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Guess I missed where you asked me about the gopro last time I checked your thread. Anyways I like it quite a bit just haven't gotten out to use it a whole lot yet.
Sorry guys, I can't believe how long it has been since I updated this. It was a busy summer for me.
First things first, the metal power steering pulley that I installed has worked flawlessly. I put it through a lot of abuse later in the summer.
I didn't really change anything major on the car. I went from 3.73 gears to 3.08s.
I wanted more of a highway gear and had heard that turbo cars liked longer gears. The car felt a little bit slower initially, upping the boost to about 15psi did the trick. Car felt a lot better on the highway!
^^Was after getting back from a 250 mile road trip to a car show.
I managed to make it to quite a few car shows actually! This one was in town.
The car is seriously fast, from a dig I managed to beat a 2014 ZL1 with a few bolt ons. This was with me short shifting 1st and 2nd because I still have crappy all-season 235 tires on. He jumped me by about 3 lengths on the launch. Passed him like he was standing still around the 1/8th mark though!
Fairly modest plans for this winter:
- I want to redo some of my wiring, the crappy fuse holder I used started to give me problems towards the end of the year.
- I have upgraded c-clip eliminator axles to go in, once that is done I am going to put drag radials on the car. Thinking 275 MT ET streets, any insight on this is appreciated though!
- Hoping to get the headliner in this winter.
- driveshaft loop.
- Finish exhaust.
- Reroute the FMIC piping a bit. Hoping to learn how to TIG!
I am super impressed with how well these motors hold up to boost! I picked up a spare 6.0L in case *something* happens to this one. The Gen3 6.0 was still holding strong on 17psi 12 degrees peak on pump gas when I put the car away for the winter. Guessing the car was making around 700 wheel based on the hearts she broke!
Did a bit of a photo shoot:
I can't wait until next year!! I will update this as I make changes. Probably won't tear into the car much until early spring. Stay tuned for a JY, big turbo 55 chev build thread. I convinced my old man to join the LS side!
Last edited by LSChevelle; 12-11-2014 at 01:04 PM.
Nice update, glad to hear you got the car out and had some fun this summer! I need to do some rear end work myself, but I was only thinking of going to 3.42. What are your thoughts after doing the 3.08's? Were you running meth while on 17 psi, if so what nozzle?
You should post a complete engine bay shot once you rework the coldside
I wasn't running meth, I only ran 17 psi for the last couple of weeks. The car seemed to handle it quite well actually. Besides the traction limitations.. I like the 3.08s, if I had the chance to get a gearvendors or a 4l80e I would probably put the 3.73s back in though.
I will have a better idea on gearing after next year. I plan to put some good tires on the car and make it able to pass tech at the track.
I will definitely post up lots of pictures when I rework the cold side! My main concern is getting a filter on the turbo and getting the air inlet out of the engine bay. My IATs would climb a little bit on long pulls, wondering if maybe the under hood temps were getting high and the turbo was sucking in hot air.
So you haven't run an air filter the whole time up until at least December of 2014? Even to your car show 250 miles away?
That's correct, we have cold winters here so I drive the car from around April to Octoberish. I put a lot of miles on it though. Close to 15,000 miles on this combo since last year I would estimate (daily driven for work during the summer.) Everyone I talk to always cringes when I tell them this but I haven't really seen any adverse effects yet. Unless something large gets sucked in, which is unlikely given the inlet location. The turbo shows no wear on the blades and I recently had to pull the heads. I inspected the valve seats and they seem fine as well. I wouldn't recommend it if you have a choice, but it seems to work for me.
Where was this pic taken? You can see my creamie chevelle(at least Im fairly certain it is), right next to the light pole!
This was taken at the Grey Eagle Casino Wild Wednesday night. Every Wednesday they have a car show. I don't THINK it is yours, there is a cream 68 chevelle sleeper that frequents these meets, I believe that is the car. I could be wrong though!
Alright I have been fairly busy, just enjoying the car this summer. She is currently down for a bit so I will take some time to bring everyone up to speed.
I didn't end up working on it as much over the winter as I had hoped. Basically the spring was a lot nicer here than usual so I opted to drive the car the way it was instead of work on it.
I managed to get the upgraded, c clip elim axles in the car from Matt and I removed the crappy home-made pinion snub in favor of 2 inch lowering springs. By correcting the suspension geometry I eliminated any wheel hop.
Oh, I also had MT 275 ET streets on the car for about 2 weeks. Apparently I drive too much because that's all they lasted..
I have the AEM Tru Boost so I had a couple different boost settings. My everyday run around setting is 12psi. I have a spirited driving setting of 15-16 and my kill setting was about 18psi. As many of you know, 18psi on an s475 is approaching 750whp at sea level which is pretty much the danger zone for stock gen3 rods.
That was number 7 rod. Now for the story:
Around the end of April the car started making a very faint knocking/tapping noise from the bottom end. The sound was "harder" than a lifter tick type noise. But seemed to be too "soft" for a bearing noise. It was only audible at idle when you stuck your head in the drivers side wheel well. If you reved the motor up, it disappeared. It would make the noise when it was cold or hot, sometimes. The problem was it would seem to disappear for a couple days and then come back for a couple. The car still drove and boosted fine and I didn't want to tear the motor apart and not be able to find something wrong with it. So I made the executive decision to keep driving it until it got worse. I should mention that I also had numerous friends/racers listen to the noise, everyone seemed to think it was a cracked flexplate. Problem was, I had inspected the flexplate and it was not cracked.
I daily drove the car until the middle of July without any issues.
Street Wheelers car show in Lethbridge is one of the bigger shows in this part. I drove the car last year. This year, I was planning to put the car on a friends dyno and it was still intermittently making the noise. So, rather than get stranded I opted to trailer the car. It also helped that I got to try out my new tow rig/winter daily driver!
I made it there without any problems, she pulled pretty well for a 1/2 tonne with the 5.3 actually! Averaged 16MPG.
I drove the car around on kill all weekend, including putting it on the dyno. Hopefully you can see the video, I believe this is a public page.
She did pretty well! more than I was expecting. Unfortunately there was no rpm pickup for these runs so I don't know what the torque numbers were.
The first run of 479.3 was me playing around. I had the boost on "DD" mode with my exhaust cutout closed.
Interestingly, 591.8 is what it made with everything the same, just the exhaust cutout open. I attribute the biggest gain to the car actually running about 3psi more with the free flowing exhaust.
The next 3 runs are me playing with the "spirited driving tune" a bit. Mostly messing with A/F, which changes .5-.7 depending on the outside temp.
The last run was on kill. She made 675 to the wheels through an unlocked TH400 with a $200 dollar torque converter and a 12 bolt. 18-19psi/14 degrees timing. Corrected to sea level that number is apparently 742, I don't put much faith in that though because the car will probably never see that kind of altitude.
I was more than happy with that number! I beat the car the rest of the weekend, put her on the trailer and went home. The next weekend after some spirited driving she started huffing oil.
Pulled the motor to find the bent rod and a cracked piston. Turns out the tapping I was hearing was from the piston skirt contacting the crank counterweight, it had been bent a while. I think it finally started to use oil when the piston cracked. Which I attribute to the rod being bent for 3 months.
This also means that yes, the car made 675 with one bent rod. Not sure how badly it was bent but I imagine it would have made more with proper compression in number 7.
We inspected the block and it wasn't hurt.
As some of you may recall I purchased another LQ4 last year. This one is an 05 so it has the stronger rods. It was the middle of summer so I figured I would pull the motor and replace my shortblock with the 05.
I did the swap and had the car going for the next weekend. All was well for about 3 hours.. First time I really tried to boost the car (low boost) it burnt up. Did a compression test. 7 had low compression and 5 had none. So... out came the motor again only to find a cracked piston and a flame-slotted piston. Since I never verified the blocks integrity I'm thinking that this block may have had a couple of cracked pistons from the get-go. The cylinder will clean up with a slight bore so i will save this block for when I finally make the leap to a forged rotating.
A buddy of mine had a little incident with his 6L.. switched from a supercharger to turbo and wasn't quite careful enough with covering the intake ports..
The block is ruined so he said I could steal 2 good pistons and rods from it to get mine going.
Which is where we sit now! I am waiting on some rings and bearings to arrive from summit. I will be putting the 05 rotating into my good 03 block.
We are starting to gather quite the LS collection!
Hopefully have it running soon so I can enjoy it for a few months before winter.
Last edited by LSChevelle; 08-06-2015 at 12:45 PM.
Sorry to hear about the carnage, but it sounds like you got your $'s worth out of the first 6.0 and it's always nice to have a buddy with spare parts Dyno #'s are impressive and it sounds good in that video! I'm curious what is the elevation where you live or where it was dynoed?
Sorry to hear about the carnage, but it sounds like you got your $'s worth out of the first 6.0 and it's always nice to have a buddy with spare parts Dyno #'s are impressive and it sounds good in that video! I'm curious what is the elevation where you live or where it was dynoed?
Haha, I can't be mad at the gen3 motor at all! It more than paid for itself. The 3 hours of run time on the other one... little less impressed haha. Mostly just mad at myself for not taking the extra couple days to re-ring and bearing that one while I had it out the first time.
Elevation where I live is 3557ft according to google! Where it was dyno'd the elevation is: 3048ft, ambient temps were 27 degrees Celsius during the dyno runs.
Bent rod and 675 at the wheel. Gotta love it. I think im gonna swap my 308s in place of the 373s after reading you liked the switch.
Nice car. Good luck with the new powerplant.
Great thread! Suscribed... I have '65 Corvette/LQ4 as well. No turbo. I am from the Calgary area, now in Penticton - GREAT summers. I recognize many of the location pics, and I think knew the owner of the blue Nomad many years ago ....
Bent rod and 675 at the wheel. Gotta love it. I think im gonna swap my 308s in place of the 373s after reading you liked the switch.
Nice car. Good luck with the new powerplant.
Thanks! The funniest part is after dynoing 675 I thought to myself that the noise couldn't be anything to do with a piston/rod or it wouldn't have made that! Now I know.
Honestly, I think part of the reason I enjoy the 3.08s is because I don't have a drag strip nearby so the car doesn't see dig launches very often. They would definitely work, but if I was going to be launching the car a lot I think I would go to a 3.42 or so. What do you use your car for mostly?
Originally Posted by 00fxd
Great thread! Suscribed... I have '65 Corvette/LQ4 as well. No turbo. I am from the Calgary area, now in Penticton - GREAT summers. I recognize many of the location pics, and I think knew the owner of the blue Nomad many years ago ....
Hey! Cool to see another Western Canadian! I wouldn't doubt it. My dad had that car running in the early 90s. He did a complete restoration on it. Still owns his first 55 post too.
I really like your corvette! Always thought that would be a fun swap candidate.
Hey! Cool to see another Western Canadian! I wouldn't doubt it. My dad had that car running in the early 90s. He did a complete restoration on it. Still owns his first 55 post too.
I really like your corvette! Always thought that would be a fun swap candidate.
Did/does you Dad own an engine/machine shop just west of Calgary?
08-20-2014, 09:42 AM
