1dirtyZ's Conversion by 1dirtyZ

15 minute(s) of a 153 minute read

got the car off the lift and squared away in the middle of the garage so i can remove most of the interior. i managed to remove most of the nitrous wiring, timing tuner, bottle heater, and progressive controller wires. 

i also routed the grounding cable i got from the head to the trunk area. turned out to be a tad to short, so i'll be grounding it on the driver side trunk area and running a cable from the battery - on the pass. side- to that spot .

i also snagged a spal 16" fan from a buddy of mine , should be installing that soon too.

another thing i noticed is that i'm running out of places to put guages in 

i'm thinking of getting a guage pod that houses the tach , and two small guages ( boost and fuel pressure). orrrrrr, i could just do what i did on the camaro and just build me a whole new cluster with my own guages. right now the only guages working on there are fuel level and volts.

i'll see how energetic i feel tomorow

9/18/08

i finished the grounding deal , and now have the battery grounded to the body and directly to the block.

the car still didn't like to start after it warmed up, so i went ahead and boght a new starter ( thinking the one on there was already toast since the header precticaly touches it - only header wrap and a bit of heat shield seperate the two )

i also extended the maf harness- i'm thinking of running the thing on a 1 bar maf setup (using the camaro's old tune) for now and going SD in the near future when the thing is up and running propperly. connected the BOV and tans vaccume lines ( need to install them correctly/ cleanly)

i also decided to ditch the stock cluster and do my own. maybe a small rpm and speed ( not sure on the speed one ) and relocate the essentials in to the cluster. will do that as soon as the thing is running i guess.

i started the thing up today and it ran fine . i turned it off and the thing would not turn over! so , the starter was a waste 

could it be that the battery is bad? the alternator is charging ( i see it on the volt guage).

so i guess next up on the list would be the damn electrical wiring 

i'm seriously considering removing everything ( and i mean everything ) and starting from scratch, i'm just too lazy to do such a thing 

i do need to do the following now:

- redo the fan wiring and install the spal fan - the harness i have now has some small guage fan wiring for power and coupled with the crappy fans i have now you get this :

- wire the two fuel pumps to two seperate relays on the relay board.

- wire the water injection pump

- wire the fuel pressure sending unit box thingy.

- fix a ground issue i have right now with the reverse lights and rurn signal - they now stay on all the time !

- clean up the existing underdash mess that is supposed to be "electrical wiring " 

after that i should down load the camaro's old blower file after i tweak it a bit and then fine tune it on the dyno.

9/23/08

got most of the wiring done , just have to do the guages now. i redid the relay panel, all that i need to do is wire up some fuses for safety. i also finished installing the spal fan , it turned out the cheapie ones i had there had their blades angled in a way that made them not move air !

right now i need to change the oil on that thing and filter. then i will try to take the car out this weekend and play with it and fine tune the tune i got in there.

took the car out for a quick test drive , it drove great , i lso did the obligatory "floor it to see which hose comes off" test , and as expected , i had one of the hoses going into the intercooler come off ( clamp was bottomed out and not tightening the hose properly), fixed that and proceeded to vaccuming up the interior of the car from all the crap inside of it . 

on a side note, the car still would not start after it got warm . the battery is charging propperly , and i even tried another battery on there , yet still no luck. 

what could cause this? i changed the starter, and got a thick gable grounding the block to the - batt. terminal. can it be the smallish guage wire (original) going from the ford fender mounted starter solenoid (now used as a junction block ) to the starter?

9/26/08

took the car out for some testing at the local spot ( ok , it was more like laying rubber down from my old slicks on the launch pad than actual testing )

car pulls good, only there is one major issue : just past 4000 rpm afr shoots up to 17:1 and higher !!! don't know why its doing that ; i have the same tune in it as the camaro - which runs great- fuel pressure is good at 60 psi and rising with boost.

i looked atthe hp tuners file and the strange thing is that the PE table goes from 1.2 in the lower rpm's to .85 from 4000 rpm and above ! i checked a few of the camaro files i had and they were all set up that way; which doesn't make sense! ( i almost could have sworn that the PE tables i had never went below 1.1 )

any how , i started messing with the tune and slowly brought the AFR down to 14 ish last time i floored it .i had to cut my session short cause i ran out of time and slicks then 

another issue i'm having right now is over heating: the car's temp slowly rises untill it gets too hot. i have a single spal 16" fan on there, and another on order which should be here in the next few days. another problem is also that the starter will not turn w=once the car got warm. i'm assuming that is due to the small + cable going to the starter.

i also need to cut up the bumper some more to get some more fresh air in there. that and finally get to redo the starter cable and the water injection pump wiring.

i'm also debating weather i should go with an SD tune right now, we'll see what happens this week

10/3/08

well i found out that the file i was looking at seemed to be corrupted, cause when i opened an older file the numbers looked more familiar. 

so i took the car out to the local spot again after changing the slicks i had on there ( 4 uears old and pretty worn ; this is what they looked like when i was done with the first sesion of testing :

anyhow, the car pulls through the rpm range at about 11:1 now , still need to get it to a dyno and see exactly how the AFR graph looks like.

i'm still overheating this thing, i ordered a new spal fan which should be here in a couple of days , i'll be mounting it as a pusher to help the puller i have there right now. 

if that doesn't work , i might just pull the radiator out and have the end tanks pulled off and cleaned. if that doesn't work i'll start looking into replacing the water pump ( i guess i ran out of parts to replace so thats why i'll change it )

the cool thing about today is that with the new(ish) slicks the thing pulls goooood all i can say is :

VIVA LA BOOST!! , 

the bad news is i think i need to change the converter ; ( and this is where i need your input) when shifting from 1st to 2nd and 2nd to 3rd rpm's drop from 6300 to 4300 rpm. i'm thinking the thing is pushing through the converter , could that be the issue? cause if i remeber correctly , i should just drop about 1000 rpm or so between shifts.

10/7/08

well a quick update on things going on :

i got my new spal fan in today, so i promptly installed it as pusher on the other driver side of the radiator. i also had the radiator cleaned ( end tanks removed and internal passeges cleaned) , the shop said there was alot of gunk and scale built in there that they removed.

so i slapped all of those together and installed it and ran the car for a few minutes and it held steady at 180 for a few minutes ( had to shut it down cause i couldn't breath in the garage anymore ) , which is a good thing, cause before it would just keep climbing . the real test is when i take it out again on the road. 

another thing i got out of the way was the new ultra sexy guage panel i fabbed up which goes where the center AC vents are. it holds 3 guages (afr, boost , and fuel pressure) and did i mention it is ultra sexy 

offcourse in my ultimate wisdom i forgot to take the camera with me , so no pics today , but given how sexy the guages look , i'll definatly have pics be tomorow 

i also found out that i forgot to bolt down the compressor housing or snail ! there was one allen bolt missing and the rest were loose a bit . but luckily no damage was done to the unit.

i also got a message from a buddy who owns a bike ( busa with n2o) who was mentioning that his bike is "ready" for my junk...... oh well , guess i have to put the 200 shot back on 

next up on the list: more tuning ! i'll be taking it to the dyno this weekend to see what i can do timing wise. i'm also thinking of setting up a retard button ( timing retard that is ) , so that i hit the button when launching to gain traction and release ( bumps timing up to normal ) as soon as i feel the car hook. maybe even wire the timing tuner back on ehre aain ... ( now that i think of it why did i rip all that stuff out in the first place! ) .

another little progect i might do is relocate my regulator from the rail to the fender so i can bolt the regular fiberglass hood on . but why would i want to make the car look decent

10/12/08

so, i totaly forgot to take pics but some stuff is finished - and i still didn't get pics 

i swapped the converter i had to the ol'trusty PI "pinky" one 

i also had the subframe connectors finally welded on , just need to paint them ( had them in the garage for over a year!)

and in another step forward i took off the rear sway bar - to put on another car ( azooooz's stang , since he "forgot " to order the wolfe sway bar )

i also had the flex plate shield and tranny blanket put on too ( i still love you feet )

we have a test and tune we will be attending this friday , we'll be taking the red stang there , but as soon as we come back , i'll start fine tuning the car on the dyno and hopefully have the water injection finally plumbed. i'm also thinking of converting to speed density. that and the other little stuff mentioned earlier.

10/14/08

here are the pics (finally ) :

the subframe:

and the ultra sexy guage and panel

1/25/09

man its been ages since i got on this thread,,,,

just an update for you guys ,,, the thing is running and well went out to the local spot a few days ago and i had the drag radials on ,,, managed to smoke the tires at 130 mph! so i know its making power 

hopefully will be heading to the race track in bahrain this weekend and should see what it does. debating on wether to run the car as is or dump some pump gas and bump the timing . 

next up will be an SD tune , and finally mess with the rear brakes to get them to work properly

1/31/09

went to the track this weekend ,, track was horrible , no one made a clean pass. i managed to run a 10.2 lifting 3 times ( one of them was a complete lift till i regained control). i know this thing has mid to low 9's in it easy!

just sucks the track was not there . it was so bad that they actually had to cancell round 3 of the championship ,,,, it was so humid and wet it was not safe at all to run.

9/30/09

man its been ages since i updated this thread!!

here's a quick update till i get some pics:

- switched to a carb style efi GMPP intake manifold and edelbrock low profile elbow 

- installed a snow performance carb spacer with meth. nozzle bungs

- got a new set of DR's along the slicks i already had.

- converted to a #bar SD tune

- ported the headers ( they were nasty from the inside)

- got the heads ported and cleaned up 

thats it as far as i can remeber 

next up is getting it tuned , lower tubuar front controll arms, cutting the lower core support and welding i decent looking one, and later down the road swapping to a cog drive setup.

on a side note , i got a set of dynatech swap headers and tried them, they almost fit ( driver side was ok but pass hit the frame). i think this is due to the fact that i used the 4.6 k-member and mounts , as opposed to the ls1 specific k-member . from pics i came across it seems that the ls1 specifit k-member sets the engine higher up and forward in the engine compartment compared the the 4.6 ; wich leads me to beleive that the headers were designed with a ls1 k-member in mind.

10/14/09

got a base SD tune in the car now , just need to fine tune it now. i also got the lower control arms in .

i also looked back at the placement of the meth nozzle after reading a thread about placing it there ( in the carb spacer) , and noticed that the methanol will be siphoned in while cruising . so i'm thinking of just sticking a single nozzle back into the intake tube going to the throttle body. 

pics of the intake : 

12/14/09

more updates as i get some stuff done to this thing 

i decided to ditch the stock f body radiator infavor of the becool one i had on the camaro, only problem is that the becool one is soo much thicker than the stocker which meant i had to move it forward some more to clear the blower inlet tube.

long story short i hacked up the front end 

i cut both upper and lower core supports and fabbed up a tubelar unit that bolts to where the bumper used to mount. this way i'll have the nose of the car, radiator and intercooler all mounted on that unit as well as the front (inside) bumper.

bye bye core support:

dead core

and here is how it looks now ( radiator is going to sit a bit lower , didn't have a smaller box to sit it on ) - and the welds look alot nicer in person

bottom side will have tabs for the radiator and intercooler , and the top side will have tabs for the nose of the car and radiator.

when that is done , i'll weld the other ( thicker ) tube to the side plates to form a bumper and to use also as a mounting point for the top of the intercooler .