dmyntti

The pulleys on the Corvette engines sit out a different distance from the engine than the Fbody (or so i've been told). You may need to use the version that is for your pulley system (i.e. vette, fbody, impala). This assumes you can use their brackets at all, you may have to fab up you own brackets anyway. If you can't run it in the location it is designed for then just get the kit that is cheapest or maybe not buy a kit at all just the blower itself and start fabbing.

Pistons are not round on the top they are actually slightly oval. This is because of the geometry of the piston in the pin area causes the piston to grow differently along its axis. Forged pistons have more growth then cast or other types of pistons. Your pistons are probably small on the top compared to the bottom due to the fact that that is where the heat would be concentrated and would grow more there. By having the bottom of the piston have a larger OD you can get tighter clearance at the bottom of the piston and still allow the top of the piston enough room to grow with heat. My experience with piston design is with large reciprocationg engines and compressors and not automotive type but these are my thoughts.

Other suggestions would be headers, cold air intake and an electric water pump. So should check the LT1 forums at fbody.com and cz28.com, all your questions could be answered there. I am considering getting a stage 1 heads and cam package from Elliot Portworks. High is highly regarded on both of those furums. His Stage 1 kit makes 380 at the wheels. http://www.eportworks.com/LT1LE1.htm Your Corvette exhaust manifolds are holding you back. Also look into bypassing the coolant in the throttlebody and 1 160 degree thermostat.

I have also been considering this as an interesting cowl induction system. I think it would be doable with the LT1. The hole in the back of the block is for the oil pressure sender. You could plug it and pick up the oil pressure at another point.

Your pushrods probably came off of the Vortec engine that the heads came off of. I believe the Vortec engine had roller cams which do have shorter pushrods due to the extra hieght of the roller lifters. If using Vortec heads with non roller cam then you need the standard chevy non roller pushrods. Also note that Vortec engines used self aligning rocker arms. If you are not using guide plates and hardened pushrods make sure you buy self aligning rocker arms. Both Jegs and Summit Racing sell some inexpensive self aligning rocker arms.

I have experience with the Rinda technologies DIACOM software. I found it very easy to use and it gave very good information. It has saved me hours tracing bugs. It is nice to be able to capture the data from all sensors at once and see what is going on at the exact instance of a problem. I had a Corvette that would run about an hour and then suddenly lose all power and quit running. Once the engine stopped you could start the engine and run another half hour and then the process would start all over again. This turned out to be a injector shorting out and not letting the other injectors to fire. I may have never found it if I could not see all the sensors and see that my injector pulse width went may up but the AF ratio dropped of and I got spark knock. I have not used any of the other software that you listed but I am very pleased with the DIACOM software.

The self aligning rockers arms are the factory setup on Vortec and LT1 heads. I do not know of anyone converting to them but I do not see why they wouldn't work. To convert an engine with SA rockers arms over to regular is add hardened pushrods and guideplates.

I agree with Pop N Wood about the stud girdles being a good idea. You may also want to look at self aligning rockers arms as used on Vortec and LT1 heads. These keep the rockers aligned without the use of guide plates. You may also want to consider if perhaps the pushrods are deflecting under heavy use this could also add to the problem.

It does appear that the rockers where not aligned with the valve tips looking at the pictures. That would indicate an alignment problem from the guides. Make sure the guides you are using are set up correctly for your heads, I think some of the aftermarket heads require a special guide as well as the Chevy LT1 heads.

Likely, but it could be a problem with the pickup or the wiring as well. If the pickup does not work then the module won't get the signal to switch the coil. If the wiring is cut or shorted inside that could cause the porblem, if the distributor body does not have a ground then there would be no ground for the module to switch to. The most likely cause is the module however. I know you changed it once but maybe get it tested to see if it is the problem. The autoparts stores around me will test them free of charge.

That is right, the tach signal should switch from +12 to ground while cranking. Power goes into the power connection of the distributor through the coil and then is intermittantly attached to ground by the module when the distributor turns. When the module grounds the distributor, current goes through the coil and charges it. When the ground is removed the coil fires the spark plug. You will see +12 on the tach terminal when the module is not connecting to ground (no current flowing through the coil) and see ground at the tach terminal when the module grounds the coil (current flows through coil). I hope this makes sense. It appears your distributor is not switching to ground and therefore not charging the coil.

If the test light isn't turning on and off when the engine turns over then you are not switching the coil on and off, so you won't get a spark. This usually would be a pickup coil or a module but you have changed both of these so I am not sure. You could try attaching the test light from the distributor body to a good ground with the key on. If it lights then the distributor body is not seeing ground. I doubt this is your problem but it is an easy check. I saw this happen once on a car with a painted intake manifold and the paper distributor gasket installed. My van actually has a ground wire attached to the distributor hold down bolt.

I do not believe there is a direct ground from the coil. The distributor grounds through its body. The spark is initiated by the distributor switching the ground on and off. The wire on the distributor is the tach terminal as someone mentioned before. If this is grounded the plugs won't fire. When I mentioned the ground in my earlier post it was meant to be make sure the distributor body is grounded. You should be able to put a test light on the tach terminal and see if it is switching when the engine turns over. You can also take you module to an autoparts store and have it tested, it is a common HEI problem.

This may sound silly but check to see if you havea good ground. It is possible that your distributor is not grounding to the the engine or the engine is not grounded to the frame. I have seen both of these problems. Also if this is a HEI make sure the wires off the pickup are not shorted to the distributor body, they can get pinched or rub through at the bottom of the distributor body. I had that one on a Camaro once that drove me nuts for an entire weekend until my boss bet me he could fix it. It took hom five minuted to find the problem. Unfortunately you have to dissasemble the entire distributor to fix this. This is apparently a common problem with HEI's.

The blocks bolt up the same. The one issue you might have is with accesories. I do not believe the ones from your old block will bolt to the LT-1.

Once you install the intake and carb yo will need to replace the distributor to one from an older non computerized engine. Once this is done your engine should mount and wire up just like that in the JTR manual.

I always check my gas mileage between fill ups. I do almost all freeway driving around 70-75 mph. I routingly get better mileage then the sticker indicated. I do notice that cruise control adds about 5% to the gas mileage. My 99 Neon with DOHC engine and 5 speed got 38 mpg if I used midgrade and 33 if I used standard grade gas. My current car an 04 Chevy Aveo gets about 33 mpg no matter what fuel I use. I am somewhat disappointed by the mileage of the Aveo as the Neon was bigger faster and better looking and still got better mileage but the Aveo's mileage rating from the sticker is 33 and I do drive it too fast on the highway. I have always found that the mileage ratings on new cars are close if you are driving a manual trans and drive at a steady rate of speed. But the automatics really seem to hurt the mileage of cars with small engines (as indicated on the sticker).

My father-in-law etches glass with a sandblaster. He built his cabinate (large) using plywood and plexiglass. He uses a pressure pot style blaster as they work much better and don't require as much air volume. Harbor freight has this type of blaster. You can buy the gloves and other supplies from several sources. He uses a dust collector, which is a large vacuum with a special filter to cut down on the dust and increase visibility. I am going to build a large cabinate at home using a pressure pot blaster and plywood. I am going to try it without the dust collector and then if needed I will buy one of the filters and try to rig up a dust collector with a large shopvac I have and a plastic drum.

Be carefull predicting the price of the builidng. With a commercial structure you may be required by code to use a certain type of construction. I built a service garage in Ohio and it cost over $50,000 to finish. Mine was 40'x50' with 12' ceilings and one bathroom and one large door. I either had to build a engineered steel building or a 2x6 convetional frame building. Also there were other codes I had to follow. Drywall had to be two layers thick for burn rating, electrical had to be outside the wall and run in conduit, etc. One of the more expensive things was the need for an oil interceptor in the sewer line. The interceptor alone cost $3000. I had also planned to rent out part of my garage to the company I was working for. Well just before the garage was finished the company I was working for went belly up leaving me without a job or a renter. This meant I had to sell my building before I even got to use it. It took three months to sell it and I just about broke even on the place. I lost about $2000 when all was said and done, it could have been alot worse. This doesn't even begin to touch on the problems I had with the contractors builidng the place. I fired two general subs sued a plumbing sub and got in a fist fight with a grading sub. Be careful and don't go with the low bid if it doesn't fit with the other estimates.

White smoke would be coolant but the bluish smoke indicates oil. I sounds to me like you have a bad piston either blown through or broken ring lands. You need to pull the head to determine this for sure but it sounds like a rebuild is in order. Don't run it until you know for sure because a broken piston can scrape a cylinder and destroy the motor.

The wear items are the Teflon strips on the edges of the rotors. Most blowers use these. You can convert a blower from a large diesel. To convert you need to change the drive unit (new unit can be bought from BDS etc.). If converting from a truck the best unit to get is the 6-71 blower off of a Detroit Deisel because the standard blower manifolds are built for these. You may also want to look at Magnusun sp? blowers.

Please keep us updated. I currently have 89 Firebird rotors mounted on my 240 and was about to get the Toyota calipers to test that out. You are saving me time and money by doing this before me and I much appreciate it. PS my 89 Firebird rims fit nicely (without spacers) without a caliper but appear that they would interfere with that caliper.

I have round tops on a 71 240Z and a 73 240z. Both of these ran when parked but not great. These would need to be rebuilt prior to use but I do have some rebuild kits I got from Napa. Let me know if you are interested.

You can see a display of all of the characters and get there code by doing the following. Goto Programs-Accesories-System Tools-Character Map You will get a box showing all of the characters. If you click on one you like it gives the code at the bottom right of the box.

My 89 Firebird Rotors were the same diameter as the Datsun rotors. I do not know of other years.