Sprocket's Competition

[clocker]

Minor update.

Sadly, the first set of mandrel bends did not work out.
Put the exhaust too close to the oil pan and the drain plug could not be removed.

Another pair of bends is on the way and the exhaust should be finished tomorrow morning.

Here's a pic showing the close quarters they have to work within...


Circled in red is the end of the header flange.
From this flange to the top of the subframe is only about 6"...not a lot of room to work with.
The arrow points to the raw gaping wound where the "builders" thoughtfully hacked away the rear part of the subframe to clearance the oilpan.
We've discussed the need to box this closed but I think it'd be better to just get the right motor mount setup and avoid "repairing" this abortion altogether.
We'll see,

Next up are two shots of the finished PPF...



In the second pic, the red arrow points to stacks of washers that fill the space between the rear tranny mount and the bottom of the tailhousing/PPF.
I'll be machining some alloy spacer tubes for this when I get her to my house, so it's not as ghetto as it appears now.

You can also see the cattywumpus rear trans mount...this should be an interesting obstacle for the exhaust shop to get around.
I can't wait to see how they squeeze two cats and a resonator into this area...

[clocker]

Small update.

Exhaust is finished.
Looks beautiful, they did a great job snaking through the obstacles and keeping it tucked up.
Naturally, I have no pictures.

Also par for the course, the car wouldn't run.
Started fine but died after 15 seconds.

Finally occurred to me that something- almost certainly the ECU- was killing the fuel pump- it must not be seeing a sensor or something, so it shuts down the engine.
I jump wired the fuel pump direct to the battery (which has conveniently been relocated to the trunk) and she runs perfectly.

Drove her @10 miles back to my house with no problems...water temp maxxed at 190°, oil temp at 170° and oil pressure @55-60PSI.
It was 93° outside at the time, so I'm pretty happy with the performance.

The new clutch has fairly high pedal effort but is not outrageous and the tranny shifts nicely.
The new exhaust is aggressive but not ridiculous, no one seemed to pay me much attention so I guess it's OK.

I'll get some pics up tomorrow.

[j2k4]

How's the comfort level now?

You must be heading for the twisties soon, I would imagine.

[clocker]

She's almost a real car.
Not quite, but close.

No twisties till she's done.

[clocker]

Here's the exhaust...

[clocker]

Yesterday I finished up the fuel filter install.
Was not able to relocate the alternator as the geometry just didn't allow for a clear run of the belt around the waterpump...sigh.

Anyway, it was time to ferry the car from my house to S.'s and naturally, rush hour was the most convenient time to do so.
Remarkably, she drove just like a real car...sat idling in traffic without overheating and was completely docile.
Idle stayed steady, oil pressure and temp were absolutely nominal and even the clutch- which at first blush seems quite stiff- was no problem.

Steering and suspension were normal, car tracks fine on Denver's typically patched/rutted/multi-surface roads and only the new front facia's absurdly low front lip will be a problem...one must navigate dips and curbs carefully.

Once we button up all the interior she should be very liveable...kind of noisy and hot right now.
From the outside the exhaust sound is unremarkable...no one even glanced over at me in disgust, which is exactly what we wanted.
Certainly she rumbles- an astute observer would instantly know something was going on- but it's not overly loud or obnoxious.

Honestly, I was surprised.
Given what I consider some really dubious install methods and the unfinished state of the project, I was expecting a cruder, more brutal experience but that was not the case.

The T-56 transmission is more mechanical feeling than I'm used to, not sure I'm a real fan yet.
The gear ratios are probably not ideal for our application- first is essentially useless, second is where I started off, even on hills.

My involvement in this project will be winding down now I suspect.
I think S. is running a bit low on funds and he still has to get through emissions and have the car dynoed/tuned, so I may be sidelined for a while.

Sure has been interesting and fun though.

[clocker]

Well, so much for being sidelined.

Spent all day yesterday tracking down and solving two vexxing issues, both related as it turns out, to the fuel pump.

Long before my arrival on the project, S. had installed a Supra fuel pump- a popular alternative to the more common Walbro- necessary to provide the higher flow required by the bigger injectors.
At least, this has always been my understanding of what had happened.

Turns out, the pump actually came in the car and S. had merely added a relay/fuse to the wiring.
The wiring turned out to be the root cause of issue #1...intermittent stalling and engine cut out.
We had already spent considerable time/money chasing this through the ignition system...new plugs, wires, HP OptiSpark distributor, ignition module and coil pack...all to no avail.

The stalling continued intermittently and was getting worse.

Turns out, the relay assembly S. had installed (buried under the hatch plastics and thus, impossible to get to easily...of course) had an integrated resettable circuit breaker which was malfunctioning and killing power to the fuel pump.
After a few seconds, it would reset and begin working again.

Replaced the relay and installed a real fuse and viola!, problem solved.

The second major issue was a strong fuel smell in the car which we could never localize.
Finally removed the fuelpump access panel and JesusGawd, what a nightmare!
The wiring between the access panel and the pump cover on the tank was a total cobbler's nightmare...the +12v to the pump was bare, twisted wire and the fuel level sender wire was missing altogether (which explains why we could never get the fuel gauge to work) but even worse, there were two open holes drilled into the pump cover.

No clue what what going on here, can't for the life of me imagine how somebody could leave open holes in the gas tank, but there you go.
Used nuts/bolts/fender washers and RTV to plug the holes and surprise, surprise...fuel smell gone!
We have been extremely lucky that the combination of escaping fuel vapor and bare live wires didn't incinerate the car.

Also got the fuel gauge calibrated and working (easily done now that it's finally getting a signal from the tank) and hooked up and calibrated the speedo.
The speedometer was a bit of a trial...the ECU gets the signal from the VSS (vehicle speed sensor) on the transmission and then conditions the signal and sends it on to the speedometer.
Turns out, the Autometer speedo wants the unconditioned signal, it must do it's own processing internally.
Once we tried that, all was good.

Car now pulls strong (real strong!) through 6500 RPMs, which was as high as we dared run her without a tune.
The engine sounds like a bucket of bolts, possibly due to the solid (non-hydraulic) lifters and cheap, stamped metal valve covers.
Looking for some cast aluminum valve covers to put on after the valve adjust and I also suspect we have an exhaust leak at the header flange.
We're planning on wrapping the headers (and probably even further down, past the cats) with heat wrap and will replace the gaskets at that time.

All in all though, another great day of progress.

[j2k4]

Well, so much for being sidelined.

Spent all day yesterday tracking down and solving two vexxing issues, both related as it turns out, to the fuel pump.

Long before my arrival on the project, S. had installed a Supra fuel pump- a popular alternative to the more common Walbro- necessary to provide the higher flow required by the bigger injectors.
At least, this has always been my understanding of what had happened.

Turns out, the pump actually came in the car and S. had merely added a relay/fuse to the wiring.
The wiring turned out to be the root cause of issue #1...intermittent stalling and engine cut out.
We had already spent considerable time/money chasing this through the ignition system...new plugs, wires, HP OptiSpark distributor, ignition module and coil pack...all to no avail.

The stalling continued intermittently and was getting worse.

Turns out, the relay assembly S. had installed (buried under the hatch plastics and thus, impossible to get to easily...of course) had an integrated resettable circuit breaker which was malfunctioning and killing power to the fuel pump.
After a few seconds, it would reset and begin working again.

Replaced the relay and installed a real fuse and viola!, problem solved.

The second major issue was a strong fuel smell in the car which we could never localize.
Finally removed the fuelpump access panel and JesusGawd, what a nightmare!
The wiring between the access panel and the pump cover on the tank was a total cobbler's nightmare...the +12v to the pump was bare, twisted wire and the fuel level sender wire was missing altogether (which explains why we could never get the fuel gauge to work) but even worse, there were two open holes drilled into the pump cover.

No clue what what going on here, can't for the life of me imagine how somebody could leave open holes in the gas tank, but there you go.
Used nuts/bolts/fender washers and RTV to plug the holes and surprise, surprise...fuel smell gone!
We have been extremely lucky that the combination of escaping fuel vapor and bare live wires didn't incinerate the car.

Also got the fuel gauge calibrated and working (easily done now that it's finally getting a signal from the tank) and hooked up and calibrated the speedo.
The speedometer was a bit of a trial...the ECU gets the signal from the VSS (vehicle speed sensor) on the transmission and then conditions the signal and sends it on to the speedometer.
Turns out, the Autometer speedo wants the unconditioned signal, it must do it's own processing internally.
Once we tried that, all was good.

Car now pulls strong (real strong!) through 6500 RPMs, which was as high as we dared run her without a tune.
The engine sounds like a bucket of bolts, possibly due to the solid (non-hydraulic) lifters and cheap, stamped metal valve covers.
Looking for some cast aluminum valve covers to put on after the valve adjust and I also suspect we have an exhaust leak at the header flange.
We're planning on wrapping the headers (and probably even further down, past the cats) with heat wrap and will replace the gaskets at that time.

All in all though, another great day of progress.

How's about a few pics of the car from a few paces away for a bit of perspective?

This is about 2500 lbs. or so, eh?

If the thing has solids...gee whiz, who even uses them anymore.

Bit of a poser, that.

[clocker]

If the camera is available, I'll get pics on Saturday.

Yeah, solid lifters...imagine that.
Rednecks in Longmont still like 'em, I guess.

What was my car, something like 2740 full of gas, right?
Then yeah, 2500 for the FD would be about right, the sheetmetal is noticeably thinner- you daren't lean on the fenders- and the interior is made of dreams.

The car gets it's ECU downloaded on Monday and hopefully a test drive by Mike at Precision.
S. is convinced that there is something terribly wrong with the handling but cannot pinpoint where it comes from. Hoping Mike can either confirm and locate the problem or dispel the fear.

Saturday we'll be continuing down the (ever-shortening) punchlist...the end of my tunnel is definitely in sight, I think.

[clocker]

Back from the grave...

Still working on this POS.
And, since it's winter again, still freezing my ass off.

Rereading the thread, I see I left off quite optimistically...how naive I was.
Long story short, the car came with the wrong clutch slave cylinder- too much throw.
This caused the throwout bearing to literally get punched through the clutch (another $500 down the drain!) and ultimately destroyed the thrust washers on the crank...motor got trashed.

Found a brand new longblock- not as trick as the one we started with, only 400 HP at the crank- and traded our built motor + some cash, just to get rolling again.
Naturally, this was not the only problem.

We also discovered that the ECU was not out of the donor Camaro but instead was some truck unit.
Got new ECU but because it was a stock part, it immediately started throwing codes because it wasn't seeing all the sensors it expected.
Our tuner can fix this but we had to reinstall the old ECU just to get running.

So, the car now actually runs more or less correctly.
Now that she's driveable it turns out the suspension is crap, one blown rear shock and all the bushings in the back are shot.
Parts to rebuild the rearend are over $500 (seems like everything we need costs at least $500...), not including the shocks.
Probably going to buy a Harbor Freight hydraulic press and do the bushings/pillowballs ourselves since labor would be absurd to drop the whole rearend and have it done.

Brakes also need a complete redo but in the greater scheme of things this is a minor detail.

It's been nearly a year now since I got involved in this project and the light at the end of the tunnel is still but a glimmering mirage.

Hopefully the owner's will and pocketbook will prevail.