Happy Memorial Day weekend to all!!
to all usa service men and women and soldiers from the past... I honor you and your sacrifices..

Okay some may know I had bought a ton of parts for my 1998 Pontiac WS6 for the aluminum 5.7 liter and ended up having a 5.3 liter iron block in the car. Totally unexpected surprise....
After purchasing a new slew of parts from the WS6 store such as the ASA HOT Cam on a 110 LSA centerline .600/.600 lift installed with new PAC springs and new 7.400 pushrods with new roller rockers and everything all set up..... Sadly the car is running horribly. Took it to south New Jersey to get it re-tuned again and over about 2200 rpms on up it just breaks up and only made 121 hp on the dyno... Kessels tuning stripped down the tune removing the mass airflow so in a speed density tune now and nothing is working so ill have to tow the car back home and start ripping it all apart all over again looking for bad or bent pushrods... look at the following:
compression check
Bad plugs
Bad wires
Bad coil packs
Bad wiring harnessess
bad or broken valve springs..
bad or broken rocker arms..
Probably go back to stock rocker arms with new trunions possibly
use my bore scope and look in each cylinder for any issues...
The kooky part is the car is not throwing any codes at all
..
Did a smoke test and had no vacuum leaks...
and everything else appears to be in great shape and no issues at all. BILL kessel at the tunibg shop said that i do some of the cleaneat well done work he has seen in years.

I just purchased brand new 58 pound fuel injectors from the fuel injector clinic and new fuel rail hold downs from Michigan motoraports because these new injectors are tall and needed all new fatter o ring seals to stop fuel leaks and keep the fuel rails straight not cocķed at an angle ..... did nothing... stopped fuel leaks but car just won't run worth a damn.
have read a few posts on here and other LS forums and pages and nothing is clearly described what too look for...where to start etc.
my philosophy is Keep it simple and check the obvious things first. So I plan on
1. Pumping the old 6. 7 .8 monrh old furl out of the tank
2. Change the fuel filter
3. Test all 8 brand new plug wires to ensure they are not broken
4. Pull fuel rails and intake off and inspect the valley
5. Pull the valve covers and look for any broken springs and manually rotate the engine to see if all valves are moving and not hug up or binding
6. Pull all rocker arms off and look for any bent pushrods

If everything looks okay then I guess I'll have to yank the headers and the heads and possibly pull the can out and inspect it for a wiped lobe or lobes and see if the oil is full of metal or not

I'll check to ensure all the coil pack wiring harnesses are okay and no broknn wires and they are all good
check the knock sensors that i moved to the outside of the block by the motor mounts to maķe suee they are good...
Check the brand new ac delco crank position sensor to make sure thats okay and tight and connected to the new harness pigtail i got with it.

I dont know what else i should look for or what else to do
i am wide open to suggestions. I replaced every part piece bolt washer harness and all as i went thru and dug into this engine
i just wish the computer would throw a code so it could at least point ne in a direction but its not.

Anyone ever have anything like this vefore or suggestions of what to look at and where to start or any ideas??? I'm desperate to drive my car again uts been way too long and a cam swap should notbyield horrid results like this wver. My first cam swap I did in 2000 on my first 98 trans am with the original GM HOT Cam on the 110 centerline was perfect and took like 5 hours and ran great.
so if anyone has any suggestio s...tips...tricks. anything I should look at or inspect or start with I would be grateful

Thank you all

Happy Memorial Day to everyone
Jay

 

Before anything else do a compression and possibly even a leak down test. Are you sure the engine needs a factory length pushrod? First off this isn't the original engine and you don't know anything about the internals or even if the heads have even been milled which would probably require shorter pushrods. My guess is that you're not building much in the way of compression becasue the longer pushrods are keeping the valves opened.

 

If valves were hung open it likely wouldn't start. If the pushrods were too short they would make lots of noise. If its breaking up I'd check fuel and spark first.

 

Check to make sure all grounds are good

 

In my experience, whenever a new engine doesn't do what it's supposed to, it's because I made a rooky mistake somewhere.

Before taking anything apart, do a few checks first:
- With the engine running, unplug each spark plug wire. If the problem is in one cylinder, the idle will not change when you unplug that cable.
- As said above, compression and leak down test.
- Trace all your wires. Make sure everything is plugged in correctly, proper wires to proper coil/injectors, damaged wires, etc.
- inspect the plugs for damage or fouling
- make sure you're getting a strong spark at the right time.
- Check fuel pressure.

 

Did you.

Degree the cam
Check pushrod length.