tortuga

I finally made a showroom thing. My riv definitely not as nice as most of yours but here it is anyway.

This opening thread is full of a bunch of bandwidth-sucking pictures I just took yesterday after my yearly car wash.

NICE

I like that pic. It reminds me of a stingray or disc or something...

Nice pics, although AA is going to kill you for not resizing them

NICE color.
u should truy to polich the car ower. it may take off even the scratch on front bumper. looks like the scratch isent to deep?
maybe remove the riv emblem from other side tho?
and...you need NEW front tyres! lol

did not know thats legal to remove a airbag steering wheel and but somethign else in it. or isent?

No problem with big images in the Showroom thread. It's up to you here.

But wow, they are so large and so many... I only saw a trash dumpster and the nose of a Riv, then gave up.

Nice, I'm starting to like the single-pipe exhaust on your car. At first I didn't like the looks of it but I got over it I guess...

Nice cute little riviera..... must be stock.....

98riviera98 wrote:

Nice cute little riviera..... must be stock.....

must be must be





The mods that I would consider the most substantial are the ones you can't see anyway. You can't see a cam or the inside of the blower. I suppose you can take a guess as to what it should do looking at a pulley though.

Since I don't have it in my signature, my current mods are:

*original L67 motor (currently 187,000mi)
*4" custom shorty intake made of spectre parts
*LQ4 maf sensor
*northstar throttle body (75mm)
*completely ported (inlet/outlet) blower & IC ready
*intense MPS with 3.4,3.2, 3.0 pullies
*IC ready LIM with blocked off coolant passages to blower
*180 thermostat
*AL104 spark plugs
*EGR delete
*42lb lucas fuel injectors
*zzp xp cam
*zzp clearanced retainers
*intense moly rods (non-OR)
*cc 105lb springs
*cc oe850 lifters
*hd valve locks
*JP single roller timing set (set to stock timing)
*xs power headers w/ 3" downpipe
*shop built 3" exhaust (no cat or resonator)
*3" dynomax racebullet glasspack situated where the factory cat would be
*single walker muffler (3"in / 2.5" out) used as a performance option for 4.3L HO motors
*3" electric cutout towards the back of the car

*zzp shift kit and synthetic ATF for the trans
*HPtuners tuning software
*caspers timing commander

got some used wheels and tires
The overall tire size is identical to original.

wheels - 17"x8" Sport Edition ST3 (bright silver paint)
tires - 225/55/17 Yokohama AVID H4s

Oh yea this is my old summer get-around-towner
87 kawasaki ninja 250

Looks pretty clean

nice! im feelin that steering wheel turtleman..how did you do that? does the horn work? it looks like its further back too? does it make the car steer quicker? can you do a write up? sweet!

robotennis61 wrote:

nice! im feelin that steering wheel turtleman..how did you do that? does the horn work? it looks like its further back too? does it make the car steer quicker? can you do a write up? sweet!

Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of the swap process. I mainly just did it because I was tired of trying to find another wheel in good condition and the correct color to replace mine, which was pretty worn at the grip and other places. This Grant Challenger series wheel was the best fit to my interior theme. The horn is functional and the (R) emblem I put on it is actually a modified one from a 7th gen riviera. I took the "GT" badge off first, obviously.

You need a basic steering wheel puller. Sometimes you can rent them from your local auto parts store for free but either way, they are not expensive. Grant is probably the most attainable steering wheel and you also need the GM adapter hub.

This wheel has its upsides and downsides. I like the feel and speed of it much better and certainly the fact that its not worn to hell. It actually fits into the steering column trim very nicely with no ugly gaps or anything. The downside is that this wheels is slightly smaller in diameter than the original which means it covers part of your view of the gauges. I don't find it a bother myself but that's something to consider. Also you're obviously giving up your airbag. Grant has plenty of wheels in their line that are bigger and even sell direct-fit horn buttons with the buick logo on them if you want to get fancy. Overall though, I'm keeping mine.

I see a scoop. I love the double-barrel "shotgun" exhaust too!

wow i do like the wheel. what size is it? and was the electrics difficult to do?

*IC ready LIM with blocked off coolant passages to blower.

What does this entail. I have the L32 LIM waiting to go on. Should I be considering blocking the coolant passages and if so how / what needs to be done?

Rickw wrote:

*IC ready LIM with blocked off coolant passages to blower.

What does this entail. I have the L32 LIM waiting to go on. Should I be considering blocking the coolant passages and if so how / what needs to be done?

IC ready just means the blower outlet and LIM inlet are milled to sandwich with an IC core properly.

Personally, I woundn't go out of my way to block those passages. It's just one of those little KR inhibiting tricks. My blower and LIM are products of Chris Kemp and that's how he does all of them so I'm not exactly sure myself. He filled the two ports with something that feels rubbery.

whywould you block the water passages? doesnt this cool down the s/c?

robotennis61 wrote:

wow i do like the wheel. what size is it? and was the electrics difficult to do?

http://www.grantproducts.com/pc-27-94-414.aspx
It's either 13.5" or 14". It's about an inch smaller in diameter than the original.

With the GM adaptor hub, the horn was a plug and play installation. The airbag is just a matter of taking the bag off the oem wheel and then once you get the wheel all off, you disconnect and remove the harness from the lower steering column area. That was the most time consuming part for me.

robotennis61 wrote:

whywould you block the water passages? doesnt this cool down the s/c?

This is a little beyond my level of investigation but, although the blower produces heat, the combustion chambers produce more and therefore we want to keep that extra heat away from the already hot blower. There's a lot of little stuff that has to do with it. It's generally a good idea from a reliability standpoint to try to keep all the heat spread around evenly and keep things the same temperature which is why coolant pretty much goes through every component of the motor that is made of metal and can dissipate heat a little bit.

A lot of that stuff really changes when you want to bump up power from factory though. There's a lot of things we inevitably unengineer. Ideally, what we want is to have the radiator do basically all the work of the cooling and not the blower housing/throttle body/intake piping/etc.