ezss

For those of you following along at home to the little saga with my car, I got it back from JD's high performance today.

Here are the changes from before -- please feel free to comment or make recommedations on any of them:
--Darton block was honed with plate and actually picked up a bit more bore from 4.125 to 4.135.
--new diamond pistons provided by JD, along with bearings, comp r lifters, rings. Similar setup to before, with ~11.0 to 1 CR
--reworked heads ( 4 angle job I believe) that flow 329cfm at 600 lift. Too bad my cam doesnt go that high. I will probably be looking at a different cam later in the year and some form of better TB and intake.
--comp adjustable rocker rollers replaced the yella terras. Pushrods replaced because they werent the right size and not even hardened...I wont comment on that. Preload set to .01" cold. According to JD that gets me to .002 to .004 warm.
--safer tune, showing 12.5 AF with cutout closed, max timing at about 28.5. Previous tune was around 13.0 AF and 32 degress of timing.

The car dynoed (with almost no miles on it) almost identical to before. Its actually about 3 rwhp peak (ranging up to about 5rwhp) less than before and about 5 peak torque less than before. Should pick up a bit more as the motor breaks in. I am going to run it for a while and then consider changing the cam, intake, and TB as mentioned above.
SAE peak numbers: 475/450 ( 496/474 I think were the STD numbers). 400 ft/lb tq still coming in at about 3300 rpm. I dont have the graph in front of me but I can post later if people are interested. Other modifications are on my webpage listed below (except I havent updated the new things yet)

The car is very driveable, other than they extremely annoying whine of my moser's 4.11s. It feels better than before in my limited testing ( i kept going sideways when I tried to get on it). No smoke coming from the tailpipes in my limited testing and it doesnt sound like its breaking up in the upper rpm band.

I think its worth mentioning, before people go thinking that JD really, really took care of me (he did fix me up though), that I was still charged a lot of money for this work. I am not really upset about it though if the car runs right, but it definately makes me feel that my struggle to get things was set right was only a partial success. However, nothing on the engine was left untouched, so bascially I partially shared the financial obligation of getting the car running again with a new motor.

Anyhow, I was happy to be driving the car again until I got stuck in my driveway trying to get the car up to the garage After several increasingly dangerous attempts to get it up the hill it ended up beached in a snow bank. I guess ill be trying to come up with some way to get it out tomorrow, cause its too damn cold right now and Ive got frostbite

11 Bravo

iTrader: (3)

That's good to hear, those are great numbers. I have not heard of your saga, but it is nice to know JD squared you away, he is installing/tuning my motor when it's ready. He needs to come back to the board.

blk~2000~Z28

With the new bore what is final cubic inch on the engine? Do you think that the same/lower dyno numbers are from the safer tune, new engine or a little of both? Just curious.
Thanks

ezss

I guess its technically a 390.xx ci now (it was a 387.xx before). The numbers I guess are the same-ish because of the reasons you mentioned -- seems to me that it should make more with the small amount of added displacement, less strain on valvetrain (from the pushrods not being cranked in too tight), and better flowing heads once the engine is broken in? Id like to see it hit 500/475 range once some additional mods (like the cam, intake and TB) are in-- I dont like the idea of being outdone by h/c cars I looked at some of those graphs, and the huge low end torque advantage I used to have is nearly gone by ~4000rpm.

ezss

JD inherrited the problem from JPR, you can probably do a search for my user name if you want to read it.

What are you having done to your car?

blk~2000~Z28

I think a solid roller might like those heads .

PCMFORLESS

Eric,
Glad to hear you made it home OK, but sorry to hear about the stuck in the snow problems.
The two biggest reasons I see for the slightly smaller HP and torque levels are
1. The motor is not fully broken in yet
2. I believe the previous setup was done with a short belt, this was done with all accesories attached and running

The safer tune does leave a tiny bit on the table, but I feel more comfortable with the slightly richer, less timing tunes.

Thanks
Bryan

ezss

Hey Bryan,
There was no short belt ever on the car to my knowledge-- but I didnt see the car dyno either time, I was just told this information.

I threw a soild SES light also on the way home -- I need to get an adapter for my laptop to ATAP it, but Im guessing its the TB sensor problem again. maybe that tb just isnt going to work on my car anymore for some reason?

PCMFORLESS

I may have been wrong (on the belt), I have done so many black f-body cars they all start to blend together in my mind

Let me know on the code. I do wonder if the TB is a problem especially with all the tweaking I had to do to get that happy medium on the idle.

Later,
Bryan

Bear

iTrader: (1)

Erik good luck with the setup. U probably have as many miles on your car as I do on mine over the last 3 weeks. Between work, cold weather and snow, I dont even have the car dugout yet. Let your car "settle" in a little before you start making changes, U dont want to go thru "that"again. We should hook up at Atco or Cecil (I am going in March) and try to get JPR and Bryan down their as well. We could get their input and help on the tune in the real world situation. Let me know. My Hals go on in a week or 2. I will be ready by March 11th at Cecil. Hope we can meet up.. Peace

Mike K.

Eric, glad to see you got your car back, sorry JD did not give you the full hookup.
It does sound like you are better off now though as you dont have smoke and your tune is safer. Good luck with the new setup and congrats.

Uthinkso

Glad to see that you got your car back, and can start enjoying it once the weather breaks.

Sounds like a pretty stout combo you have there, just wait until you get the bigger camshaft.

Scalpel

iTrader: (4)

Good to hear!

2001 Pewter WS6

iTrader: (43)

I followed the other posts about your woes. I am truely glad to hear thigs are going better for you. It is a sick gut wrenching feeling when you dump a ton of money into something and it doesn't come out as expected and especially when you have problems. Me and a few other people have been there and it doesn't feel good... Good luck with the new setup and I hope all goes better than expected.

BTW those cars pulling 500hp on a 346 bottom end, take a look at the A/F ratio. They are at like 13.5:1 and everything is probably running on the ragged edge. I don't think those cars would hold together very long in the real world with that type of tune. Let's see one of those puppies with 12.5:1 A/F and 28 degrees of timing and see what they pull down with all the belts on as well...

07BlueDevilZ06

iTrader: (8)

12.8-13.0 is a very safe tune and i normaly only tune to 28 deg of timing, my personal car only has 20 degrees due to me having higher compression i just want to be safe

george

99 Black Bird T/A

iTrader: (4)

EZSS, happy to learn you have your car back and it's running well.

VINCE

iTrader: (1)

Congrats on getting your ride back...

Chris@AP-Engineering

iTrader: (-2)

Good to see your back on the road! Have fun.

mikey

iTrader: (6)

Best of luck to you Erik.

maddboost

iTrader: (11)

Well dont try and get it out like these idiots.