Turbo V6 Camaro

[Jon Early]

This was a pain and I may come up with a better thermostat solution down the road. For a number of reasons I found it easier to keep the stock location for now. As the car progresses, I will find a better way to run it in line or something.

Welder couldn't get in here, so I had to cut more off.

He buzzed what he could, but it would still for sure leak water. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

The actual intake was going a little better though.

ooo baby! If this is all worthless for performance it should at least look cool when I'm done!

 

[Jon Early]

Since I'm running M90 heads, the intake injector bungs are worthless to me. I have to plug them.

3/8" NPT pipe plugs work well.

It seems worth it to port the protrusions though.

Hmmm. I know people have plugged these holes before, but I'm curious if they bother to clean up the ports. I haven't decided if I should leave them alone beyond this, or try filling the voids with JB weld.

Moving on for now. Finally blasted all that gross paint off. Temporary front cover plate is on.

tapered entry is cut to fit! That took a while.

This is where we stand for now. My welder is going to get the side pipe welded on soon, and I'll start fitting the pipe from the throttle body to the plenum after that.

The plan is to run an LS1 throttle body which means I'll need to add an LS1 throttle cable and accelerator pedal. These throttles are the same as the Northstar except different cam for RWD so it's a nice upgrade for the 3800. I'll have to also get an LQ4 MAF, swap the PCM over to a '98 operating system, do some minor work to my wire harness, and hope like hell that everything still works like I think it should. I hear that there might be some issues with my gauges, but I'll believe it when I see it. Worst case scenario is that this intake needs to wait until I get Holley EFI.

 

[Jon Early]

The old Comp G is a gift that just keeps on giving! The only set of rails I have that will work without major modifications came from the intercooler kit. I just had to drill and tap the unused boss on the intake manifold for them to fit. Unfortunately the supply fitting is on the wrong side. I'm hoping to plug it, and drill tap the other rail once I figure out where my plumbing and regulator lands. The crossover hose can be shortened quite a bit too.

The weather in southern Indian was really nice until yesterday, so I pulled the GN out and took some pushrod measurements with the new lifters. I went with GMPP LS7s. They may be a bit overkill in terms of price, but the supposed quality gives me piece of mind.

I used two methods of measuring. One was by coloring the valve tips with sharpie and reading the contact patch. The other was by setting the rocker to 0 lash and counting the wrench turns to full torque (25 ft-lbs). It helps to have an adjustable pushrod so you can dial in the ideal length.

The ZZP 7.00s were a little short.

Setting my adjustable to 7.025" pushed the mark down a ways and while putting my preload around 1.25 turns. It didn't make a nice mark on the valve tip like the 7.00 did either, but the not pictured witness I saw was a slight overshoot to the outboard side. I forgot to check and see how much preload I would have with a 7.00, but I think it will be about perfect. A shorter push rod should amount to less lifter preload and the pink mark above is not bad. I figure that mark should move to the center of the valve tip once there's some oil pressure at the lifter.

This is all just the way I learned it though. Let me know if I'm missing something or doing something wrong. I've never done this before, so I'm glad I'm not messing with super low travel lifters or anything like that!

 

[dezldave961]

Congrats on the life stuff, and I like what you're doing with the intake. For the injector ports, I did the same exact thing on mine. 3/8"NPT tap and plug, I believe, then blend it (also didn't add anything to risk it falling back out... bonus tip: use AL plugs to let it grind at same rate).

My plenum extension for this season will be similar, but just spent ~$150 to get it from Australia...
(already hand-made a thicker one for the lower section to lift it above my fuel logs, and going to trim the MACE upper to fit nicer than they made it... my TB is still on the driver's side, unlike how they mod for Holden turbo space)

I know people say the F-body #1 port is hamstrung, so hopefully your work improves that. I look forward to all your efforts hitting the road/track.

 

[Jon Early]

Thanks! I had a lot of people recommending the Holden intake but I really only like how they look on FWD cars. I don't want the throttle off to the side either.

I hadn't heard of Cylinder 1 being crippled, but I'm not particularly surprised either. Being right up against a wall cannot be good. I hope I'm not aggravating that problem with my big plans, but I don't think I'm helping to solve it either.

The tapered "side pipe" is mostly welded on.

I was hoping this fanned entry would help with distribution. Going straight in but offset away from the runners would for sure put cylinder 1 at a disadvantage.

Nobody sells a nice LS1 throttle flange so I bought an adapter plate for an LSJ M62. It just needed to be ported a little.

Fixed!

I'm still not 100% sure how this is going to work. Right now it's looking like I'll be flipping the throttle and flange upside down so the that the cable is on the driver side and pulling the bottom of the spool. I think then I can mount a cable bracket where the L36 fuel rails were.

If that doesn't work, I might have to ditch some parts and get a Northstar throttle. It appears to be exactly the same except for the throttle spool being reversed. This wouldn't hurt my feelings because the LS1 throttle I have is kind of messed up. The idle air hole is plugged. Perhaps it was too big for the V6?

Also, it doesn't even open all the way. Not sure what's up with that. The cracking powder coat that's going to be a big pain to remove is so thick that it may be stopping the motion too soon, but I think the stop itself is bent too. Regardless, this thing needs some work and it may be easier to just start over with a bare untouched throttle.

 

[Jon Early]

I tried to get this long block together once and for all, but I've never set up a valve train before. This has been quite the adventure without adjustable rockers.

I started by tooling around with the ZZP adjustable pushrod and a sharpie. In hindsight, I made a lot of mistakes and ended up buying a set of Manley 3/8" chromoly pushrods. All of them are 7.00".

On another forum I was asked by a more experienced builder if I had accounted for the hydraulic lifter preload which I had not. Somehow I knew this would bite me in the rear, but none of the videos I watched had mentioned it. I looked up the lifter travel for the consensus seems to be .060 - .100" but shoot for .080" I decided to add .080" to my adjustable pushrod and try again. However, I noticed the rod length being inconsistant. It doesn't have a lock nut and seems to spin no matter how careful you are with installation.

so I made an atttempt to fix that before moving on. I started by threading it the entire way.

Threads are terrible, but they'll work. The new ones will only thread the lock nut anyway.

I found a nut in my stash. It's unfortunatly thicker than I hoped, so it gives me a minimum length of 7.05". Oh well. I knew that if anything, I was going to need longer pushrods anyway.

I adjusted up to 7.08" and gave this another shot. That's when I noticed this.

Huh. That's no good. Now I understand why these otherwise pretty titanium retainers look so hammered on the edges. I know the previous owner of these heads wasn't doing anything special with his valve train, so he just let it ride. Hopefully the guides are okay....

I also did a recheck of the sharpie trick which resulted in my mark being pushed down quite a bit. I was discouraged, but determined to figure out what I was doing wrong. I wondered if the rocker to retainer contact was telling me something.

After some research on the issue, I learned that these are LS style valves which are longer than stock. I also learned that ZZP makes pedestal shims to correct this exact difference. Perfect!

Deburred the edges and installed.

 

[Jon Early]

It's very close, but it's clearance!

Sharpie mark looks close enough to the middle to make me happy which doesn't make sense to me. Since I already had the 7.00" pushrods, I chose to try a different method. Instead I would count the wrench turns from 0 lash to full torque.

The passenger side stayed at around 1/2 turn which is on the loose side but in spec. The driver side was horrendous. The front cylinder was at the very bottom of the spec at about 3/8 turn. The back two were very loose at only 1/4 turn. This basically means that there is no preload on the lifter at all. In fact, 0 lash was never acheived on cylinder 5. They were still loose at full torque.

That was disappointing becasue I really wanted this behind me. I have eight 7.05" pushrods ordered, but it will be a couple months before they ship according to Summit. Had I known that, I would have bought ZZP pushrods to begin with. I hope the 7.05s will be what I need. The travel on these lifters is a lot smaller than stock and I want them on the quiter side, so I will get picky if I need to!

 

[dezldave961]

Those heads seem similar to what I rebuilt for the Buick last summer... stock rockers, upgraded everything else. I still got to use stock-length 7.05" pushrods, and also went to 3/8" for strength as I went up with springs. Most of my focus was on install height/spring rate checks, since it appeared my exhaust rockers were coming off and mushrooming the top of the valves at some point in recent years.

It's better that you're checking than not, since these problems tend to hide under the valve cover until they crap out. I don't look forward to messing with my adjustable T&D's on the Tischler heads I have for my RWD 3800 project.