As of a few days ago I have gone for several “real” drive around town (I’ve put about 200 miles on the car so far). I think all of my initial impressions were pretty spot on and I don’t think I have much to complain about.

I’m getting the hang of the clutch now (you have to engage it quickly at a higher RPM), but getting it rolling – especially when the car is cold – is still tricky.  I’m still impressed by how quiet it is compared to my last clutch. The pedal isn’t really an issue for me anymore- I’m getting used to it and I really like the lighter feel. Shifting is much quicker with the lighter flywheel.

The sound is definitely unbearable. Even cruising around town the drone is too much. I ordered a B&B Fusion exhaust so I can (hopefully) eliminate some of the drone on the quieter setting. Not cheap, but I’m think this will be a good upgrade.

Since it’s so cold out I haven’t really been able to floor it in lower gears, but in third and fourth I really think the car pulls harder than it did before. With the turbo upgrades I feel like power is more immediate.  Also – and this isn’t related to performance –  I can hear the turbos spool down when the car is shut off and it’s a really cool sound. I can’t wait to see how high we can boost. I can almost taste the 1000hp.

To be honest I am really surprised by how smoothly things are going so far. Of course it’s not perfect. When I flipped the methanol switch it blinked and then seemed to short out and then a few moments later the car began running really rough and the MIL illuminated. I limped the car home and pulled the codes (p0202, p0204, p0206, p0208). The passenger side injectors were all malfunctioning.

Turns out I had blown a fuse. Not a big deal, but it may mean there is a wiring issue. Quick reference below. Circled fuses. Left = odd injectors. Right = even injectors.

And when I test drove the car after replacing the fuse I got a P0455 code. I’m not sure if it was related to the injector issue, but I tightened my gas cap and cleared the code. Earlier today on a short errand I got the error again. There have been a couple of times when the gas cap wouldn’t screw on properly, so I went all in and bought a new one. After clearing the code a time and driving around a bit the MIL was still off. I even checked pending codes and so far so good. Hopefully the fix is that simple. [update: Solved! It wasn’t the gas cap – one of the engine hoses had been capped instead of vented back into the engine].

I’m really hoping I can finish breaking the car in and get the final tune done before the weather gets really bad. But if not I’ll probably survive (probably…). I know, I know… my life is so hard. I’ll shut up now.

We’re making slow but steady progress on the Corvette. Nothing is as simple as we expect, but I guess that’s part of the fun!

I mentioned that the CV Boots on the C5 axles rubbed against the new coilovers. After searching online we found a simple and effective solution- just scooch the CV boots back a bit. Presto.

The big delay getting things back together stemmed the turbos. With the APS kit there’s simply not room for larger turbos and that’s really what we needed. In the end we sent my Garrett GT3582Rs to Comp Turbo in California. They overhauled them and added lighter and larger 64mm billet inducers. In theory this will allow us to build more boost at lower RPMs. We shall see…

The Turbo installation went smoothly…

…and everything fit back together pretty well. Installing the AMS-1000 was a bit tricky. Vince and the crew got the boost controller elements hooked up and he felt confident that it was “probably right.”

Here’s everything under the car all put back together. Vince and the guys did a fantastic job and the reinstallation looks really clean.

The first time we tried to start the car it fired right up and seemed to run perfectly. The video below is the second time we tried to start it.

And then there was a little mishap with a transmission cooler line that wasn’t hooked up. Really we were just cleaning out the old fluid.

And then we were finally able to film it with no mishaps while it was running. It sounded really good!

I called Marc hoping he could swing by to give the car a quick tune but he was off at SEMA. And as it turned out there were a couple of small issues to take care of so I sent it up to Premier in West Jordan. And that’s where it is now… hopefully behaving.

Each time we make some progress I get excited. Hopefully I’ll get to drive it a few times before I need to park it for the winter.

Awhile back I had posted about the 1000rwhp dream. In the past month we’ve made some pretty good progress. Admittedly it’s not going as fast as I’d like, but I think we’re almost to the halfway point. Here’s the project so far:

The first step was to get the car “ready.” I pulled out a good chunk of the interior (necessary since there were going to be a lot of cables to run). I had wanted to cover the outside of the car with protective film but for some reason I used Saran wrap… not my best idea.

On August 13th I took my car of to Vince’s where we racked it and talked about how fast things would go (ha ha…)

Transmission, differential and torque tube removal were a cinch.

Engine disassembly was pretty quick.

Out with the old LS7 and in with the new LSX!

That’s a good sized void. Nice chance to clean up everything.

New engine mounted in the car and the old engine in the truck ready to be hauled off to storage (maybe I’ll put the LS7 in the Camaro!).

We put in an upgraded clutch master cylinder from Tick.

This is the new clutch from McLeod (P/N 63055-00-07M). Not my first choice (I had wanted an steel flywheel) but this is what was recommended so I’m going to give it a shot. A lighter flywheel is an awesome idea (less rotating mass = more power the car can use to accelerate), but can present problems in street driving conditions. This went in late last week. I’ll be curious to see how it drives.

Since the install was taking longer than anticipated we undertook a few repairs. The exhaust manifolds on my car had gotten super rusty. We went them off to get ceramic coated. The look awesome (they won’t stay awesome forever, but this will help prevent rust and keep some of the heat inside).

A section of the turbo piping that runs behind the front wheels has a small tab that had cracked (both sides). I happen to know Utah’s best welder (Mike @ utahweld.com). Mike did a killer job of fixing and reinforcing the pipes. Once he was done I painted them black again.

This is the AMS-1000, the mother of all boost controllers. We’ll start wiring this in tomorrow or Friday. I’m really looking forward to setting the boost according to gear (traction issues can be mitigated this way).

Working with Vince has been a blast. Periodically I’ll get texts with pictures of “progress” and “problems”. The first pic here is my “new engine” installed in the car. Sure looks dirty! And the other pic here is my exhaust manifolds that came back pink by “accident”. I’m going to pay him in Monopoly money.

The new transmission, drive train, etc was put in this week.

We got the new coilovers on yesterday, but ran into a snag. We put in C5 axles (which are way stronger that the C6 axles) but the C5 CV boots are bigger and the coils on the new shocks are rubbing them. Not sure what we’ll do yet, but we’ll figure out something.

Right now we’re waiting to hear from COMP about the custom turbochargers they are working on. Hopefully we’ll get the engine put back together this week too. I had a dream last night that I was driving around. Withdrawal.

On a totally separate topic… Quick Tip! While I was painting the turbo piping I guess there was some overspray. I didn’t even realize it until a few hours later when I went to throw out the cardboard. Whoops. But you can use rubbing alcohol and a scrub brush to remove the paint (as long as it hasn’t fully dried). Good as new.

Now I’m getting really excited. Last Friday we took delivery of the finished engine. For the curious you can see the engine specs here. All the specs are the same as before except that I upgraded the intake values to titanium. The compression ended up being 9.8:1. I just have to say that this engine is like a work of art.

I peeled the plastic off for a peek, but we won’t unwrap it all the way until we’re ready to put it in. For reference here’s the dyno graph. Max HP is about 590 and Max Torque is about 540 (which doesn’t seem to bad for a low compression engine).

Here’s a video of the engine dyno. Fun!

Posted by Cam, August 1, 2012