Patriotic work for Memorial Day

Being Memorial day, and celebrating my stepson's safe return from a year in Iraq, I installed a set of Patriot dual coil springs on the heads. The lever type compressor was impossible, so I borrowed a compressor from Frank. His compressor works great for recessed springs like on these LS6 heads. It took about an hour per head to remove the springs and seats, install new seats and seals, and install the new springs.

Got Cam

With the heads off the motor, it's pretty easy to swap the cam. Step one, buy another puller, because the long arm one you bought last week to pull the tranny gear and water pump pulley won't pull the balancer. After that, it's maybe 45 minutes to pull the balancer, the timing cover, the four lifter trays and lifters that don't come out with the trays, and the cam.

Here's the new cam on the left, and the old cam on the right. Old cam has a bigger base circle, but only about 0.480 lift with the stock 1.7 rockers. New cam has a higher 0.560 lift, and obviously muc more duration as evidenced by more of a square lobe profile than the triangular profile.

The cam all buttoned up. Cleaning the front of the block I found a mud wasp nest on the left side under the water pump just above the 5.3L casting on the cylinder barrel.

Good, Fast or Cheap - Pick One

Getting ready for the long weekend, I went out to Torrence before work and picked up my wheels from Phil at PS Engineering. The wheels have another 1/2" of backspacing vs. the 8" wheels, putting another inch outboard.

On the way back, picked up the heads from Engine Supply in Santa Ana, and still made it into the office before 9:30. The heads had 0.030 shaved from them to boost compression.

Before I install the heads, I need to swap the springs for the new Patriot dual coil springs with their titanium retainers.

Went by Eagleton after work yesterday to see if I'd be surprised and see them actually starting on the body. I wasn't surprised, it was still sitting in storage, but they did say that they can't work on it until it's on a dolly - the rotisserie had too much play for them. With the frame under the car, it is a simple matter of building some bolt on casters to convert the frame to a dolly.

A trip to Harbor Freight for some 4" casters, and Home Depot for a 2x6 and a couple of 2x3s, and $38 and a few hours of assembly, and the vette is now on a dolly rather than rotisserie. Luckily, Jim was in for a few hours Saturday working on his personal car, so I was able to come in, bolt on the caster assembly that I whipped together at home, and pull off the rotisserie.

Several weeks ago the lower fender panel showed up.

This will allow them to fit the fender closer at the door jamb to fix the alignment on the door.

Back at it

The past month has been pretty slow - body shop hasn't done anything, and I haven't done much. I trimmed a frame brace to clear the header - the pass header didn't quite tuck in enough.

Last week ordered a few parts - ordered a tailshaft housing with mechanical speedo provisions - a little bit more than a cable-x box, but won't need replacing every 10,000 miles. The conversion uses an adapter back to an early style caprice tailhousing. The tailhousing is modified to carry both the VSS pickup and mechanical speedo gear.

I also ordered up a Camaro water pump with a front outlet rather than a top outlet that the truck pump has - simple swap of the pulley, and I no longer have interference on the throttle body. I'll tap where the truck outlet normally is to have a supply line for the steam line off the heads.

I had to trim the throttle body water fitting off to clear the water pump. In sunny california, no need for coolant to warm up the throttle body.

My back wheels are ready - went to pick them up Friday, but Phil got an early start on the weekend. Had him pull a bit more backspacing. On the 8" rims, I only had 6" of backspacing - standard Camaro 8" wheels are 6 1/2" backspacing.

I also pulled off the heads today to send them into the machine shop for a .030 shave to bump compression. When I pulled the heads, I found some light surface rust on the tops of a couple of bores. Likely the side effect of living so close to the beach. With the heads off, gave all the cylinders a good coat of oil.

Vacation Bench Racing

The custom grind camshaft I got for the car is close to the Comp Cams XR273HR cam, just some difference in the Lobe Seperation Angle and the advance of the cam. I ran the XR273HR through CamQuest, modeling the L33 with it's LS6 heads, headers, free flowing exhaust, a .030 mill of the heads to bump compression to 10.6:1, and the XR273HR combo should be good for 429HP and 380 ft/lbs of torque. Surprisingly, the two step smaller XR265HR models to 460HP and 401 ft/lbs of torque in the same combo, with a slightly stronger lower end. We'll have to see how it works out. Either combo should put the car in the deep 12s, if not knocking on 11 second timeslips at over 110 mph.

I took a couple pictures after cleaning up the harness. For a small, waterproof fuse block, I use the 6 position weatherpack connector with a clear cover. It provides three fuse positions, and a nice flat area for a label of the fuses using a Brother 1/2" tape label.












Here is the modified harness. I took out a few pounds of wire, reterminating nearly all the connections on the PCM. The Carolina Auto Masters tuned PCM is on the left side of the picture.

Tuning at Carolina Auto Masters

Drove out to Durham, NC yesterday to visit Jeff at Carolina Auto Masters. Selected Mutt's cam from the boneyard of small cams customers upgraded from, and got a good little cam to give Mutt a bit more go along with the free flowing exhaust and headers, and a small shave to the heads.

While there, Jeff reprogrammed the PCM to remove unnecessary emissions, match it to the cam, set the right tire size and rear end gear ratio, and tune the transmission. About the only negotiation was on the WOT 3-4 shift speed where I asked Jeff to back it to 130 MPH. Past experience open road racing showed the car cruising between 130 and 145, and I thought 130 would have the car downshifting too much if I open road race again. The difference in shift speed is around 600 RPM, taking it from just over 6000 rpm to just under 5500 rpm.

Carolina Vacation

Took my knitting along on vacation. Actually the engine harness and PCM. Repinned the engine harness to take out many feet of excess wire.