SATAN

Well, I got the coolant leak figured out. Turns out I am just a ruhtard. Steam ports need to be plumbed to the pressure side of the coolant system... not the over flow. But, that's about 100 times better than a blown head gasket or a cracked block or something like that. So I'm happy about that. However, once one thing gets fixed, something else pops up... My IAT was reading -38*. After some diagnosing, I quickly came to the conclusion the sensor was bad. Got a new sensor, plugged it in and it read just fine (81* which was ambient that day). Went to start it up, and now I can't keep the car running. Runs great with a faulty IAT sensor (or IAT sensor unplugged), then like **** with a good IAT sensor plugged in. I'll just keep plugging away at it till I get it though. EDIT: I'm also not a big fan of the red compressor cover on the turbo. It was red when I got it. I'll probably take it to my sand blaster guys and have them strip it off. Whatever the paint is, is really durable. I thought a wire wheel would take it right off so I could weld on it. Not so much, I had to hold the wire wheel on it for much longer than I anticipated for that stuff to come off.

So I put in a bunch of work yesterday and I got the car out of the garage under it's own power. Washed all the dust off of it and took it around the block. It drives ok, need to look into a couple of noises, but nothing terrible. My radiator cap was spewing coolant at only 190 degrees though, so I have to figure that out. Just a very productive day overall, and I reached my goal of driving the car by the end of March. I also took some pictures yesterday.

Hey thanks man! Over the years I have been getting better at fab work and welding and all of that. I look at stuff I used to do 5 years ago, and kind of cringe now, LOL. I will always continue to improve, but I am pleased with what I can do now. I want to come down there in May, but there are some things that may prevent me from doing that. But it is not out of the question, so we will see! Now it's copy and paste reply time... So I reached my goal... sorta. Close enough. Goal was to get it running and potentially driving around by the end of March. After a long day of tracking down problems and just random ****, I managed to get the car fired up at the last minute today (actually tonight). Fired up on the stock 6.0 tune but with E85. Ran for about 3 seconds, then died. I'm assuming it died just because it was too lean on E85 which would make sense (didn't get a chance to check out the wide band to see). I can get out there tomorrow or sometime this week and start tuning, but it was already 9:15 when I fired it up, and my neighbor who's room is right next to my garage goes to sleep at 8:30. I'm always impressed with how fast this thing fires up. Even with a bigger cam and a stock tune for gasoline but running ethanol and changing it from like 28lb injectors to 160lb injectors... It just lights right up with no hesitation.

No waste gate. I'm just going to see how much boost it will make on its own... I currently have the waste gate pointed out the same hole that the intercooler pipe runs through. It just shoots into the fender well for now. If I want to later, I can spin it 90 degrees like you see in the picture, and then reintroduce it into the down pipe.

Sorry for the fuzzy pictures, they are phone pics. It is because it is very easy to snap pics with the phone and upload it real quick. That and it is just to give everyone and idea of what is going on. Not meant for a photo shoot. Catch can I made using bronze wool as packing with a K&N filter on top. Uses -10 coming off of the valve covers. OEM cover with the oil baffle in place in OEM location. You can see on the right side where I put the -10 fitting. Then all I had to do was move the baffle over to the right side to put it over the -10 port. Direct fit. Series of flaring the fuel line, for those who wonder how it is done. This is a single flare. I have the option to do double flare, but single works just fine. My oil cooler location. It uses -6 line. In the future I would like to upgrade to -8. But we'll see if -6 is sufficient first. Some random body work I am envious of... My rats next of a fuse block for the ECU. My crank shaft mail box post. Utilizing two VG30E cranks and one LS1 cam and one KA24E cam. I am in the process of making a sheet metal aluminum box with some big fat welds. Gonna put on some pneumatic arms for auto closing as well... Just took this with my smart phone. uploaded it to photobucket. By the time I got back inside, it was already on photobucket and ready to post up. I love technology! EDIT: This is how it sits now for the most part. May have to clean up some of the wiring over the plenum. Not too proud of that, but there is a reason it looks like that, which I'm not going to get into right now, but it is my fault... Here is where I had to go from a single 4" split into a dual 3" so I could snake it past the steering column. I have gotten 4" past the steering column before, but I could not get 4" past the exhaust manifold with this setup. I was adding filler rod to the weld beads, but then decided that the gaps were perfect, so I decided to autogenous weld them together. Of course those are the pretty ones underneath the car that nobody will ever see /face palm.

Good thing this wasn't posted at z31p. I would have a bunch of people telling me that the piping is so large that it is going to lag for days.

Well, I don't know if you watched the video, but currently I'm putting down 0whp. Still finishing up the build.

People are still ****** bags and... no... not really. Haven't missed anything at all. Z31T made over 700whp on his VG30E, but then spun a bearing just like everyone else does. Dunno if you knew about that though.

People like video's, so I figured I would post one of me just doing a run down of the build. So... here it is.

Was it the lifter guide that allowed the lifter to turn and **** up the cam? I have a 6.0 cam as part of my mail box that has MASSIVE grooves worn into the lobes from the guide plates wearing out. Don't get upset when you are able to push that stock 5.3 just as hard as the built 6.0. LOL

So I got to a point where I couldn't do a whole lot more. So I pulled the engine back out to start replacing the cam, oil pump, timing chain and stuff like that. Also, the main reason, is to hack up the oil pan so it clears the ground. Here it is. I took about 3" out of it. I also welded on an extra area to get back some of the capacity I hacked out of it. The nice new aluminum always welds really good. But even after having the old pan washed and then wire wheel/ brushing it, it still welds like crap. So I decided I will just take it to work and hit all the cast sections with the MIG welder instead of wasting my gas and filler rod. I hate aluminum MIG welding, but it is fast and this is under the car, so nobody will ever see it anyways. I was able to incorporate the original oil drain too! I also have some equal length headers I made laying around for a z31 that I am trying to sell. After that is said and done, I can afford to buy some lifters and push rods and double timing chain as well.

Hmm, I don't want to go polluting the forum with the same thing, just in a different section though.

Ok yeah, mine is from a truck also then, as it goes to all four. I may end up just capping the rears and using the fronts. Eric, the car took me realistically a solid 60 hours of body and prep work before I was ready to paint. For the longest time I could not understand how a paint job could cost upwards and over $10,000. NOW I KNOW WHY. Not saying that my car is a 10,000 dollar paint job, but I do completely understand the amount of work it takes to get a show car quality paint job now. Oh also, I have a buddy that happens to work at a chevy dealership. He managed to order me the correct flex plate. First I ended up getting one for a 4L60E, Then I got one for a 4L80E, but it was for an older externally balanced engine. Finally I got the one for my engine. Simple, I just had to get it off of the same vehicle that my engine came out of... 99 silverado with a 6.0. Mine has the longer crank on the back. There is a lot of confusing info on which flexplate you need if you have an older TH400 or a powerglide, if you are using the longer crank like on the earlier 6.0's. Just use one for a 99 silverado with a 6.0. Then you have to open up the holes where the torque converter line up ever so slightly so you can get your bolts through. Got mine put on tonight before my kids started bugging me to come play with them.

So this next post was two separate posts that I made on a different forum. I just combined them here. So I got this Pro Comp intake manifold, which is essentially the same thing as the Typhoon intake that you read about here and there. My advice to anyone thinking of purchasing one of these intakes is to stay away from it. The bottom of it has a steel plate that is bolted on. It doesn't have enough bolt holding it on, therefore you will hear people complain about it leaking under boost. Also, it looks like it was put together using a couple different cast pieces. The cast sections do not like up very well and are in need of some smoothing. I decided to go ahead and tackle both of these issues. I was going to simply weld on a 1/4" thick aluminum plate onto the bottom, but I have decided to just drill and tap 21 more holes to clamp it shut more. It only had 10 bolts holding the lid on. Now it will have 31. I'm also going to seal it with some silicone in between the gasket and manifold and gasket and plate. If it proves to be a problem after that, then I will just sell it and buy a FAST or maybe make my own. I also went ahead and took care of a lot of the casting overlaps and extreme flashing that looked like obvious restrictions. I didn't take any pics of that though. I did take a picture of the flashing that was sticking out into one of the ports though. Over all, just not a good intake manifold in my opinion. But, you get what you pay for. I think this one was something like $300 shipped. Sorry for the crappy phone pics. I didn't feel like running inside to grab the camera. Second post merged in here. Ok, so I know I have already expressed my disapproval of this intake manifold, but today really pissed me off. I was putting the intake manifold on and torquing it down. Gave it more torque that I should have, and still could not get it to seat all the way. Gasket by one of the back injectors was still loose between the head and the intake. Clearly the intake was hitting something. I pull it off to find that I cannot run my water lines under the intake due to the intake hitting them. The water lines had dents in them from me trying to torque down the intake. Also, the gaskets did not have holes in them to accommodate the small head studs. So they were hitting there too. I had to remove material there so I would not bind as well. Now I am going to have to cut up my water manifold (or whatever it's called) and run individual hoses off of each outlet to make it work like it is supposed too. Over all, just a shitty situation for something that is supposed to be a bolt on part. Here you can see where I removed gasket material on one side to make room for where the bolts are supposed to go. Still had to do the other side when I took this pic.

Hey thanks man! Yeah, I've seen that. I'm not as impressed by that as I am by username Skinnies grabbing a 8.64 @ 167mph on a stock bottom end aluminum 5.3 though. He also makes 1150ft/lbs torque to the wheels by 3,600rpm's. He didn't even bother touching the ring gap like those guys did either. There's one thing that doesn't make sense about that article though. They had to pull apart the engine to open up the ring gap. Yet after all the dyno pulls, they pull it apart for the second time, and only THEN do they notice it wasn't what they thought it was. But either way, it did what it did and is very impressive still. I don't know if it is all in the tune, or if there is a difference in the pistons on the smaller bore engines than the bigger bore. But it seems that the smaller bore are making the records. Lots of people are blowing up the bigger bore engines. Seems most are only getting into the 7-800whp range on the stock block 6.0's. Again, could just be poor tuning blowing them up too. Who knows? Oh, I forgot to post up pics of the tranny. It's just a powerglide though. Shifting will be done with a Hurst shifter. Intercooler is an Ebay 12x24x4 core. I cut off the in/outs on the end tanks because they only had an I.D. of 2 5/8". I welded on some 3.5" Vband flanges and now run 3.5" I.C. pipes (3 3/8" I.D.) and they run to a 92mm throttle body. Turbo is a Borg Warner S374. It is a 75mm inducer turbo. Supposed to flow over 100lbs/min. I plan on maxing it out and throwing some extra N2O in the mix if needed.