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I'll download the MS stuff and see how it is. I didn't know you could just download the software without buying the ECU but I guess it being an open source thing it makes sense.
If I decided to stay with HP, guessing a 411 PCM would be my best bet?
Just figured I'd throw an update out since it's been a while.
I ended up having to get the block bored .30 over and new pistons and crap. Someone had an accident by my block and gouged the living hell out of the one cylinder. Was not happy but oh well.
All together though.
I need to dissemble it once more and clean the hell out of it. I decided to put new cam bearings in and freeze plugs since it sat so long. Hopefully after this I'm done messing around with this engine when I actually have time.
My heads are ready for install, I need taller valve covers though to clear the stud girdle. The baffle in it hits the stud girdle about 1/16 to 3/32 too much. Doesn't look like I can cut the baffle out easy ether.
Outside of that I haven't had much accomplished. I have been enjoying my one new Camaro for a few months now haha. It's a V6 but it has a lot of pep for what it is. Plus it's a manual 6 speed. I ended up dumping some money to mod it too. It's kinda become my daily. I need to finish the exhaust though. It's dumped behind the valance right now but it sounds badass with a Magnaflow resonated X pipe to two Holley terminators.
Also with swapping to a 411 PCM, cause I been doing a lot of research on it lately. To my understanding if I use the 411 and an Astro van base cali from 01-02 I can run the 4x reculator, vortec distributor, timing cover and sensor and have the crank positioning and cam sensor without retrofitting a lot of stuff. I'd just have to make sure the timing cover clears my chain and it's sealed up well? I want to do a Victor EFI intake all said and done so I can break in with a carb and swap the distributor and carb out for the EFI and start tuning.
I been thinking of doing a 4L80E too so the 411 would work perfect with a segment swap to control everything.
i drilled my own hole for the breather/oil fill, and also on for pcv
Assault racing 200cc heads.
Thanks, I might have to get another set of valve covers. Still going to debate then and see if I can make these work or not before I jump into getting new ones.
Originally Posted by DIGGLER
are those pistons upside down?
They're just that way because that's how I ended up putting them in to check clearances. I have to disassemble it anyways and clean the living hell out of the block to get all the metal shavings out from clearancing the block out. Plus I'm going to change the cam bearings again and freeze plugs again just because. No worries lol though I don't think it would actually hurt anything unless there is PTV clearance issues
Managed to get some time this weekend. Cleaned the block out completely for the last time and started assembling. Everything on the bottom half is done outside of mounting the oil pickup and getting it clocked. I need to install my heads then, measure for pushrod length and order those, then I can finish buttoning it up then.
Also have the bay of the car all cleared except the brake lines and brake booster and master. I'm leaving those in till I can drag the car out and get it to the shop to finish up cleaning it and start cutting for the intercooler fitment and getting it together so I can paint everything. Also going to smooth out the firewall and wheel wells and get rid of all the holes I won't be using.
I managed to get some more time this weekend and the past weekend to get a little more together. I'm hoping next weekend I can get the time to finish the engine up. After that I'm not sure what I'll have for time being its busy season again till July/August and there's way too much to do once again between everything.
Anyways.
Last weekend I installed a head and measured my pushrod length for the intake and exhaust. Also measured my actual valve lift too. Ended up being .530 instead of .534 on the exhaust like I calculated. The intake was spot on at .520 like calculated so I guess I got shorted a tad on the exhaust. How well. At least no coil bind issues and I have plenty of seat pressure.
After that I ordered the pushrods I needed and luckily I could get off the shelf ones. I got some Comp Cams High Tech ones.
Now fast forward to this weekend. I TIG welded my -10 AN bungs into the pan and got that all cleaned up. Threw on some caps so nothing gets in and installed the oil pan. I ended up not having a timing cover gasket around. I don't know if I never bought one or if I lost it. I'm going to go with I lost it most likely so I'll have to get that and loosen the pan back up to get that on. I didn't feel like running to town and getting a new one because that's a 45 minute to an hour trip there. I'll probably stop and pick one up this week or order one.
Then I finally got it looking like something for once.
Set the preload and locked them all in for the first fire up.
Then the stud girdle went on.
I also have a Blow Thru Carb coming in from Pro-Systems. I don't have to deal with emissions bull crap anymore to keep it a street car so back to the carb we go. One day I'll go EFI, but I'm not ready to deal with that headache quite yet.
Also going to run the valve covers I have. Once the old man gets a chance, he's going to mill the baffles out of the valve covers I have now so that way they'll fit. Even if worse comes to worse and they still don't then I'll get some fabbed aluminum ones or something and paint them black and have a buddy of mine up the road make some Chevrolet decals in red. He should be able to make some that can withstand some decent temps.
I just need to get my single plane intake now and finish it up. After the engine is broke in, lock the dizzy out and the MSD 6AL-2 will do all my timing work.
It's been a while. I've made some progress and collected a few more needed items. Next weekend I plan on dropping the engine in once I have a helping hand so it's nestled in without an issue. Plus I need someone to work the brakes while I tow the car inside haha.
Here is the engine kinda mocked up for the intake and stuff. I forgot the timing cover gasket again and said screw it, made sure everything else was ok. The carb is a blow thru carb built by Patrick from Pro Systems. Has all the works to it for this and he built it based on my engine so hopefully it's super dialed in and all I have to do is some minor tuning.
Here everything is all said and done. The engine is ready to be dropped in and we're good to go. After I get it in and the twins mocked up, I'll route everything and plug anything I'm not using up. Then it all comes back out so I can paint the engine bay. I been thinking of using Eastwood's Extreme Chassis Gloss Black epoxy paint for the bay and trans tunnel. After I get it painted, everything goes back in one final time and setup and ready.
Still have to machine the baffles out of the valve covers. But I haven't been worried about that lately.
Here is all the Sch 10 pipe I need for the hotside. two 4 foot lengths, one 1 foot length, and 12 elbows and 2 reducers. I plan on tacking it all up with the MIG then TIG welding it all up to finish it.
Here's the two turbos all ready and painted to go. Twin T4 GT45 Ebay turbos haha. Truly 69mm turbos. I figured the T3 turbos from before were going to be way too small and since this car is going to see street time rarely at this point, I decided to go big or go home. Plus this gives me room to grow if later whether I blow this engine up or retire it and go with something bigger, all the hard parts are there for the turbo system.
After I get the turbo system mocked up and ready, I'll be ordering a Powerglide from FTI and the Spohn crossmember setup. After I get it moving by it's own power again I plan on repainting the whole car and sticking a Ford 9" under it with 3.73 gears. I've delayed the roll cage till next winter, mainly so I focus on getting it moving by it's own power and not my truck, trailer, and/or straps.
I've been thinking of using an Aero 340 Stealth fuel pump for this car, I also want to hit the junkyard and try to find an LS1 tank or something. Maybe a Walbro 400. Depends, but I want to get rid of the metal tank too. Mine looks ok but trying to save some weight too plus I just don't like the metal tank and I would rather only drop it once if I can.
Well that's all I got for the moment. It's not much but I haven't abandoned the car haha. Just been slow at getting there between work and other life responsibilities.
What are you running for springs? how much boost are you planning on running?
GM LS6 Valve Springs. I plan on running 7-9 PSI at the moment. These springs should work well with my Comp cam and shouldn't be any valve float for the RPM I plan on turning (6500 RPM max).
Intresting. Comp tech support told me spring pressure on my 509/527 lift 224/236 cam with 10# of boost should be around #135ish seat pressure - Its why i didnt go with ls6 springs on my vortec heads and went with BPE heads and comp 985 springs
So the on off showers cancelled my plans for dropping the engine in Saturday...
But instead I went to the Junkyard and scowled for a plastic fuel tank from a 98-02 Camaro. But that was too no success ether. Every tank in every Camaro (there was like 30 there) was just a metal tank.
Feeling kinda cheated on the way out I made a last minute stop for ***** and giggles and managed to find this just caked with grease, oil, and dirt. You name it, it was probably covered in it.
Brought her home and steamed the living hell out of it to get it cleaner and now I have a core short tail TH400 for this car! With a good rebuild, a 34 element sprag, some mods here and there we should have a 800 HP capable transmission.
Plus with this being a street/track car, a set of 3.25 gears in the Ford 9" later should serve this combo well.
Next weekend I'm going to drop the engine in and start fabricating the turbo system. Hopefully there is no rain next weekend.
Still waiting on some parts to show up to finish it up. But with a deep pan, 4L80E Direct with 34 element sprag, dual feeding, and some nice and extra high energy clutches, new bushings, and some other small upgrades, this thing should live a long life behind the twins.
This weekend was mostly tear down, and a lot of scrubbing with a lot of brushes and a steam washer. Painting the case today. And a lot of zip lock baggies to keep all the bolts and stuff organized.
Originally Posted by rgauder
What size schedule 10 pipe did you get for the headers?
1 1/2" Sch 10 304 Stainless that will then go to 2 1/2" right before the T4 Flanges.
Progress has been made. Between a few days here and there of managing to find time and this weekend's 2 AM early start to get stuff done there have been some major strides.
I finished rebuilding the TH400 I pulled many moons ago. Has a lot of good **** in it now and should withstand some serious HP.
I ordered the last of the few things I needed ATM. Still need a lot more and these pictures don't show all of what I got but the bigger things of what I needed right now. I have enough AN fittings and AN line to do the turbo feeds and drains, fuel lines, transmission lines, and etc.
This is after the transmission was installed. I'll have to get more pictures from underneath then because at the time I didn't bother.
The transmission has a 4500 stall 10" converter with anti-ballooning plates, and is supported by a UMI TH400 crossmember with a driveshaft safety loop. The UMI unit fit like a glove and the gloss black powder coating is beautiful to say the least. I been solely using ARP fasteners on everything right now.
I originally had some long tube headers I was going to install to break the engine in with but... The damn things didn't fit worth a crap on the driver side after the transmission was installed. I ended up getting the driver side stuck and I had to take my porta band and cut the collectors off to get them back out. The passenger side fit pretty beautifully sadly. So I'm kinda saying screw it and building the turbo manifolds now and just breaking the engine in on those.
I played around some with the turbo mock up to see where I want them. I'm still not sure how I want to run them yet. I'm going to get my cherry picker out next time and hang them closer to the engine and see if I can/want to mount them closer to the engine. The downpipes are already going to be a PITA from what I see. All I need to finish the turbo plumbing is get some aluminum tubing for the cold side and then exhaust tubing for the downpipes. I have Sch 10 304SS pipe for the log manifolds. I also have two wastegates and two blow off valves so all I need is more tubing later once I cement an idea.
Here is my gauge cluster layout so far on AutoCAD. Still on the fence about it. I didn't include the turn signal or high beam lights because the plasma table can't cut that small accurately. I'm just going to use some small LED bulbs for those anyways so all I'd have to do is drill three holes.
I need to install the transmission cooler, and plumb the AN line to that, finish hooking up the small things, reinstall my modified wiring harness, get my new gauge cluster layout finished and installed, install the shifter and make a plate for the console to blend it in, wire the shifer in, plumb the fuel lines, install the Walbro 450 pump, fabricate the turbo system and plumb my lines, install my L88 hood scoop onto the hood (I need the extra couple inches bad then to run the cold side to the carb), paint my engine bay, and ether make or find the overflow tank and windshield washer tank because I doubt I'll have room to run the stock ones.
Once all that is done, my next focus will be the suspension and rear end for upgrades and modifications. After that is done I want to move onto the body and get it painted and get a roll cage installed.
Turbo headers are in and stuff. I think I want to extend them forward another inch. They're pretty damn close to the front of the engine and I been thinking about this for a week or two now since the original "done" date on them. I have some more stainless so moving the collectors out another inch isn't a concern, just time consuming. I still have to mount and weld the waste gate flanges in so it's a do it now or forget it deal for extending the collectors.
The downpipes I'm going to run through the battery trays and out and under. I figure this will be the easiest way to route the exhaust under the car. From my tape measure action I shouldn't lose too much ground clearance if I do it right and it'll help keep heat out from the engine bay.
I have to move my radiator forward no matter what though because these turbos eat up so much space. I have a 24 foot length of 2x2x.083 square tubing coming in. I'm probably going to cut the whole core support out and fab up a new one out of that length of tubing. I'm still in the planning stages of this so no 100% ideas yet. Ideally I want to move the radiator forward a couple inches, gain more room to run my two coolers up front, retain the factory hood latch, and still have a place to run an intercooler up front. Worse comes to worse I'll order some 4130 round tubing in and redo the whole front end to make room for everything. I'm trying to avoid that so I need to spend some time with a protractor and tape measure and figure this out. I also have a small sheet of 3003 aluminum coming in too so I can make a fan shroud later being I'm going to run two 12" slim profile electric fans.
I also have to run a hood scoop no matter what. My L88 hood scoop will provide me with enough clearance to run an Extreme Velocity carb hat when I start on the cold side piping. But I'll have only a little bit of clearance to play with so I need to keep everything as low profile as I can.
Outside of that, I have an Astro Steering Shaft to help with the header clearances (it's as compact there as possible). I just worry about the plastic cover being a fire hazard on the stock one and it's only about 3/8" to 1/2" of clearance there. Plus I need to run new brake lines now no matter what... The stock ones broke from rust or wear right by the master cylinder under the factory prop. valve. That's why the master cylinder is out to give me more working room at this point.
I been debating on going hydroboost when I rerun the brake lines in SS tubing. I still need to do farther research but I'm sure it'll aid me a lot later. But on the plus side I can reroute the brake lines to suit my needs with space.
Also after I get done with everything and everything is done in the bay, I want to tear it all out minus the engine and transmission, and paint it all. I been eyeballing the Eastwood Extreme Chassis paint and with them being very close their shipping is generally only a two day deal from ordering it, to it being at my door. I should have painted it when I had the engine out but I didn't want to paint it all when I knew I'd probably be messing with sheet metal for this.
Outside of that, it's been every time I get one step farther I'm taking two steps back with having to change some stuff. I figure though being it's a custom setup at this point it's expected and I can't complain because I'm the one who started doing all this lol. At least I'm making slow steady progress.
I haven't posted any updates in a bit but a little of what I've been up too.
This is what I started with after removing all the front end stuff. Just a plain jane core support.
Then I ended up with this. The top bar is end capped and where I chopped off the old is braced with sheet metal (1/8") and welded solidly into the many layers of sheet metal of the car.
The top tube was then welded solidly around after being leveled and square. The tubing sticks out like it does because of having to clear the front clip's brackets for the headlights. Basically the front clip attaches like stock to car still minus the center supports ATM which are omitted till I get the radiator mounted and the coolers and intercooler so I know how to make the center support without colliding with anything.
Then the bottom tray was cut out. It's only held in by four spot welds. Now the problem is after this tray is gone, the side plates are FILMSY. They're only thin sheet metal so gussets (4x4 if I remember correctly) are welded on the opposite sides to add some rigidity back.
The bottom tube has two forty five degree legs coming out each side that has a piece of 2x2x1/4" angle welded to the back side of the legs. Due to the angle of my cuts the tube legs were 3" long so I ended up making 2 end caps to seal the tube. I would have used 3x3 but I didn't have any around. The 2x2 angle was then welded to the outside of the core support plates to provide maximum clearance.
I think the maximum length you can go without hitting the front clip's headlight brackets is 30 1/4". I don't remember off the top of my head. I know I didn't want to start modifying the front clip so I stuck within the max limits and by that I mean I have a 1/16" of clearance from the headlight bracket's and their bolts to my new core support tube on ether side.
The hood latch is still the factory set up. I toke a piece of 3/16" steel and measured for the space I need and the hole opening. I drew it up on AutoCAD and burned it out on the shop's plasma table then bent a 90* leg on the backside so it sat down low enough and came forward enough to utilize the factory hood latch setup. The factory latch is just welded onto my tubing.
For the spring preload it was just trial and error. I ended up finding that a 1/2" plate provided enough to easily close the hood but still pop the hood up slightly when the factory lever was pulled.
I also cut out the factory core support "horns" and welded flat pieces of 1/8" steel in to blend the contours in from the stock radiator core support spot. It looked goofy as hell without them being flat.
I also finished running my 8 AN fuel lines to the fuel regulator and to the carb. Both the feed and return are 8 AN until they merge back to the factory lines. I think there is about 12 foot of hose total used in both sides. Later on I have to get my rubber clamps and mount them on the firewall so the braided steel line has a rigid way of mounting and is better guided on the backside of the motor. This was done first before the core support though so I didn't have any open fuel lines while welding and grinding. Even though I had a plastic bag over the engine and a fire blanket wrapped over top and covering everything, I didn't want to take any chances. Safety First!
It'll look better (I hope) after I finish hacking the car up and paint the engine bay At least that's what I'll keep saying!
Originally Posted by zacharyhorn
Looking good. Keep up the strong work.
Thank you very much. Slow and Steady at this point haha
And which would be better, the bellow piping or the flex piping? I need these for my 4" downpipes and I am having trouble finding them.
EDIT: Also I have another -8 AN filter I can put on. Would it be worth while to mount it in the return line or just not worry about using the second one?
what color is your engine block painted? is that a bronze?
No, I used a gold metallic high paint and then I used a transparent black high temp clear coat I made overtop then a few coats of high temp clear coat to seal it. Should be plenty cured by now being I painted it two years ago now? Maybe three? I honestly don't remember.
The wiring is almost 100% done. Just need to wire in my gauge cluster tomorrow. And then clean up and loom all the wires up. Along with other misc. lines.
Outside of that waiting on 10AN line for the drains then need to run the oil feed lines.
Just need to do the cold side then and fill the transmission full of fluid and put coolant in after my coolant tank comes in then.
Outside of that, the power steering pump and power steering box are getting ditched for a manual set up and she's going to go to a full manual brake set up.
After this little bit is finished up, it's onto the Ford 9" install and the roll cage.
This project hasn't died. It's just been a back burner deal. Recently with the COVID stuff I've had a bit of extra time.
To catch up on the progress of the car, I've fixed some rust in the wheel wells, got the whole rear suspension changed with UMI control arms; new springs; UMI adjustable panhard bar, BMR panhard relocation kit, new poly bushings on everything and the sway bar, new driveshaft, sanded prepped and painted the whole under chassis, ripped the complete interior entirely out and cleaned the carpet super well, ran the car's fuel system in 8 AN from the tank forward, made a switch panel that triggers relays for their functions, manual brake swap, new fuel tank and got the car running and driving. Not all in that order ether and probably forgetting so much details with everything I've done.
What I need to do; Run new brake lines and get my wildwood prop valve and the B&M line lock in, upgrade brakes, run a full exhaust, mount my Aero GFXs, install the new fenders and 4" cowl hood and get the car painted, new windshield (because I want it out for paint), install my new weather stripping, new seats, cage at some point, weld my subframe connectors in, get and install a Strange S60, and other things.
No leaks and the TH400 seems to work great with the small amount she's moved from testing.
I haven't been mindful on taking pictures but I did happen to take some I was sending to my cousin. Here's a small snippet of the things that's happened and a small video of the 383 finally coming to life for break in. (Chassis bolts weren't tightened yet due to not having full weight on them yet in pictures, tightened everything once everything was in place and full weight was on the chassis)
11-23-2016, 11:11 AM
At least that's what I'll keep saying!
