Gaskets are ls9's, and I had head studs before, and as you can see, I went with main studs as well as coated race bearings. I have a kit that ties together the front and rear vent lines similar to Kurt's kit. The key is the rings are gapped at 0.024" top and second, Diamond pistons, Scat H-beam rods with ARP2000s that will be torque to stretch. I'm also going to be running water/meoh to help keep things nice and cool. I have a few things up my sleeve with that as well.

It's not a big dollar build, but I did spend a little here and there where I felt it was worth it. My hope is to run it at 15 psi all day long and not worry about longevity. That should put me in the mid to high 600 range, maybe more, who knows. But if the itch is there, I will drop down in pulley size, but also switch over to a 3-bar tune and see what it does.

Honestly, on the street, I think high 600s is fine. It's not like I'm roll racing TT Gallardos lol.

 

Hmm, just ran across this thread, read it from beginning to end, had some laughs (well, giggles really) had some sadness for your difficulties, and now am waiting to see how things turn out.

 

Motor looks purtyyy!
Best of luck to you man.

 

That pretty much summerizes this whole experience. I've actually been pretty unemotional about it and haven't gotten upset at some of the **** that's happened.

Even when I popped the motor, my only concern was getting home safely. I honestly get as much enjoyment out of working on the car, modifying things, changing setups etc as I do driving it. So I looked at this opportunity to do the one thing I have never done, and that's build a motor. I just wish it had happened on my time table, but oh well.

Thanks. The block has been cleaned a good half dozen times it seems, it should be pretty by now.

 

Now you just need to get the wife and kids to leave you alone to put the motor and trans in the car next weekend. Sounds like a nice Fathers day present

 

That's the idea... actually, I would really like for my 5 year old son to hang out with me while I do it considering one day it'll be his.

 

that's awesome

 

I have a six year old son, and think the same thing. I can't wait to get him behind the wheel. Now get your boy out to the garage and get to work. I'm anxious to see this thing finished!

 

I officially have a rotating assembly tonight...



This entire process has always been about being a learning experience for me. Every step of the way, my machinist/engine builder has taught me what he was doing and explained the process. Tonight, I learned how to measure rod bolt stretch and proceeded to do pistons 2-8 after he showed me how by doing #1.

Just think, if this were GM I'd have to pay them to be doing this.





Tomorrow night I'm headed over to put on the heads, front and rear covers, and oil pan. Progress feels good, but built not bought feels really good too.

 

Looking Good Brien

 

looks sexy!!
looking forward to this

 

Well, the heads are on. Talk about being so much easier to do on an engine stand compared to in the car.



Tomorrow night, the oil pan, front and rear covers will go on as well as the front hub. Then it's time to bring the baby home.

 

Getting close!!

 

youre putting my progress level to shame man

 

Well, it's been just over 6 months sinth I popped the motor. To me this is taking forever, but I have to keep telling myself to slow down and enjoy the journey and make sure everything is right before moving forward.

 

I have to tell myself the same thing. You are supposed to enjoy putting it together and working on it. Looks good. It should be really strong this time around.

 

i hear ya man. i took mine apart at the beginning of feb, seems like its taking forever. finished the trans this weekend and was gonna put the motor together tonight, but there was bad juju at the shop today and i know better than to work on my own **** when theres bad juju in the air

 

I need to re-read the thread and try to sort out the **** info from the good info.

Otherwise, nice progress man. Sucks to hear about your bad juju but maybe its all over now.

Kind of a general question but how did you "teach" yourself to tune? I'm looking into getting into it, and when I get an F-Body tuning my own car and I don't want to F- it up. I know HP Tuners and a Wideband are needed.

 

Teaching myself to tune involved reading a lot, asking a lot of questions, and then actually going hands on and data logging a lot. Granted, I'm no expert or nearly good enough to get paid to do this. It all starts with having a general understanding of what you want the motor to do and then figuring out how to change the program to get it to do that. So in basic terms, you need to come to an understanding of what basic parameters need to be at, which is timing and air/fuel ratio. Everything in the pcm controls those two things in a nutshell.

So just like any experiment, you start with a control, which in this case, log lots of data and get your baseline. Then start to figure out what's happening that isn't correct, then make small changes in your program and then data log more and see if it's moving in the right direction. The net is your friend here because at this stage of the game, just about everything has been covered by someone, in a thread somewhere. But be careful just copying over other tunes. Typically, I take the advice of others and take the difference between their suggestion and my current tune and divide it by two to see if it is going in the right direction.

So to sum it up, am I comfortable tuning my car, sure, but I wouldn't touch anyone elses car because I don't have that experience or comfort level.

 

yeah we all started working on our motors in feb it seems. to hell with taking my time! I wanna get to the track!