tortuga

Those harbor freight jacks are amazing. And that is one meaty-ass tire. I am excited in multiple ways.

100percentjake wrote:

Those harbor freight jacks are amazing. And that is one meaty-ass tire. I am excited in multiple ways.

Eww!

Really quick rundown on things..

I'm taking the turtle to a dyno on saturday and hopefully me and tommygloves can get the tune straight cause i'm still havin problems getting it dialed in. It could be a total flop of a day or it could be magic - we'll see what happens.
Tuesday, I blew a brake line - really inconvenient timing! I got that pretty much fixed today and also hung the stock cat-back. I thought about it a lot and decided I wanted a stock quiet riv again (still have the cutout though) and although I didn't really know this until getting under the car, my less than 2 year old muffler I had on there dropped a baffle and it was just loose rattling in there which was probably at least part of the noise that was bothering me.
The new wheels & tires are on. I went full retard with straight up cheater slicks so my intention is to take this car to the track hopefully this fall and get my 11 sec pass out of it and that'll pretty much be the end of it. I say that because rust is taking it like cancer. The spot near the fender-well entry is getting kinda bad and the area near the gas tank filler pipe is really bad - I started vacuuming out that area and I basically have a hole going into the cabin now behind the rear seat.

turtleman wrote:

I say that because rust is taking it like cancer. The spot near the fender-well entry is getting kinda bad and the area near the gas tank filler pipe is really bad - I started vacuuming out that area and I basically have a hole going into the cabin now behind the rear seat.

That was the demise of my '98. Only difference is my holes are in the frame/body structure underneath. I can spin the rearward-most left cradle bolt with my fingers

I finally put in the replacement fuel pump booster. Surprisingly it has the same issue as the magnavolt unit did. It'll often stay on (the fuel pump) after you turn the key off so I suppose it's just some weird electrical phenomenon between the factory speed control module and it's feed to the booster. I have it wired such that it basically just goes in between the factory speed control module's output to the fuel pump and the fuel pump obviously which lets me keep the factory speed reduction functionality and also get the extra voltage under boost. It's going to take some brain wracking to remedy the problem of failing to shut off though. I'm pretty good with electrical but that's expert kind of stuff. Even though it didn't fix my problem, I still like it a bit better than the magnavolt just because it's more modular. It doesn't have the built in pressure switch which is good because those tend to fail and it's not really serviceable, plus I run one wire through the whole car instead of a long vacuum hose for triggering. Besides that, you can select the voltage you want in the range of 15-20 which is cool. I'm at about 17.5v which is roughly what the magnavolt did and that seemed like enough to keep fueling on track.


There's where it's actually mounted which is right next to the factory speed control module you can just see a little bit hidden from view.


There's the bracket I designed to mount it up. As a rule, I never drill any holes in the car unless it's a piece I can easily replace so it's always fun coming up with mounting solutions for added stuff. This is the first riv part I've made up using my new solidworks skills I just finished my first class for.

nice

I managed to get the oem cat back I picked off a '99 riv put in without too much trouble. Since of course I kept the headers and 3" cutout I needed to adapt it to that. I found a 3" to 2.75"OD adapter which perfectly fits over the inlet of the stock resonator. After cleaning up everything nicely, I pounded that adapter on and it's such a fit I didn't even need to clamp it or anything - seals up fine. Then Just a piece of 3" pipe to make up the distance between the cutout and the resonator and done. I definitely miss the badass sounding lopey idle but nonetheless I'm happy.


You can also see the brake line I just replaced there.


There's the custom cat-back I just pulled off. I guess I'm just gonna scrap it unless somebody wants to take it. I really love the way that rear muffler looked at the tail of the car - kinda tuner-ish but nice at the same time

new wheel/tire pics











I haven't really put the tires through the paces yet to see how well they bite but so far so good. The bias ply's are no trouble on the highway - because of the big contact patch and stickiness they do behave differently than normal tires but not crazy. I have them inflated to about 25psi. At the dragstrip, they need to be down to like 15ish to really work their magic. Not good in rain - worse than my micky thompson drag radials as they have no tread whatsoever. I can get by with them at sub-highway speeds - just need to be a little bit careful. The wheels themselves I think look pretty good. They stick out noticeably more than stock which I personally don't mind - definitely adds an aggressiveness to the car. Believe it or not the offset is pretty close to stock - they are just wider at 9" and the big lip and tire exaggerates the width more I guess.

What else..? Oh, the dyno yesterday didn't exactly happen. We got there and found the dynojet wasn't communicating at all. Apparently this happened once before so Tom has to get them to come fix it. It'll probably be around 3 weeks before we return. Bummer


waiting to get on the rollers...


and the mad turbo regal. That bottom air damn that looks like it's made out of aluminum sheet actually is. lol This car is more over-engineered than a german fork





Also this happened on the way home from the dyno and I limped it 10-15mi like this.
This is the second time this has happened. I fixed the symptom before by replacing the broken/bent rocker bolts but evidently something is goin on here beyond a defective bolt. I'm not really sure what to do.

Gotta be a pushrod length issue for that to happen more than once. Are they adjustable pushrods?

The other possibility is that the valvespring is binding somehow.

Okay, there are other possibilities too, but those are the most likely things.

Tell me more about those rocker pedastals? What is in there to keep the rocker arms straight?

Or the spring is going into coil bind.

The rocker bolt sleeves determine the trunion installed height from the head - if there were no pushrod and spring holding it up to the top end of the sleeve, the rocker arm its-self would just flop down onto the head unlike the stock and yella terras where they have kind of a bed for the trunion to sit on. In the pics you can see the little pin that joins the two trunions together at an offset which creates the angled orientation. Since they are joined like that, one breaks (the bolt) and the other ends up bending.

The pushrods are not adjustable. When I purchased and installed them I made sure each one was within the lifter preload range. Pushrods aren't bending and I'm not binding the spring. The angle orientation isn't perfect on the rockers by the way. Some are a tiny bit closer than others but all of them are within reason. The polishing on the roller tips reflect this. I can't do anything about that - it's manufacturing tolerances.

Hmph. Interesting. Is this a known issue with these rockers? What brand are they? That doesn't seem like much stopping the rocker from twisting out of line, I guess I'd have to handle one up close to understand how they work.

Otherwise... Can you tell if the valve is still straight? I'm wondering if there was piston/valve contact. Do you have an inspection camera you can put in the spark plug hole?

They are compcams. I hardly see them so I can't say I've heard anything about them. The previous owner of them didn't mention any problems with them on his turbocharged grand prix aside from removing them because he threadlocked the bushings and everything in.

I actually just found my pics from the last time it broke. It was the same cylinder but the other valve actually and it broke a few threads proud of the head whereas this time it was like a thread or so in the cylinder head.

I'm actually thinking about making an upper support to tie all the rocker bolts together basically like those girdles people put on the old school v8's and whatnot with a serious valvetrain/conditions. I think that would keep the individual bolts from experiencing the full side forces with this rocker design. It would be really easy to make - just need to get hold of some valve cover risers (less easy to make) to clear the extra tallness. I'm talking to somebody about that right now.

A lot of motors with straight valve to pushrod alignments use a rocker shaft instead of individual pedastals.

deekster_caddy wrote:

A lot of motors with straight valve to pushrod alignments use a rocker shaft instead of individual pedastals.

Yeah every once in a blue moon you see the T&D shaft rocker setup on somebodys 3800. I don't know of any production discontinued or otherwise part though so maybe it's custom. Who know's it may come to that for me one day.


I finished making my support beam and spacers today and went ahead and threw it together - not too much drama. The only thing is you have to kinda get all the valves on that bank on base circle at once so you can tighten it down without it binding since it's all tied together so you can't really have any appreciable height discrepancy between the rockers as you go. That provided, it installs without trouble - you just alternate tightening around little by little.
The only thing now is I need to wait for the valve cover risers to come so that the covers clear the support beam and bolt heads that are higher of course. Also the OEM valve covers have a little section of webbing that interferes with my support beam so I'll need to mill or grind that little bit - no big deal. Pending a question or two, I'm thinkin about picking up a set of the zzp aluminum covers actually.

Tortuga is up and running again. I feel like I say that too often but I don't care anymore. haha

According to my log, the first rocker bolt failure (at cyl 1 exhaust) was 456mi after installing for the first time. After just replacing the two bolts and reinstalling, it took 605mi to break again (at cyl 1 intake). So we'll see how long it goes now that I've added the support plate on the front only.

I'm very pleased to announce I believe I've figured out a solution to my fuel pump sticking on with the voltage booster installed. I don't remember how much I talked about that before but ever since I installed the magnavolt a while back, my fuel pump will stay on after shutting the car off (almost 100% of the time if the car was not running for a longer than say 5-10minutes, or you just key on and key off). I would have to hit the voltage booster box to get it to click off. Because of that I automatically assumed it was a mechanical fault and replaced the unit with a different one. To my shock it did the same thing. I brainstormed an idea after thinking a little bit about what has really changed in the electrical system by adding this booster. Basically it is wired to the fuel pump such that it takes the B+ feed that used to actually run the pump (from the factory fuel pump control module) and just uses it as a 'turn-on' trigger and then it has it's own dedicated battery power and ground to run the pump. So instead of the factory module feeding a pump that soaks up 15+amps all it's doing is exciting an internal relay in the booster and barely using any current at all so I decided to try simulating some extra loading there by simply adding a resistor - I arbitrarily picked a 10ohm but It shouldn't be too critical as long as it turns on and turns off too which it does! Really easy fix!

As for the dyno, Tom's still waiting for it to get fixed. End of this month is my best guess when we go back. My luck it'll be fine and then something will break the day of 'cause that's just how it goes for me but I'm crossing my fingers.

Also I decided to do some playing. There's a mod people do where you kinda re-adjust the boost bypass actuator so that it doesn't swing as far away to fully close the valve and enable boost - supposed to make throttle/boost response a little tiny bit quicker (which I never noticed). For shits & gigs I decided to go one further and run an actuator equalization loop (I honestly don't know how to make more sense out of that as a name). All it does is keeps the bypass valve from hanging open at idle & very light load cruising. So bypass is pretty much always closed (unless the PCM intervenes via the solenoid - that still functions the same). I have to say I like the response of the engine 10 times better! The smaller pulley you go, the more noticeable I've found the issue of boost being a distinct on/off thing where you are rolling onto the gas from a stop and the engine feels kinda gutless with the heavy car and then you press a little more and it suddenly kicks into kill mode (bypass valve closes and you start getting boost). With a 2.55 pulley, that's prominent enough to be actually annoying IMO. Personally I really like the invisibility of the roots blower in how it makes power and that's somewhat compromised with how the unmodified bypass circuit behaves with a really small pulley. I think I'm going to set it up so that I can switch that mod on and off. It'd be pretty straightforward to do with an extra boost control solenoid. I'll do a silly write-up once I do that. I haven't done any elaborate testing besides trying it and immediately being happier - the car just has much more pep in its step, more natural feeling, no on/off boost affect. I don't know how much it affects things like efficiency, heat, mpg, etc. but I'll share if I find anything really bad.

Since we're waiting on the dyno we got bored and went to the track yesterday - myself, the turbo regal, and Jr with his nitrous sbc nova. None of us really got any personal bests but got data and whatnot. Pretty hot afternoon 85-88ish - I figured I'd see what my tires would do more than anything else since my tune is weird. I don't know why yet but I couldn't get these tires to work for me. They seemed about the same as my mickey thompson street radials as far as launch grip I guess which is disappointing. I never did more than a really quick burnout 'cause I can't keep the car from quickly advancing forward. These tires give the best grip while spinning lol. I should just let it run wild and ride out the burnout past the tree now that I think about it. Al was watching one of my runs and he told me that when I launch the tires are skipping up and down which I don't really feel at all in the car but that isn't helping anything I'm guessing. Ideas?


Here's my runs for the day. It was creepy consistent despite everything I was trying to do to get better. Basically I couldn't get a decent launch (which is what the day was about for me), and my AFR was just lean up top every run (no kr though). I did get my shift points pretty much sorted out at least. The first run I let off at the end because it never upshifted to 3rd. My mph was off a bit I suppose - tires and whatnot. As for the AFR discrepancy though, I was trying to adjust the maf table up top just really roughly to see if I could at least see a difference in the right direction and it wasn't really. PCM would be commanding something like 11.1 which is richer than I want but the wideband would be showing me stuff in the neighborhood of 12-13. Only occasionally was it close to right. It was weird I had one run (I think the 4th) where it was actually really close where I was looking and I hadn't changed anything that time. This car is a tuning nightmare.


in-car from one of the runs for posterity
I didn't realize this before but the car shields a lot of the noise of the cutout if the windows are closed. You feel it more than you hear it even though it's super loud outside the car. It's strange going down the track with that and a stock cat-back 'cause when you let off at the end there's zero engine noise
Ps. I seriously need a better camera before I go to the track again. I would really like to be able to read gauges in the videos like speedo/tach, nitrous pressure. I'm gonna make a mount for my dragstrip helmet and see if something like a gopro has a wide enough view to capture what I want in the car. Shoving my outdated cameras under the headrest of the passenger the seat is getting annoying haha.


Overall for now I'm just happy I didn't break anything, I didn't loose my tires. Well actually I think my rear air shocks failed because I had it pumped way up and towards the last runs it lost all pressure. That's a nothing fix though in the scale of things. Kevin ended up loosing his reluctor wheel in the turbo regal after he was done. Car was fine all day and he just started it up in the pit after and we heard noise in the trans - had to tow it back.

what rate do you run for rear springs?

what was your 60ft time on your PR run? do you usually hit sub 2s? wondering cause you said you werent happy with your launches.

robotennis61 wrote:

what rate do you run for rear springs?

uhh rate? they're original springs and monroe stock replacement shocks I put in about 8 years ago

charlieRobinson wrote:

what was your 60ft time on your PR run? do you usually hit sub 2s? wondering cause you said you werent happy with your launches.

My personal best et run I did a 1.997 60ft and that was on the mickey thompsons. I was hovering around 2.200-2.000 with em over the course of 10 passes - 2.145 as a calculated average. I only have 5 passes to sample but I did about a tenth better (averaged) with the cheater slicks but my best was nearly the same as the m/t's. I was expecting better results than that with basically the meanest tire that can be run and I thought people were occasionally pulling off 2.000 60ft's with good street tires.

turtleman wrote:

robotennis61 wrote:

what rate do you run for rear springs?

uhh rate? they're original springs and monroe stock replacement shocks I put in about 8 years ago

charlieRobinson wrote:

what was your 60ft time on your PR run? do you usually hit sub 2s? wondering cause you said you werent happy with your launches.

My personal best et run I did a 1.997 60ft and that was on the mickey thompsons. I was hovering around 2.200-2.000 with em over the course of 10 passes - 2.145 as a calculated average. I only have 5 passes to sample but I did about a tenth better (averaged) with the cheater slicks but my best was nearly the same as the m/t's. I was expecting better results than that with basically the meanest tire that can be run and I thought people were occasionally pulling off 2.000 60ft's with good street tires.

If you run a stiffer rear spring your times would improve

robotennis61 wrote:

turtleman wrote:

robotennis61 wrote:

what rate do you run for rear springs?

uhh rate? they're original springs and monroe stock replacement shocks I put in about 8 years ago

charlieRobinson wrote:

what was your 60ft time on your PR run? do you usually hit sub 2s? wondering cause you said you werent happy with your launches.

My personal best et run I did a 1.997 60ft and that was on the mickey thompsons. I was hovering around 2.200-2.000 with em over the course of 10 passes - 2.145 as a calculated average. I only have 5 passes to sample but I did about a tenth better (averaged) with the cheater slicks but my best was nearly the same as the m/t's. I was expecting better results than that with basically the meanest tire that can be run and I thought people were occasionally pulling off 2.000 60ft's with good street tires.

If you run a stiffer rear spring your times would improve

FATCHICKS IN BACK!!

robotennis61 wrote:

turtleman wrote:

robotennis61 wrote:

what rate do you run for rear springs?

uhh rate? they're original springs and monroe stock replacement shocks I put in about 8 years ago

charlieRobinson wrote:

what was your 60ft time on your PR run? do you usually hit sub 2s? wondering cause you said you werent happy with your launches.

My personal best et run I did a 1.997 60ft and that was on the mickey thompsons. I was hovering around 2.200-2.000 with em over the course of 10 passes - 2.145 as a calculated average. I only have 5 passes to sample but I did about a tenth better (averaged) with the cheater slicks but my best was nearly the same as the m/t's. I was expecting better results than that with basically the meanest tire that can be run and I thought people were occasionally pulling off 2.000 60ft's with good street tires.

If you run a stiffer rear spring your times would improve

My contention is throwing 100+psi in the rear shocks pretty much has the same exact effect as having a stiffer spring plus the ride height benefit (for the sake of launching only - not handling of course). You are stiffening up the rear end of the car - the shock absorber actually takes on a substantial part in supporting the weight of the car which conventionally isn't the job of a shock. I'm toying with the idea of making basically solid supports (replacing the rear shocks) that I'll install for the dragstrip only. Then I'll just continue using my air-less shocks for the street and not spend money on it. It'll be a little bit like a traction bar except it's out of sight. It'd be pretty easy to make something like that. My only concern is the new shock loading that the towers & mount point of the control arms would experience. I know they can handle the weight but hard bumps and stuff is my worry. I might just go ahead and try it on the tortuga since I consider it somewhat expendable.

more custom G/H body part porn!

I designed some lower mounts for the rear shocks and realized afterwards they are exactly the same as what I'd be making for a coilover conversion so I don't feel the least bit bad about it.



My solid shock (kinda silly to call it a shock) will have a 1/2" heim joint at the bottom so the mount for that to the control arm is very much the same as what robo & matt have for their coil over setups except this is billet aluminum instead of welded steel plate basically.
Also since I'm going to utilize the oem insulated top mount for the solid shock, I'm thinkin I should be pretty safe to not kill my towers with shock loading from the effectively solid rear suspension. Worst case I tear the rubber and the shock potentially gets thrown up into the trunk whatever distance the rear falls until till it hits spring tension. The bar I'm using will only be 3/4" or 13/16" so it has tons of clearance to the tower center opening. Actually I guess the lower mount washer would hit the tower then but that's not so terrible. I'm planning to make the length about as long as the air shock would be at full 150psi. We're talking in the neighborhood of 2 feet total length. That seems like a safe limit for everything.