Well the little girl got a heart transplant. Before I talk much about that I have to extend my thanks to several people. First, B (chevymad) - without B's time, patience and help there would be no project. I think there are a lot of folks in the Cascade Crew who are indebted to this guy for helping out and I have learned a lot. Several other crewbies wrenched on this project as well so thanks to Dewey (Dewey 316), Paully (TwilightOptics) and Bart for giving your time and effort. Quite the group project! Thanks also to many of you that have been very supportive online and in IM's.

I had a three year plan: 1) cam and intake 2) heads 3) new forged shortblock. We installed a miniram and LT4 hot cam last spring (year one!). I don't expect that anyone is following but that is when i posted my purty new valve covers . So about 5 weeks after the install we had a Cascade Crew gathering and on our cruise the last day of the gathering I fried a rod bearing. Post mortum inspection showed that the failure was not anything we had done in the mods but an oil pickup tube that had come free from the pump - when it dropped off it busted a piston skirt off into the pan and clunked around in there. Grindage in the oil etched the journals on my new cam. The combo ran pretty hard but did not get a chance to go to track or dyno with that combo. Really sucked.

Sooooo, my three year plan becomes a three month plan - so I thought. It actually took a little over four months... most of which was spent waiting for my AFR heads. But that is behind us now - the little girl lives.

New Combo:

383 - GM block 4 bolt mains
Forged Eagle crank
Forged Eagle rods
TRW Forged pistons w/thermal coating on tops and moly coating on skirts/pins
AFR195's w/upgraded valves and springs
Hydra Rev kit
Ultradyne cam: 284/292 adv 230/236 @ .050 114 .565/.565 w/1.6
Comp Pro Magnum rockers (1.6)
Comp Magnum pushrods
Crane hydraulic roller lifters
Moroso 6 qt pan
Moroso crank scraper
Moroso windage tray
Moroso hv oil pump w/tack welded pickup (thank you very much )
Miniram
Accel 30# injectors
SFI spec balancer
Comp timing chain

All machining work, balancing, align honing, decking, etc. was performed by Jones Automotive in Spokane, WA.

We (B, Dewey and I) fired her up at about 8:30 Saturday night. She started right up and sounded pretty healthy. Only had one small coolant leak that was taken care of with a few turns of a screwdriver. It had been a long productive day and was dark and rainy so we shut everything down and headed inside.

Sunday morning we set the base timing, put the hood on and headed out for a test drive. We got held up for a while by (of all things) the windshield wipers! It is kind of funny how many little things can go haywire when a car sits for four months. For some reason the internal ground for the wiper motor was not working. Fixed that and we were back in business.

Initial impressions were that the combo is very streetable. The power was smooth and linear. It was pretty wet out and I took it easy but took the rpms up a few times. All in all it was looking pretty good. We got back to discover that we were only running on 7 cylinders! Apparently the plug wire had come off the cap and the injector harness had come off of the number 1 cylinder.

Checked everything out and it looked good so Dewey followed me home (about 100 miles) and the car ran flawlessly - lots of oil pressure, little temperature.

I have driven it a few times since and each time it is a little stronger - I assume from the rings seating (and running on 8 ). She is definately a street machine now. The flowmasters really bark with the new mill and cam. I don't have as much Hooker envy

Anyway, thanks again to all. I am excited to be driving her again.


Later,

-Schultzy

 

i domnt know you or the project but congrats man. i hope to be able to accomplish something like that. now take her out to the track and see what she runs.

and show some videos!!!

 

Congrats!!!!!

I am still ironing out some tuneing and getting a tranny leak fixed.. putting an aluminum driveshaft and planning a rearend swap.. to a bw9 with 3.45 gears/posi and rear disc's.. a lot might already have this stock.. but mine came with the 10 bolt, posi, 2.73 rear drums.

 

Ain't 383s fun!!

 

Who did your prom burning with your combo??? Im sure its not a stock prom

 

Shultzy,

Now seems like a prudent time for me to give you a

Glad the car is running strong for you.

If you need anything let me know!

 

Another thirdgen enthusiast has been helping out with the tune and a couple of my Cascade Crewbies have the data logging/chip burning equipment.

It feels pretty darn good for a first tune but there are a few minor issues. Frankly a few of us thought that we were going to overcam but the advice came straight from Harold (Ultradyne - now head cam designer for Lunati) and I'll be damned - every thing that he promised me has been true. We'll have to wait until the dyno in January to see if all promises were true - lol. Very driveable - I swapped a few chips in and out for some testing. So hopefully I can do some data logging when I help Paully swap in his tranny

I need a laptop

-Schultzy