Finally back on the road...
Well, I finally got my POS back together and am back on the road and I wanted to thank all parties involved in that process. I used the stock balancer on this rebuild and the Cloyes 9-194 timing chain in hopes that one or both of them will prevent this from ever happening again *knock on wood*. So far everything seems to be working fine and the car feels like it still has some serious power, so thats always good. Follow up dyno's will happen within the next 2 weeks to re-verify power(or lack there of
).I would like to thank all forum members who participated in my TC failure thread(especially 405HP Z06 and Vettenuts for their constant participation and pm's). A lot of good information was posted, so hopefully others can avoid this type of situation themselves.
I would also like to thank Vengeance Racing, Spartan Performance, and WCCH. WCCH went through the heads to verify all was good and knocked 5 thousandths off of them just for good measure. They were quick in their work and communicated with me well....what more can you ask for? I opted to not have them run their CNC program on my heads due to the fact that if a piston let go, I didn't want a fancy set of heads on the car to get ruined in the process. That and 480+whp is pretty quick anyways.
Vengeance Racing got me my pushrods the day I needed them and I would like to thank Ron for working with me on all of my different rebuild options/questions, even though I decided to do all of the work myself. For anyone wondering, Vengeance did the original install of my cam'ed setup and I am happy to report that everything they did checked out perfect. All tq specs were spot on, there was no cam walk, and the pushrods measured out perfect(yes, I measured myself with an adjustable pushrod). The setup ran quiet w/ regard to valvetrain noise before and runs just as quiet now.
I would like to especially thank Spartan Performance. Many may wonder why I have his shop underlined. The basic matter is Vengeance is a busy shop and many times I would be in the middle of something and would have a question that I needed answered right then. This is where Spartan Performance truly became my go to guy. Josh gave me his cell number and was more than willing to answer any questions I had while elaborating on other issues that I might not have even known about, without me spending 1 penny with him. He probably has a few hours worth of talking on the phone to me over the past 2 months and not once seemed any less enthusiastic about helping me out. Anyone considering work around the Ga area owes it to themselves to give Spartan a call.
Vengeance and Spartan are the only 2 shops in Ga that I would let work on my car other than myself and if anyone doesn't think I am an over analytical Mech. Eng. hell bent on covering every possible angle of an install, then just give Ron@Vengeance a call and I am sure he can fill you in
. Thanks again to the above shops and everyone on this forum who offered their input in my thread. I do have one last question, my oil pressure at cold start is 45psi and it eventually falls to ~30psi at idle once I have beat on the car some and gotten the oil nice and hot. Idle is at 900rpm and I usually cruise around ~1800rpm where oil pressure is ~41psi. Does this look normal? I am pretty sure that it is within spec but just wanted to verify. It is a touch lower than it was prior to this rebuild.
Last edited by 1.8t; Feb 6, 2009 at 01:42 PM.
Glad to hear you are up and running!!! Im glad everything we did checked out. It is nice to know we have the ability to satisfy even the most demanding customers

Spartan AKA Josh is good people. Known him for years. Glad he shoots the breeze with you. He only calls me these days when he needs something

FWIW for those who read this whole ordeal, I gave Michael some instructions to check for a mistake in the install that could have caused the problem and that was not the case. Vengeance did their job. It was simply a chain failure. PERIOD.
Going to mess with the pressure sensor first with hopes that I might get lucky. Otherwise I am going to go jump off a cliff.
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