My yearly update!! Mainly because @
harner called me out. Lol. So I've been gone for over a year due to some life issues which caused me to lose motivation from pretty much everything and distance myself from a lot of people including friends. Some may or may not have noticed my disappearance from FB just to limit the drama from my issue. Anyway, I'm back working on the car and I may have gone in a bit too hard. To bring everyone up to speed that haven't scrolled through the last 50 pages here it goes. My previously 355 Forged LT1/CC503/4L60 94 Formula is now LS swapped with a 5.3 aluminum block, Texas Speed forged rotating assembly, SS2 cam and all supporting valvetrain mods, Huron Speed T4 hotside blowing into a Gen 1 VSracing 7875. Trans is a T56 that was originally a LT unit that I faceplate swapped to LS with a LS7 clutch kit. Out back is a QP 9" with 4.11 gears (3.55's going in soon). Now is the last post I made I said I fired it up...I did and it ran well until a brand new lifter failed. Car went on back burner after my world fell apart. Larry always bitched at me for not taking picture but I got a ton for you.
I ended up picking up a set of Race Star front runners from @
95 blackbird so I naturally had to get the matching rears...
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Thus started my need to get the car back up and running. So after learning part rocket science with HP Tuners I decided that it was time to learn a whole new program.
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I decided to also have E85 capability with a GM content sensor and a Sloppy Mechanics Alt/E85 harness and Low Dollar Motorsports pressure sensors for fuel and wastegate dome pressure for boost control.
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Speaking of boost control, I went with a Motion Raceworks dual Mac valve setup for controlling boost...but wait don't you need a constant pressure source. Yes you do, so when it's time to do racecar shit you do racecar shit. I went with a compressed air over CO2 since it's self contained and refilling CO2 sucks for a street car. A Viair 1 gal setup fit the bill and has been use on a few Drag Week cars so I'll trust it (Thanks to ClapdOut and KSR for the idea). I also mounted up the battery disconnect and went through the bumper with the handle. Also notice the Motion catch can next to the Mac Valves, much better that the eBay can I had there before. Don't worry about the rust from the old coolant bottle, the entire bay is being prepped and resprayed back to red to pretty it up.
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This is the part where if you have electrical anxiety please look away. So with going to the Terminator X I needed a way to integrate it into the chassis harness. I wanted to use the factory wiring for fuel pump trigger wiring and fan relays and triggers. I ordered a Integration harness but since I wasnt keeping a stock ecu to control gauges or AC I trimmed the harness to what I was using. So a $450 harness became 5 wires that I could have probably made myself as I have all the connectors already laying around. Paid for that lesson the hard way but it is what it is. Pics are all 3 stages. Cut wires didnt go to waste, I've used them in the dash harness further down.
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On to the car's chassis harness. FSM became my best friend for this part. So while doing a HVAC delete, I wanted to clean up the wiring and make it simpler to diagnose in the future. In the effort of weight reduction I removed large heavy bricks from under the passenger dash and steering wheel as well as all associated wiring. Vats components, hvac wires and controls, power seat wiring, majority of gauge cluster wires, starter relay (previously bypassed) and fuel pump relay were also removed. I retained the turn, high beam, fuel sender and horn trigger wires and wired them into a Holley plug to be integrated into the digital dash. Speedo is a Holley GPS unit. So all that's left is lights, stereo, retained power module, window and door wiring. You'll see the Holley is mounted via isolators on the delete panel. The lugs below are the battery pass-thru's to protect the power wires from the battery relocation from running directly through the firewall. The 1/4 airline from the air tank also has a pass-thru connector. I considered using a large Deutsch connector for the engine harness but thought that may be a tad overkill (kinda dumb statement at this point). The same process was used on the engine bay harness as well. The 1" bundle of wires on the drivers frame rail is now less than 1/2". Same process was used on the engine bay harness as well, sorry with a completed pic of that. Just lights, wipers and fans left. A few power wires were kept to supply KOff and Kon power. All wires were either mesh loomed or Tessa taped to clean up the look.
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So as I write this work on the car is on hiatus for the time being. My daily driver truck dropped a DOD lifter and wiped the cam. So I pulled the motor to do a DOD delete and re-gasket the entire engine. Since I cant leave shit well enough alone it also received a Summit Pro Vortec LS cam, PAC 1218's, Trunnion lifters, LS2 timing setup, and some headers. After this I have multiple sudden projects on the list as well. 4.8 to 5.3 swap in a good friends Silverado. He really helped my get my shit together after everything went down which I dont think I could ever repay and a refresh of a 6.0/4l80 in a box truck for a friends new business.
