Finally FINISHED!

[mxracer4life]

Hey Rich, is that intake from Lingenfelter?

 

[WebSlave]

Hey Rich, is that intake from Lingenfelter?

No. It is a F.A.S.T. product, who I believe was bought out by CompCams. At least CompCams is the place with the people who respond when I had questions about it.

Here's another video I took after Connie helped me to put on a new airbridge. The old one was hitting against the underside of my hood, because apparently the larger opening on the new intake manifold moved the centerline up in the throttle body, and changed the angle of the airbridge. I tried every which way from Sunday, but just could not get any more clearance....



Now part of the reason for running the engine was to get the new airbridge heated up so I could retighten the clamp that attached to the MAF sensor. Well, I figured I should go ahead and recheck all the clamps, as one of the primary instructions when working with forced induction is to make sure EVERYTHING is tight so there are no leaks. Well, that didn't work out so well....

So afterwards Connie and I put the old airbridge back in and I sent this flimsy darn thing back. I could just see this thing getting hot and then blowing up like a balloon when I kicked the car into turbo boost.

In the meantime I found a new airbridge made by Granatelli that can handle up to at least 23 psi. Since I'm only set up to get 10 psi out of my turbos, this SHOULD do the trick. Supposed to show up on Monday...



Still got my elbow laid up. Started feeling better, but like a dummy I went and hammered in some fertilizer spikes into the ground with that arm yesterday, and got it to aching again. So I still haven't driven the car since the tune. I think trying to push that gear shift into reverse would be kind of painful to me because of that danged elbow.... Sheesh, it would be my luck that doing all the wrenching to fix my car over the past 6 months or so injured my elbow PERMANENTLY and now I won't be able to drive a stick shift. Yeah, that's MY kind of luck...

 

[mxracer4life]

No. It is a F.A.S.T. product, who I believe was bought out by CompCams. At least CompCams is the place with the people who respond when I had questions about it.

I asked because I seen the same intake on Lingenfelter's website.

 

[mxracer4life]

Love the 'Vette by the way. Got a 60th anniversary here in my detail shop right now. Just love em!

 

[WebSlave]

Heck, between the rains we have been getting, and my danged right elbow being messed up, I'm feeling like I'm NEVER going to be able to drive this car again. My new air bridge came in yesterday, but I'm trying to baby the elbow hoping it will heal up sooner rather than later. But it's driving me NUTS feeling like an invalid....

 

[~Just Curious~]

Yeesh, your luck... It can't be easy taking on your problems one at a time if they refuse to get in line.
But hang in there, try to treat yourself and enjoy the little things! I'm sure it's torture, but the rain will stop and it's good for you to give your elbow a break. Personally I'd prefer that kind of weather if I'm trying to take it easy anyways, at least there's no gorgeous day out to tempt me.

 

[WebSlave]

Yeah, I'm going to put off putting on the new air bridge till later in the week. Connie and I took her truck out, and the road is pretty messed up anyway, so no chance I'd be tempted to take the car out for a ride.

So, no more karate lessons for me for a while. Heck, now that I think of it, been 40 years since my last one...........

 

[WebSlave]

Well, so much for the car being finished....

Well, this just keeps on getting better and better...........

I took the car out today (Thursday) to find a lonely stretch of road to just practice using the clutch from a dead stop to try to get a feel for how it wants to be treated. So I found a nice spot and spent a good bit of time at it. With this dual disk clutch and the lighter aluminum flywheel, it's quite a bit different from what I am used to.

But I was getting better at it with finding what seemed to be the sweet spot between having the clutch chatter like hell, and having it bog the engine because the RPMs are too low. I was thinking I was really getting the hang of it, and maybe there was some breakin of the new clutch needed. So after a couple of dozen of those test clutch engagements, I was doing the clutch thing again and the wide open road beckoned me on to try out some of the other gears. So what the hell.... The car certainly does feel strong, and you can definitely feel when the turbos spool up. It still broke the rear tires loose when I was in third gear up near the top of the gear. So I just cooled it after third gear and put the gear shift into neutral to just coast to let my speed drop down. And, well, I guess you need to hear this rather than trying to describe it.....



Scared the living hell out of me, let me tell you. I was thinking I was going to be needing a tow truck, for sure. And believe me, it was MUCH louder in person than it shows up in that video. Sounded like it was coming from right at my feet, which is right where the clutch is located. There is just no way that this sound is normal in any way.

Well, I got it back home without any further incidents, but man I was sweating it. I guess I'm done driving it until I figure out what to do about the clutch. I don't want to chance it breaking down completely or even cause some damage to anything else. Not really sure what to do at this point, as I know I can't tackle removing that drivetrain with my elbow like it is. I just don't have any strength in my right arm because of it. It's better than it was, but a LONG way from being 100 percent. Working the gear shift was even a chore for me trying to get to fifth gear and reverse. And besides, do I really want to take the chance of hurting my elbow further to where I could never drive a stick shift again?

So basically I'm screwed concerning that car until I can figure out what to do now. Obviously I can't take it back to the person who put the darn thing in there, so this is going to be yet another out of pocket expense. Maybe I could be lucky and the last man in just put the clutch in incorrectly and it can be easily fixed without having to buy a new clutch. But still, that entire drivetrain needs to come out, and that's a pain in the ass from what I can see. Which means it will be costly just for the labor of even checking out the clutch if I feel it is prudent to pay someone else to do it rather than run the risk of hurting my arm further.

Dammit, this is getting REALLY old....

 

[WebSlave]

Well, long story short, MAYBE my car is done and roadworthy now. Took the car to the vette tech at the local Chevy dealership and let him take a look. Besides my finding missing bolts on the bell housing holding it to the engine, the carbon fiber drive shaft I got from Pfadt was too long and contributed to it's own set of problems. So after replacing the drive shaft, torque tube, clutch, clutch master and slave cylinders, and the pilot bearing, maybe nothing else is wrong.

Been putting some miles on the car to break in the clutch properly. So far things seem to be holding together well.

Here's a short video of just stretching the car's legs a bit. Didn't push it too hard, as I didn't take the RPMs over 4,000...



It's definitely got some power to it so I'm going to have to be careful it doesn't just get away from me one day.

 

[hhmoore]

Missed the last update, but I'm glad to hear it's fixed.
What the heck did you do to your elbow?

 

[WebSlave]

Getting there....

Still working on the tune with my tuner. He sends me new tunes, I load them up and do data logging and send him the results so he can generate a new tune based on that data.

Cold startup was a lot better than it has been. Not as rough and not nearly the stumbling it had with the earlier tunes. So that was a good sign of things to come, I thought.

Car just felt stronger to me and sounded stronger somehow. Still a minor problem with throttle crispness just when the gas pedal is depressed in the 1500 to 2200 rpm range, but then it seems to snap together with just a little bit more pressure on the pedal. Definitely improved though. And there is still that minor surging at around 1,000 rpm or less. But overall it feels pretty darn strong.

So I tried to get some logging while the engine was under boost more so than I have done before this time out.



Quite honestly, the car kind of startled me at speed when it felt like the steering got loose on me. I was expecting the rear tires to maybe break loose, but wasn't prepared for the front tires to feel like they weren't exactly gripping the pavement. Maybe it was just my imagination. Or maybe it was just the road itself. But it sure as heck felt strange. And just a tad bit unsettling, even. And heck, I only went as much as 51 percent throttle the entire time. I've NEVER had the throttle to 100 percent yet.

Speaking of strange, I was cruising back towards home and was on a flat section of road running around 65 mph in sixth gear and I noticed the gas mileage was at 33 mpg. Man, can't complain about THAT!

So all in all, things seem to be pulling together rather nicely with the tuning.

 

[JColt]

You should see my Boxers faces right now with the engine noise, lol.

 

[WebSlave]

Still playing around with the tuning on my car. This is kind of complicated stuff, made all the more complicated because the software (EFILive) kind of just keeps you in the dark about what all of the tables, switches, triggers, and modifiers really do and how they affect other tables. Descriptions are terse, to say the least. So you pretty much have to just try to figure it out, then make a change, then take the car out for a drive while logging the data to see if the change you made was for the better, worse, or made no difference whatsoever.

So, I did another data logging run yesterday. I've noticed that the short term fuel trims were fluctuating quite a bit, so I wanted to disable closed loop mode to see what was going on.



Car ran really well in open loop, but seems to be running a bit rich in most areas of the VE map. I disabled the fuel modifiers last night and will do another run today or tomorrow to see if that helps lean it up a bit before modifying the VE (volumetric efficiency - B0101) table.

FYI, the reason I take videos of every run I make is so that if something bad happens, I will have a record of at least the audio so I can go back and try to analyze what happened. Along with the audio and the data logging, it would help a lot to try to figure out exactly what went wrong. So far I've only had one failure, and that was my own fault. When I was working on the fuel system to replace all the lines with teflon lined fuel hose, I had wanted to replace the fuel filter, but couldn't get one of the connectors off. So I left it, possibly thinking I would go back to it. Well, I didn't go back to it, and apparently I had loosened up the connector, as it popped off while I was driving down the road, stranding me till a tow truck could get the car back home.



But all in all, the car is really running pretty well, even with my fumbling attempts to figure out this tuning stuff.

 

[Metachrosis]

and we thought LS1 Edit was the stuff*just a few years ago
Been a few years since I was street duty tuning and blowing big bucks doing what GM failed to.

 

[WebSlave]

Well, I think I've got a better handle on this VE table now. First off, here's what a VE table (B0101) might look like in EFILive..

The values in each cell are a representation of how much air is PREDICTED to be able to fill the engine cylinders at the intersection of the manifold vacuum/pressure and the rpm of the engine, as shown in that table matrix. The PCM uses that value to determine how much fuel to inject into the cylinders when the engine is actually at the rpm level that corresponds with the intake manifold vacuum/pressure. This is pretty much the basis of what's known as a SPEED DENSITY tune.

What a MAP file is, therefore, is just a representation of the VE Table set up in the scan tool, set up to capture the DIFFERENCE between the commanded AFR and the actual AFR as determined by the wide band controller in the exhaust. This is done via a calculated PID that generates these values on the fly while the scan tool is capturing data. What this map file then represents is a correction factor for each cell of the VE table that sufficient data has been captured during a data logging run. That MAP file will look something like this:

The values shown in the above are AVERAGE values of each cell with data in them. Cells that have had hits between zero and ten(10) are excluded from the MAP display so that the average value is more realistic of the actual differential.

So, now with that information captured in the MAP, what EFILive allows you to do is to cut those values in the MAP display from the scan tool, and then paste those values into the VE Table in the tune tool and at the same time also MULTIPLY those map cell values to the cell values in the VE table. This CORRECTS the values in the corresponding cells of the VE Table based on the difference determined in the MAP data. The values less than one (1) will therefore reduce the cell values in the VE Table cells, which will make that cell command a leaner value. Cells in the MAP that are greater than one (1) will increase the value of the VE Table cells, which will command the AFR to be richer. So a smaller value tells the PCM to expect LESS air and therefore inject LESS fuel into the cylinders. A larger cell value does the opposite, telling the PCM to expect MORE air in the cylinders, and therefore inject MORE fuel to compensate accordingly.

So increasing the numbers in the VE Table indicate a richer AFR, and decreasing those numbers indicate a leaner AFR. So this cut and paste of the MAP display values is a very quick and easy way to do what used to be manually capturing data from such cells, figuring out the percentage of difference needed, richer or leaner, and then manually multiplying EACH CELL in the VE Table by that percentage of difference. Yeah, I'll bet THAT was tedious!

Of course, the issue is trying to get enough "hits" in each cell of that MAP display to cover the entire VE Table. Which is why this sort of thing is certainly much easier to do on a dyno where you can control the RPM of the engine and the loading (on a load bearing dyno) of the engine in order to capture ALL the cells needed for a complete VE Table correction. Unfortunately, I have to do this the hard way on the street, which means I most likely will not be able to capture all the cells at the higher RPM range, under all vacuum/boost conditions.

Whew! That had me scratching my head for a while, but I think I understand it now....

 

[Metachrosis]

yup,need a set of drums to spin for that type of fine tuning
It looks like a very cool tool(program)

 

[Shadera]

That thing just sounds soooo good. I love that shuffling idle. Glad to see there's finally some light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm seriously kicking around the idea of buying an old Chevelle to putter around with and rebuild.

 

[Metachrosis]

All LS platform GM's have that sound and it is sweet no doubt
Without that fender badge,its just another Vette . . . . . .

 

[WebSlave]

All LS platform GM's have that sound and it is sweet no doubt
Without that fender badge,its just another Vette . . . . . .

Sorry, but no, not quite. Not all "LS platform GM's" have the sound of my car. Not by a long shot. The engine is a custom built 427, (block, heads, intake, etc.,) and has rear mounted twin turbos replacing the mufflers. The aftermarket headers dump into 3 inch exhaust pipes. And the entire exhaust is wrapped with insulation. All of these contribute to modifying the sound of the exhaust.

And the fender badges don't tell nearly the story of what this car really is under those blue plastic body panels.

Yep, "just another vette".

 

[RoyalPythonPros]

Is that simply for fun or do you plan on getting it on a track?