Work went to crap after the Deep water Horizon and the car fell off my list of "things to finish." I thought about ditching this set up for a turbo but ended up deciding against it. The whole point of this build from the very beginning was never about bang for the buck. The point was, this was my first car, and I wanted to build it like I would have when I first got it in 2000 but using whats out now. Back then I would drool over CC306 vids on CZ28.com and was impressed by Chris B's H/C (CC306/GTP heads) car. At the time he was one of the fastest H/C Lt1 cars in the country clicking off deep 11s at around 120MPH. So I didn't care that newer stuff was out there, I wanted my CC306. The eventual goals are to build a stroker for it when this bottom end lets go, most likely a 396 and at that point I will go with a custom cam, but for now trying to finish this set up and have a little fun.


Part I - New exhaust

The first of a "few" upgrades are aimed at correcting some wrongs. The old set up was pretty rough and was victim of some crappy performance shop work, power was being lost to a junk Y pipe and hacked up set up Hooker Long Tubes. In the end it was decided to scrap it all and start from scratch with a new set of Long Tubes and Y pipe. I ordered a set of Kooks 1 3/4 to stepped 1 7/8 Long tubes with 3" collectors from Speed Inc and began talking to Tiago about a building a new Y pipe. The Y pipe is full stainless TIG welded construction, has two Vibrant bullets and a Columbia River merge. The bullets are to clean up the Borla rasp, they gave it a deeper tone. They didn't quiet the car down any but it helped clean the sound up. I could have bought a Kooks Y but I wanted the bullets and I wanted a real merge, also given the UMI chassis mounted torque arm, custom seemed the best way to go. If the design looks familar, the idea for the merge was taken from Patrick G's Y pipe thread. From what Tiago was saying the car should pick up any where from 10-15rwhp from the changes in exhaust, if you saw the old set up, it wouldn't be hard to believe.






Video

Open Headers

View Video on FQuick

Full Exhaust

View Video on FQuick

Whats to come

Part II - New Fuel Lines - Konis

Part III - Dyno Tune the EFI 24X

 

it sounds MEAN!!!

looking forward to the dyno tune

 

Looks great Neil! Nice job Tiago!

 

Man that thing sureeee is pretty.

 

That sounds bad *** bro and im loving the EFI 24x setup too.

Cant wait to see what she puts down on the dyno

 

That y pipe looks awesome i wish pacesetter would update there junk y pipes with the hacked merge. Right now im in school to be a fabricator and once im done i hope to have free range at a shop to do some stuff like that. Open Borla FTW!

 

All around awesome car! I really dig the new exhaust and EFI 24x set up. I like seeing people hang on to their first cars and restoring/building them with the same amount of passion like if it were the first day they got it. My 77 GMC Royal Sierra is sitting at my brothers shop in West Texas, begging for a restoration and a LS1 swap; I'll never let that truck go. Props to you for hanging on to your TA!

By the way, you wouldn't happen to have any pics of the old exhaust for comparison would you? I'm guessing if you did you would have posted some, just thought I would ask.

 

Thanks guys, I am looking forward to seeing what it makes. I knew if I sold it I would end up regretting doing so. It's been 11 years since I have had the car, trying to make it nice again and fixing the little things

Here is the old set up. The Hookers were ok when I got them but when I was bolt on I wanted to pass emissions, so I added cats. And it did actually pass for a number of years but when the shop added cats, they ordered the wrong size. Instead of returning them they hacked up the collector and welded the flange crooked, so they never sealed all that good right there. The Y was junk, I got it for free with my Borla, had tons of leaks and hung down pretty low. Not a very pretty set up, the cats ended up breaking so they were gutted, not ideal again. It was just one of those things where I wanted to fix the problem and not have to mess with it again, tired of having ghetto **** on this car. I need to power wash the under side of the car.

 

Wow, how nice of the shop to just hack **** up rather than getting you the right parts lol. The new set up looks great compared to the old!

 

car sounds absolutly awesome with the borla on there.......nice!!!!

 

That was the dilemma with the old headers, build a new Y for a messed up set of headers didn't seem like a good solution. I could have gone with a lot cheaper set up but this is the last set of headers I want to buy for this car so I didn't want to have regrets like I have had in the past. I think the stepped maybe a little over kill for this set up, but then again I don't want to have to buy them when I do a short block.

Thanks Mike, CC306 got more bark than bite

 

Your cars sounds awesome and the exhaust looks much better. What kind of wheels are those in your sig?

 

Thanks, the wheels are Fikse Mags. Lot of people hate them, they look cool from certain angles more than others, definitely different.

 

Just an update, the car got a set of Konis and SLP Level II springs, should get some pics this weekend. Kept the 93 rails and did new fuel lines to replace the ugly stock lines. Tiago is the king of Camera phone pics so this is all I have. He's currently tuning it now, we are going to have dyno numbers soon, maybe in a few weeks? Also looking to get the 12 Rebuilt, 3.90 gears and a True tack or maybe Auburn Pro, not sure yet.

 

I'll get you some better pics this weekend

 

That looks top shelf, Biswas! Good work Tiago!

 

looking good Neil

 

Looking and sounding real nice!!

 

Looking real nice!

 

Thanks guy. Slowly getting there. Looking to redo the nitrous also this fall. Was wanting to copy cat Larry's set up but with maybe a Nitrous out let dual nozzle kit or maybe just wait for Larry to go LS1 and turbo and buy his entire nitrous set up which makes more sense