Ryeguy2006a,
thanks for the update. Do you recall what the muffler P/N is?
When do we get a video of idle and maybe a drive by to showcase these mufflers? I always rememberd that story the I think you referenced about the Borla mufflers being the quietest while still being powerful.

I just ordered the Summit Ghost cam kit with matching lifters and springs along with a Terminator X Max (550-928) I really need to narrow down my muffler choice I’m hoping your car is quiet enough for me. Once I get my Holley stuff and VAPOR WORX PWM, I’m sure I’ll have ?s for you and Andrew.

keep up the great work
Jim

 

Here's a link Jim. I was planning on posting this up so this is timely.


Not the greatest video, but they sound really good. Maybe it's just going to take some getting used to, but inside the car doesn't have the greatest sound. But when my dad sat in the car and revved it for me, damn did it sound amazing. Although it doesn't sound as good in the cabin as I was thinking, it's significantly quieter. I think that the tradeoff is well worth it.

 

Ryeguy2006a,
thanks for posting. I want quiet with a little rumble. I think it sounds great.

Jim

 

Awesome update Ryan! Glad to hear she's cooking tires with boost now. How are the leaf springs handling it?

If you decide to build some, I laid out detail on how I built similar wheel cribs in my build thread post #1742. They've come in very handy. Lumber is pricey at the moment but it's something to come back to when/if the prices come down.

 

Pretty quiet, I like it.

 

Thanks guys, I just need to install my proper tail pipe hangers so it's not rattling.

Clint, the Hotchkis leaf springs are doing a great job. No wheel hop, or any strange suspension issues. Just pretty much a smoke machine on command haha.

 

Mission accomplished then lol

 

I don't believe it does burnouts on command until we get some video evidence!

 

It's been a few weeks since I posted. Finally took some time to clean up the wiring and tuck it nicely under the dash. I also installed the Custom Auto Sound radio that I picked up. It sounds great and I loaded it up with 1k songs and a flash drive for cruising. It sounds really good and looks way better than that double din unit I had under the dash last year.







I got all of my oil around to do my first oil change on the new motor. I've driven it around 200 miles on the break-in oil and decided it was time to get that oil out of there. At the suggestion of many of my friends who build motors, I wanted to cut the filter open to see what debris it collected. So I bought a used pipe cutter on eBay that would cut up to a 3" pipe. It was way cheaper than the dedicated filter cutters that I found. Not pretty, but I like the patina on it.







Unfortunately, I started having problems (I think coincidentally) after I installed my tailpipes. The car was running great, but then slowly started to develop a strange AFR spike. Almost like someone was turning a switch on and off. It would be cruising along at 14.7 right where I commanded it, then spike to 22+ and the car would nose over slightly. Give it throttle and it would clear up, but as soon as you drop down to a normal 5-10% TPS, it would start doing that again. I thought it was in my tune, but after logging it and checking things out, I think I have a hardware issue.

I pulled the plugs and understandably they were all indicating rich. Since it was dumping fuel to compensate for that lean condition. Plug 2 looks cleaner because I cleaned it off. All the others were as removed.





Now I think this may have been unrelated, but I found that Cylinder 7 had the strap pushed down and not sure if was even delivering spark. Would explain the fuel smell I have had especially at idle. But this was on the driver's side and my wideband is on the passenger side. So this wouldn't have explained the lean issue I was having.



At this point, I'm leaning towards a clogged/bad injector. I need to pull them out and inspect. I'm really hoping that is the case and not something deeper in the motor... Here is a screenshot of the log that I took where you can see it going crazy. The yellow line is where Closed Loop was turning on and off. As soon as it transitions the compensation spikes. The upper red line is AFR which is happy and where it should be, then something happens and the middle of the chart it spikes over 20 AFR.



Hopefully I can get this figured out soon. I'm missing out on some prime cruising weather. On a good note, I've officially fixed all the leaks on the car. I had a leaking pinion ever since I put the car together, but when I replaced the yoke, new seal and sealed the splines it hasn't leaked a drop. I also got the shifter leak fixed, and the few coolant leaks fixed. Hopefully I get this fueling issue fixed and I'll be back in business. I've got some brand new NKG plugs for when I get this straightened out. For now I'm just going to re-use these one's so I don't contaminate a fresh set.

Cheers,
Ryan

 

Good find on the tubing/pipe cutter. I never even thought of that. I’ve just got a filter cutter after trying to buy on from Jegs and getting jerked around. Summit to the rescue lol

i hope your problems are just the bad plug. But HOW did it get like that? It doesn’t make sense. Especially being that the car ran so strong prior. I’d regap that plug and put it in a different cylinder. Maybe on the bank that has the oxy sensor. See if the problem goes away or Merely changes cylinders. It would eliminate a possible injector issue or help pinpoint it.

best of luck

 

I'm back with an update and bearing good news. I found the source of my troubles! I had a bad spark plug wire where it contacts the spark plug. The terminal didn't "click" into place like it should normally and was loose fitting on the plug. It was a brand new spare MSD wire I had on the shelf and it was the last one I would have suspected. I test fit another spare I had and it clicked on tightly, so I swapped that one onto the car. I also installed the new spark plugs and it runs great, just like it did before. But the greatest thing is my fuel smell is almost completely gone now. I must have been running with that dead cylinder this whole time assuming it was my tune up. So word to the wise, check your plugs! The strange thing is I did check the header tubes and they were all hot enough to boil water when I sprayed them. I guess I need a thermal IR gun to confirm in the future.

Here is a comparison of the NGK BR7EF plugs to the Denso that I had in it. You can see how much taller the Denso is. I did use a borescope to check out the cylinders and pistons, especially Cylinder 8 where I had that damaged plug. I saw zero damage and nothing unusual. That was a huge relief.



In the meantime before I figured out it was the plug wire, I bought this neat little kit online that allows you to clean your injectors. It's a little adapter that goes on top of a carb/brake clean can and has a hole fit for an injector. It also came with a little harness with gator clips to activate the injector. I confirmed that I had a clean spray pattern on all the injectors, but I suppose it was good preventative maintenance if anything. It was super cheap on Amazon, $12.



I also forgot to share my father's day gift from the family. Some new Astrovents for my dash. The one's I have in there now are originals that look ok from a few feet away, but didn't work well and were pealing. These will make for a nice upgrade!



Now that the car is back on the road and firing on all 8 cylinders, it is an absolute blast to drive. It didn't seem to give a clean sweep from idle up and always had a little gas smell. With the new plugs (ordered some new plug wires too, but they are on the way) it was really easy to tuned up. Since I was having issues, I started with a fresh fuel table and a revised AFR table. It only took a few minutes of driving around for the fuel learning to kick in and it cleaned up really nicely. I thought I was happy with the tune before, but I'm way happier now. It runs really well now. Very responsive and idles perfectly. In my driving around I was able to clean up a slight bog off idle which was my only real issue I had before. On the way home I got a little brave and goosed it around a truck. Was going around 60 at the time, but to my surprise when I downshifted it broke the tires loose! This newfound power is definitely going to take some getting used to. Next on the list is a set of sticky tires!

I'm hoping to change the oil tonight and get it cleaned up for a car show in town. I've shared with a few people the issues that I was having with my Dad's 71 Chevelle and we finally figured that out with his car about a month ago. So this is the first time that we both have running/driving cars and can attend a show at the same time. Really stoked to park our cars next to one another. I'll post some pictures after the show.

Cheers,
Ryan

 

I love the simple injector cleaner.

 

agreed. Do you have a link? I think I NEED one. I’m really glad you figured out your problem. Simple and cheap. In fact. It lead you to the injector clean tool.

Have fun at the car show !!!

 

Ryan,
Did you ever find out how that plug got the grounding strap closed on that plug? At least it looked that way to me without my reading glasses lol

 

Hey Jim,

I inspected the piston with the bore camera and didn't find any evidence that it was making contact with the piston. I'm guessing I missed that the plug was like that when I installed them. They were a set of plugs I had on hand from another motor and wanted to just toss them in to build the startup tune. I'm planning to check the cylinder 7 plug again just to confirm it's not making contact though.

 

Great news is that my dad and I were able to make the car show and it was uneventful. No tow trucks, or any funny business. Both of our cars are running great and it was really cool having him there with me. My little guy helped me get the car all cleaned up so that was a fun time with him. I put some water in that spray bottle and he emptied it twice on the car and wheels.



I completely forgot to get some pictures, but one of my dad's friends was there and took pictures of all the cars. They sent them to us thankfully, but aren't full resolution.







My son loved checking out this firetruck that was there.



I already bought the upper radiator hose to replace the makeshift one that I bought to get the car up and running. When I was at the show, I had no less than 6 people mention that my upper hose was weeping. Well that was it, time to replace that hose.



Much better!



I also cleaned up the engine bay and snapped some pictures. Here's the engine bay all detailed and in it's final form. The only changes that I may make in the future may be some cooling modifications for the supercharger's heat exchanger. Some ducting to direct air across the heat exchanger, a possible rework of the mounts that will integrate in a dedicated cooling fan and adding a larger reservoir.









Cheers,
Ryan

 

That new hose really cleaned up the front end! Details do it...
Looks like your "detailing apprentice" is getting with it! Too cute!

 

Love seeing kids checking out cars Start Em young. The engine compartment looks great !

 

I agree, I think you have a future fireman in your family when he grows up.

 

Thanks for all of the input and feedback guys. I used almost all of those tips and believe that I've fixed the high IAT issues. I'll get into that shortly. I finally got around to doing my first oil change to change out the break-in oil and assess for any bad news. I'll be honest I was kinda dreading this and put it off. I was pleasantly surprised to find no major metal shavings or chunks in the oil. To be expected after all new bearings, there was a slight amount of glitter in the filter, but nothing in the oil that I drained out.





Then I swapped on a new matching set of plug wires to get rid of the mismatched set I had before.



I made some templates out of cardboard, and modified my HX brackets to tip the whole exchanger forward.





Once I was happy with the fitment, I welded the brackets back together. I also removed the J-nuts that I had before and drilled/tapped the brackets so it all fit a little tighter.



I was really happy with the cardboard templates, so I made some shrouds out of a spare piece of stainless plate I had.



Added some side filler plates and trimmed the upper piece up for a cleaner look.





Hard to get a picture of the "finished" product, but I wanted to test it out before I went and painted everything. That way if I had to modify it, I wasn't re-doing anything. Took the car out for a drive and unfortunately it didn't seem to help much at all. Slightly lower, but the temps still crept up to about 140* AND it was a cooler day than when I had the really high temps. Then I hot wired the pump like was suggested and watched everything. Well come to find out after about 3-5 minutes of running the water gets aerated! The water looks almost gray. So then I would kick the pump on and watch the water flow through the stock clear reservoir. What was happening inside is that the high volume circulation pump I have was draining the feed hose before the return could feed it more coolant. Once it all leveled out, the water became aerated. Air mixed with the water doesn't bode well for cooling. Thankfully I bought an Edelbrock reservoir a few weeks ago so I quickly hooked that up to see if this would help. Well it certainly did as ended up adding around 60oz of water even though that reservoir is only about 32oz. I kept working the hoses and shaking the HX and more and more air bubbles came out.

Went out and tested again with the newly installed reservoir and Bingo, that was the issue. Air in the system and a powerful circulation pump that was draining the lines. Oh and the JD bottle was for spill support not moral support haha.



After letting the car idle around this is what the temps ended up being. I bumped the on/off temps for my coolant too and that seemed to help with my radiator cooling too. It was about 78* when I took that picture.



Then I took the car to my favorite road, and let it spin through 3rd.



Going up my driveway I found this little guy running around. Had to chase him back into the fence haha. Sometimes I'm so glad that I have these guys as neighbors, rather than people haha.



My dad and I went to another car show on the 4th that was about 20 mins away. All the temps kept in check and it was a good time. I remembered to take some pictures this time!







To top off a great day at a car show and the car running tip top, I looked down on the way home at my MPG's. Cruising around it was clocking around 20-22 mpg. I took a picture and sent it to a few of my buddies where on coast, it was clocking over 30+ mpg's haha.



Can't wait to put some more miles on it. Next Sunday I have my second AutoX event, so I'm really looking forward to that. So glad that I got all of the bugs worked out.

Cheers,
Ryan