DLinson
07-29-2009, 10:06 AM
It's been a while since I've chimed in here. This past winter I removed the engine from my Nova so I could fix an oil starvation issue, have it dyno tuned, build some inner fenders to keep out the crud, and a few other misc. items.
I picked up my inner fenders from my friend Saturday, he painted them for me. I got them in and everything is looking better. I added a few pics of before and after. I made them from flat sheetmetal, lots of beating, bending, rolling, shrinking, and stretching. I still find that part almost as much fun as driving the car. It will be nice to be able to drive the car without having spend hours cleaning the engine bay after.
I still haven't driven the car since I have to get a friend to help put the hood on it. I downloaded the new program in my ECM last night and it fired right up, that's good.
I had the engine tuned on a bench dyno out of the car. The numbers were not what I was hoping for but it will have to do. I'm not changing anything in that engine. The first thing he told me when I showed up to get the engine was the heads I bought were junk. They are GM performance oval port aluminum heads with the 2.25 intake and 1.88 exhaust valves. Oh well too late to change that. It made 520 HP at 6000 rpm and 500 ft-lbs of torque. He had to stop tuning due to the large amounts of oil spraying out of the back of the intake manifold. Bummer. It blue out the RTV sealant. That was another reason for the dyno tuning is to have him find all of the oil leaks, and there were plenty. So once I got it home I went over the engine and replaced the guilty gaskets and used some Loctite 5900 sealant on everything, the engine tuner suggested that. The tuner and his brother actually run a boat business building high end racing boats. My engine was pretty mundain for them. Oil leaks are bad in boats so I figure he should know what sealent to use.
I made a few other items like steel radiator hoses and a new tranny mount. So hopefully I'll get to drive the car this weekend.
Dennis
I picked up my inner fenders from my friend Saturday, he painted them for me. I got them in and everything is looking better. I added a few pics of before and after. I made them from flat sheetmetal, lots of beating, bending, rolling, shrinking, and stretching. I still find that part almost as much fun as driving the car. It will be nice to be able to drive the car without having spend hours cleaning the engine bay after.
I still haven't driven the car since I have to get a friend to help put the hood on it. I downloaded the new program in my ECM last night and it fired right up, that's good.
I had the engine tuned on a bench dyno out of the car. The numbers were not what I was hoping for but it will have to do. I'm not changing anything in that engine. The first thing he told me when I showed up to get the engine was the heads I bought were junk. They are GM performance oval port aluminum heads with the 2.25 intake and 1.88 exhaust valves. Oh well too late to change that. It made 520 HP at 6000 rpm and 500 ft-lbs of torque. He had to stop tuning due to the large amounts of oil spraying out of the back of the intake manifold. Bummer. It blue out the RTV sealant. That was another reason for the dyno tuning is to have him find all of the oil leaks, and there were plenty. So once I got it home I went over the engine and replaced the guilty gaskets and used some Loctite 5900 sealant on everything, the engine tuner suggested that. The tuner and his brother actually run a boat business building high end racing boats. My engine was pretty mundain for them. Oil leaks are bad in boats so I figure he should know what sealent to use.
I made a few other items like steel radiator hoses and a new tranny mount. So hopefully I'll get to drive the car this weekend.
Dennis