Cascade Crew

aaron_sK

Got home early today and got a wild hare to work on the Camaro a bit. Started by clearancing the core support for the intercooler piping. When I put the headlight bar back on I realized that it interfered as well, so out came the RotoZip.

As we have learned in the past, RotoZip makem good speed holes. Yup yup

Unfortunately the headlight bar is made out of some horrible high-density fiberglass crap. Mountain Man no likey. No no no...

I also built another hood latch out of the one Andy gave me. It's identical in design to the old one, but I was not drunk off my ass this time so the cuts are square. Down the hatch

I haven't posted any recent pics of the engine bay, so there you go! Cool

While I was at it I dumped all the pictures in the camera onto the hard drive. There were some pictures that I took last summer when I was rewiring this thing before Gabe and I got it running. These start sequentially from sometime around June of last year...

-MAF hole gets recycled:

The RWD 3800 throttle body has a built-in MAF sensor with a pillar cast into it to divert air into the sensor. The pillar had already met it's fate in another topic but I still had the hole in the top. ZZP sells a blockoff plate, but why spend money? Why not be both cheap and clever?

Hard to see, but in that last picture there is an open-element intake air sensor where the MAF once was.

-Crank vent:

GM had a goofy crank vent on the 3800 S2. It was entirely internal, with no outside piping. Even the PCV valve itself was inside the intake manifold. The fresh air intake was from a port in the throttle body just ahead of the butterfly. Obviously with the boosted application this would have ended poorly, so I blocked off the fresh air port. That meant I had to add an external air intake. I traced the fresh air line through the intake manifold and head and found that it ended in the driver's side head just above the #1 cyl. So that's where I figured I would put my vent:

The last picture makes it look like it's under the fuel lines, but it is merely an optical illusion. I will run a line up a bit and into a breather. The draw side of the PCV system will have a catch can and be routed somewhere, probably a slash pipe or something. You can tell I'm all about specific on this build. Cool

-Battery cables:

Sticking with the built-not-bought theory here is some 1ga wire being made into battery cables.

Three grounds and one lead:

The terminal ends, flux and solder pellets came from Waytek, the cable is welding wire from Pacific Welding Supply in Tacoma. I could have gone to 1/0 wire, but decided it was unneeded.

The battery is grounded to the chassis (via a stud stolen from a spare 3800 and screwed into a seat belt mounting hole). The first ground strap goes from the passenger head (at the same point where the MegaSquirt and all ECM sensors ground) to the firewall. The second strap goes from the starter body to the framerail. I did this to ensure easy starting and good ECM ground. So far it works fantastically.

-Starter relay:

I hate GM starter solenoids. They fail on you at the worst time. In an attempt to outsmart this I installed a relay for the solenoid.

The large ring goes to the battery stud on the starter, the smaller ring to the solenoid trigger. One side of the relay coil is grounded to the firewall, the other side goes to the ignition. This ensures that the solenoid sees maximum voltage. If you are considering a Ford fender-mounted solenoid to cure a clicking GM solenoid then I suspect this may be a better solution.

-Alternator wiring:

Not much to say about this. Trigger with resistor, sense wire, and fat feed for the CS130D:

-Wiring:

Bussman multipurpose 3-buss fusebox. I love this thing. Cool

A quick pic of proper weatherpack disassembly. This is the gauge harness Paul built for his Autometer swap. It would have worked great if I was reusing the stock dash harness, but for this custom job I rewired them. Doing it this way allowed me to reuse the connectors and wiring.

-Spohn torque arm bolts:

The plates on the Spohn arm are much thicker than the GM version. This means that the top-locking nuts on the factory bolts will never bite, so longer ones are needed. I don't think Spohn ever bothers to tell anyone this, but it's been awhile since we installed this arm in Gabe's car, so I don't remember.

Regardless, this here is nearly twenty of your American dollars worth of locking grade-8 hardware: Cool

That should bring everyone about up to date, and get rid off all these build pictures I've been meaning to post.

Moving forward, here's a random start and idle video from a week or two ago when I was checking the turbo oil lines for leaks:

It must be Paul's birthday... Surprised

One more parting engine bay shot...

And a reminder to someone that the sooner they bring their Berlinetta over to my shop for an electric fan swap the sooner I can put the proper shroud in this one and get the Taurus fan mounted up! #$%^&*

Alphius · Posted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 6:29 am Post subject:

Spohn are indeed a-holes who respectfully neglect to mention that stock bolts are a no-go. We made a quality unexpected trip to Ace to buy bolts when we put that thing in my car.

Make 'er street legal and decently stealthy so it looks like we're driving a beater (but legal!) thirdgen around when we are tuning instead of doing massive 3rd gear boost brodies down paved roads in a rolling moving violation.

Still got room for the inside headlights on there or are we gonna save weight and blank those holes out and run the outside beams only?

91RSVert · Posted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 12:12 pm Post subject:

I re-used stock bolts on my spohn. Been that way for about 10 years.

aaron_sK · Posted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 2:28 pm Post subject:

91RSVert · Posted: Sat Aug 03, 2013 12:44 pm Post subject:

No pics right now. I think they are flush, or sunk 1-2 threads. I know I questioned it when I put it in the first time. Drove on it a year or two. Pulled out and put it on the "new" car. Had it on for a year or two, pulled back off when I changed rear axles. Now its been on 4+ years, no issues.