Rock & Roll - 1984 Oldsmobile Ciera Convertible - Engine Build and Car Restoration!

turbokinetic

Member
Joined
Jan 29, 2008
I shared this thread on A-Body.net for those interested in the car its self. I want to also share it here for the sake of the old school turbo system!

This is Rock & Roll, my 1984 Olds Ciera convertible. There were only 100 made, I believe. She's been sitting in the barn since I got her home, with a knocking engine, rusted out gas tank, and lots of other serious problems.

The car was free, as a side benefit for buying the custom wheels on it. Was headed to the junkyard if I didn't save it. I made a road trip from central Alabama to south Florida and dollied it home. The tow vehicle has a turbocharged 3.8 engine, by the way. :)

IMG_4052.JPG


Then I got her up and running (with burned crank and mostly gone rod bearing) so she was yard-drivable. That allows me to keep her mobile and not be stuck in one place in the barn. I had to install an underhood fuel cell....



IMG_4197.JPG


Rock & Roll has a Buick V6 3.0 engine. I have had experiences with this particular engine in the past and it is not my favorite. It has all the problems that can happen to an LG3 (ie. plastic timing gear) and all the problems that can happen to a carburetor motor (hard to start, horrible mileage etc) and all the slowness that happens to a small displacement flat-tappet cam engine.

IMG_4059.JPG


So, the first order of business was to start collecting parts.

I started with the easy stuff first.

With the click of a mouse - a new fuel tank, sender, and pump arrived at my door.


Since I live in the South, we have no issues with severe underbody rusting. A friend and I went to the junkyard and stripped the underbody tubelines from a hapless 86 Ciera that was at Pull-A-Part in Birmingham, AL. The brake lines went to Diesel Danielle; and the fuel lines go to Rock & Roll.


The original tank had been sitting for years with stale ethanol gas in it and it has holes rusted in the bottom of it. The original engine had a carburetor with in-tank fuel pump. That one had an internal regulator and would deliver about 2 to 3 PSI pressure to the carburetor.

The pump in the tank now provides FLOW and depends on the fuel regulator at the engine to determine the PRESSURE. It will support more than 50 PSI if the regulator requires it. The engine going into this car will have a TBI running at 10 PSI or so.

Next for the engine. I made an epic 3000 mile road trip and visited several people along the way. Along the way I also collected a "partial" LG3 3.8 engine that is missing the heads and intake. This gives me a rock-solid bottom end foundation on which to build a Buick V6 engine. The engine on the left side of the trailer (no heads).


For the air and fuel delivery, I have gone Old School. The setup below is the Draw-Through Turbo system from a scrapped-out 1978 Buick Riviera. I don't have any detailed still pictures of it but I show it mocked up in the video below.

In order to overcome some of the problems GM had with these engines when they were new; I have ditched the carburetor in favor of a throttle-body injector system (TBI). This does exactly the same function as the carburetor, but it is much simpler and easier to tune for the modified engine.

TBI_wide.jpg


Now for the engine its self.

The basic LG3 bottom end will be used with the top end from the Buick Turbo V6. In order to adapt it, there will have to be an oil return created in the block, as well as some other improvements that should always be made.

To start with the oil return, I studied both the blocks to see where the factory did it. One of the main differences between the LG3 and the old Turbo Buick engine is the bellhousing bolt pattern.

The old Buick Turbo engine has the General Motors "B-O-P" bellhousing.


The LG3 has the front-wheel-drive "corporate" bellhousing. There is a flat topped section that is in the way of the oil return. It will take some creative modifications to install one.

First, I drilled a pilot hole at the angle needed.


Next, I used the gnarliest tungsten carbide cutter tool to enlarge the hole (at the correct angle) through the bellhousing flange and the rear wall of the block.


After that, it was Tap Time. Ever tried to tap a hole at a 45° angle? Believe me it ain't easy. But it also ain't impossible!


The result?


And the pipe installed.... Note this one is too long and will be replaced with a shorter one.


Next will be the oiling system porting and dual feed main bearing oil hole installation.

There is additional detail about the above shown in this video and the ones to follow, hope you enjoy it.

[video=youtube;8ED7LBJLr4s]

There is a part 2 video posted already, it is linked at the end of part 1.

I realize most of you here have a very good mechanical knowledge. I hope you understand why I say some overly simplified things. I'm sharing this with some people elsewhere who care about the car more than the engine and aren't as technical. I just want everyone to stay interested.

Sincerely,
David
 
Nice Ciera vert! That's an incredible car. White top, white mirrors, on white. :D This car has tons of personality.
I'm kind of picky about aftermarket wheels, but those actually work on that car from what I can see.
Any chance you will be keeping them, or will you be going back to stock?


PS Nice tap test! Thicker, denser = higher pitch,.. Thinner more flexible, hollow, lower pitch. :rock:

Thanks, it does have a lot of personality! I'll keep the alloy wheels. They do look natural on the car, IMHO.

Yeah, GM was getting their act together with the LG3 block. That was the first of many world-class engines including the Series 1 and Series 2 3800; the L67; and the 3300 engines. Casting technology came a long way since the old blocks were built. It is always a hit or miss proposition to cast holes into a casting; as with the old block. The LG3 block was mostly casted as one piece and then all the features were machined into it.

Very nice David you will be cruising on the warm months In a shiny convertible with some nice power !!

Thanks. This one will be a very difficult and long-term restoration project. The engine I am not afraid of. The interior and convertible top restoration are very daunting....

I'll be anxiously watching this build. Looks like a fun project and truly a rare car to start with! Congrats and good luck.

Glad you find it interesting! It is a rare car and rare parts going into it. The car was 1 of 100. The LG3 block was part of a LeSabre Grand National (one of 112 cars built); and the turbo system was part of a FWD turbo 79 Riviera (not sure of numbers, but very low production).

I noticed the "other engine" on the trailer. You have plans for that green diesel?

Ken T.

That engine was traded for from ... and will be used to restore my 85 Century Diesel Coupe to running condition. I drove from Alabama to Colorado to visit and pick that up. A 3000 mile round trip.

Today's Update!

Today I cleaned and refurbished the lifters; as well as did some porting work on the heads.

The intake and exhaust ports before any work:


After some port blending and cleanup work. These castings were insanely shaggy and flawed. Should have been rejects.


Top surface after de-rusting with HCL:


Close up of one cylinder:


The old 1978 heads, before removing the valves. Very nasty!


Valves polished up! The intake will be usable but the exhaust are not going to work. They have a groove in the stem that will tear up the new style valveguide seals.

All the cleaned up parts of the lifters... ready to go back together...


And the lifters are together, ready to be installed!


And, today's progress video! Here I show how to assemble hydraulic roller lifters and some other tips:

That's it for today!
 
Got a short progress update today. I was still unable to get the main bearings for the engine. Without those I have no pattern to do the oiling modification.

So, instead of refurbished the turbocharger and modified the oilpan to fit the hybridized engine.

The turbo had more shaft play than it should have, because it had been run with clogged oiling system. Also, the older turbos were failure prone due to hot shutdowns. This will cause oil drying up in the bearings, leading to localized, internal clogging of the turbo oiling system.

I have a center housing from a newer turbo which has cooling water ports in it. This is like the ones I've used on my other builds that only require a moment of idle before they are safe to shutdown. Full detailed Garrett Airesearch T3 center section disassembly and reassembly are shown in the video.

Now - I know there are those who claim the water cooling doesn't matter or is a "bad" thing. I disagree and have my reasons. I work for a major industrial engine OEM and have seen identical applications with water cooled versus dry turbos. The difference is profound in the life of the turbo.



Then, the oilpan. It was designed for an LG3 engine with the gerotor front cover. The combined LG3 block and 3.0 timing housing made for an "oddball" oilpan profile. I had 2 old LG3 oilpans, so I cut he end off one of them and welded in a new reinforcement strip to make up for the lost support. Then simply slotted two of the holes to get it to bolt onto the engine.

Is said in the video - I think that MAYBE an LC2 oilpan from the 86 / 87 cars might fit this without modifications but I don't know and don't have one to use for a test pattern.... so this seemed like an easy way to get a usable oilpan. :)

The one on the LEFT is the 3.0 oilpan. The one on the right is the LG3 oilpan after modification. In the video there is a lot more detail.






And here's Part 4 of the videos!


As long as the rainy weather holds out I will be working on this project - hopefully I get the main bearings today and can get the block modified. Then after that it can be sent to the machine shop for cam bearings.
 
Keiths1976 said:
Looking good David great craftsmanship !!!

Thanks!

SegaGT said:
Great updates! I'm familiar with old school idle it "turbo care", the never doing a sudden stop especially after a hot run or just having spooled up.
The thought of a turbo cooking on a stopped engine (no lubrication or cooling) makes me want to crawl into a fetal position. :tear:

Ugh! Yes I know the feeling. The worst was when I was at a pumping station that used multiple Caterpillar 5500 HP turbodiesels. The electrical power to run the control systems for the engines was provided by a single, non-redundant, non-UPS backed, no-name, off-brand, piece-of-crap generator. We had 3 or 4 of the Cat pumping engines running at full tilt..... then the El Cheapo generator decided to spontaneously shut down. When it did, all the Cat engines did a CRASH-STOP from 100% power to nothing, without any idle, without any electrically-pumped postlube oil, and without any possibility of re-starting immediately to idle the engines.

All I could do was walk away from the pumping station and try not to kill whoever left a massive design flaw like this in the system.

Today's update on Rock & Roll

I got the oilpump high volume rebuild kit installed, along with some threading and plugging of extra exhaust port plugs. Then UPS came and brought some pistons and rings! :)


I have read here some mixed reviews of the Melling K201HV oilpump kit. It seems like some who have failed at it have attempted to install the kit without removing the timing gear cover. After doing the modification myself, I see how it would be very difficult to verify and ensure things were going correctly if you did it on car. There would be oil dripping, it would be hard to keep the drill straight, and all sorts of other concerns could arise. With the timing gear cover in the vise, it was not difficult and it was pretty easy to verify each step of the procedure.

One more thing I find interesting here on turbobuick.com is, there have been more than 200 views of this thread but not one single comment....

Good or bad, I would like to know how people feel about it.

Sincerely,
David
 
I am following this now, love the ingenuity. I had an 87 lesabre T I wish I never sold, I have a soft spot for these cars.

Nice work
 
I am following this now, love the ingenuity. I had an 87 lesabre T I wish I never sold, I have a soft spot for these cars.

Nice work

Thank you! My mom has an 89 LeSabre sedan that our family loves. It has 460,000 miles and still is driven daily. I was lucky enough to get a 1987 Electra Park Avenue, 2-door coupe that I saved from the junkyard. It is a smooth riding car. I have read that they only made about 5000 of the 2-door PA's in 87.

As for the build at hand, I got some more parts in today and got the block to the machine shop. Here is a video from today!


The comparison of the LG3 pulley hub and timing sprocket (with oilpump drive) to the 3.0 (or 1987 3.8) parts:


Dual-feed main bearing porting done:


The old and the new bearings. There will be better lubrication with the new bearing! Has two holes, each of which is larger than the original bearing's single hole - and has the groove continued and tapered off in the lower insert.


Camshafts. The original LG3 roller cam (with no distributor gear) along with the original 78 3.8 engine flat tappet cam (with distributor gear) and then the crossover cam - the Comp Cams part with roller lifter lobes, along with distributor drive gear.


I dropped the block and some other parts at the machine shop today. Going to get the cam bearings replaced, as well as hone the bores and install pistons on the rods.

I may or may not be able to make more progress before I go back to work! If not, then it may be a while before I post again. :)
 
Nice, when I get home I'll have to watch the videos. Interesting build for sure.(y)
 
I love these unique builds! I have a couple of questions regarding the TBI configuration. First- what TBI/Injector/FPR combo will you be using. Second- what ECM will you be using to tune the combo?
 
I love these unique builds! I have a couple of questions regarding the TBI configuration. First- what TBI/Injector/FPR combo will you be using. Second- what ECM will you be using to tune the combo?

Thanks! I also love doing these kind of things. Very challenging and rewarding in the end.

Those are good questions! The only real choice for a TBI (low-Z) injector with boost is the 1227749 ECM and the Turbo Sunbird / SyTy program. I have used the Code59 program on 5 other builds and have learned quite a bit about making it work on unusual combinations.

This ECM / program combination has excellent tunability; plus native boost control, detonation control, plus all the factory "bells and whistles" such as TCC control, air conditioner, cooling fan, fuel pump etc. natively supported. It seems to be a pretty good fit for the project.

As for the TBI, it is something I had on hand. I believe it came from a Chevy 305 pickup truck. I have modified the throttle arm on the TB to work with the draw-through system mountings. The injector pod was ruined by flood water, so I will likely have to buy a reman TBI and swap out the injector pod and regulator assembly. I expect this engine to make somewhere less than 300 HP so the injector flow should be sized for slightly above that. Since it will have to be tuned from scratch anyway; I will see what's available and then make a purchase accordingly. One good thing about TBI injectors is they can be used at much higher pressures than originally specified. They can be "stretched" quite a lot in this manner.

When I originally ran this system on the 3.0 engine, I used the original 1227747 ECM from the 4.3 TBI V6. I had re-scaled it to use a 2 bar MAP sensor so that it would work with boost; but it didn't have any boost-aware functions. It would only control fuel delivery and had no safety factors or boost wastegate control functions. That engine only lasted about 10 or 20 miles before the plastic timing gear chips clogged the oiling system. During its last few minutes of life, the TBI system maintained a 12:1 AFR with the engine at 8 PSI boost and 4500 RPM. It didn't seem to be running out of wind. Then when I stopped to turn around and head back to the farm, I heard it was knocking and that was its last ride.

I don't yet have the block back from the machinist, but I did manage today to refurbish the distributor. Made a video but no pictures, unfortunately.

These distributors have a packing that lubricates the upper bushing. This had deteriorated, so I replaced it with new felt and oiled it up good. The pickup coil was in very good shape, so I dipped it in enamel as for a motor winding. This should seal moisture out of it. Tested it by hooking everything up and spinning the distributor with a drill. Made a lot of ozone! :)

 
Yeah man, pretty slick. I've pecked around in $59 a little bit, primarily to cure a rolling idle issue on a 3.4 60V6 turbo Fiero, enabled the Idle Spark Stabilizer. Ive also used $42 with a 7747 on my old cammed 3.4 blazer, and 7730 swapped my old 5.0 foxbody. (Also 7730 swapped my old 2.8 Fiero and that ran with SAUJP.) Got some weird looks from the blue oval guys when they saw a GM ICM(with heat sink) and MAP in the engine bay, lol. Ran that with S_AUJP V4. Currently working adapting the OEM LC2 harness to a non buick V6, running that with the EBL SFI6.

Are you using the latest iteration of $59 xdf? Has the ignition cut patch and 2 step(anti-lag).

Nice work! Looking forward to more updates
 
Yeah man, pretty slick. I've pecked around in $59 a little bit, primarily to cure a rolling idle issue on a 3.4 60V6 turbo Fiero, enabled the Idle Spark Stabilizer. Ive also used $42 with a 7747 on my old cammed 3.4 blazer, and 7730 swapped my old 5.0 foxbody. (Also 7730 swapped my old 2.8 Fiero and that ran with SAUJP.) Got some weird looks from the blue oval guys when they saw a GM ICM(with heat sink) and MAP in the engine bay, lol. Ran that with S_AUJP V4. Currently working adapting the OEM LC2 harness to a non buick V6, running that with the EBL SFI6.

Are you using the latest iteration of $59 xdf? Has the ignition cut patch and 2 step(anti-lag).

Nice work! Looking forward to more updates

Thanks, I'll keep updating as progress is made. Going to be going to work for a few weeks pretty soon, though.

I will have to look at what version of the Cde59 XDF I am using. I've not used the ignition interrupter setup because my builds have a full exhaust system and I don't want to backfire the muffler off! I believe I'm using v.23 of the .bin which has the knock gauge output.

Will be very interested to see how your transplanted LC2 harness and controller turn out! That should be interesting to tune, and very rewarding.

OK finally got a little time to work on Rock & Roll's engine build! The machine shop finally returned the block and I have (part of) the head components here, so partial head assembly.

First, using the drill press and an old oxygen sensor socket to compress the valve springs:


The exhaust valve guide seals haven't arrived, so that leaves three vacant ports. :banghead:


The front cover rope-type packing has been replaced with the retrofit rubber lip seal:


The crank cleaned and ready to go back in. Main caps cleaned and bearings in place on them and in the block. Note the rope-type rear main seal packing laid out on the table - along with the two "C" shaped pieces? Those two "C" shaped pieces are the rubber lip-type seal that is a conversion for these engines. The crank has been polished as much as possible at the seal surface to remove the "grooves" that were to keep oil drawn in around the original packing.


Timing chain and all associated parts in place. Note the lack of a camshaft sensor magnet. Not needed with this build.


And lifters, guides, and retainers in place!


The video turned out really long! I combined a couple days worth of progress in it because of getting interrupted over and over. Hope people don't lose interest in it before seeing the whole thing.

 
The EBL can also be used for tbi with boost. I had planned that route with the tbi v8 I was running.
 
I like what you have done with that car. Looks original, and yet a sleeper with mostly production parts.
 
I like what you have done with that car. Looks original, and yet a sleeper with mostly production parts.

Thanks again! The Ciera 2.8 Turbo was a fun build, and pretty easy since it was adaptation of an existing system and not a custom build. I have built one more similar for a friend, with the older iron-head 2.8 and same McLaren system. It has mad power, and in spite of my best efforts, the transmission is now missing 3rd gear....

As for Rock & Roll - Today I got the timing cover installed, and the pistons installed in their bores...

 
For the broken bolt you may be able to plug weld a washer on the broken part, then weld a nut on to the washer and turn it right out. A little less messy too.
 
For the broken bolt you may be able to plug weld a washer on the broken part, then weld a nut on to the washer and turn it right out. A little less messy too.

Good point... Also at this point, I can take the front cover off the engine if needed. That would allow easier access, for only the cost of a gasket.
 
How's progress?

Torque converter(46RE) shit the bed on my ram on Friday. Been a fun weekend over here.
 
How's progress?

Torque converter(46RE) shit the bed on my ram on Friday. Been a fun weekend over here.
Well - not much progress to speak of! I had a work assignment come up (out of town) so I have been trying to make money instead of spend it this week :)

Sorry to hear about your torque converter failure - I guess the lockup clutch stopped working?
 
Top