Back in Black

awesome

Started the car this morning and all was well! No leaks at all, and my stupid ticking noise from my EGR is GONE GONE GONE! You have no idea how happy that makes me. I am sad though - my PLOG already turned blue lol. It's neat looking but I liked the polished look.

Took it for a drive to get it up to operating temperature and stomped on it. I didn't notice any real power difference, but I noticed I had no KR where I normally would have before. Whenever it warms up I'll get my 1.8 rockers and rebuilt fuel injectors put on and see what happens!

Karma, maybe even a GenV AND LIM AND N* TB, all with your magic P&P work instead of 2 separate blowers.

Did this last week....I blacked out all the chrome trim. Change the car completely. Looks like a GS should.














I actually didn't paint much. I painted the license plate surround because the chrome was dead anyway (tail light was from my old '95). I also painted the spare grille I had because it wasn't as nice as my original chrome one. I'll save that one for a rainy day. To black out the rest, I actually used vinyl! Basically just decal vinyl, but not cheap crap - really high quality outdoor sign stuff. It should hold up really well, time will tell! I simply cut out pieces that were the basic shape, stuck them on, and trimmed accordingly.



My Yella Terra rockers go on Wednesday! I'm excited to see the results...

Now that looks wild.....

Tits!  

Lookin' good, homie!

That does look really good. I don't know how great it would look on a non-black car, but on black it is definitely sharp!   
 
So did you scuff up the chrome to get a good bite or just paint over as-is and hope for the best.
 
....I bet that was a LOT of masking BTW  

Thanks everyone! I think this would be hard to pull off on anything but black. Maybe the green cars.

Al - I actually only painted the license plate surround and the grille. Everything else I covered in vinyl! It sure would have been a lot of masking though! But for both the grille and surround I scuffed the heck out of them and used an adhesion promoter, good primer, black base, and clear. Should be bullet proof!

Well, I'm unbelievably irritated. I don't know how many of you remember, but a couple years ago I put Yella Terra rockers on my Series I L67 Lesabre. When I did, I found the rocker arms to be loose and the lifters couldnt pump up enough to make up for the space. Well guess what...

SAME PROBLEM on this engine. Only this time it's just one lifter. I really don't want to tear this engine apart AGAIN but I guess that's what I'll be doing tomorrow. I have a set of lifters and gaskets and metal coolant elbows on the way....

Looks nice. Got me thinking about it for my green car

Z-type wrote:

Well, I'm unbelievably irritated. I don't know how many of you remember, but a couple years ago I put Yella Terra rockers on my Series I L67 Lesabre. When I did, I found the rocker arms to be loose and the lifters couldnt pump up enough to make up for the space. Well guess what...

SAME PROBLEM on this engine. Only this time it's just one lifter. I really don't want to tear this engine apart AGAIN but I guess that's what I'll be doing tomorrow. I have a set of lifters and gaskets and metal coolant elbows on the way....

Interesting. I don't recall hearing about many people with lifter problems. A lot are running cams and higher ratio rockers on the OE lifters without a problem (myself included). Did replacing the lifters take care of it on the other motor?

That's what I don't understand either! No one else seems to have had this particular problem but me lol. And yes, new LS7 lifters cured in in the Series I engine, and have about 2,500 miles on them right now.

I dunno! I'm just about to go to the garage now and start taking the engine apart...I'll update later today.

Well, I think I may be close to setting a record lol. I tore down the top of the engine to this in less than an hour:



Removing the rockers, pushrods, and lifters took only 10 minutes more. So now my bench looks like this:




I should be able to get my lifters, supercharger gasket, and aluminum coolant elbow from the post office tomorrow and I'll have the car running by the end of the night (I work until 8) . Hopefully this does the trick like the last engine!

Any harm in reusing my aluminum intake gaskets? There's nothing visually wrong with them. I wiped them down and they look perfect. I got new rubber strips for the top of the engine block part of the intake gaskets.

Z-type wrote:

Well, I think I may be close to setting a record lol. I tore down the top of the engine to this in less than an hour:

Jeez dude. Come help me out sometime, my head gasket looks like it's leaking. That and I want to get new rockers soon......

Nice skills, Andrew. I'm totally jealous.

Haha thanks guys. It comes out of necessity, and the unfortunate circumstances to need to be able to perform the surgery quickly.

Well, the car is back together! Everything went pretty smoothly except for my back hurting now.

The car SEEMS faster, but I've been driving an S10 for a week lol. It's hard to say right now, but when I get back to work after these 2 days off I'll be able to tell during my normal route.

Let's just say on my test drive I got to 70 mph before I really expected to or realized it.


Buuuuut one thing I noticed. My Aeroforce reports me running super rich...like -12.5 when warm and when I let off the gas. WOT it's at 0.0 . I had the battery disconnected all week, and I put 'new' sonic-cleaned injectors on. Just need to give it time to adjust?

Fuel trims at WOT are meaningless, as are 'off throttle' trims. When you are in 'coast', it's got the injectors almost closed.

Fuel trims at WOT are whatever they were before you got into WOT. A basic O2 sensor can't read the pulses once you get over a certain point (somewhere around 40-50% throttle), so it drops into open loop mode and goes by the MAF table plus or minus whatever your fuel trims were just before you went to heavy throttle. That's one reason you want to tune to keep your fuel trims very small.

Thank you Derek, that makes a lot of sense. I'm sure it's fine, nothing smells or anything - just wanted to address it!

I forgot to 'burp' the cooling system yesterday so I added coolant to the reservoir today. Everything still looks peachy! I don't have anywhere to go right now so I haven't driven it, but I'm looking forward to it!

Another update for the car - it's been a while! I haven't had to do much, I've just been enjoying it. BUT - Ive gotten sick of the roof paint that's been deteriorating quite fast these last 2 years. Looked like this:



And this on the A and C pillars:


And my bumper was hit before I bought the car. I've just been clever with these things when I take pictures of the car to hide the roof.



So last night I began the process of stripping the paint from the roof and pillars and prepping my bumper cover from my old '95 Riviera.

I'm still not sure why this was covered in saw dust, but it was in a barn.


Scuffed and ready to go:


I used this fancy attachment with my drill to strip the paint. It's a 3M something-or-other disc and it's hard as a rock.


It made quick work of the paint though! You have to press a little harder so it wears you out, but it does a good job.




So I got everything stripped and prepped last night until 1 AM and took the time today to clean and mask. This is my least favorite part of any paint job, but I'm good at getting the lines taped right.


My door jambs are in perfect shape paint-wise, so I made sure to block them off with something so errant paint wouldn't make it's way down there.


And the car is gone!




This is my second 'major' paint job besides the work I did on my Gram's S10 a few weeks ago, so I don't know much about what paint is good and what is bad, I just know to use urethanes. I already had Eastwood Single Stage black urethane from a previous project so I got more to cover this project. I also got their urethane epoxy primer and a Kirker clear coat from a local place. The Eastwood primer is hard to mix but it sprays SO NICE once the gun is set.




For those who may not know, Single Stage urethane is just that - one single shot and you don't need clear. Easy 4-1 mix.


Set your gun right (which takes time with this paint for some reason) and it comes out beautifully.




The Kirker brand clear is a bit tricky...it's sort of syrupy so you pretty much always need to reduce it, but I evidently didn't add enough as I got a little orange peel, which you can see if you look closely.






Nothing a little sanding a buffing won't take care of! I hope to have that done tomorrow depending on how well it's cured. I'm just glad this is almost done, as I've been waiting 2 long years to fix this. Now I just have to take the time to swap the front bumper and related hardware. I think I might lightly tint the turn signals while they're out.

Looks good from back here!

perfect....

Howdy - I finally got back to the car. It's been sitting in the garage for a week and it looked unhappy.

Facelift - literally. Actually that's the old bumper on the floor.


I had forgotten how easy it was to take this cover off, but even so I broke 2 studs holding the cover to the fenders. No matter - one each will hold the sides nicely for now.


New one on, old hardware swapped, and signals slightly tinted.


Sand and buff!


Pretty good reflections! I see a Skyhawk...


Didn't realize the hood was popped in this picture. I'm happy with the front bumper! Hopefully I can complete the roof tomorrow...that's going to be a job...

...word is still the same...PERFECT.