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Back in a Formula Again
http://www.ccfbg.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=15402		 Page 8 of 20
Author:  auto_god [ Fri Dec 04, 2015 7:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Back in a Formula Again
Since the first day I had this car it has been plagued with smokey start ups after sitting for any length of time. I decided to take advantage of the rockers and valve springs being out of the way to put some new valve stem seals & o rings in to hopefully resolve that issue.

Image20151201_194100 by Shane Hewitt, on Flickr

The old o rings just crumbled touching them, & the seals had gone hard.......I think my smokey startups should be a thing of the past. I was also pleased to find the valve guides seemed to have no wear to speak of......valves have no play in the guides at all.......pleased about that!!
Author:  auto_god [ Fri Dec 04, 2015 8:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Back in a Formula Again
Beehive valve spring upgrade working out exactly as planned.

Imagereceived_10156504114275556 by Shane Hewitt, on Flickr

Luckily a friend of mine also went beehive this past summer, so I put his Comp retainers on my spare heads to measure out what was going to be necessary in terms of shims & locks.

Intake side requires + .050" locks on 083 heads, exhaust side is needing .045" of shims. With that info already figured out I was able to have the parts I needed already on hand when I go to this stage.
Author:  auto_god [ Sun Dec 13, 2015 10:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Back in a Formula Again
Finished up the valve spring upgrade tonight. Glad that's done......hate doing springs in the car! Lol!

Imagereceived_10156540856705556 by Shane Hewitt, on Flickr

Back when my friend put these same springs in his motor in the summer, we measured bind height on all his & they came in on average at 1.19 to 1.20 inches. I elected to measure mine before I put them in & found bind height to be 1.16-1.17 on average. Not disappointed about that.

Hopefully get some time tomorrow to set the valve lash & double check my rockers have enough clearance in the rocker arm slot (I'd like to upgrade the rockers eventually, but that's $$ I'd rather not spend right at the moment if it isn't necessary).

Assuming that all goes well, my goal is to have the intake manifold back on and distributor in and indexed tomorrow.
Author:  auto_god [ Mon Dec 21, 2015 4:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Back in a Formula Again
She's alive once more!!

Liking the noises she's making now!

Some videos of her sitting idling......(click on image)

Imagereceived_10156575619465556 by Shane Hewitt, on Flickr

BLM's have gone right in the toilet, so some tuning is going to be in order in the spring, but happy to hear her run again with no issues.

In case anybody is wondering, this is one of the Lunati cams that were being sold off for $70 from their clearance page. A little bigger cam than I originally planned to run, but I couldn't say no given the price tag.

https://www.lunatipower.com/Product.asp ... 07&gid=346
Author:  auto_god [ Sun Jan 10, 2016 1:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Back in a Formula Again
Yay!! No more vice grips to keep the hood up!!

Imagereceived_10156633296960556 by Shane Hewitt, on Flickr

You would think such a simple thing as putting new hood supports in would have been one of the first things I did to the car (especially given the amount of time I knew I would be spending under the hood doing the engine mods I had planned).

In any case the hood now stays up on its own. Another case of simple, inexpensive & easy upgrades getting overlooked in favor of the more exciting stuff.
Author:  auto_god [ Sun Jan 10, 2016 7:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Back in a Formula Again
Finally got annoyed enough with the over spray staring back at me every time I opened the hood.....decided to do something about it.

Imagereceived_10156638922185556 by Shane Hewitt, on Flickr

After a couple hours taking things apart, degreasing, cleaning & then some painting, things look much better!

Imagereceived_10156639316795556 by Shane Hewitt, on Flickr
Author:  Steve383 [ Tue Jan 12, 2016 3:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Back in a Formula Again
Looks good! Makes me miss my old GTA 8)
Author:  auto_god [ Mon Mar 14, 2016 2:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Back in a Formula Again
So Saturday was the day to take the Formula out on her maiden voyage with the new Lunati cam in it!

I plugged in TunerPro & set off on a nice hour long cruise around to get a pile of data to start fine tuning the tune in the car. My initial impressions of this cam are quite positive. Sounds great, no real noticeable loss of torque.....really, when just cruising around its almost like stock, just sounds better (which is what I was hoping for), and has a cooler idle. Once the tach swings past 2000 rpm though, you know there is clearly something very different under the hood now!

Unfortunately not all went well Saturday. Towards the end of my cruise I was really wanting to put my foot in it and see what it has with the new cam in. My logical side was saying "Wait till the wideband is hooked up" to see where my air/fuel ratios are. My impatient "I've been waiting 4 months to drive this" side was saying, "Just watch the narrowband 02 voltage and let 'er rip!" My impatient side won out & I romped on it while observing 900+ mv from the o2 sensor during the entire pull. Car pulled fantastic and all seemed well until I got home and put the car in park........that's when I heard the new rattle coming from under the car......from the catalytic convertor.......damn!

I hooked up my wideband and took the car out for another quick pull & my suspicions were confirmed. The car had gone quite a bit leaner at WOT than I had anticipated & cooked the convertor.

So being rainy and miserable today, I spent this morning removing the convertor.

It has been temporarily been replaced with a pipe until I can get a new convertor, and more importantly the wideband data has been used to burn a new chip to rectify the lean condition that started the whole problem.

On a more positive note, the Beehive spring upgrade is taking care of business just fine as far as I've revved the car so far (5900 rpm).

In the grand scheme of things, if a cooked convertor is the worst issue that I have to deal with after this cam swap, that is pretty minor.
Author:  Z28 MeTaL HeAd [ Thu Mar 17, 2016 11:38 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Back in a Formula Again
auto_god wrote:
It has been temporarily been replaced with a pipe until I can get a new convertor

In the grand scheme of things, if a cooked convertor is the worst issue that I have to deal with after this cam swap, that is pretty minor.


You know what, you should also temporarily install the shell of your now blown converter around the new pipe you just replaced it with, just to be safe.


And naturally replace that pipe with a new converter, that you ordered online...if it ever shows up. *cough cough*


Sounds and looks good man 8)
Author:  auto_god [ Thu Mar 17, 2016 8:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Back in a Formula Again
Z28 MeTaL HeAd wrote:
auto_god wrote:
It has been temporarily been replaced with a pipe until I can get a new convertor

In the grand scheme of things, if a cooked convertor is the worst issue that I have to deal with after this cam swap, that is pretty minor.


You know what, you should also temporarily install the shell of your now blown converter around the new pipe you just replaced it with, just to be safe.


And naturally replace that pipe with a new converter, that you ordered online...if it ever shows up. *cough cough*


Sounds and looks good man 8)


A new convertor will definitely be finding its way onto the car......has to pass emissions again in July.
Author:  auto_god [ Sat Apr 23, 2016 6:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Back in a Formula Again
Over the past couple of weeks I`ve been out cruising around with the car, tweaking away with TunerPro slowly getting everything under control. Initially it wasn`t going too well.....car was wanting to stall at lights, occasional misfires, power was not what it should have been. Even after repeated rounds of VE tuning, it wasn`t responding predictably, massive amounts of knock retard.....something was clearly wrong, so I went back to check the basics over. What was wrong was somehow base timing had gone from the 6 deg I had set it at to 18 deg!!!! Obviously I must have forgotten to tighten the distributor clamp back down or didn`t tighten it sufficiently enough. In any case after setting it back to where it should be at 6 deg, virtually all the driveability issues I was having went away, changes to the tune responded predictably and I have finally been able to get it driving to my satisfaction.

I also put my wideband in it last weekend and did some WOT tuning to ensure all was well there too.

Initially when I first picked up my Lunati cam, I did some Googling & came across this post on Thirdgen........given how similar the LT4 Hotcam is to this particular Lunati, and how similar that persons modifications were to what I`ve done, that is more or less where I expected to wind up power wise.

http://www.thirdgen.org/forums/tpi/1759 ... otcam.html

Well after doing my wideband tuning last weekend, I ran some of my datalogs through Virtual Dyno (awesome software), and this is where I stand at the moment. Hopefully I`ll get opportunity to start fine tuning the WOT ignition timing and squeeze a little more out of it this weekend.

ImageLunati Cam Tuned No Background by Shane Hewitt, on Flickr

All in all I`m pleased the car seems to be making the power it should be. The torque makes the car an absolute blast to drive, sounds really nice......mission accomplished!!
Author:  auto_god [ Sun Apr 24, 2016 7:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Back in a Formula Again
Tweaking the ignition timing this morning.....net result was 275 whp according to Virtual Dyno. That's everything I could squeeze out of it. Very pleased with the final results. Putting some fresh plugs in tomorrow after all the tuning, then off to spend the summer enjoying it!
Author:  auto_god [ Sat May 14, 2016 8:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Back in a Formula Again
Well, I thought I was just going to enjoy her for the summer.........

Over the past few weeks I was watching the coolant level in the reservoir slowly diminish.......I automatically started thinking the worst. Was it a head gasket, a cracked head or block, leaking intake manifold? After borrowing a cooling system pressure tester I was relieved to determine that everything was sound other than the heater control valve leaking. I was a little annoyed with that given that the valve was less than a year old, but compared to the other possibilities, a big relief.

Given that I was going to have to lower the coolant level to put a new valve in, I decided to take the opportunity to pull the intake manifold off again to address an oil leak that had also developed at the back of the manifold (I'm an ace at the TPI manifold now!)

So at this point, the disappearing coolant has been dealt with & oil leak resolved.

Catalytic convertor next.
Author:  auto_god [ Fri May 20, 2016 6:55 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Back in a Formula Again
Well, I thought the convertor was going to be next! Driving home from work several days ago a new noise began under the hood and was getting louder quite quickly...... :(

Turns out the air pump decided to call it a day. Given that it wasn't hooked up to anything anyway with the headers that are on the car, I elected to go buy a new belt to bypass it, & removed it completely.

One more issue dealt with. In retrospect looking closely at the old belt, looks like the new belt was a good idea anyway.

Convertor next.......
Author:  chevypower91 [ Sat May 21, 2016 11:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Back in a Formula Again
auto_god wrote:
Well, I thought the convertor was going to be next! Driving home from work several days ago a new noise began under the hood and was getting louder quite quickly...... :(

Turns out the air pump decided to call it a day. Given that it wasn't hooked up to anything anyway with the headers that are on the car, I elected to go buy a new belt to bypass it, & removed it completely.

One more issue dealt with. In retrospect looking closely at the old belt, looks like the new belt was a good idea anyway.

Convertor next.......


What brand cat are you going with and are you going with a single or dual?
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