tortuga

No race today I'm so f***in disgusted I'm really trying not to think about how much this just sucks because it makes me sick

so basically yesterday all day I was goin and goin getting this thing together. I was sore and tired as shit getting into the evening. I was full well planning to just pull an all-nighter no sleep and tune the car and get it decently felt out and then head to the race in the morning (would have had to leave at like 6am probably). At about 11:30pm after an oil change and some cranking to get oil prelubed a bit, I started the car. Basically sounded great. about 1 minute or more running, A squeak started and kept on really freakin loud. Also thought I heard a slight leak down in the exhaust downpipe or something - not a big deal but at that point I was in no shape to be getting back under there again for something like that. I thought my alternator sounded/felt a bit rough in the bearings so I actually transferred the alternator out and put in my new machined one and stuff which I was going to do anyway if I had time. Despite being ready to fall over from from exhaustion, I had that done by maybe 1am. Squeak was still there and at that point I pretty much put down the wrench and said "this isn't happening". I went straight to bed

This morning, I got up and we went out for breakfast to celebrate my roommates mom (who we both live with to make more sense) getting her new honda crv last night which was nice. At this point testing stuff, I've gotten it down to being the belt its self. If I run the engine without the accessory belt, no noise. THANK GOD. I roughly tested out all the accessories and found no cause for a squeak. If i spray brake cleaner on the belt while its running, it stops the squeak completely, immediately comes back once I stop spraying. Belt is a gates and maybe 3 years old tops and looks like it's in good shape so I'm kinda confused why it'd just squeak like that. Jerry suggested belt dressing.

Oh and something else that's a little ridiculous the cpu fan on my tuning laptop just took a shit. Are you kidding me

ah, that sucks man. Sometimes things just don't align.


Not related, Haha! I just noticed your sig. I was hoping that comment would just quietly vanish. Aparently not. One of these days I need to find out if my spare engine has that different cam thrust thingie that I'm hoping it has.

playing with AA's cam while I go through some tuning checks - I do seem to have a gasket noise around off idle so I'm guessing something with my custom silicone gaskets isn't well - not a terrible thing to fix but not till at least the weekend.
That's what my belt sounds like right now and what freaked me out when I started it up late saturday night
And yeah this is an exhaust video proving there is NO rasp whatsoever

I have some pictures and stuff coming yet

Dang! is that how it's SUPPOSED to sound?!

I replaced the 4 year old 28k mi gates accessory belt finally today. That engine mount bracket mod didn't help that process all that much because the larger 8rib smooth pulley at the bottom for the supercharger takes up all the space inside the bracket there to slip the acc belt past it. I ended up having to get that big bracket all loose anyway. The noise that's been plaguing my ears for the last month or two is finally gone. I still don't really see anything wrong with the belt I took off but ok whatever. That belt dressing does kinda do stuff though aside from being messy if you overdo it - thinking now it could help my s/c belt slippage during fast decel from boost? I'll try it.

I definitely have a vac/boost leak in the gaskets I made. I will have to take care of that before I bother with tuning again.

Some stuff I didn't really get time to post yet for fun



The new 265/40/18 drag radials fit unbelievably nice. The specs recommend a rim width 9-10.5" but they fit my 8" beautifully



revised the external PCV passages for better flow/easier service. Aside from changing to 3/8OD tubing and the nicer fittings over the rubber elbows & brake line I had before, I actually drilled the inside of all the npt fittings oversized to match the ID of the new tube. Bottom line is it's not restricted anymore



I also revised the back PCV connection so that you can get to that bolt for the lim without doing anything with it and you can get to it with everything assembled in if I have to change the hose or something in the future. Also I'm using clear 3/8 hose now for the connection to the catch can so I can see what is making it back to the intake and whatnot.
I can say there is always moisture in there no matter what which is why you get that yellow gunkification in the catch can - the water vapor condensing and mixing with the oil that's in there.






The new intercooler plumbing & fill kit came out really freakin nice! I'm very happy with that


My old valley gaskets had lots of RTV on 'em so they got tore up coming off. I had these alternate style (no block locating pins) ones from a Felpro gasket kit and modified them to fit nice on my block


I actually took a set of LIM gaskets to work and indicated each port and CNC cut them to the larger Intense Stage 3 ported dimensions. It's actually a fairly big difference. IS3 heads are opened up about .125" width and .100" height with corner radius up at about 5/16" from 1/8" per my rough measurements! The gaskets as is would be terribly obstructing. I actually called Intense racing last week and talked to Chris about it and basically they were not even really aware of this issue. The heads are sent to their shop that does them and all dimensions and such are unknown to anyone in sales. He said he'd find out about it as I suggested they really should sell gaskets to match their heads. I mean they sell matched lower intakes.

I took tons of pictures of the heads when I got them back obviously but I'll just throw a couple on

You can see one of the new valve guides they put in and kinda blended. The way they did these guides, they stick out into the chambers a tad which technically would add some miniscule amount of obstruction but personally I'm ok with it for the sake of better valve stem support.


You can see the seals they got are different. I don't know if intense or zzp sell any different ones but the new ones I bought a while back that I used on the heads originally as well as the old ones took off the heads as I got them had the flat band spring at the top and bottom, not the coil spring like these new ones have. But yeah Opel said the ones I had weren't really the right size.

Nice work!!

Gosh darn it, Code man. I'm so jealous of your engine bay!

Hope mine looks just as cool someday!

I'm so ready to see this car in action maybe I will get motivated enough to work on my Riv.

Btw turtle are you using the aluminum coolant elbows zzp makes? I was wondering about their quality

setsuna57 wrote:

I'm so ready to see this car in action maybe I will get motivated enough to work on my Riv.

Btw turtle are you using the aluminum coolant elbows zzp makes? I was wondering about their quality

I dont think turtle has them, but I do. At first I thought their were aluminum PAINTED plastic because of the look, weight, and feel. I called ZZP and they guaranteed me they were aluminum. Anyways, they have held up just fine for 8 months now.

I'm using a plastic one from the dealer. I bought like 3 of em' after the incident with the dorman ones. The dealer ones are just fine. I also now have one that came with my new gates accessory belt tensioner. I kept it but I'd be a little weary of using it. lol It has black seals on it distinguishing it from the dorman but who knows

setsuna57 wrote:

I'm so ready to see this car in action maybe I will get motivated enough to work on my Riv.

Btw turtle are you using the aluminum coolant elbows zzp makes? I was wondering about their quality

I believe the ZZP aluminum elbows are the same as the ones you can now get from Dorman, etc. I wouldn't buy the plastic ones ever again.

I noticed this and figured someone would post about the elbow. Codith's engine is a good example of real, functional mods on a 3800 SC engine. Aluminum elbows are great, but they don't actually give you anything, they're just shinier compared to the black plastic ones. Functionally, the black plastic works just fine, if you get the OEM ones.

If you want to show off your engine, get a shiny aluminum elbow, and some billet CNC valve covers. If you're going for power and performance, plastic is fine, and I think it adds an element of substance - stealthy and lightweight, not showy, says you're above just looking good under the hood. I'm on my 2nd plastic elbow, the first one lasted 247k, and it wasn't leaking when I replaced it!

Who cares what freaking elbow you have as long as you are not leaking.
stealthy? lightweight? ...............seriously?

WOW that looks awesome!

Awesome

bleh I was just wondering if the alum would last longer I may have a leaker have not been under the hood much lately and for the record my engine bay is homely probably the worst looking on the board theres a block of wood holding the hood latch in place.......from where the bumper was cut to fit the intercooler.....plus my rats nest wiring harness tsk now Im all depressed again thanks lol so much to fix.....I would be lucky if 6k got me half of what I need/want.

On the plus, I guess you could re-use the aluminum elbow since it's probably not going to break into 3 pieces upon removal like the dorman plastic ones did even before the premature failures, every time. The o-rings deteriorate though so you'd wanna buy new ones. Whatever, I use the delcos now - never had a problem with em.

Quote :

stealthy? lightweight? ...............seriously?

Yes, black is a stealth look vs. polished metal. Like colored wire loom - it's normally black. Aluminum elbow is a show mod, unless you're removing your manifold every week like Codith mentioned. I can see the value there. But before you go replacing your perfectly good plastic elbow... It's not a performance mod.

You'd be surprised at what it takes to make car light. Every little piece adds up. One of the major auto makers has spent millions developing a plastic dipstick, which is now used in most of their vehicles. It's not any cheaper than a metal one, but it's lighter. Buick used plastic for a reason. Maybe to save money, could also be for weight savings or some other reason.

There's no way the plastic is significantly lighter than whatever zzp has. I wouldn't be surprised if the zzp elbow is LIGHTER than the plastic. Like I said, I was surprised when I got it. It was so light I called zzp to confirm that it was metal and not painted plastic. It felt like super thin plastic.

I bet it's lighter than the plastic bows.

Unless they decreased the wall thickness, the aluminum part should weigh approx. double the plastic part. It seems light because it's metal and you expect it to be heavy.

One week after this whole engine thing, the front right inboard brake pad took a shit for no apparent reason. Wow it's a repeat of that last Jan right after I finished putting in my new L26, my brakes all said "You haven't spent enough money yet, we're done!"
So yeah my front right was making some noise all week like grinding but low pitch and some ugly feeling in the pedal. As soon as I noticed it on like monday coming home from work, I stopped the car and kinda felt the rotors and stuff. There wear on the inboard side was a bit ugly but not crazy. A few hours ago I went to try to back my car up out of the garage so I can clean up my mess from last weekend and it wouldn't go! It was like I had the parking brake on. My first thought was definitely not to check my noisy front brakes to see if a pad popped out and jammed but...


outboard is perfectly fine






I didn't even attempt to separate the rotor,bracket, and pad until after getting it all off the car



So I dunno obviously I'm getting some new pads and rotors but this kinda bothers me. Why in the hell would this happen? There is nothing indicating the caliper wasn't able to float in. The slide pins moved easy as butter. I can see the pad was only able to dislodge itself because there was zero friction material left holding it away from the rotor so that's just due to me not getting to it in time but why did it wear like that so prematurely now?

On that note, I have a warranty on the Performance Friction 749.20 brake pads through O'Reilly auto parts so I'm just gonna get another set of those. My Raybestos drilled/slotted rotors are out of warranty so I'm thinking about getting THESE HERE. They are in Chicago I guess so I was thinking to drive over there tomorrow morning first thing, get the pads and have it back together in time for work. Anyone have any experience with their products?