Phantom

Know what you mean Cody. I came up behind a "sleeper Mustang" this morning. Looked like a POC older model until I listened and then noticed no visible exhaust pipes. Anyway - he took off which kind of surprised me since I was behind him so I pushed it down in 5th and stayed with him until I got some open road to the right and then caught & passed him. The bummer about the synchro problem in 5th is that I can't drop it down to 4th and then back up to 5th if I'm in a hurry without regrinding the gears. Got to get the T56 fixed! Anyway - congrats on the kill. Gotta love picking on the F bodies & 'stangs!

Austin, What offset are you running on your wheels? I have '0' offset on my 16x7 Center Lines. I am also running 225/50-16's. Yokohama's right now but had Dunlops. I have the same problem with ocaissional scrubbing on the rear fender well lips. I've considered the baseball bat routine myself - or a sledge hammer handle - NOTE - I said the handle of the sledge hammer!!!

My '77 280Z has never had a seal between the hood and the cowl - at least in the 11 years I've had the car. I have seen multiple sketches where one of these is installed. Was that a feature on the 240/260 not carried over to the 280 or should I have one there? I didn't have seals on my windshield wiper posts either until I saw them in a sketch,looked hard at my car and saw remnants of the old ones. I now have those seals as well as new cowl to body seals, hood guides, inspection port, bumpers, etc. I also have always had the seal between the hood and the radiator core support which is evidently getting hard ot find. Anyway, anyone out there that knows if I need to install a hood to cowl seal?

You can also go to the tiny little bicycle tires on the front. Less weight, less wind resistance, less rolling friction.

Was out giving a friend of my son a "demo ride" this afternoon. As per my standard routine I quietly motored up to the I-20 frontage road near my home. I stopped dutifully at the stop sign and made a very slow right turn onto the frontage road - making sure no one was in sight in front of me. As I turned onto the frontage road a white TA pulled on behind me. He was just starting to get on it to go around me when I "gently depressed the throttle" - 1st, 2nd,3rd,4th and BRAKES for turn under to catch frontage road headed back to house. TA was about 50 yards behind me by the time I hit the brakes. I had slowed back down to about 30 and was making my left turn when he went by at WOT doing about 100. He won't forget the little red Datsun.

I've gotten a "POP" 3-4 times now out of my LS1 when I was backing down from fairly high rpm (5,000) in 3rd or 4th. That doesn't seem right to me. What could that be symptomatic of? Valve problem?

Grumpy. Thanks again for your feedback. I originaly wanted to go with the 3" but now I'm seriously thinking about going up to a 3 1/2". I'd hate to screw the car with something as simple as a too small exhaust. Anything else in mind on a stock LS1 that could be tweaked to help that torque curve? Do I need to get into the ECM?

Spriirit, You're reading the curves backwards. The one that goes high quickly and stays up there to about 5,200 is the torrque curve. The one that does the steady climb and peaks from 5,200 to 6,000 is the HP curve. All I can tell you is that the car walked away from a Mustang Gt and a Firebird TA in the past two days like they were standing still. The only thing that really concerns me is the torque curve. It's not as flat as I would like and it dies at 5,200. I'm really beginning to think it's an exhaust problem. May have to change that just to confirm one way or another.

Despite Herculean efforts on Spot's part I am still in the same pickle. There has to be a way to do this?

JohnC - I think he was talking turbocharging rather than NA - but if you really want to educate him his name is Dave and his email address is: idealh@bellsouth.com. That's the thing about emails. There is generally a return address on them. (smile) For what it's worth, I think the source of the emails may have been guys that read a couple of my posts over on zcar.com. The classic, though, was the first guy who flamed me. I got an email from his sister-in-law a few days later apologizing for his actions. Evidently he had been visiting and had nothing better to do than get on her computer and flame about a hundred guys. Felt sorry for the poor woman. What a butt he must be. Anyway, I really try to consider the source and that usually helps. I also have leared through a lot of istakes that it is so very easy to say something that can be mistaken for something else. My wife really helped me out there.

Grumpy, Engine is a stock 99 Camaro LS1 with a K&N intake right in front of the MAF, just behind the radiator. Engine has about 4,000 miles total on it now. Obviously a total computer controlled engine here with coil-on-plug electronic ignition. Reason I asked about exhaust is that I run 2.5" off headers to a Y connector to single 2.5" the last 4' throught the muffler. Thought it might be killing my top end?

Grumpy, I noticed on my dyno results that my torque curve is above 300 from about 3,200 rpm to about 5,200 rpm - max 326 at around 4,200. The HP curve is nearly a straight line climbing from 100 at 1,750 to 300 at 5,000. the climb then tapers and tops out at 311 at 5,500 and is back down to 300 at 6,000 where the rev limiter kicks in. At 4,000 rpm it's about 280. With the T-56 and a 3.7:1 LSD and shifting at 5,800 the rpm ranges are: 2nd: 3,880-5,800 ~ 65 mph 3rd: 4,236-5,800 ~ 95 mph 4th: 4,462-5,800 ~ 115 mph 5th: 4,292-5,800 ~ 155 mph 6th: 3,867-5,800 ~ ?? Basically it keeps me at the peak of the torque curve and at 88% plus hp at all times. Looks pretty good to me. Now if I just had some tires that could hook it all up in 1st and 2nd. The one thing I noticed though is that my torque drops like a rock after about 5,200 rpm. It goes from about 300 lb-ft to about 250 lb-ft by 5,800 rpm. Could that be caused by a restrictive exhaust or is it something else?

Doug,

Just have to vent a little. I'm sure many of you have encountered them. You know, the petty little guy that feels like he has to take you down a notch and sends a personal email just to do that. Got one from a guy who flamed me because I typo'd LT1 on one of my posts instead of LS1. "Obvioius that I don't know what I'm talking about". Another guy had to knock me down because it's so much less expensive to get 300+ HP out of the L28 rather than doing a V-8 install. Like that was the reason I did it anyway. Anyone else got some classics they'd like to share? Just how small can people go?

And also decide to do away with your turn signal indicators. Plus - I haven't personally seen a substitute gauge that matches the oem gauges well enough to not be obviously a substitute. I was willing to spend a few $$ to keep all my stock gauges. I guess that is one of my "preferences" that dictated my conversion just like other folks like the white-faced gauges, or a fuel cell, or whatever. If one of my gauges dies on me now I just go to my local salvage yard and get another one for a fraction of the price of a new one. If the "converter" dies , though, I'm in for it if it's outside the warrantee period.

I've been trying to post my dyno trial sheet in my album. Scanned it into my computer as a jpg file, reduced the resolution so that the file size is not too large but now I'm being told that the image is too large. I assume the image is dimensionally too large? How do I fix that? I thought as a jpg it would be ok but evidently not.

Basically it's a little black box that takes the output signal from the T56 and converts it to a drive signal for a small electric motor that drives the speedometer cable. It is adjustable for differential gearing and tire size. Not very easy to set up but works. Mine is mounted down by my left foot where the ecm for the Z used to be.

No tuning done on the car - just wanted to benchmark where it is. July 25th sounds like it could be fun - if I have the car. I'm trying to get it back into the shop to fix headers, AC & tranny that week and, if I can, it will be off the streets for about a month. Spot - you're right - I'm worried about breaking the car. Haven't had it long enough yet to get fully comfortable with everything. Also - with my gearing if I actually get a good launch I may need to be able to shift to 5th at the end of the run and I can't do that right now - unless I want to wait for engine to wind down to 1,000 RPM first. Don't think that would help much. By the way - my car will be weighing in around 3,050 with me in it.

Actually it's dual 2.5" to a Y collector behind the transmission. Was going to run a 3" from there but didn't fit right so said to heck with it and choked down to the single 2.5" for the last 3-4'. In retrospect probably should have run dual side-by-side 2.5" all the way to a single 4" muffler. Live and learn.

Cyrus spurred me on. Put the car on the dyno today. Results were 311 RWHP and 326 lb-ft of torque. I have headers but a single 2.5" exhaust. NOt quite as much as I had hoped for but in the target range I expected. I will post the graphs in my album later.

As far as I know it is a 2001 LS1 'Predator'. It has a K&N style intake filter- I think - stock cast iron headers and then flows out through dual 2.5" exhausts to 2.25" Corvette C-4 mufflers. Not aware of any other internal or external mods. Probably need to contact Cyrus to get the full scoop. I ran mine on the dyno today. Mine does have the K&N intake and a set of custom headers but combines in a Y to flow out through a single 2.5" tailpipe. Mine dyno'd at 311.2 HP and 326.5 lb-ft of torque. Mine is out of a '98 or 99 Camaro and is otherwise not modified.

If you look at the racing world you'll see that they've realized that HP is directly related to th eamount of air they can pump through a motor. The faster it turns the more HP it produces. The Honda S2000 makes its HP at nearly 9,000 RPM while the LS1 makes its at about 5,000 RPM. Run a direct ratio and the LS1 would be making about 540 HP at 9,000 RPM. The problem is the technolgy and cost to get somethnig that large moving that fast. It can be done but no one here would want to spend that kind of money. You have to look at the whole picture, torque also in the equation, to understand. One number does not tell the entire story.

There's also some stuff called CD2 that is a spray on treatment designed specifically for underhood use - protects paint and rubber products.

Just to rub it in I bought the converter that allowed me to keep the stock speedo - with the turn signal indicators - and run it off the output off the T56. Mine works fine and it's tuneable to any tire size/differential ratio.

Man - I can't believe Cyrus hasn't posted his dyno results. He ran his car on a 94° day in San Jose, CA - June 26th. His best of five runs was 332 RWHP and 343.8 lb-ft of torque. He had 90%+ torque from 2,500 to 6,000 RPM and 90%+ HP from 4,500 to 6,000 RPM. WOW!!! All this from a basically stock motor!