Gary you need to open up a speed shop once you retire from the Military. You have all the skills to be successful! You have the car to prove your results.

 

Thanks Tony....that's quiet a compliment. But I'm afraid to be completely sucessful I'd need to hire you on as Lead Custom Fabricator. Interested?

 

You would be better off without me. Thanks though

 

Despite being pretty sick over the past week I still managed to get some little things done on the car this past weekend towards my goal of being track-ready by 23 March. Moving at a snails pace I was able to set my Caltrac bars and check my pinion angle, change the transmission fluid and filter, change the oil and oil filter, and drain and replace the old (and somewhat rusty) water with fresh distilled water and a bottle of Redline Water Wetter. Hopefully the Water Wetter will add some corosion protection because I refuse to go to antifreeze in this car.

I was really happy with how my trans fluid looked. This was the first fluid change since the tranmission was brand new. Since then it's had 20-25 dragstrip passes and nearly 1100 street miles (minus the passes....LOL). The fluid came out bright red and after dropping the pan I found only minimal clutch dust suspended in some of the leftover fluid in the bottom of the pan.



Monday I was able to drop my front wheels off at a local garage to have my new Coker Pro Trac tires mounted up.



All I have left to do is:

1) Make some NA street passes to check my A/F ratio after making some recent carb tune changes.

2) Get my bottles filled.

3) Drain the fuel cell and refill it with 93.

4) Swap out the spark plugs and make some test hits on the street.

That all sounds easy enough but the problem is I woke up this morning to this....



We got probably 8-10 inches so far and it's not supposed to stop snowing until after dark tonight. I'm sure the snow won't stick around long as it's supposed to warm up by the weekend but the problem is the roads are gonna be covered in salt. If we don't get some significant rain to clean them off before the 23rd there will be no street testing at all. I'll just have to cross my fingers and hope that everything works when I get to the track.

 

Hey Gary, thats a awesome car your building, i can only wish that my 73 SC camaro come out as nice as yours whenever i get a chance to start, keep up the GOOD work :-))

 

I only finished page 1,,have many more to read...

Wanted to say you have done an exceptional job on the chassis
?? What did you use to strip the paint on the under body,,lol you never leave any tools or mess in the pics so its hard to see how you did it...

?? Can i use that timing chain tensioner system on my 5.3 LM7 motor,,my chain just sit their floppy and i worry.? thanks looking forward to more of your pages..
Dennis

 

Thanks for the compliment. Hopefully you start a thread when you get started on it....let me know so I can check it out. Good luck with it!

 

Yeah, you've got a couple more to go.....LOL.

Thanks man. The early pics are just a sampling. I had a whole "restoration" build thread going on a second gen specific site and just cherry picked a few shots I had posted over there for this thread. I really didn't start this thread until I was ready to start the LS-specific part of the build.

Anyway.....to answer your question......The car was originally bought in New York state in 1973 and then shipped to Tucson a year later by the original owner. So the car still had the factory under coating on it that was typical of northern-bought cars back in the day. So The first thing I had to do was remove all of that. For the most part I used a pneumatic needle scaler to "chizzle" it off, but it the more stubborn parts I had to use a propane torch and scraper. Then I used a series of wire wheels on an electric grinder to strip the paint that was still holding on underneath the under coating. I fooled with some chemical aircraft paint stripper under there as well but none of the stuff I was buying locally was working for anything other than dripping in my eyes. So basically it was just a lot of time spent on my back under the car. Probably not the "best" way to get it done, but it was effective. If I had to do it again, I'd probably put the car on a rotissery and flip it over to do the work but at the time I didn't have enough storage space to tear the car down that far (no place to store the extra parts such as interior and front end sheet metal and subframe).

I'm not sure on that. You'd have to pull your timing cover and see if the older engines had the provisions in the block to bolt it on. I think the chain tensioner was new for the Gen IV motors but I'm not sure if they used existing bolt holes left over from Gen III motors. You may poke around in the internal engine section for an answer. I'm sure if it can be done there are probably plenty of guys doing it.

Good luck!

 

To throw my cents in, I had a 6.0 with a brand new LS6 timing chain and it was loose. I had a 408 built and used a K-tech timing chain on new GM gears and it has slop in it as well. It is normal to have about 3/8" slop or at least this is what I was told. The old SBC had a tight timing chain setup for a couple of reasons, not only did it drive the cam, it also drove the distributor, the oil pump, and in most cases the fuel pump. Hence the need for a tighter setup. Sorry Gary for the hi-jack.

 

Hey Tony....no need to apologize. You know your input is always welcome here. Those are all good points. It's very likely that GM updated the gen IV motors with the tensioner to address a noise issue and not a mechanical necessity. It's been a while since I've had the timing cover off the ls1 in my 99 TA, but I recall its timing chain being rather loose as well. Again, I'd bet the tensioner was added to reduce internal engine noise but that's just a guess.

 

Here are a couple of pics of Gary's car at Maryland today. The first one is all motor and the second is with a little power adder. See if you think it made a difference. Gary can give you the run down.

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All I know is Gary did a hell of a job putting together a consistent combination.

 

Here is the N/A pass video using the GoPro:

 

Damn. Gary is getting a lot if air under the tiers. LOL. I wasn't expecting THAT much LOL

 

First off I'd like to say a HUGE thanks to Tony and his son for driving all the way up from NC just to head out to the track with me! It was great to finally meet you in person even though it seems like I have known you for years already. Definately a great couple guys to have in your pit. Tony and Braden had all the action covered with setting up the Go Pro, a still camera and a video cam from the bleachers. Very cool....can't wait to see it all. Please feel free to keep posting up the vids and/or pics as you have time Tony.

I also have to thank my buddies Scott and Dan who came down from PA and also took video with my camera, and my local buddy Bruce who was a big help in the pits. We had a long day at the track but I couldn't have asked for better weather with negative DA all day long and plentiful sunshine. The whole story will unfold with time but the bottom line is, the best NA pass was an 11.17 @ 120.12 on a 1.58 60' and the best nitrous pass was a 10.09 @ 131.05 on a 1.39 60'. This came after a lot of trial and testing.



Now that I've had time to park my trailer and put away all the tools, I'll take some time to go through the vids that were collected from my camera and get some of them posted. Then I'll give a blow by blow of how the day went down.

 

Dayum dude...brutal. 10.09! On one hand you can pat yourself on the back for the accomplishment, but now that it is so close to 9's its almost criminal you didn't make it. I have no doubt you'll be in the single digit club with this car this year!

Great job man...looking forward to the vids!

Dave

 

Congrats, great work.

 

What hit were you playing with today to hit the 10.09

 

Thanks to everyone who commented so far. The tune up was a 53n/47f @ 5.5 psi hit, so just hair over a 100hp probably (47n is usually considered an over-rated 100hp jet). All passes were made with this jetting and fuel PSI and all but one were made with 950psi bottle pressure; one was only 900psi. Straight 93 octane fuel was in the cell with no race fuel or octane booster added. As for going for 9’s yesterday….it was definitely tempting but I had a feeling I better take it slow and not get greedy too fast. Things may have been fine but getting greedy with nitrous is a slippery slope so I walked away while I was ahead….LOL. Plus I was getting very close to the rev limiter in high gear at the stripe. The limiter is set at 7500 and I was going through the traps at or near 7400.

The first pass was a baseline NA pass and was a new personal best. The air was phenomenal with a DA of -934ft which was a huge reason for the huge improvement over my previous best of 11.35 @ 118. This would be my only NA pass for the day.



After swapping out the plugs for some -7s and putting a bottle in the car, I made my first nitrous pass. I started with what I figured was a conservative timing number of 28 degrees (I run 34 degrees NA). This wasn’t a completely clean pass as I lifted briefly just shortly after the launch. I was running full exhaust on my car so leaving next to a blown dragster (see the pic Tony posted) gave me a lot of popping and banging to listen to that wasn’t actually coming from my car. But it made me nervous enough to want to lift for a brief second. Then I reached down, found my sack and got back into it. The DA for this pass was -767ft. Here is the result.



After reading the plugs, it appeared the car could tolerate another degree of timing so I increased total timing to 29 degrees. The mph dropped off drastically from 129.82 to 128.40, which was an indication that it didn’t like the timing increase. But, since I was still trying to wear off my “ring rust”, I managed to go from 1st to 3rd, and then quickly back into 2nd on this pass, so I wanted to try the same timing again to validate that the mph loss was from timing and not my driving. DA for this pass was -755ft.


On the next pass everything was left the same as the previous pass with 29 degrees of timing. This pass verified that the car definitely didn’t want the additional timing as mph fell off yet again to 127.37. The DA for this pass was -345ft.



Having confirmed the car didn’t like 29 degrees of timing, I moved it back to 28 for the next pass and was able to back up and improve up the results from the first N2O pass. DA for this pass was -337ft.



After discussing it with my “pit crew” it was determined that the car may actually want less timing than 28 degrees. So we took timing back to 27 degrees for the last pass and were rewarded with the best 60’, ET, and MPH of the day. DA for the final pass was -344ft.



This makes makes me wonder two things. First I have to wonder if it would have picked up yet again at 26 degrees or if I found the sweet spot for this tune up at 27. Also, since I’m pulling 7 degrees from my NA tune for a ‘roughly’ 100hp hit…..it makes me wonder if 34 degrees is too much timing NA and I may pick up by removing some NA timing.

 

WOW Gary. thats hauling ***.!!!

 

Ok I finally got the videos in order, a light editing, and save to YouTube. They should all be in order, The GoPro was used along with the hand held except for one. Hope it turns out: