip

iTrader: (22)

Glad to see the car running well.

You're not going to continue to use those slicks to drive around town are you? That's another patented "Skinny Neb mishap" waiting to happen.

Skinny Neb

iTrader: (2)

Thanks everyone!

I'm not, I've driven the car maybe 5 times since it's been together. I still have the racestars with street tires to drive around on.

Skinny Neb

iTrader: (2)

Quick updates, car caught on fire shortly after putting an overly aggressive 350Z in it's place. Luckily my hood was off so I could run up front and blow it out.
Turns out my zip tie broke that held my main positive lead away from the header. So I made a set of cables from 4 different sets we had sitting around.





Then I put the hood back on the car to not make the mistake of saving it from burning down.


It even fits with the Victor Jr. and carb spacer, sort of.


I also bought a house, therefore the car finally has a permanent garage. (I like S10s too)




Here is a video that doesn't show the garage any better, but you can hear the car.

That's all.

DynoDave43

iTrader: (11)

Car sounds healthy. And I'm glad you caught that fire in time. That can have ended badly.

And, Congratulations on the new house!

Skinny Neb

iTrader: (2)

I was forced to drive the car to work for a few days while the transmission was out of my S10, so naturally the car blew a trans cooler line leaving work the last day that I was supposed to drive it.


After that, I picked up some upgrades worth roughly what I sold my rusty 93 S10 for.


It's just a shame that the NX Gemini plate is too tall for the hood to fit.




Details if anybody cares. I might come up with a numbered price list for everything that's in this "budget build".
950CFM QuickFuel Black Diamond carb $600
Nitrous Express Gemini Dual entry plate $300
KYB AGX single adjustable rear shocks $40

I still need to piece together some misc parts for the nitrous kit such as a bottle and fuel system, switches etc.
It's been fairly cold here in Nebraska for the last couple months so there hasn't been much of any progress. As it starts to get warmer I'll be more inclined to go into my non-insulated garage to work on this thing.

Skinny Neb

iTrader: (2)

Also, I need to come up with ideas for hood clearance. In my opinion, every cowl hood made for the Firebirds look horrible. I'm half inclined to cut up a mailbox and toss it on the hood as a scoop rather than put a cowl hood on the car.

tylercamaro

iTrader: (1)

i love this build!

QwkTrip

iTrader: (22)

Ya, they do look horrible. The IMSA style hood is the least disagreeable I've seen.

Skinny Neb

iTrader: (2)

Thanks!
My thoughts exactly. That would be my second choice to the factory GTA hood, but I'm not 100% on buying a hood just to maybe have to cut it yet. I'm half and half with finding a Weiand 177 blower mainly to justify cutting the hood, for boost reasons.

QwkTrip

iTrader: (22)

Those superchargers are so inefficient and old tech. If you're going to boost it then get almost anything else and it will work better.

Skinny Neb

iTrader: (2)

I was looking at it as more of a simplicity factor being that it's basically just an intake and crank pulley swap with a single carb. I figured 5-7 lbs of boost with a baby shot of spray to cool the air would be about as much as this cast 10.5/1 bottom end could handle.

A local was running that setup on a barebones 355 in his thirdgen a couple years back and it seemed to work great.

Skinny Neb

iTrader: (2)

Alright, more overdue updates. My time to work on the car has been very limited due to switching to night shift a few months back, but I manage to make it out there every now and then.

First off I installed my quick fuel carb. Noticed a big improvement even while running pig rich, have since leaned it out a bit but the car will be getting dyno tuned as well as the nitrous installed soon, so I've just been tuning off of the plugs.

Second, I robbed the 9 inch from my Camaro before I sent it off with the new owner.




This alone was almost a 2 month long ordeal (with 75% of the work being done in one week) due to lack of time. Luckily the driveshaft from a 4th gen camaro with a T56 is the same length and spline count, so that went straight in. Other than that, I had to trim the existing conversion mount, bend new brake lines for the rear mounted calipers, replace my U joint straps, shorten my exhaust, and while I was at it I installed stock springs to make more room for a 28" tire, which didn't end up being enough, so I added 2" spring pads and my street tires STILL rub on the fender with a good bump. After the pads, my driveshaft rubbed on the driveshaft loop, which I then heated and bent up to the floor to give a good inch of clearance.

I also picked up some factory 15x7 20 slots to toy around with on the street since I keep breaking lug studs with my racestars. Plus I wanted a 15" street tire to try to give any chance of traction. That being said, I'm trying out some 275/60/15 Hankook H101s for the hell of it. Cheap enough that I can burn off without looking twice.

Lastly I installed my $40 KYB AGX rear shocks.

After I set it down, someone mysteriously did a burnout in my garage. Can you believe that??


The rest of the updates are from this past week trying to get the car ready for The Shop, Inc. no prep at I29 Dragway. (continued in following post)

Skinny Neb

iTrader: (2)

Disclaimer: I had this post almost fully typed after 20 minutes, and my dog ran past and tripped on my power cord. Since I don't have the time to re-type everything, I'll give basic points.

Start of the week we finished the rest of the issues with the 9" install.
Changed oil, cut filter, found a ton of brass. Not bearing material, we believe the thrust washer is getting torn up that sets my timing chain spacing. Will tear down soon and fix.


Distributor hold down still allowed movement. Welded a couple tacks and ground to points. Now works.

Leaned out carb, installed street tires and skinnies, loaded up and drove 60 miles to I29 dragway.

First pass on the car in almost 3 years, I left soft with 30lbs in the street tires and the shocks set on full stiff, car went 1.88 to the 60' and runs 8.06 at 86mph.

After pulling off noticed valvetrain knock, found loose rocker. Set lash and made a second pass.
Second pass blew the tires off, lost a couple tenths, but pulled clean and went straight. Came off to find the same valvetrain knock and an inconsistent lower end knock. Different rocker came loose, set lash again and drove the hour home.

Next morning I fired it up and noticed the valvetrain knock came back. A third rocker came loose, so I set lash again, and went down to the shop to gather thoughts. We decided my 3/8 studs weren't up to the task with my high spring pressure and 7500rpm, causing them to flex and loosen the rockers.
So we panic ordered a set of $120 stud girdles from speedway motors, a simple task turned into a nearly 5 hour headache.

First, I received a set for 7/16 studs. Back to speedway. Received a reboxed set for 3/8 studs, but they were a higher quality set anyway so I didn't complain.
Next problem, my two rockers I replaced at the beginning of the engine build had thinner slots, and my new stud nuts wouldn't fit. After searching for hours looking through different sets of rockers, we couldn't find anything that would fit 3/8 stud, the stud nut, clear the spring, and have a 1.6 ratio. Then went BACK to speedway to spend $85 on new stud nuts that had more clearance. They now fit, but hit the rockers while adjusting lash. Will grind later, for now I spaced them up a bit to clear.

Fired up the car to a horrifying knock, so naturally we thought the stud girdles hit. Removed girdles, knock remains. Tracked it down to the bottom end, back side of the engine. At this point it was 4:30 and I was 60 miles from the track, where registration was ending at 5pm sharp. It wasn't looking good, so I let everyone know that I wasn't going to be there unfortunately..

Until we found out at 4:35 that my converter bolts were backing out, causing the noise. Cranked them down, filled up with gas, picked up the fiancee and made a phone call at 4:51 to Joey Hiykel, better known as Beater Bomb, who promotes the race, to see if I would be able paypal him money as I was making a bullet run up there. He kindly tells me sorry, but I have to sign up in person. I ask if there's anything I can do, and he tells me if I have someone there who can pay my tech card and entry fee, as well as draw for me, I can show up before my class starts. I then call another friend with a badass nitrous smallblock s10 and ask a favor, and offer him extra if he could sign me up. He tells me no, that isn't going to work.

As my dream of finally racing the car again get crushed, he comes out of a 2 second pause to tell me it won't work because he won't take anything extra from me. Just to pay him back when I get there. So on the road I go, slicks in the back, running 3500rpm the whole way in overdrive. I show up, get emergency tech'd in, toss the tires on and find out he drew me a bye run, instant ticket into the semi finals!



Made my first pass on the slicks, ran 7.96 at 86mph with a 1.77 60'. AND NO LOOSE ROCKERS!


Semi finals unfortunately I drew the fastest in the class. Some 600plus cubic inch big block nova, rolled out of a double decker trailer pulled by a toter home. Pretty up hill battle against my little thirdgen that I drove to the track.

Lined up, knew my only chance was if he red-lit, which he didn't. Still ran my fastest pass of the weekend!


All in all, I'm fairly satisfied with the first few passes. The car went very straight every time. No drama launches with the new shocks/tires/rear end. The biggest downfall as of now is my converter, as well as the poor brake issue. I can only foot stall to 1500 on the line. A new converter may be in the future, but I may just rip this 700r4 out while it still lives. That overdrive sure is nice on the drive home though!

85irocZ2819

iTrader: (4)

The small journey of and fun third gen

Skinny Neb

iTrader: (2)

I wish I could say fun, so I'll start with a couple of decent pictures.





The car is broken, yet again. After daily driving the car for a month while my S10 was waiting on me to fix the transmission line, I blew a seal on the old 700R4.



So, we did what everyone else would and ripped out the 700R4 and installed a long shaft TH350 with a 5400 stall.


Then we noticed the header cracked here we previously clearanced it.


Drove the car for two miles, second turned into neutral, pulled in the shop, both water pump gaskets blew out, and it started knocking, because everything might as well go wrong at the same time.

To make things short, it spun #2 and #3 main bearings.



I actually got frustrated enough that I bought another Corvette, and sold almost all of my small block parts so I would have no choice but to put an LS in the car. It'll either find a junkyard 5.3 going into it or I'll finally get around to putting the 6.0 in my garage together for it. Either way, I'm not putting the amount of hours into another block like I did for this one just to have one thing ruin it all.