My Ongoing Mid-Life Crisis

Like I said in the first post, the kit hasn’t even shipped yet (should soon), but I am getting antsy so I started the teardown last night. Going to be taking my time and hopefully enjoy it (most of the time at least). I know it’s going to be hard to stop once the hardware is here though.

First order of business is a little bumper repair. Hit a cat or rabbit the other night and it cracked the bumper is a few spots and knocked out the ‘fog light screen’. Thankfully the 2 cracks are on the underside and I think a DIY repair will work just fine and won’t be noticeable…..I don’t think I’ll post pics of that though, might give some Corvette owners a heart attack lol.

For gauges I got the dual aeroforce interceptor OBD gauges. It can display boost (I will run a 2 bar MAP) and knock. Has 2 analog inputs which I will wire my wideband and fuel pressure sending unit to. One thing I really like is the ability to set up alerts and you can also combine them. i.e. if AFR is greater than 12.0 AND boost is greater 2psi, or whatever you want. Every now and then the car will freak out “service car soon message” or similar with the dual OBD setup, I guess it’s trying to poll too often or something, I may have to mess with some settings.

I started digging into the engine last night. I was hoping to avoid removing the radiator, but this this thicker radiator/oil lines make it impossible to just remove the fan shroud by itself apparently. Good time to give it and the condenser a thorough cleaning. Next up is the damned steering rack…but second time doing something is always easier (did it during cam swap).

I need to figure out what to do with my PCV / catch can setup. I bought a cheapy regular catch can to put between the valley cover and intake mani and I also have 2 x 10AN bungs on the valve covers and a can that will work with those. Going to have to move my current setup I think to make room for the blower. I did the 10 AN valvecover mod for the old track setup and apparently it’s working well, there was a little oily residue in the can but I couldn’t get any oil to drain out, after thousands of miles of use. Should be plenty of ventilation for the added power and I can skip drilling/tapping the oil fill port.

 

how's that ryobi impact treating you?

 

I absolutely love it. Ever since I got it, I don't think I've used my air impact once. On the ST I had to change axles, which required removing the hub axle nuts... came off easily. I will be using it remove the crank pulley bolt here soon, we'll see how it goes but I'm expecting no drama. The bolt was torqued to 200+ ft-lb

 

Well, Ryobi has let me down. I could not remove the crank bolt with it. But it is supposed to be torqued to 240 lb-ft and likely that red loctite was used. Ryobi and I weren't talking after the incident last night, but I think we can still be friends.

1/2" ratchet with entire floor jack handle as extension did the trick though, but it was still super sketchy feeling.

Only big snag I've hit so far is removing the power steering pulley off the pump itself. It's recommended to go with the "C6" style which is all metal and isn't solid so you can reach some bolts behind it without having to remove it. Mine is plastic except for the center hub, and it broke while trying to pull it with the proper tools.

 

Got the pulley off, auto hobby shop on base + press ftw.

Apparently there is a backorder / A&A is out of stock of the v3s (self contained lube) due to holiday sale demands. They offered to change to the V2 (engine oil fed) and I accepted. The V2 Ti apparently has the "heavy duty" bearing and can take up to 55k rpm, which gives it a little more headroom than the v3. I already have everything apart, so it seemed like a good option and maybe what I should have done from the beginning anyways.

IW balancer arrived, but it's damaged unfortunately. Injectors arrived today and the rest of the kit arrives mid-week. I'll probably be held up by the balancer, hopefully another one gets shipped out soon.

 

Made some decent progress this weekend. Went relatively smooth, a few unexpected bumps.

New balancer came in, but my install tool wasn't long enough. FYI the Autozone rental tool "long reach harmonic balancer install" works great, even with the 8 rib IW balancer. Drilled the pan, drilled the crank and about finished up with the secondary drive kit. Steering rack is back in, did the DRM bushing while it was out, because I figured why not... hope it tightens up the steering a bit, but not expecting miracles.

The secondary drive lower bracket interferes with the Dewitts radiator with "c6 hard lines" oil cooler. I had to chop off the bottom part of the bracket and it just barely fit and you can still use another bolt to tighten the belt tension..thank goodness, feel like i dodged a bullet there.

Now I'm having an issue with the C6 ps pulley interfering with their custom PS line that comes out of the pump. Not sure if I need to just pull the pulley back off a little bit or if something else is amiss. I also noticed in those threads that the hose routes under the steering shaft....mine is all above and seemed to fit OK? Sent an email and pics to Josh. It seems this has come up on the forums before, looked thru those threads but didn't come to an obvious answer for my situation. Little stumped on this one.... or maybe I was just getting tired last night lol.

Next up is mounting the blower itself, hope there is no big clearance issue with the full size dewitts radiator and the intake.

Overall pic


Drilling the pan


Crank pinned with IW pin kit


Bottom bracket of secondary drive modified to fit Dewitts C6 oil cooler lines


PS pulley interference

 

The fitting into the PS pump has an angled seat, and needs ones? Could get grindy on it and raise the hose fitting up enough to clear maybe?

 

Yeah, the instructions tell you to use that end to make sure it clears and since it doesn't I just want to make sure I'm not doing something else wrong before I press on. I have a feeling that will be the fix though, it would be pretty easy to just grind down the end of the fitting a wee bit more. With the pulley all the way on, you can still turn in..so its rubbing but wont take much to clearance it.

I also had a hell of a time removing the stock pulley on that thing and have had the pump apart and dinged up the bearing and stuff a little more than I'd like. So I have decided to just buy a reman pump to take another possibility out of the equation and potentially save some headache down the road. Right not it's not too bad to take pulley on and off but once it's back together it's a big pain. The rebuild kit was $30 vs $85 for a reman with lifetime warranty etc... seemed like a no brainer to me and I don't have the right tools to do the rebuild.

Good news is I can still press forward on the install.... if I can get the motivation.

 

Well I was kinda under the weather for part of last week so didn't get a whole lot done. New reman ps pump appears to be fine, we'll see I guess. I swapped the hose ends on the PS line and it fit fine, no pulley clearance issue. Ground down the fitting a little to be safe, have tons of space now.

After that ordeal, finished the secondary drive setup, and mounted the blower and got the belts all situated.

One issue I did run into was getting the rear bracket of the blower installed. Of course 2 of the bolts bolt to the water pump and 2 to the head. Since my heads were milled whenever I did the port job.... the bolt holes did not line up. I had to do a little grinding on the water pump and elongated the holes in the bracket slightly. I wanted to be very conservative in this and not cut too much and possibly mess something up. It was a very snug fit, but I got it all to work. Just ended up taking a lot of time doing a lot of test fits.

Next step is clean out the radiator, condenser, and reinstall all that jazz for an engine startup to check for leaks, any belt issues before going forward with the intercooler piping and ducting.

 

Merry Christmas to you! I want a smoky burnout on 12/25

 

It's a GM, he may have an ECU connection problem before the burnout can happen.

Although, I would like to see this build come together nicely.

 

Cleaned the radiator and condenser. Did a couple test fits and trimmed the fan shroud for blower clearance. Changed oil, refilled coolant, PS fluid. Changed my existing tune to speed density (still running original injectors) to keep variables at a minimum for now. One thing that surprised me was it took a good 20-30 seconds of engine cranking to build any oil pressure. I always figured 10 seconds was probably a safe/overkill amount, but wasn't the case at all. Once it got pressure, it was making 40psi at 150rpm.

Car fired right up, no fluid leaks or belt issues that I can see. Got it up to temp, burped / topped off the coolant / oil / ps fluid and called it a day. I'm going to be out of town for the holidays, I really wanted to get it fired up before the break and make sure nothing major wrong on the install so far.... looks like I'll be able to rest easy lol.

Still left:

- Rest of the kit - intercooler / piping / ducting
- Injectors, BAP, MAP sensor, spark plugs
- Catch can / PCV setup
- Meth kit , weld on bungs

 

Guess I should update this for all your GM lovers.

Finished hotside piping... was pretty tight with the aftermarket sway bar and stock PS cooler, coupler is a little pinched, but it all fits.

Had some fitment issues with the cold side piping, the included TB coupler is only 3" long. Found a 4" long version on amazon which did the trick. Got 2x meth nozzle bungs and IAT bung welded into cold pipe.

Re-did the crankcase ventilation system. Still using the 2 x 10AN valve cover fittings, but had to get some different angle adapters and have them routed back into the air intake tract.

On the 'dirty' side of the pcv system I got a small can, and put it between the intake mani and "valley cover". Found a check valve that I could thread into the can itself to serve as pcv valve and keep the can/crank from getting pressurized under boost.

Finished the AEM WMI install. Amazingly everything work first try from electrical standpoint, so that was a big relief. I had to grind down the 2 meth nozzle bungs quite a bit to get the nozzles flush-ish on the inside. I was afraid of them being too far recessed and the spray hitting the bung wall/threads and killing the atomization. Took a quick video to confirm and also wanted to see how long the nozzles continued to spray after the pump shut off. I don't have a solenoid, just the built in check valves. I am running two 500 cc/min nozzles, which is about 15 gph.

Only thing left is to install the "boost a pump" and trim a single panel down by the passenger side front wheel for the hot side piping.

I also went ahead and swapped in the 80 lb/hr injectors and did a datalog to send to the tuner and check things out. It ran super rough and once the wideband came alive the thing was idling at 30:1 AFR! Closed loop fueling doesn't come on until like 100F coolant or something, but it finally got there and once it started trimming it ended up being at around +25-35 fuel trims.....lawl.

I'm using the same VE table that ran great on the old injectors.... so idk if this injector data is a little wonky or what's going on. I am going to spend a little time on injector tuning before simply just adding to the VE table. Big thing I want to play with too is injector timing. They say with a big cam you want to delay the injection until the exhaust valve closes, but it's not an exact science and just requires some trial and error to figure out what is most efficient for a given setup.

Then once that is squared away, ready to start the normal tuning process and get it ready for dyno action.

 

I haz some sort of belt issue. I don't think it's huge, but I need to take a few things apart and figure out what's going on.

Drove the car for a couple hours logging, hit around 5psi at 4k rpm and then backed out of it because it was running lean, but I did get to confirm that it is pulling timing in boost like it should etc., so that's good. That should put me at about 10-11 psi at 6500...give or take. Atmospheric pressure here is around 12.5psi, so either way, almost double what it was before.

After that long drive, no issues, shut the car off. Next time I started it up (cold), loud chirping at idle. Spraying water on inside of belt makes it go away for a couple seconds. All signs point to some sort of alignment issue on the pulley, so I got this laser alignment tool. Also there is 'belt dust' and one side of the belt sidewall looks a little worn already.

I started the car a few times since then to back car in / out of garage and one time it was silent...no belt noise. Let it run for a couple minutes and then it had a few weird tapping noises randomly over the course of 30 seconds or so. Then like an on/off switch the chirping was back. Only thing I can think of that really moves around and could make a sporadic tapping like that is maybe the auto tensioner, so that's also suspect to me as well.

I have the alignment tool now and just been too lazy to check it out... maybe tomorrow lol.

 

The video is pretty loud and the audio on my phone isn't great but it almost sounds like a bearing in an idler pulley. Is there anything that you could have hit when you sprayed the water?

 

Bearing was my first thought too. But after watching lots of videos comparing to mine and the fact that water eliminated it, I'm pretty convinced it's likely the belt at this point. If the bearing was bad.... I don't see how a little squirt of water is going to change anything. Vs the belt rubbing somewhere, the water serving as a lube for a couple seconds.

I've been super lazy and haven't dug into yet. Been too cold to drive it anyways lol.

 

I've made some progress, but shit still isn't quite right.

I used a spacer to measure the distance between the head and main bracket to make sure the bracket was indeed "square". Turns out the bracket was ever so slightly tilted or cocked. Not unheard of for a water pump to throw this alignment. So I did my best with a caliper to sand/grind down the mounting points until the bracket was square.

I also found a spot on the water pump where the belt like likely rubbing/belt shavings. Ground that down.

After that I thought I was in the clear.... no chirping, no belt dust for quite a while.

I finally ran the thing up to red line multiple times yesterday. Boost seemed to hold great, hit 14.8psi. I was super happy, then came home to find a few chunks of the belt missing. A few sections of maybe a foot or so of the outer edge of the belt missing, the whole edge didnt come off (yet). I'm guessing this is in no way a coincidence.

So I don't know now if something is still cocked or out of alignment causing wear issues, or its contacting something somewhere.

WOT, high rpm use I'm thinking maybe something related to or close to the auto tensioner, as that thing is probably moving around a lot at high rpm, during shifts etc.

So either way I gotta dig back into it... getting a little depressing. lol. But I feel like I am almost there.

 

14 psi? Probably still slow lol

Are you sure that the belt wasn't just damaged from the prior rubbing?

 

I put his new belt on after I did the last bracket "fix". I've gone thru like 3 belts now, swapping in new ones to "test" after trying something. 2 more belts orderd and on the way.... lol.

 

I have never done this buy maybe putting something like sharpie on the edges of the pulleys and turning the car over with the starter. See where it is rubbed off?