97 Corvette Daily Driver

Worked on the FAST today.

Here you ca see the lower.

And porting work

So the FAST intake is such a high quality part its sealed up with a cut up rope sea and pookie, so first step was removal of old pookie. Then install rope seal. berkeley this.

Seal in, looks like when you get the seal you get enough extra to do one runner seal, so if anyone is doing this in the future dont mess up the perimeter seal.

Then you put some pookie at all the junctions and bolt the upper on. All done.

I decided not to paint it today, because I still havent decided, Id like the relatively stock look of a textured black intake and I think itd look good with red covers, but damn does this gray look good. What do you guys think?

I say leave it gray. Looks good.

I'd leave it, only because I think whatever finish you put on won't be as good as what the factory put on. There are a lot of nooks and crannies to clean and prep.

I'm in the minority paint it wrinkle black.

Thanks to this thread I"m gonna buy a god damn c5 corvette now. SCREW YOU.

Decided to leave it grey for now. Its easy to yank off. After i do my valve covers, of it needs to be black ill pull it off and do it.

So Im thrashing to get the car ready for a road trip for my buddies ring dunk, Ill use that as a shake down trip cause when i get back ive got 2 days to get the Fast on to get ready for the dyno tune.

So today i did a fuel filter.

Fuel in old filter

Then its been about 6K miles sice i did the clucth fluid.

Seriously if you have an ls1 fbody or corvette do this often it only takes about 15 minutes, and it will never stay clean but apparently doing it often can help prevent the many clutch hydraulic issues these cars have. Its amazing how dirty this stuff gets and how quickly it happens.

This is what i finished with. It will be black as night before my next oil change.

Gonna have the fast intake and 85mm maf on, if everything goes okay, by monday then a dyno tune at Simple Quick Racing on wednesday.

Anyone care to guess what a bolt on m6 c5 with a fast intake will dyno.

Alrighty so I took some time off from work to get the intake on and get the dyno tune done.

Starting to tear it apart. Once the intake is off, you have to flatten the early LS1 steam pipe, most people convert to the later style with only a crossover in the front but Id rather have the 4 corners vented. Ports are really clean.

Time to dress the FAST & old TB & MAF vs New.

Go to put it on and the MAP hits the firewall, so you have to install a fitting and relocate the map with a vacuum hose, and the PCV hose doesnt fit behind the intake, so you have to jam it WAY down behind the engine and lengthen all the hoses, and install the button head bolts so the intake clears, which it still doesnt, more pounding on the steam pipe, and the new 90mm TB doesnt have a fresh air pipe so you have to put a fresh air source after the MAF. We ended up finally getting the intake to fit after putting it on and taking it off about 15 times. Torque it to spec, and the get the Vararam back on.

All the poor fitted lines were a test fit to see where to run everything. Prime the system and I have a vacuum leak, at an injector Oring. Pull the rail and go get injector kits.

Put the new rail back on and have a massive fuel leak, I cut an oring at the rail reinstalling. Get some new o rings and put them, and prime system, all is well. Clear fuel trims and fire it up, seems to run okay. Go to drive it and it drives okay, bring it back to the house and once it idles down, the idle is all over the place, I grab some carb cleaner spray it under the intake. MASSIVE vacuum leak. Repair failed. At this point im so mad at all the fitment issues with the FAST, I say screw repairing it again, and just order a different intake.

2 days later this arrives from Summit.

Its a BBK SSI intake. I got it pretty much because it accepts the factory intake gaskets and fuel rail, which most of the other intakes dont do both of, dynos with the older FAST with a 78mm TB, is drop in, and was readily available.

First you have to dress it and install the intake gaskets and the lower plate, its there for porting later.

The runners have a little clean up done.

The only problem with the BBK intake is the injector holes are kinda sharp and not tapered, so I tore up a few more injector orings, I just hit them with a dremel, it took about 1 minute and then they slid right in. Then it drops right on, clears everything and has provisions for all the factory stuff. Only crappy part was the stock intake bolts, they are too long so it comes with some janky ass hardware. I really like the factory bolts since they have a pilot, but the aftermaket ones worked fine, they are just ugly, I will replace them with something prettier.

I ended up using the stock TB and MAF, and put the Fast up for sale, Ive already got one offer. Im so happy with the BBK, has made a noticeable difference in power. Gonna try and make it to the track this weekend. Gonna wait on the dyno tune, since I still have the stock TB and MAF. Gonna go with ported TB and MAF

So now that I got my car back together, I got to spend some time on my buddies foxbody today. Its been sitting for a while, because of some drivability problems. He got it out and drove to the house last night and it barely made the 10 mile trip, it ran terrible. We did some quick driveway checking. Fuel pressure good, no dead cylinders, nothing abnormal under the cap, MAF fine, everything hooked up, corrected the loose air duct causing unmetered air to get past the MAF, and no major air restrictions, but it still ran terrible. It would backfire and pop and hunt for an idle and barely run. So we gave up and he took off. He called me when he left and told me it was running like a champ and halfway home then started running bad again.

So this morning me and a buddy went over to help him work on it.

Before:

Youll notice the dark ass headlights and taillights, so we swapped them out

After:

And we are also pretty sure we traced down were the problem is, appears to be a wiring issue by the PCM, we didnt have time to fix it but at least we narrowed it down. It currently seems to be running great.

http://vid79.photobucket.com/albums/j131/TAEnvy/Corvette/Parton_zpshge15z9c.mp4

Great looking Foxbody.

I'm guessing you'll put around 370 to the rear wheels. You have a cam, headers, exhaust, intake and the manifold right? I'll guess 370-380.

No cam just bolt ons, and the dyno was canceled because the fast broke, and i stuck with stock tb and maf

So lately it feels like I work on my friends junk more than mine. I spent my day off putting a motor together for a buddy. He lost an oil pump about 2 years ago in his 6.0 Chevy 1500HD. He drove it for a while with low oil pressure before we were able to get a pump in, after we got the pump in it was too late. So the truck sat for a while and a few months ago, he yanked the engine and started the build.

Took the stock bottom end LQ4, had it rebuilt and refreshed with new stuff and ARP rod bolts, stuck some 243 heads on it, and a small Texas Speed cam (so he could keep the stock stall), and the fancy oil pump and timing chain the LS1 guys love to run. Truck already has LT headers, a Fast LSXRT 102mm intake, and KN intake tube.

Got it together ran and it like a champ, idled and drove great and was really tame. It even made 355whp and similar torque through a 4L80E and 14 Bolt.

It lasted 800 miles and let go, piston broke, bearings and crank are trashed. He found a freshly built LQ4 with a big cam in it and got it cheap, so we are switching over the good stuff from his original motor to the "new" motor.

Where we left off last time.

Almost stripped, all that wast left was to pull the fancy rod bolts out for the new motor and yank the rods and pistons to sell the block.

"New" motor on the stand. Pull the head studs, clean the E36 M3 out of the deck, bores and heads, along with anything we can reach with a rag ( the motor has been left open for a while), reinstall studs. It took us a few hours to get it cleaned up, owner requested no abrasives be used on the deck, so we scraped and scrubbed with acetone A BUNCH, before it was acceptable.

Gaskets on, drop the heads on, torque the heads down, install timing chain and check timing, get the valve train on, and install valley cover. Last thing we need to do is up front, just get the oil pump and front cover on. So we pull the pump apart to clean and inspect it, little metal but all cleaned up, we put the pump on and install the pump gears, then go to put the oil pump cover on and one of the bolts is covered in aluminum. It pulled all the threads out. This is the first time this pump has been apart since he got it from TSP, so we hit a dead end.

Dropped the VCs on and put a trash bag over it to seal it up. Hes gonna call Texas Speed tomorrow and see if they will do anything about the oil pump, if not we have an OE one and a Melling, one of those will get ported and shimmed to up pressure, kinda hoping TSP will help him out though. So next time we just need to get the new pump on and timing cover, then the machine shop is gonna put the new rod bolts on for him so they can check the stretch. After that shes ready to go in, it takes us about 4 or 5 hours to get it in, dressed and ready to fire, so its close.

Then we just need to get some Electric fans on (to replace the fan clutch) and figure out why his expense ass throttle body and x link are causing a check engine light, he's been rocking the stock 76mm TB on the big ass FAST intake because he got tired of screwing with it.

FYI he hates his FAST as much as I hated trying to install mine, his was a WAY bigger nightmare than mine.