Glad you posted up Jacob. I figured a few here were wondering what was up.

 

LOL, truth right there. Gonna be working with GatTagO on the holley software until I can learn it and refine the tune myself. It really was nice just to hear it talk again.
I knew there were a lot who felt that way, and I felt that I owed it to y'all to get it done. Sometimes life just punches you in the dick, and you have to choose what to pursue and what to let sit.
Hell yeah, he helped! But for real, the major help I got was from Che70elle and from LazerLemonTA.
Yeah, I really did owe it to the group to get it running. Almost bit off more than I could chew with the wiring, lol

 

Darth, very happy to see the engine is up and running!

Outstanding seeing the project through despite life getting in the way as it sometimes does.

 

Long awaited update!
Glad to see it is alive again.
Loved the idle clip.

 

Hear hear! That idle is pure nastiness!

 

Thanks for the happy thoughts guys!

Tuning with GatTagO last night was fun. Still have a little bit on the return to idle stuff, but the fans still weren't working last night, so once the car got over 200 degrees, we called it. This thing is surprisingly cold natured for what it is. We got a solid 30 minutes of run time in before it got over 200. Think about this. The compression is 12.8, it's a 440 small block, and I can touch the headers. It's a very efficient engine in the sense that it does not waste a lot of heat, and I'm very very happy with it.

I got the connectors I need for the fans, but ran into a few chores when I got home. Hopefully updates will come relatively quickly. At some point, I'll need to button up the interior and actually mount the ECU, but I expect to get it on the road with some driving time before I do that. Maybe gape a few nerds while I'm out

More to come...

 

Yeah, we haven't heard near enough about nerd gaping lately....

 

Quick update -- all the action is the in the piggybackl harness thread right now. Struggling to get the stock ECU to recognize the crank signal. Car runs and I'm sure I could drive it. I just don't want to get stuck somewhere without cooling fans waiting for it to cool down. I have the last piece of the puzzle arriving today. Hopefully the last piece. If not, then I'll just run the fans with the holley and work towards a full digital dash.

 

Good to see you are still around Darth.
I'm liking the progress.

 

[QUOTE=bortous;20405413]Good to see you are still around Darth.

You too Brother.

 

Thanks guys. Well, the status is basically the same. I've bypassed everything I could, and the stock ECU simply does to recognize the crank signal. At this point, I can only assume the lingenfelter box has failed, as I've ruled everything else out. I'm OK with this outcome. It will be a little stupid driving around with every dash light lit and no tach or speedometer working. Ultimately, I'll just get a digital dash from Holley and that will take care of it.

but the car is running and I can drive it. After all this crap, that is a huge victory of its own. I'm going to post up in the piggyback thread, as this is pretty much where I am on it.

 

Dart,

I it was me, I would go ahead buy digital cluster to eliminate stock ecu, wiring and lingenfelter box altogether.
Simpler, less potential failure points.
And accurate tachometer 🙂

 

That is where I'm at. I was hoping to avoid the added cost, but here we are. I'm still glad I tried. Learn more from failure than success sometimes.

It had gotten to be a puzzle for me, so in that sense I'd like to solve it, you know? Like having an unsolved rubs cube just sitting there.

 

OK, so I scared the **** out of myself, but it turned out to be a false alarm. I picked up a misfire, and when I went up front to hold the engine at rpm so I could hear it better, I could feel and hear a lot of valvetrain noise, and got the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. You know, the one that puts you on suicide watch....

Well, it turned out I simply had a few loose rockers, and I just need to readjust my valvetrain after a few heat cycles. As to the misfires, i was blowing out the spark and simply needed to increase dwell. Should have it all worked out by the weekend.

 

<3 lol

 

Same with....on I feel. Glad to see you B.

 

Hope you finish her up soon buddy

 

Max effort projects like this are never truly finished.

In fact, it is part of our hobby and passion, majority of cars on this forum are just being constantly upgraded, so technically never in their final finished state.

 

Fresh update. Short version - nothing is ever as simple as you hope when you are doing something you've never done before and learning new software.

Electrical **** -- Long version:

In the Holley software, the operating system is broken up into various modules. I'm not sure what they are actually called, but it helps for me to think of the software as modular. The fueling is one configuration, the ignition is another configuration, and that is separate from the timing. It's like you tell the computer HOW the ignitions system is supposed to work, and separately you tell it WHEN to work. THe holley software is designed to run a multitude of setups. Coil on plug, distributor, MULTI-distributor, waste gate, etc.

So, there is a canned LSX 24x and LSX 58x ignition configuration built into the holley software. But everything in there is set, and you can make no adjustments for it. Which is fine. However, in order to open up other settings, such as dwell, you must run a custom ignition configuration, and this is where it got really tricky. I set it up to run custom, and this opened up the dwell settings. I could make it a table or just run it as a static number. The versatility is crazy. So I set the dwell to 5 msec, and loaded the program. As soon as I keyed on, the 30 amp ignition fuse popped. For those of you unfamiliar with the Holley, there are two fuses. There is a main power fuse the runs the computer, AND there is a separate 30 amp fuse that powers the injectors, coils, and fuel pump. There are tricks you can do to reduce the amperage load. For example, you can use the fuel pump feed to trigger a relay instead of operate the fuel pump directly, which I had already done. You can get powered subharness connectors and use the ignition feed to trigger a relay to power the coils directly instead of the ecu powering the coils. Lots of options.

BUT - I could replace the fuse, put the ECU back into LSX 58x mode, and the fuse didn't pop, the car would start and be fine, except for the misfire. I couldn't diagnose it any further, because I knew I needed more dwell. And of course, every time I tried to add dwell, the fuse popped. I have a mega pack of 30 amp fuses btw... I could tell it was breaking up, because with any RPM, it sounded like a rev limiter kicking in. I spent a solid week chasing down what I thought was a faulty coil causing an overamp draw.

As it turns out, there are multiple means of firing the ignition coils on a DIS system. You can control them from the grounding side OR the powered side. GM is wired to control them from the grounding side, and this is important. The Holley is capable of operating the coils from either the powered side or the grounded side. If you choose the mode that is controlling the coils from the powered side, but you are wired to control the coils from the ground side, you get a dead short. The description in the Holley software was such that I picked the wrong one, and this was why I was blowing fuses constantly. So, if ANYONE out there decides to do something similar, here are the correct settings for the custom ignition configuration when running a LSX 58x hardware and harness installation:

--Crank Trigger - LSx 58 Tooth
--Inductive Delay - 20.0 usec
--Timing Offset - 0.0°
--Cam Sensor - 4x (There are no other options such as Digital Rising or Digital Falling with the 4x selected, but there are with 1x selected.)
--DIS Coil on Plug. (DO NOT pick the one that says "Active Low")
--Dwell - whatever value you choose, or select the "Activate Dwell Table" checkbox.

Mechanical **** -- Long version:

When I was investigating my valvetrain, I found that most of my rockers had loosened up. To be honest, I am still stumped by this, because I am a **** about my valvetrains. But somehow, 11 of the rockers were loose. I also found witness marks on the valve cover baffles where the adjusters were making contact. At this point, my going theory is that I did not secure the nut tightly enough and the adjusters worked loose due to either vibration or contact with the baffles. I cut the baffles out of the covers, since I'm pulling vacuum through the oil fill port anyway via an ERL -AN 10 fitting, so the baffles are dead weight anyway.

One decision I made that I am still very glad I made is this. Conventional wisdom says to put the adjusters in the middle of the their range, measure for pushrods, then install them. Instead I went to the adjusters being fully out as far as they go (longest possible pushrod length) and ordered the pushrods slightly smaller. This way, no matter what happened, the adjusters could only get .010-.020 loose, so they'd make noise, but would not throw a rod. Because I had done that, all I needed to do was to retighten the adjusters, and all pushrods were still where they belonged.

However, after readjusting everything, I was still getting one hell of a rattling noise, and I thought I was effed again. However, it was Firebird Muscle (Justin) who made the observation, "it sounds like it's only rattling when the rpm dips from the misfire" That becomes important. I listened through the valve covers with a stethoscope and heard NOTHING. I listened to the valley cover and sort of heard something, but heard it most just in open air. As it turned out, the motor would shake when it stumbled, and the driver side header was hitting the steering shaft.

 

Now, to follow up with what I hope is a simply question.

I went with BR7 plugs thinking "high compression, etc, need colder plugs"

I'm wondering if the origin of the misfire is the plugs were too cold and shielded. The car ran fine initially. Any thoughts on if I should run a TR6 protruded tip - even at 12.8 compression?