TTA Valve Covers

T

TurBo BiRd

Strong Islander
Joined
May 17, 2002
Do the valve covers that come on the FWD cars that the TTA heads come off of have the same valve covers as the TTA? I want to get a set to cut a viewing hole to watch my valvetrain and don't want to cut up a perfectly good set of TTA covers. :D

Thanks, Bobby.
 
Yes go to the junk yard and you will see the same valve covers on many FWD cars. There is two versions of the oil fill (front, our driver side) valve cover, one with the vent hole like on ours and the other with the vent hole on the short/narrow side of the valve cover but both fit our heads.

I got a spare set I had powder coated and cut an extra hole for a breather on the passanger valve cover. Paid about $10 for both of them.
 
Bobby,

Jan is right on. If you are going to get a set to cut a hole in get the 2 from the firewall side of the FWD 6's. They are solid (I am almost sure!!) so there are none of the side holes Jan mentioned. I assume you are looking to punch some holes in the top, no reason to mess with fixing holes in the sides if you don't have to do so.


Brent
 
Jan,

Those are sweet. I took two fronts (equiv to our drivers side) that has the end holes. I figured any issues with blocking them off would be hidden by the alternator or the firewall, depending on side. I had a tube welded into the factory oil fill cap hole and used K&N clamp on breathers. Here is a PIC after the work and a powder coat in white.

http://www.goattraks.com/tmp/vc.jpg

Brent
 
Brent,

Pretty clever, many ways to accomplish the same result! I had a hard time to find out the K&N part number for the one vent filter I had on the driver side vent cover when I bought the car so took me a while to get mine done.

White powder coating looks very nice, did you have any other parts coated as well? I did the up-pipe, MAF-pipe and turbo shield as well.

Jan
 
Jan,

I have had much the same work done. It started with a turbo shield and up pipe, then MAF pipe. I did the covers in Feb. Right now I am working on an alternator. I pulled another 120A CS-144 from a Riviera. I found several 144's on Caddy's and other high option cars but this one was a 120 amp model plus it had the same pulley as the TTA. I wanted another 120 and the same pulley so I did not have to borrow the stator and pulley from my origional, thus taking the car down while I messed with it. The casting number on the TTA alt is hard to come by as well so I just prefered to take it off and keep it together.

Any way, I am in the process of smothing the case to ready it to be shot in white powder.

At the Nationals this year in I picked up a 200 amp kit from turbobuicks.com that I am going to end up using. It was like $79 and included a new stator, regulator, brush set, and rear bearing. By the time I had my alternator shop clean up my stator and I bought the rest of the parts, which I was going to do anyway, it worked out to be just a few bucks more plus I get a 200 amp alternator out of the deal.

Brent
 
Wow those covers look really good painted. :D May have to get a set done in black to match everything else. :cool:
Thanks for your help guys.

Jan, How did you wind up w/ a TTA over in the UK?

---Bobby
 
The TTA was brought it over in 1996 (from Virginia) by a US air force guy stationed north of London (around Cambridge) and I ended up buying it in 2000. He had a family with 2 kids and was looking to buy a larger cab to be able to take the whole family to car shows etc.

There is another 2 TTA's here that I know the owners of and possibly another 2 people seen or heard of so probarbly 5 in total in the UK. There is 2 in Sweden as I know the owners and also 1 in Switzerland I was told by the Swiss Firebird Club. I'm sure there is a couple in Germany as well specially with all the US military bases over there.

Cheers :)

Jan
 
Originally posted by TurBo BiRd
Wow those covers look really good painted. :D May have to get a set done in black to match everything else. :cool:
Thanks for your help guys.
Click to expand...

Bobby,

Jan and I had them powder coated, not painted. I would think painting them would look good as well. Quick note, not sure what Jan went through. Part of clening them up to PC involved sandblasting them with fine sand. The casting suck and will typically peel up thin flakes of aluminum. It is almost like peeling back the thin pages of a phone book. Once mine were blasted I worked mine over with sandpaper and several sizes of files to smooth them out, clean up the fins, and sharpen the edges. The lips, closest to the head, were especially bad about casting flash that I filed off. Just expect a little work to get them nice.

Brent
 
Yes before having my stuff powder coated I used a file to get rid of the worst "edges" from the castings (not sure what you call it in English).. but it wasn't that bad but depends on the final finish you are looking for. The powder coat is fairly thick but any imperfections will show.

I just removed the worst stuff myself and then the company doing the powder coating for me sand blasted the parts before coating them and they turned out pretty nice but sure there is some imperfections if I look up close but nothing major.

Good thing about having the stuf powder coated is that it's so easy to keep them clean, I put some wax on my stuff and only have to wipe off some dust once in a while !!!

It's fairly inexpensive to powder coat it as well compared to having them painted (unless you do it your self). I paid about $100 USD for both valve covers, turbo heat shield, aluminium MAF pipe (aftermarket) and a stainless steel mandrel bent up-pipe (aftermarket).

Jan
 
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