graebz28

iTrader: (5)

After much painful consideration, I am finally come to a consensus of what to do with all the crap I have laying around here and end up my dream car. There's a lot of history behind my 18 years of relationship with three unique f-bodies, all that timestamped a chapter of my life. There's the maroon 42k original mile Formula that carried me from Chicago to my 10 years in Phoenix and the black 90 w/ 38k that replaced the previous and brought me to my current residence of Kansas City. After all the episodes, several month periods riding a bike or taking the bus, the times having the three all pulled apart at once, blood, sweat and yes literal tears of both joy and frustration, it was all worth it and really helped define who I am today.

So now back in the Midwest, everything has come full circle and back to the start. My alpha, my first car, the one that has seen more miles on a trailer patiently waiting the entire last 18 years is finally gonna get what it's due. The 83 Z-lemon that a very young and inexperienced me worked his *** off to get. After a couple months it was down to 6 cylinders. But my Dad, bless his heart, gave up half his garage and encouraged me to fix it myself. So with a Chilton Manual and the sorriest set of tools you can imagine I took the entire car apart (minus the doors and hatch) and rebuilt my pride and joy 355 - 5-speed. And ignorantly ran it with the CCC and stock chip. I remember my friend lighting his cigarette off my catcon once as it glowed bright orange like the sun. Once winter came I put it away and said I will rebuilt one more time to perfection. 18 years later, the dream continues.

Needless to say the dream has molded itself quite differently from when I was 18. I had a set of 15x15x33 tires at one time in the middle of the family room. So below is what I have right now and my initial thoughts and questions.

But real quick, first and foremost I want to thank all my gear head brethren most especially of the Third Gen Order. Thanks for all the help along the way. Seeing all of your accomplishment has been inspiring.

So with in the last month I bought a cowl hood for the bird, got slightly rear ended, got 2600 from insurance, found out I'm gonna be a daddy, passed the hood on to someone else, bought a 93 honda for the winter, which brings us to this weekend. Me in a frantic rush slapping all my spohn gear on the bird and bolt slicks to the back before the track closed so I could finally hope to get a solid timeslip. Then, Mr Murphy came by the garage to put a hole in my air tools line, hide a bunch of necessary crap from me, and tell me that my LS-1 brakes are too big to run my rims with the slicks that have been rotting on the Z for, ya again, just under 18 years. By the time we got the street tires back on and to the track then won't let me go to tech.

PROJECT Z-406

Current
406 forged crank studded motor that age and reason is telling me to radical/impractical. I read what Mr Lingerfelter said about building a fun to drive car needs to make power down low so not what I got right now with a .630/.630 cam Dominated to 1000cfm and making power from 3500-7800. What I loose by going practical I can make up with nitrous (Still got at least a full bottle in garage)

Other impracticality is the ladder bar suspension. Again, if I could go back I'd build it more like, well more like the last car I just got done building and tuning the last two years. So I've had a hard time deciding which car to keep and I have to stick with my first since I promised myself never to get rid of it. It is 12pt caged and tied together underneath well. The 9" panhard bar necessitated a fuel cell. Would have done different. I thought of taking the birds rear and spoon stuff and may try down the line. I would have to recreate the pan hard body mount that I hate to say disappeared. I need to prioritize so that is back burner for now. Maybe true four link or 5th gen IRS, no wait if I can find a wrecked c6 .... I digress.

So use 406 bottom end, ladder bars, swap in the t-56, and continue on the EBL path since I got lot's invested recently.

?s

Hard to put something first. I guess injection is really going to drive the rest. I need to step away from the 1000 cfm carb plan and build a car I might be able to start in the cold.

Injection
Currently have 2" TBI. I guess for the first step I would like to keep that until I prove replacement necessary or someone here tells me to stop. If so, I am convinced I am at the limit of the GMPP TBI manifold. I found one that I'll link here later that should match my the powerband. A friend was mentioning Holley Stealth or LT-4 but I kind of want to give the 2" TBI a shot and if necessary one step bigger or duals. Your thoughts please.

Heads
I currently have some beautiful Aluminum Chevy bowtie heads with a lot of hours into porting. They are 2.05 intakes (Need to measure exhaust). Current build it at 11.8:1 compression; that is another factor I am going to have to change from radical to streetable. I am hoping that by using the E-tec 200s I have will reduce the compression enough. I am gonna need help to determine this. Then manifold can be resolved since one is vortec and the Phase VI. If pistons need to be changed regardless to get the compression that is streetable then I'd ask if I could realistically use the the motor as is and run race gas for a while. I need to learn how to balance the cubes, compression and cam. So here is where I am getting confused and could use some help.

Exhaust
I have been holding on to same LTR for years now and have dual 3" with turndowns which is ok for starts. After it's running I can open that topic.

Cam
Last but not least for now. Custom grind? Hydraulic Roller for sure. My tech portion of the brain is locked on I think a comp cam that changes the firing order for balancing and more power like" you know who". E-tecs can handle .600 but I was thinking either around the hotcam specs or maybe .550 max. With the more cubes added to the bird as it is right now, I think I would where I want to be.

I've been out of the loop on engine simulation software. Anybody got some input?

At least that is a start and I got the projects kicked off in my head. Writing on the board always helps! I'll eventually have a link in my sig for everything I am selling to support this project. I'll try to start researching other large cube TBIs on the board.

alvanwie

Wow, looks like you did a brain drain there. Anyway, a lot of what you are looking at is highly dependent on what your personal goals are for the project and what your interpretation and tolerence level is for streetability. But I will try to provide some ideas from some past experience (btw...my perspective is from the older guys view, my son and some of the younger guys I helped have a different view).

- I would not try to go more than 400-425hp with a 454 tbi. With enough fuel pressure I think you could fuel more, but it will begin to restrict airflow at higher rpm and not prove to be efficient.
- I think dual sb tbi's would be really cool, but I would consider it more for its novelty than the best way to make hp. I would think tuning would be very difficult. Rbob's ebl has options to drive dual tbi's and I would think would be the way to go to tune it. I may build one of these myself some day.
- I think HSR is hard to beat for making great hp up to 7000 rpm. If you want more of and old school look, then a single plane efi manifold with a 4bbl throttle body would be the way to go.
- the 11.8:1 compression probably is going to require 100+ octane. No fun paying for that for street use, but it sure does smell good. Yes, you could look for larger combustion chambers to bring it down or you may want to consider setting up for E85. This would pretty much rule out the 454 tbi because the approx 30% more fuel is going to put you short on fueling, but would work great with HSR or the single plane efi.
- If you stay with a large cam, I would definitely recommend MAF (for HSR or single plane). For street use I definitely believe this is the way to go, much better fueling resolution and easier to tune. Extremely large cams do not provide enough vacuum to give sufficient resolution on MAP to provide a good SD tune for street use. (I know there are guys here who will not like these statements. It is just my opinion and no I do not wish to argue about this. Others are welcome to their opinion).
- I helped with the tune on a 383, HSR, trickflow heads, 290ish cam, 12.0:1, and all the other stuff. This is I guess where my age shows. It ways more radial than I want for the street. However, with the MAF it was easier to get a reasonable tune than my much milder 355 Vortec tbi. I would like to see this one converted to E85 to make it more practicle to drive.

Anyway, hope this give you some food for thought. When you get a few of your choices nailed down I would be happy to run some Dyno2003 simulations for you.

Good luck
Al

graebz28

iTrader: (5)

Al, much thanks for your time. And yes, moving the laptop to the garage and hanging out writing this post helped me get my vision aligned. Hopefully I will get a timeslip this week with your SA table.

Begin with the end in mind, right! I guess that I just want to spend the least amount of $ I can right now to get running, then hopefully have left room to try a lot of combos. So I could just get car running with carb for now, but what fun is that? HSR looks promising as well as http://www.fuelairspark.com/.

I want to bring the powerband down lower. I believe I am at 600 hp with the current cam. I would like to achieve 500-550 on motor.

On the way in to work today after reading your post, I was in the turning lane when I glanced over at the gas station billboard that read "E85 available here". Seems like a great idea. I've been reading up on it some. Funny cause I have been paying a bit more recently to get BP-92 at one particular gas station that claims to not have any ethanol at all. If I did, then 2" TBI I think would be out since the wet-flow requirement must be 1000CFM+. That is why I keep going back to multiport. The frankenTBI or siimilar may be a cheap alternative.

Do you like your dyno software? Tell me what your need to run numbers. I'm gonna pull the motor this weekend and get things rollin. I need to degree the cam to get the specs. Lost cam card years ago. I guess I can cc the heads as well.

TonyC

iTrader: (1)

Support ya 100% man

alvanwie

Dyno2003 is good to get a feel for how components will work together and usually gives a fairly good estimate of hp, torq, rpm range. For some items there are limited choices so some assumptions need to be made.

Items needed: cubic inches, heads (if common brand then part number, otherwise if modded need some idea of flow and valve size), intake manifold, cam (part number or duration/lift/cam type), compresion ratio (or piston type[if dish voulume], chamber volume, gasket thickness, deck height).

305sbc

iTrader: (3)

It sounds to me like you would probably need to swap to a slightly dished piston to bring compression down to 11.0:1

This Lingenfelter camshaft: http://www.lingenfelter.com/mm5/merc...egory_Code=C30

Should be great for low to midrange power in a 406.

You may be able to use your Bowties with a spring swap, and some epoxy work on the intake port floors if necessary.

I took EBL in your post title to mean the type of EFI you were planning to use.
http://www.dynamicefi.com/
That is made by one of the moderators here from the DIYPROM section.

The Edelbrock heads could need quite a bit of work to be a good match for a 406 cid engine.

graebz28

iTrader: (5)

Thanks for the input!

I read Lingerfelters book about making a good/fun street car and I did everything opposite .... high revin ridiculous cam vs low to mid power. If I could go back....

What are your concerns with the bowties? Springs may be too strong? Would I need to do epoxy work to lower the intake runner cc size?

I am running the 200s on a 350 right now and think that the air velocity is hindered lots using these heads. They recommend them for a 383+. I should have went ETEC 170s, but I got these from a thridgenner instead. I would think that they could flow pretty well with the cam you mentioned above. Dynodon has these on his 350 as well and was not impressed with the flow #s, but he was at the time running on a 350 or 355 as well. From what I understand with vortec designs, 1.98 are the new 2.02s.

I have EBL currently on my 350, so if I could keep it to keep cost and relearning down great. I would go with direct port injection though cause keeping the tbi intake wet on a race 406 seems rather impossible to me.

305sbc

iTrader: (3)

I like heads for the street to have a ratio of more air flow per intake volume. The E200's aren't a bad match for a 406 when it comes to intake volume, but I think they are poor on flow. Your Bowties sound like they could be great for the 406 on flow, but could possibly be a little big on intake volume for street use.
If it was me I would epoxy the intake port floors to reduce the volume and increase the velocity. The result should be a head that beats the E200's at every point. It's something you could test by epoxying one port and getting both heads flowed. If you're not comfortable epoxying inside the port, then you might want to find someone very experienced, since it is a bit of an art to get both the correct shape, and reliability.

For a MPFI system I'm sure you could get away with as much as 220 cc intake ports if the flow is up around 260 cfm or more, which I'd expect from a ported Bowtie. It will still work with larger ports, though may be lazy at street RPM, depending on your gearing and vehicle weight. Most street set-ups are on the heavy side (3000 lb +) and use a weaker gear ratio, and so appreciate the smaller intake port volumes. I believe Lingenfelter almost always used just under 200 cc intake ports on his 383's and 406's (for street), unless it was for a dirt car. He usually kept the intake durations under 220* as well.

With the smaller intake ports, a 406 is very forgiving on the choice for intake manifold, so almost any carb style single plane will work well with MPFI. I've always wanted to see someone convert a Tork-link intake for MPFI. It seems to me that the longer runners would make a very wide power band for a 383 cid + street combo. It's not a very popular intake though and is banned from a lot of dirt tracks last I checked.

graebz28

iTrader: (5)

Thanks for the wealth of knowledge!!!

Great to see you actually match head flows to the cam. With that said, would increasing the cam lift on my 350 with the E-200s help or hurt. I think I am going to run the 350 in the camaro this year just to get it going fast and learn how the car is going to handle on the track. Later, I will drop in the 406 as is with a matic and run it as intended since I trust the people who built it. Anyway, I am thinking of running EBL on timing and possibly a carb that will better match the combo. After that I can monkey with the TBI. Maybe go E85 as well.

Bottom line is I want to run this season so spending less and using what I got is the plan for now. I got a good daily driver so I don't have to worry about streetability for now.
Thanks again

graebz28

iTrader: (5)

You know how they say time flies when you have a kid. I can't believe it has been a year since my last post on this!

I did manage to sell some stuff including the e-tecs which generated some project cash.

Here is the results of the head:
I know that I was hoping for 300 cfm but they are not too bad all things considered. Valves are only 2.02/1.60. Shocker on the heads is that the intake cc is 190! I think that translates into great port velocity. These heads are old tech compared to modern day and were really meant for high revving, small cube blocks. I would love to see them on a 327 or 305 but I am keeping them for now.

Another oddity is that the bore is 4.148 , so it is only .023 over. I know this does not mean anything as far as power but is does equate to a tad thicker cylinder wall. Just an odd number unless you are an Oldsmobile guy.

The correct specs on the cam are:
Intake 296 259 173 .429 .643
Exhaust 305 269 179 .406 .609

Heads stock are 55cc but the shop measured them to 58. Not sure because CR I remember from builder was 11.7:1 which the math works out for a 4.148 bore, .039 gasket, 9cc valve relief, and piston .020 in the hole.

So next step is to get the injection selection. I have went back and forth too much on a HSR, multiport single plane or just a Holly 900CFM TBI. Since I already have EBL, I will be keeping that as the controller.

Although the Holly is close to $900, it is still the cheapest option at this point plus since I am running E85 for sure, it would gain the advantage of cooling the intake stream. I am not sure how the TBI will respond to an air gap manifold.

Professional Product has a nice single plane set up for 920 minus injectors so about 1300 complete. I could keep the current cam and change it out down the line. Any votes for that?

A HSR woulld keep everything under the hood and run about the same. With my max flow under 275cfm which is what I read the HSR will flow out of the box, this would work but a cam with a lower power band may be needed.

For a cam, I am keeping the car solid roller due to cost and since I have it already. I have been thinking about droping the size to a Comp Cam XR286R or XR280R. I put my numbers into CamQuest6 and those are the cams that are great fits. I cannot believe that the estimated hp is 708 max / 245 Average with the 280R. I know that the intake runner size has to limit hp and there is no place to enter this in on the program; you can just enter in flow numbers and typical motor parameters.

Please provide some feedback on which injection/cam you would suggest. I am trying to keep it cheap cause I still have lots to buy like that expensive ext balanced flywheel to mate a t-56 to 2 pc rear main seal block!