Like most one-day projects, it's a two-four day project. I took a half day off work on Friday because I knew this, so I started at 1 pm Friday. Taking the old stuff off was pretty straightforward. I did manage to find two large vacuum leaks in the lower runner area and one broken bolt hidden behind the wiring harness. I think GM could've been a little smarter by angling the lower runner bolts another 10 degrees so you could take them off without pulling the valve covers, but these are also the same engineers who put the distributor in the back.

ChrisFormula showed up just in time to pull the base off and take a break to eat. Around 4 o'clock we clean the old gasket material off and put the new base in. Then I put in the fuel rails, fittings, and we built and installed the 6AN braided lines. (StealthRam.com's suggestion of 5 foot lengths for fuel lines, is a BIT too long.) The new water neck has an O ring type seal which is a pain in the *** to install, but ChrisFormula managed to get it on because I was getting too frustrated by this poine since the sun was beginning to hang low.

Then the first major problem. I'm missing the barbed vacuum fittings for the back of the new plenum for the fuel pressure regulator and MAP sensor. The ones on the stock TPI are too large. Since it was dark at this point and I don't own a droplight, I decided to call it a night.

This morning I get up and get some fittings from AutoZone. Fittings in hand I head back to the car and install the plenum, plug wires, and wire up the MAP and IAT. Then I go to install the throttle body and it's a little tight.

 

This is why. The throttle linkage whacks the chubby 90 degree fitting that Holley supplies. I'm not the first person with this problem, you'd think Holley would've gotten the point by now, the HSR has been around for 2 years. I finish bolting everything anyway just to see if it'll at least turn over.

 

And thanks to this, I started up and went straight up to 2500 rpm. It was a little hard starting but that's probably because the throttle plates are open. I can't even get full throttle out of the thing with this linkage. So I'll be ordering a new throttle body.

 

But the car does run. It didn't backfire, bog, or anything just idling there. I didn't have one leak out of all the fittings. I did manage to break a few connectors for sensors because those wonderful GM engineers used plastic on everything near heat.

If you're thinking of installing a stealth ram on a speed density, external coil car, keep these things in mind. You will lose your MAP sensor mount, so be ready to make a new one (mine's hanging.) You will lose your coil mount, I still haven't found a solution to this one, so I'll probably mount it to the firewall.

Holley: A couple suggestions for your kit. Swap out the fat *** 90 degree elbows for thinner ones. There isn't a whole hell of a lot of room there, I can't even connect my fuel pressure gauge to the schrader because it's too close to the plenum. You might also space out the vac fittings on the back, or better yet put them on the side. There's a lot of plug wires back there and it makes a mess. Put the boss for the coolant temperature sensor a little more towards the center, I have to tension the wires to get the plug to reach because it's on the opposite side of the stock sensor.


I'll keep people informed of how the tuning goes.

 

holy cr*p... holley reads posts in this forum im sorry for anythign i said.. and if u wanna send a HSR ram 2 me for free..

 

I know a Holley employee goes to the TPI board. Mebbe he'll see it in a search or something.

Turns out I'll be fine if I get an 85-88 throttle body and swap out the throttle cable. A bunch of other people are grinding the cable guide, but mine hits so hard it'd have to grind through it.

 

After much cutting and grinding on the cable track, I got it to install correctly. Now my throttle cable is too short somehow, so the throttle sticks open. And I also lost my TV cable clip, so when I get into stealth ram territory, the tranny slips. My idle O2 actually looks better than with my old setup, but once I hit 4400 RPM and go into the high fuel table, I'm running FAT. But hey, I can almost drive it to work....

Anyone have a TV cable clip?

 

Nevermind, I found it. I tweaked the pivot point on the throttle pedal and got the butterflys to totally close. Now when I stomp on it, it feels the same down low in TPI area (drifting around the corner by my house since the wheels broke loose in 2nd) and it just keeps revving all the way up to 5500. But like I said, after 4400 I start puffin smoke and the O2 reads full fat. So stay tuned for part two: Tuning the damn thing.

 

Looks sweet. How high does it sit compared to your stock setup?

 

Sorry to hear your having so many problems. I have Speed density and HSR and none of those issues at all. Only thing I did wrong was connect fuel lines backwards.

 

The HSR looks like it sits about 1/2" higher than regular TPI. All I can tell for sure is that it's really close to the hood.

CaptPicard: Do you have the early arm type of throttle body, or the later cable guide type?

 

Ok, I guess you can't edit the main title in a post. Welcome to part 2.

My fuel pressure gauge broke, and I think I'm running way too high of fuel pressure. No sense in burning a chip without knowing my fuel pressure. It seems like I'm running a little fat, what do you guys think?

 

I have an 85Z28, so I am using the original bracket and cable. I also bought the Holley 85-88 58mm TB to go with the HSR. I didnt have any trouble with anything. The only thing I had to do was grind down the arm a little on the TB at the tps side. The tps sensor arm was rubbing on the TB. Didnt have to grind much at all. HAd to be careful not to heat up the sensor either. Other than that, no issues. The whole thing went very smooth.

 

There ya go

 

hehe, thanks.

Before I left work I gave the fuel pressure regulator a half turn to the left. This is the result. It's a little leaner above 2000 rpms.. but still rich.

 

Then I decided to get up on it a little bit. You can see that I rolled into the throttle really slow because there was a bit of traffic around and I have bald rear tires.

The initial flattening of the TPS line in the beginning is me trying not to spin on the paint lines at the light. Then I rolled into it. The blue bump is me losing traction in second gear, shifting at 5000 rpm. I had a little knock up here, but the counter only registered one knock retard during this whole run. Then you can see I immediately got my foot out of it when I saw a Sheriff parked on the side of the road. But I never broke 55 mph!

When I I go into PE mode, the O2 flys up to .950 and stays there. A *tad* on the rich side. Once I figure out what my fuel pressure is at, the injector constant will be kicked up a pound or two.

 

Noone's probably reading this, but anyway.

If anyone's thinking of buying an AFPR.. here's another reason to get one. This was all just AFPR adjustments.

 

i read it.

 

I'm reading it too.. looks like your VE tables are seriously out of whack.. regardless of your FP you seriously need to work on that chip

 

I am reading it, too. I just dont understand a lot of it.

I was thinking of going this route also. Keep us informed.

 

Yeah, but you have to approach it in a systematic way. Fuel pressure effects the whole range in a very coarse way, so you tune that first. Then you set your injector constant to get it semi-close, since it's a little finer tune. Then you work on the tables, the finest tune.

Then after that you do your timing, which effects the VE tables. Then you do your VE tables again... etc.. rinse repeat.

My tables were dead nuts for stock TPI (with a vac leak in the runner I found out later), Accel 24# injectors, and headers. I didn't bother changing anything above 4200 RPM because the engine just didn't go there. The tables up there are still set for stock 22# injectors (incidentally, so is my injector constant.) Since I'm effectively going to be running 25.8# injectors by using SVOs with stock fuel pressure, it's fatter than a woman addicted to twinkies. With the old chip I ran it a little fat in PE anyway to keep the knock down on hot days.

The new fuel pressure gauge shows up Thursday. I could have my main driving range within 2 BLM of each other in a couple days after that.

Nice to know people are following along.

 

I'm here too. I don't quite understand it all though.

 

The extent of knowledge I have on TPI is it gets air from outside the engine, into the engine. Reason being I'm a mod on the TBI board Even with that, I'm following this. If one day I DO pick up a TPI car it'd be nice to have a little bit of knowlege on the subject. Good work man!

Bruce (90RS305)

 

Hey Tom, good to see your still with us!

Same here. Iim still following this beast also.

 

This is Speed Density TPI... the tuning theory applies directly to TBI (TBI ECU justs uses a chip 1/8 the size, hence less values to play with) ... Soak up the knowledge now

If anyone needs any part of this explained, I'm sure Synapsis or myself would be happy to oblige.

 

Well, expalin away. How about a nice step-by-step presentation?

 

I was hoping for something more specific

Short and sweet, the speed density system has no way of directly measuring airflow, so it uses tables in the chip to approximate. Any change to the volumetric efficiency of the motor at any given rpm vs manifold pressure, and those tables will be off. The BLM graphs Synapsis is posting are a visualization of the ECU's on-the-fly corrections to the VE tables based on O2 sensor input. The HSR, for instance, has shorter and larger runners than a standard TPI, so VE suffered down low.. as a result, his VE tables are adding too much fuel down low.. and the BLMs are showing rich down low. It is also likely they'd show lean up high, but that data is lacking at the moment.

 

I won't be posting here anymore since someone decided to edit my sig without notifying me.

I can understand editing posts, I can understand deleting posts, but when you're editing someone's profile, they have a right to know.

 

Editing your profile? That's crap! Show me where in the rules does it state that you cannot show other cars in your profile. I see plenty of people with "other" vehicles in there sigs and nothing is done about it, even moderators have them. It's bs and everybody knows it. Can we say holier than thou?





Ok, just so everybody has a clear understanding.........I am not blaming the Mods for this. All the Mods on this board are cool and would have given a warning first if they could have. I know why it was done now.

 

What was edited in your profile? From what I have seen, your sig was changed due to the "No Bashing" rule of TGO.

As taken from the user agreement:
Do not post messages about site policy, criticism of Moderators, Administrators, or other Members. We have a Problems/Help/Suggestions/Comments Board for site policy, and Private Messages can be sent to anyone you have problems with or want to contact. You can also privately communicate through E-Mail.

 

Tech,

Well, since my car has a MAF, what can be done with the PROM? I have heard that it is not worth getting into burning with a MAF car. Is that true?

 

Spark Advance tuning is an available option regardless of the air metering system.. modifying your base pulse width if you're moving to larger injectors.. the MAF tables should generally have no reason to be tuned, though.