fictmich

Just thought I'd post up a pic for you guys of what I've been working on.

project89

iTrader: (1)

man u most have a ton of patience i tried polishing a set of rs wheels once i gave up after doing 1 rim and 2 spokes of another and id imagine that was much easier then the lower intake
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looks good u doing all 3 pieces?

fictmich

Thanks! It was a major PITA but it turned out ok. It wasn't as good as I was hoping for but much better than it was. I should stamp a fake part number on it so I can send some people at the car shows on a wild goose chase, haha.

Yes I will be going on to the other 2 intakes, right after I give my hands/wrists/arms a chance to recover. Then it's bolt them up and head over to the dyno and see how much I picked up with the runner work.

bl85c

iTrader: (2)

Looks good! Damn, where do you find the time? Make sure to clearcoat it so your hard work doesn't dull.

fictmich

Thanks! You should see it now that I cleaned off all of the residual buffing compound. I have a lot of down time at work... Yea I've already got it all taped off and ready for the clearcoat, I'm just looking for a good one. I'm thinking of one for wheels since it goes on a lot thicker and stands up to abuse longer but I'll have to look at the heat range on them.

fictmich

Thought I'd post up another one for you guys. I think I'm going to try going over it with a different sander to try and get the ripples out from the top, otherwise this is pretty much how it'll look.



This is just some of the metal shavings i was able to take off of this piece. I'm going to have a racecar now that it's a whole pound lighter!

2.8RS

iTrader: (5)

That looks real good. I started to do that do my manifolds but gave up. I'm too impatient to complete it, I'm just focusing on porting them out as much as I can.

forkvoid

iTrader: (1)

What did you use to remove the metal?

fictmich

Thanks! Yea it's VERY time consuming, I already did a lot of work on the inside of all 3 intakes and from there moved straight into the exterior smoothing and polishing. I've been working on it for around 3 months now and am getting really sick of working on them. I just have to polish the other half of the middle intake and I'll finally be done. I can't wait to get them installed and take the car to the dyno to see what I picked up.

I've been using my die grinder for everything which is why it's so wavey. I have a bunch of carbides for the heavier material removal and sand paper rolls for the rest of it. I can get you more info on what I've been using if you want.

88RS19

Yes, please more info. I want to do that to my other camaro in addition to painting the block&heads. I am also going to accent the whole thing with a chrome kit. ie; valve covers, oil dipstick, timing chain cover, etc.

grimmcs

iTrader: (1)

Hell yeah! Your gonna move now!!

But on a more serious note...Good job looks good. Is that polished or just sanded?

2.8RS

iTrader: (5)

Do you have an angle grinder? When I started to do mine I used a sanding disc that works really well. It'll flatten out all of those waves that you get from the die grinder.

fictmich

Well as I mentioned I start off with a carbide for the larger amounts of metal to be removed. You can get them in various shapes and sizes from many different places. I have some from snap-on, some from eastwood.com, and some that I picked up for cheap at local swap meets. You will need to make sure you have the right one for the correct application too (aluminum requires a different style than iron) After this you could go to stones, but I prefer sandpaper rolls because you can remove the material just as fast and they're cheaper to replace. Eastwood.com sells some stuff called grinders grease and I would strongly reccomend it when you're sanding especially when dealing with aluminum. It goes on the sandpaper and keeps it from clogging up with the metal (and far easier than silicone for aluminum) and it also keeps the glue from the sandpaper rolls from smearing all over your part making it look nasty. As far as the sandpaper rolls you'll want to start with a coarse grit and gradually get finer (like sanding anything else). You can buy them from many places but I've seen the best selections on summtracing.com and eastwood.com, don't forget to buy mandrels to go with them (or buy a starting kit). After you've gone as far as you want with sanding you can move into polishing. The finer you go with the sandpaper the shinier it will be (but at the cost of more time). For polishing, if you haven't done it before it'd be best to start out with buying a kit, they typically have pretty good instructions to get you started. Wow that was long....

Thanks! Yes it is polished in the first pic but not the second one shown next to the metal shavings.

Actually I went over to my neighbor's tonight to borrow his D/A for a bit and got most of it out. I'll work on it tomorrow for a bit with sandpaper and a block and see how far I can get with it. It already made a huge improvment with just a few minutes of sanding, too bad I can't use that technique with either of the other 2 intake pieces.

fictmich

The finished upper intake, no polish on this one.

2.8RS

iTrader: (5)

Very nice work, you went alot further than I did. It will look nice on your motor.

project89

iTrader: (1)

shweeet i was gonna recomend a file to flatten it but u got it pretty good,another option is an angle grinder with a flap disk, just spray wd-40 on the disk every few mins and it works like a charm

fictmich

for the compliments guys! I hope to have the old intake out and this one in by the end of the week so I can make it to the dyno saturday morning with the local f-body club. I'll keep you guys posted on that.

I actually did use a file for the corners of it, then I used a DA for the top and finished it off sanding it by hand just to make sure I got it all. Have you ever used the grinder's grease that eastwood.com sells? If not you should give that a try, I used to use silicone or any other type of spray I had handy but I found that and it's just amazing stuff to use. Thanks for the pointers though!

fictmich

Got all 3 parts of the intake installed, here's a couple pics. Sorry I forgot to get one of the middle intake.

forkvoid

iTrader: (1)

That looks awesome. Now to clean up the rest of it and have an amazing looking V6.

project89

iTrader: (1)

i see ur not running the ac,removing the compressor will clean up the engine bay alot if u remove the compressor u can even ditch the ac compressor bracket

fictmich

Yea, I am going to be cleaning out some of the useless junk around the engine compartment at some point and dressing up the rest. I will be using the a/c though, I just spent like $300 last year fixing it so that I can have it. I just don't have the belt hooked up for bringing it to the dyno on Saturday, however it looks like that's not going to happen now... Apparently my car is getting back at me for not giving it attention the last couple years and has decided it won't idle and will just completely die when I slow down to a stop.

2.8RS

iTrader: (5)

Check your TPS and IAC since you were messing around with the TB. Both of those out of adjustment will mess your idle up and cause the car to die.

project89

iTrader: (1)

idle relearn time

fictmich

That's exactly what I thought when it just didn't want to idle, however after I did that is when it started dying on me. I do have a code 21 for throttle position sensor, however I have referance and ground at the sensor, and the output is within spec at closed position. I'm going to try and bring it in to work today and put it on the scope and see if I see the sensor dropping out anywhere. Where I go from there, I'm not sure yet. It just upsets me that it has to act up now.

chevyracingrox

damn. your intake now matches your pretty valve covers.

your TPS is probably not broken. maybe try to clean the connections.

fictmich

Fixed! Turned out to be the throttle enhancer that was causing the problem, that's odd because it was only supposed to modify the WOT voltage... Anywho, time to do a few last minute checks then off to the dyno to see what if anything I picked up for power.

fictmich

So I brought the car to the dyno only to find out the airflow I picked up sent my mixture awefully lean (14.7:1) and wasn't able to actually make a pull on the dyno. I did just install an adjustable fuel pressure regulator today from TPIS (they're local for me) and wow is it a tight fit but it does work for those of you who are interested in getting an adjustable regulator. It did seem to fix the problem, only deal is I will have to remove the upper plenum to adjust it.

Here's how close it comes to the upper plenum (the gap will be about half as much for the stock pressure).




Even though they were not able to run it up to WOT I still saw an improvement of roughly 10hp and 20tq. I'm curious what it'll run once I get the mixture straightened out and can actually run it to WOT on the dyno.