Manuel's '01 GTP bulid I'm doing

I've mentioned this build before but I might as well make a little thread for it and I'd be interested in thoughts and suggestions. I'll go into more detail later but let's just throw some pics up for now, yea?


There's the car


inside not very clean at the moment


only engine pic so far. It was all stock with some odd 3.6ish press on pulley and short ram intake. BTW the ram air hood that's on the car throws the air it pulls right at that short ram so maybe we keep it there.



some parts


my first intake job - not flawless but functionally perfect


looking up an intake runner at the IC core fins


That car with that bumper especially has a shit ton of room for a front mount - too bad we can't get a full size core and go bigger

I'll take some more as I go but If you want to see something in particular, let me know.

Sounds cool. I love doin that stuff........too bad the car is fugly! To each his own I guess.

What all are 'ya doin to it?

Abaddon wrote:

too bad the car is fugly! To each his own I guess.

I'd have to agree 100%

Atleast it will have some cool mods done to it.

Good Luck with the project!

Agree with the above. Looks like it's gonna get rockers, GenV and IC? That exterior needs a lot of changes but that's all a matter of personal preference I guess.

I take no responsibility for anything but the motor on this car. You definitely cannot miss this thing on the road though. I don't really know exactly how quick it's gonna be but at least we're starting to get some fast in it so it's not a straight ricer.

Mods basically are 1.9 Yella Terra rockers, 90# springs, ported and debridged gen3, SSIC with a stage 2 front mount, zzp fuel logs, 3" downpipe, intense standard tune, 3.2" pulley

Maf, injectors, etc - things that affect tuning a lot are staying stock so it should still get at or near original fuel economy with no extra tuning and it'll be 100% street happy.

No headers? I think I'd do that first! When I saw with my own eyes the size difference between the front and rear primaries I was astonished. Although, with the IC, you (he) should be ok. For some reason I was thinking crazy build, but that's damn near the same as mine, difference being he's getting the IC and I got the headers

Abaddon wrote:

Sounds cool. I love doin that stuff........too bad the car is fugly!

One accidental press of the garage-door button will take care of that wing...

IC should give a bigger HP gain than headers at stock to medium mod level. Rivieras have run high 12s with ported stock manis + down pipe.

Depends on if you are looking for more low-end, or wanting more up top.

AA wrote:

IC should give a bigger HP gain than headers at stock to medium mod level. Rivieras have run high 12s with ported stock manis + down pipe.

Yes, but not STOCK mani's

12 sec Riv was also running N2O (intercooler)!

I'm having a problem. I got all the front springs, retainers, seals, rockers, and pushrods in without a problem. The back springs are also swapped at this point, although the drivers side rear cylinder was tricky to say that least because the o2 sensor didn't let my air fitting hook up.

Anyway I've come across a weird problem and I think it's some bonehead thing i'm not thinking about so please help me out. On the back, there's one rocker that has a little play while it's fully seated and torqued. I tried swapping around all the parts - rocker, pedestol, pushrod, with another one and the issue stays on that middle intake valve. I looked at the spring install heights and they are the same. I double checked the pushrod lengths and stuff and I'm lost. Nothing looks wrong but this rocker won't lock down! I did not touch the lifters at all and I cannot conceive of anything that could happen that would make it shorter so I don't see any reasonable suspision to justify pulling the LIM back off unless someone has an idea there.

turtleman wrote:

I'm having a problem. I got all the front springs, retainers, seals, rockers, and pushrods in without a problem. The back springs are also swapped at this point, although the drivers side rear cylinder was tricky to say that least because the o2 sensor didn't let my air fitting hook up.

Anyway I've come across a weird problem and I think it's some bonehead thing i'm not thinking about so please help me out. On the back, there's one rocker that has a little play while it's fully seated and torqued. I tried swapping around all the parts - rocker, pedestol, pushrod, with another one and the issue stays on that middle intake valve. I looked at the spring install heights and they are the same. I double checked the pushrod lengths and stuff and I'm lost. Nothing looks wrong but this rocker won't lock down!

Oil in the bolt hole?

I can observe this problem without the bolt even being in. You can pretty much seat the rocker fully just holding it with your finger. Once the pivot shaft is seated in the pedestol, it can't really be pulled down any farther. I can see the pedestol plate is all the way down and seated against the pedesol so I don't think its a torque thing at all.

Empty lifter?

Can you safely crank the motor over til the oil light goes out?

I pulled the LIM and it looks like the lifter isn't pumped up like the others. What the shit am I supposed to do with that? I don't see how it can take any oil pressure by cranking it if the pushrod's not even sealing against it?

turtleman wrote:

I pulled the LIM and it looks like the lifter isn't pumped up like the others. What the shit am I supposed to do with that? I don't see how it can take any oil pressure by cranking it if the pushrod's not even sealing against it?

Well... I guess this is one of the few disadvantages of youth, Cody.

A) It can pump up - Haven't you never heard an engine that hasn't been run in a long time go "rocka-rocka-rocka" until the lifters pump up?

B) More importantly, since you have the LIM and the rockers apart, just replace the lifter... In fact, with everything else you're doing, shouldn't you be replacing all the lifters?

I don't really understand why I'd have a problem like this with 1 lifter when the other 11 are perfectly fine.

These lifters don't need to be changed for increased lift or normal maintainence.

I'm just talkin' about age & mileage, Turtle!

Unless, of course, you want to think about a flat cam...

Lifters do fail individually at times and you don't know the full history of the car and who might have been in there before you.

If you still have the intake manifold off and access to the lifter that bleed down, you can remove it and a push rod and try to pump it up by hand.

Put the lifter in container of your choice, I used to cut the bottom off the plastic oil bottle high enough to cover the lifter, then put enough oil to fully cover it and then use your pushrod with a rag or something on the end and push down and release with the palm of your hand slowly as many times as possible and that will help fill the lifter with oil.
You can't always expect that the lifter will get completely full of oil this way but you can see air bubbles as you push slowly and release.

Then if you decide to re-install it still may clatter for a bit on start up until it completely fills with oil. The lifter is fed it's oil from the crankcase and not the pushrod as you were mentioning before.

Even empty of oil, though, the lifters should spring return to the top, offering some resistance to the rocker. Take the lifter out and prime it - we did it with flat lifters by pumping it while submerged in a can of oil. Not sure how you'd do it with a roller lifter but that'll answer one question - is the spring pushing the pushrod seat back to the top?

That's right, I forgot these were roller lifters.
It's going to be a bit of a challenge priming something with a roller on the bottom.
But where there is a will there's a way.

personnaly I'd replace it, but it can't hurt to try and prime it first as has been mentioned.

I played with the lifter a bit. The top where the pushrod fits against is basically just moving freely up and down that little distance of play I have. It also kind of wobbles if you push on the edge of it. I also tried pushing in another lifter in that same area for a comparison and I didn't even get a budge out of it. Any objections to this being a failed lifter?

Thankfully Travis has my back and is sending me a few spares to replace this with. So tomorrow I'm going to plumb and wire the IC since I can't do much with the motor missing a lifter. I can probably get the fuel rails going since I have to make sure they don't leak. I'll probably have some questions about that too since I haven't done an IC yet but it should be fairly straightforward.

turtleman wrote:

I played with the lifter a bit. The top where the pushrod fits against is basically just moving freely up and down that little distance of play I have. It also kind of wobbles if you push on the edge of it. I also tried pushing in another lifter in that same area for a comparison and I didn't even get a budge out of it. Any objections to this being a failed lifter?

Nope, that's pretty much where I was going - a broken lifter spring.

ya Mark - you get a cookie! Your were pretty much right on dude.


He picked up a new lifter from Napa since they were able to get it on hand same day. It's very easy to tell it's aftermarket but it'll do. I tried pumping some oil into it and got nowhere so I put it in, installed everything and cranked the motor over for about 15-20 seconds until the mild clicking stopped so I guess it's loaded now since it stopped. I'll crank it some more once its back together before I run it. It is all together and sounds good cranking though.


So Manuel's original (2001) blower has rotors in basically perfect condition. The rotors in ported one have seen better days. I really don't want to go through more work but I should probably swap the better rotors into the ported case, huh? The ported case is definitely older - like 97ish - it's got the vac/boost tree up in the front.


Side note: The felpro aluminum lower intake gaskets are thinner than the GM ones. Although I'm sure they are just as good, I'd go for the GM ones myself.

So the car is up and running again. There were no major problems and started up and ran perfect. He needs to take the car into a shop tomorrow morning and get the shorty 3" downpipe welded in and then I'm going to finish up the intercooler. It needs to be plumbed and wired. I told him not to do any WOT runs yet beacuse we couldn't get any bigger pulley on with the belt we got than the 3.2 that it'll be set up to run with. With a non-functioning IC and a u-bend in place, I hope for his sake, he doesn't get an itchy foot tonight.

Here's some pictures.


front rockers, springs, retainers, seals


These fuel rails are not my favorite but they did the job


SSIC core



3 1/4" IC core JK




One good thing about that huge bumper is the FMHE fits great in there.