Z48LT-1

Grumpy, Yeah, okay, thanks, I guess. One of the benefits implied by the sign a good friend gave me for my garage door, "My garage, my rules" is being able to work as slowly as I want to. I would greatly enjoy your company in the garage but only after the tools were put away and the beers came out. Otherwise, each of us would undoubtedly contemplate homicide... Best regards, and thank you, seriously, for your hard-learned contributions -- Gary Don't ask me how much time I spent taking apart a Camaro wiring harness to go in my project...

ouch

Durn! I was hoping for my MacGyver merit badge, too. Grumpy, you're one hard scoutmaster! Gary

Searching for "water pump pulley spacer" on a popular mail order web site (climb that mountain's peak) produced a $6 kit: Water Pump Spacer; Water Pump Pulley Shim Kit; Incl. 0.0625/ 0.125/ 0.1875 in. Shims; Chevrolet Water Pumps. Shims one and three add up to .250, by my math... Cheers -- Gary

FWIW, I fashioned my cylinder-inflater from a spark plug anti-fouler ($3/pr from Napa), an air hose fitting and a little JB Weld. The threads matched well enough (i.e. "bottomed out" under finger torque) that I figured the epoxy would seal the deal. Haven't used it yet but a dry run didn't blow the fixture apart. Keeping the piston near TDC when you play this game might help avoid the catastrophe that dead2me alludes to. Best of luck, and keep us posted, eh? Cheers -- Gary

I wish to humbly correct the revered veteran of this board, Mr. Wood, but the '94-'95 LT1s were OBDI, while the '96-'97 were OBDII. There were other changes but while all '94 up PCMs are flash upgradeable, the diy opportunities are greater for the OBDI models. Cheers -- Gary Not to hijack the thread, but I just found an interesting article on the difference among PCMs here: http://www.gmhightechperformance.com/tech/0704gm_factory_pcms/index.html

The Four Seasons! Exactly! As long as we're hijacking this thread about Eglin, let's do it right. One of my TDYs to Kadena was particularly memorable. I was an "action officer" (drone) in the Logistics Plans Division at HQ PACAF (this was my hardship tour, Hickam AFB, Hawaii. don't cry for me...) and was involved in transitioning the fighter wing at Kadena from F-4s to F-15s. The process was managed through periodic Site Activation Task Force ("SATAF") meetings where all the players from across the USAF met at the activation site to assign action items to everyone involved. My boss's boss, a Colonel, decided he needed to make a Staff Assistance Visit (Christmas shopping trip) so he tagged along on this particular TDY. Naturally, he was assigned a sedan for his convenience, so we enjoyed a little more mobility than was usual. Turns out this TDY coincided with Okinawa's adoption of the Japanese standard of driving on the wrong side of the road (rhd was an artifact from US domination after WWII, and this transition was a demonstrably GOOD THING, but something of a huge distraction, as you can imagine). We low-lifes spent most of the trip reminding the Colonel to "Think left, sir" every time he made a turn. No military personnel were harmed during this mission, thankfully. Lemme return this thread to Eglin AFB by mentioning that my very first SATAF meeting occurred days after I arrived at Hickam with a trip back to Eglin to witness one of the last SATAFs for the 33rd TFW. Some day I should tell you about Lt Col H****, my putative "leader" for that trip. He was a piece of work. Best -- Gary

ukcats, I'll definitely put Eglin on the itinerary for my hybrid's victory tour; almost too many fond memories to ignore. Lemme know if the Beach Club is still open (it was half way to Destin out on Okaloosa Island). Tony, I'll have to admit I haven't been to your Pacific Ocean beaches so we may have to call the contest a draw. I did several TDYs to Kadena AB but we never got far from the base (China Pete's for dinner ware and a Kobe beef place whose name I've forgotten...) Those were the days... Best -- Gary

Warning: Old Fart ahead. After you get to Eglin, set your way back machine to 38 years and I'm the guy showing off my brand new green with black stripes '69 Camaro Z28 in the BOQ parking lot, next to the hospital at the west gate. We've got a nice little sports car club sponsored by the local Ford dealer and have autocrosses in a parking lot next to the amusement park just over the Okaloosa Island bridge. There's a club in Pensacola that's got a disused corner of a landing field where they put on events. I work in the Armament Development and Test Center building in the Guided Bomb Program Office where I'm the so-called program manager (a puny Captain!) for the laser guided bomb program. We're buying these buck rogers kits that bolt onto standard iron bombs that home in on a laser designated target with near perfect accuracy, sending the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong to their tunnels. Couple years of this and victory will by ours for sure. Drop into the new officers club (the old one next to the flight line -- right across from the main fire station -- burned to the ground last year) and I'll buy you a beer. Its hot as hell in the summer but nice throughout the year and the beaches have no equals. Enjoy your tour. Cheers -- Gary

280/383 Heck yes, I knew that's what you meant, and I'm just an fng. Nobody who's ever been introduced to a quadrajet would get that wrong. And not just because you're a fellow Texan... Best -- Gary

Just a thought... With the fan and shroud made of plastic, why couldn't you cut the fan out of the shroud, turn the shroud around to face the front of the radiator, stick the fan on the front (formerly rear) of the shroud, and leave the fan and blade to >pull air from the grille opening - into the shroud - and through the radiator<? This would leave the fan rotation and orientation as designed. (While you're at it, stretch and shrink the shroud where it needs it to cover the fins.) It would also offer the opportunity to create an intake shroud to direct grille air into the fan... (which might make a fan-off status more frequent.) Bumper repair places can tell you about "welding" the plastics back together. Cheers -- Gary

A search (Search -> Advanced Search) on "Taurus fan", limited to the V8Z forums, came up with this: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=99700&highlight=taurus+fan, among others. That help any? If not, maybe one of the other hits from that search might. Cheers -- Gary Search is your friend.

Dale, Congrats, fellow geezer (you outrank me by exactly ten days!) Mind telling us what tricks you did to get the computer to work? Aside from the VATS thing, for instance have you already tuned the missing emissions things, powersteering sensors, a/c, etc., out of the computer? The engine sounded quite smooth and regular; are you using the original Z-28 tune? Do you have a code reader and did it throw any trouble codes? Keep up the steady progress! Cheers -- Gary

I would be somewhat surprised to learn that the original GM PCM couldn't be tuned to give that kind of mileage on a reasonably-cammed LT1. Implementation of this trick is left as an exercise for the student, as always. Cheers -- Gary

dlouis, Let me be the first to welcome you and to encourage you to make the Search function your friend. As soon as you've got the slightest hint of a question beginning in your head, do a couple searches and you're going to be amazed at how many times your question has been addressed. It can be something of a learning process to determine what search terms to use but start out with the obvious and see what you get. The Advanced search function is especially useful. I did an advanced search on LS1 Fuel Tank, restricting my search to the Technical forums by clicking and highlighting Technical in the forums list, I got pages of hits, including this one: http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=101232&highlight=ls1+fuel+tank ...which I know from experience has a wealth of knowledge about a particular solution which happens to be the way I'm going on my street rod project: use a tank with pump from an LS1 Camaro. Turns out it fits with the removal of the spare tire well, at least for some models of the Nissan-Z. Anyway, welcome again! Cheers -- Gary

lbh, I have no doubt that I speak for many of us on this forum. You're our new hero (at least for the moment). Huge props for everything you got done; bummer you didn't succeed, but congrats on having the judgement to make the right trade between discretion and valor (it'd be a bummer to waste an engine build on an ego trip). The Karma gods will reward you eventually; please share that event. Cheers -- Gary

It would be instructive to datalog it, to determine, for instance, whether the knock sensors are retarding the ignition, which would explain everything. Cheers -- Gary

Piston, I thought I had found all the LT1 wiring harness posts on the site but your mention of the lt1 wiring delete recap sent me back to re-search and re-read everything and the one thing I did find was some broken links entitled "lt1 wiring delete". Anybody have a copy of this thread which has apparently gone missing? Actually I'm not sure I'm all that concerned about what to delete, exactly, because I'm pretty sure I can noodle through what I won't be using. Regarding gauges, I got a '95 Camaro Z-28 instrument cluster off of ebay and was hoping that I would be able to duplicate the relevant wires to solve all those problems. (Crossing my fingers that the fuel level sensor in the '01 Z-28 fuel tank I've got has the same electrical characteristics as the one in the '95 tank...) (Also that the Caprice PCM has the same signal as the Camaro PCM for things such as tachometer input, etc.) Deja, the cluster I got happened to have the connector and pigtails so I think I'll be able to wire it up OK but I'm also hoping to use the lighting controls as well as the a/c controls from the Z-28 (also off ebay, natch) and neither of those came with any pigtails so if you (or anyone else reading this far) have any of those I'm definitely interested. Likewise for some of the other engine compartment connectors aside from the PCM connectors, although I my choose to simply hard-wire most things to clean up the engine compartment. Anyway, thanks for the advice, everybody; I think I've got enough to get my self thoroughly in trouble now. Cheers, and thanks also for indulging my non-Nissan issues! -- Gary

I should mention I've got the GM shop manual (all three volumes) for the '95 Caprice, as well as a CD of the wiring diagrams for the '95 Camaro (I've got a Camaro instrument cluster I'll be using) so I should be able to figure out where all the wires go, but I was just wondering about the mechanics of modding the harness. I anticipated splicing wires and using both solder and heat shrink. Did you just snip off the unused wires or go to the trouble of removing the pins from the connectors? Oh, yeah, I've also got an '01 Z-28 fuel tank with sender and pump I hope to use, using the comprehensive instructions provided by others here. Cheers -- Gary

Hey all, first of all thanks for all the great info. Just donated some dough to show my appreciation. I'm installing a '95 Caprice LT1 and 4L60E in a '48 Chevy street rod and would appreciate some basic info about modifying the wiring harness. I've got the complete Caprice harness which places the PCM at the driver's side front of the engine compartment. I'd like to hide the PCM on the cockpit side of the firewall so will have to extend many wires and shorten many others. Are there any tools that will help, i.e. to remove/install the pins in the PCM connectors? One of the four connectors is damaged and should be replaced; anyone know any web sources for such hardware? I'll be getting TunerCat and a data logging program, probably DataMaster, and an initial mail order tune. Engine mods will be minimal to start, but I'm deleting the emissions stuff as much to clean up the engine as anything. Any and all advice greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Cheers -- Gary

Wheelman, Your numbers are pretty impressive, IMO. Looks like your tuning has wrung every last particle of performance out of that cam. A gain of 55HP and 23 ft-lbs over the stock 260/330 (which we all should acknowledge may be optimistic) with the few mods you've done is sweet. Have you told us how many miles are on the engine? What about headers/exhaust? Looking forward to getting my lump running and on the dyno; it's a 33K (alleged) '95 Caprice motor/4L60E which will initially have only block hugger headers, true duals, and possibly some 1.6:1 rockers and fresh valve springs. Speaking of which, you didn't mention rockers. Did you use the complete hot cam kit with its 1.6 roller rockers? Did you start out with a mail order tune or do it yourself from the get-go? What year PCM/harness? I suspect I've read all the answers to my questions from previous posts but hope you don't mind updating my memory and putting the whole story together now that you've got the new numbers. Finally, while we're putting it all together, what tuning tools are you using? Is data-logging important to your success? Best -- Gary PS Cold air intake? Throttle body bypass?

Hopelessly, Nice job of backyard engineering, and I say that sincerely. Did the cable length work out for you? I worry that my shifter may need a shorter cable to get the stick in a decent location, but of course my hybrid ('48 Chevy/LT1/4L60E) is a different breed from yours. Cheers -- Gary

Hopelessly, I'm guessing your camaro shifter didn't come with the shifter cable. Here's what it looks like: The bracket bolts to a pair of pan bolts, the fitting on the end bolts to the shifter arm of the tranny, and the nylon fitting snaps onto a ball at the end of a lever inside the Camaro linkage unit. Hope this helps -- Gary BTW the fitting that bolts to the shifter arm coming out of the tranny appears to be permanently attached to the cable. Make sure it's included when you buy a cable.

that240guy, Surely not stock rockers and valve springs on that 338? Curious Gary

Click Search. Click Advanced Search. Enter tpi in keyword(s) block. Change "entire posts" to "titles only". Click Chev V8 Tech Board. Go. presto, 50 threads. Cheers -- Gary