Carmageddon Blues

Posted on July 5, 2013 by Cam

Well… I wish I had something good to report. Sadly, we haven’t made much headway as of yet.

I got my Corvette back from Premier a few days ago. While it was exciting to have it back I have to confess that I’m a little disappointed. As I have said before I like the guys at Premier, but even though they had the car for four months this time (over seven months total) I feel like the car just wasn’t ready.

To be fair they did an outstanding job adjusting my alignment. They noticed my steering linkage were loose and corrected that as well. The steering wheel is aligned now, no dead spots, the car drives straight and feels nice and tight. It’s a huge improvement and it’s a blast to drive.

I understand that I’ve essentially built a race car and some drivability elements have been compromised but some things could be better. After driving my Corvette for a few days I’ve identified several issues that I consider “in need of a second look.” I feel like these things need to get fixed for me to really enjoy the car.

1. RPM surging & Stalling

Sometimes when the car if moving and I push in the clutch (e.g., to shift) the RMPs will swing between 500 and 1200 before stabilizing at around 800. Once in awhile when the clutch is pressed the RMPs drop to 0 and the car stalls:

I realize I’ve got the RMPs pretty low in this video. At first I was just coming off the freeway and let my RMPs get low before shifting and the car died. I tried to replicate it by keeping the RPM’s down (seemed like it sort of worked).

After talking with some people and giving this some thought I think I’m experiencing cam reversion. Since the car has a MAF tune some of the engine air is getting pushed back up (I have a pretty big cam) toward the sensor and this affecting the car’s ability to meter air correctly, especially as the car transitions into neutral / idle RPMs. Considering I have a MAF tune the car runs really well, but I think I may need to switch it to a speed density tune.

2. Dieseling

After breaking the car in I had new Injectors installed (ID 1000s) and that’s when I noticed the engine run on. Premier did swap out the injectors and try to address it in the tune but the problem persists.

Personally I think it might be related to an air leak, possibly the spark plugs, or maybe carbon build up on the internals (creating a hot spot). I will keep working on it. I guess it’s not really a big deal- if I clip the throttle up to 1500 rpms it shuts off just fine.

3. Long Term Fuel Trims (LTFT) are rising:

Probably out of paranoia I checked my LTFT and noticed they were at +18%. When I checked the LTFTs the next day they had risen to 24%. I suppose the only real downside to this is that the car is mighty smelly and mileage is wicked bad.

This could be related to an air leak. It seems like running that rich could certainly contribute to engine run on too. It might also be in the tuning- seems like that would be negligent tuning though.

4. Boost Controller

This is really the only thing I have to get fixed. I have an AMS-1000. Lung and Premier worked to set up the boost controller, but it’s having some issues. After doing a few runs with the boost controller I noticed there were several issues. With the unit “off” the car boosts to 6psi (wastegate spring is 6 pounds). On each subsequent WOT run the car looses boost (maybe a pound or so). That shouldn’t be happening. If “high boost” mode is activated (13psi) it seems to work okay. But then when the system is shut back off the car only boosts to around 2psi.

I looked over all the connections (that I could see) and I didn’t find any lose hoses. I think this issue could be related to an air leak or it’s either plumbed wrong or the decrease solenoid is having an issue (which seems unlikely, as it resets okay when the car is restarted). It’s annoying that it “worked” for Premier. They must not have done much testing…

I actually unhooked the AMS-1000 a few days ago since it was misbehaving. The car seems to work much better and boosts to at least 6 psi now on every pull. However for a brief period of time the car was boosting to 10psi… I don’t have any explanation for that at the moment.

I did decide to give the Vette a little love. I replaced all the interior lights with LEDs (I like how LEDs look way more than incandescent lights). And even though it’s not perfect the car makes 1000+ hp now so I upgraded the car’s badge.

I took the Vette up to RaceCo today and swapped it for the Porsche (I don’t feel like Premier can do any more at this point). I’m hopeful that they will be able to identify any mechanical issues the car has (i.e. air leak) and we can go from there!

RaceCo said the Porsche was ready to rock and roll. The intercoolers were replaced, the long term fuel trims were holding steady and the car was running great. I picked it up earlier this afternoon (well, swapped it) and it was running great for about 25 miles or so.

I stopped and got gas and after a few minutes the CEL popped on. Doh! I thought about turning around, but hoped that maybe it was just a gas cap issue since the car seemed to be running fine. But after another ten miles or so it was clear it wasn’t the gas cap. The RMPs were going nuts when the car was in neutral. By the time I got it home the idle speed had jumped to nearly 1600 RMPs.
I pulled the codes from the car and it was like dejavoo!

P2279 (Intake Air System Leak), P0507 (Idle Control System RPM Above Expected), P2177 (System To Lean Off Idle Speed Bank 1) and P2179 (System To Lean Off Idle Speed Bank 2). I’m pretty sure the last three codes are caused by the first though. The long term fuel trims were both over +31%. Do I have a gift or what? Back it goes!

The only thing I can think that might have causes the issue was the the road leading to the gas station- it was extremely bumpy. I guess it’s possible something popped off. Going home I never had the car over 4000 RMPs (no crazy WOT pulls or anything). I hope it’s just something simple.Update (July 11, 2013): There’s no more leaks that they can find. RaceCo talk with EVOMS and they are hammering out a battle plan to find the problem. Fingers crossed.

At least I have the Camaro (old faithful, I call it). I was considering doing a street tune on it, but have since decided just to leave it totally stock (and these days I’m starting to feel glad I wasn’t able to buy the modified Camaro I had my eye on). I don’t see any reason to mess with something that’s working, especially given my propensity for car problems. I do want to get the damage to the front of the car repaired, so I’ll need to address that at some point. I may even try and pop the dent out myself, but that can wait for now.

Here’s hoping next week is better! And yes, for the curious, I have “real” problems too. Perspective, perspective.

I leave you with this video on my dancing tachometer:

Camaro Dent Repair – Body Work

Posted on June 24, 2013 by Cam

I drove my Camaro into a shelf. That’s totally on me. I tried to smash the dent out a bit with a hammer but it became clear pretty quickly that I’d need a new body panel.

I smashed the front of my Camaro. I’m going to fix it myself. Ordered the damageed part pre-painted.

I decided to undertake the project myself. Front comes off.

Had to take a lot of stuff apart… panel removed.

New piece is on!

Back together- all better. Even got the lettering mostly right 😀

Hughes Family: June 4, 2013 – June 16, 2013

Posted on June 16, 2013 by Cam

I’m sure every parent thinks their kids are the cutest / best / smartest / hyperbole-whatever . But I just want to say for the record that I love my kids and I think they are awesome. Chole is adorable and always wants to be dressed up in her sister’s clothes. Gabe is a little socialite – fearless and always out and about. I think it’s cool that Gabe and Mike are finally old enough to play video games (this is Turtles on the SNES, but we’ve been Rockband-ing quite a bit). Sometimes Mike is a big help. He loved playing with the blower while we worked in the yard. And Claire is an incredible reader and a great big sister. I’m just amazed every day that we made these beautiful little people. I’m so proud to be their Dad!

Fran is a great mom and she makes sure the kid’s brains don’t stagnate over the summer. All our kids like the library, even Chloe.

Fran and I went and checkout out the Outlets in Lehi a couple of weeks ago. She went back a few days ago with the kids to do some eating (Johhny Rocket’s – good burgers & fries) and shopping (The Leather store hooked her up with a sweet new purse). If you haven’t been to the Outlets yet go check themt out.

Fran got her trailer de-winterized and went on the first trip of the “camping season” with the Browns and Bensons. The hiked, played, ate and commiserated (I would assume).

Everyone said they had a good time, and from the pictures is appears this may have been the case (I was tired and skipped this one… and I confess… I plan to skip more too). In case one of the other attending families reads this and thinks “Hey, they don’t have pictures of us!” – that’s right. That’s what your [out of date] blogs are for. But I do want to thank Tyson for helping Fran with her trailer and Tom for helping the kids fish. You guys rock.

And then it was Father’s Day. It’s like Mother’s Day but much less important. Still, my family decided to celebrate it. I had a manly plate of eggs, steak and broccoli. Then my family showered me with gifts (a new leather jacket, a pair of sweet Maui Jim sunglasses and a new key fob for the Tacoma). Love you guys!

Golden Oldies

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Cam

Not a fan of the color gold so…

I replaced my hood crest with a silver plated version. Install was pretty straight forward. I don’t understand the wax speednut technology but it certainly seems to work. Ah, that’s better.

I picked up new wheels caps and painted them to match the hood crest. For the life of me I could not get them to fit correctly and one of them fell off within 10 minutes or so. “A” for effort. “F” for implementation.

Rotors

Posted on March 23, 2013 by Cam

4/30/2017 – This post is part of a large release of “DRAFT” entries. Many of these these entries were never finished (and may still not be) or were composed but never published for one reason or another. If you run across one of of these in a strange spot or out of chronological order that may be one reason.

May 2, 2017 – Not sure whey I never posted this. Maybe because it’s not interesting? No… most of what I post isn’t interesting so that’s not good logic. I’m at a loss. Behold, I give you rotors! And it looks like it’s Corvette rotors and Porsche rotors. You lucky lucky people.

The Horsepower: There and Back Again

Posted on January 12, 2013 by Cam

The Quest for 1000rwhp continues. Each day brings our tireless hero one step closer to his goal…

I finally got my car back from Premier. Most of the issues have been resolved: Melting wires are repaired and relocated (with fire sleeves added), new knock sensors, new MSD spark plug wires and spark plugs. The turbo inlet hose issue was fixed. Premier also put in my new fuel injectors- Injector Dynamics ID1000s. But most importantly the dyno and street tuning is finally finished. Here’s where we’re at:

Not too shabby. 696rwhp and 627 ft/lbs or torque is about what I expected. For the most part the dyno graph looks great and the A/F ratios are where I want them.

If you compare it to the original dyno I did at Premier (below, both runs overlayed) I lost some power on the low end. It could be the lower compression of the new engine (9.8:1 vs. 11:1 on the LS7). It might also be that the test was started later, A/F ratio differences (I don’t know what the A/F ratio was on the first run), or something else. I’m a little surprised to lose that much torque, but it’s not too big a deal. In fact, it may actually beneficial when facing traction issues.

The top end power with the new mods and tune is more substantial. I gained about 50 rwhp and 50 ft/lb torque. The last dyno was 8 pounds of boost (maybe) and this is just 6 pounds so overall I’m pleased with the results.

I’ve only had the chance to drive the car twice, but both times it was awesome. It pulls hard and it’s super smooth (no surging or hiccups). I really like the idle too- not too rough and plenty loud. I wish I could do some more testing with the car, but I’ll have to wait for nicer weather. Initial impressions: Excellent.

Some people might say it’s taken eight months to get back where I started. What do I mean? Well, take a look at this graph from my old setup done at another shop:

It appears that back then I had 693 rwhp and even more torque than I have now. The car ran well and it was a blast to drive. In essence, everything I have now I had then. So why did I do all this? Let me tell you.

1) I don’t trust this 693 rwhp dyno graph. Track times were way to slow for that kind of power and that same tune gave me 648 rwhp at Premier. I don’t think my car has ever really had as much power as it has now. 2) Before these new mods my car was a time bomb; You can’t run boost a stock LS7 forever. There was nowhere to go because everything on the car – engine, trans, clutch, diff, – was maxed out in terms of it’s ability to handle power. 3) The new setup makes more power on 6 pounds of boost than the old car made on 8 pounds. And now everything is now built to handle the power so there’s nowhere to go but up. 4) My end goal is to have a 1000rwhp car (I might settle for crank horsepower) and this is how I’m going to get there.

So that’s the progress for now. In a few months I’ll head back to Premier, we’ll crank up the boost and see what happens.

Hughes Family: November 5th, 2012 – November 11th, 2012

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Cam

Some text here… a bit here, and voila! A blog post.

Mike’s bike is in a perpetual state of disrepair from constant abuse & neglect. It seems like every month we have to repair a flat or make some of kind adjustment. We used to drop his bike off at a repair shop, but that got expensive so we started doing repairs ourselves. This last time I had Michael help me (I think Fran told me this fulfilled a scouting requirement). He was a pretty good helper.

And then we voted. The line was excessively long- I waited almost two hours- but I didn’t mind (thank you iPhone!). I would have gone later in the evening, when it turned out there was no line, but had other plans.

I have a few thoughts on the election. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but I’m not particularly pleased with the outcome (though not surprised). I don’t feel like we accomplished much as a country in the last four years. Obviously I don’t put the blame completely on our president, but I think he shares some of the responsibility.

What really worries me for the time being are taxes. I don’t mind if the Bush-era tax cuts expire, or if some deductions are eliminated here and there, but I do mind a tax increase. President Obama has made it clear that he intends to raise taxes on the rich. Maybe that, in and of itself, isn’t a bad idea. But to Mr. Obama I look like a very wealthy citizen instead of a business. My company is a pass though S-corp which mean that on paper my income is the same as my company’s income. So, to clarify further, on paper I appear very wealthy.

I’m already in the highest tax bracket. Paying more taxes would simply hurt my company’s ability to grow. If we don’t grow then we don’t employ. It is the small businesses that drive the US economy. I feel like treating small business income like personal income is a mistake. In the next year I expect to pay nearly $100,000 of additional taxes. That’s money I could have used to increase inventory, expand, add employees or stimulate the economy.

I also worry about health care issues. This coming year companies with over fifty employees will be required to provide health care coverage to their full time employees. We already do this and it’s very expensive. Premiums keep rising. I worry that a mandatory health care program will drive prices up even more and eventually become a financial liability for us.

In the meantime many companies are hard at work cutting hours of full time employees so that they don’t have to provide insurance coverage to them. The net effect is that many of these workers end up with less money and they will now be required to purchase their own heath care (that’s a double whammy). Sometimes I feel like the laws that have been created to help have unintended harmful consequences.

Sure, I’m oversimplifying some things and the thoughts I’m sharing are comprised of a limited issue scope, but my point is that I’m worried. When a county reaches the point where the takers outnumber the givers there is an unsettling imbalance and the future seems bleak.

Since my Vette has been gone I have parked the Camaro in the garage. I ended up reorganizing things again so it could fit. The kids are getting older so I pulled out one of the shelves in front of the car and pushed the remaining shelf back a few feet. I know this will seem like a funny thing to say about a garage, but it really opened up the place. I had to do a lot of shifting though.

All the garden stuff and the tools had to go in the shed ( I put a shelf in there- it makes me so happy). So then I had to take some of the shed stuff that we don’t use often to a storage unit (we actually don’t have any storage room in our house so I caved and got this unit… I am sort of ashamed, but mostly happy).
And here’s a glimpse of my super secret project. But it’s not really super secret. We’re giving the home office a makeover. We’re in a month in at this point. Slow and steady.

A quick update on Fran’s foot (toe, technically): The healing is going slower that we had hoped. Apparently all the walking around she was doing made exacerbated the wound’s bad mood. No more walking! On Wednesday we finally picked up some crutches. Thanks to those of you who have wished her well and sent money (which is, of course, appropriate in this situation).

On Saturday night I took the kids to see Wreck-It Ralph while Fran took it easy at home. What a cool movie! Visually appealing, good plot and right up my alley (8/10). All the kiddos made it way though without falling asleep or using the bathroom (that I know of).

On Sunday we went to the Lott’s new home for dinner. Despite not having a kitchen it went smoothly. Fran made pecan pie and pumpkin crème brûlée. Hopefully there will be more of those in the future. When we got back I was secretly planning to have a giant pile of pecan pumpkin crème brûlée covered pie, but alas it was gone.

“But he has two sports cars! Surly he can pay more taxes!” You know what? If I really thought the government would take additional tax revenue and use it to to pay down the deficit then I might not feel so unhappy.

Corvette: First Drive

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Cam

I picked up my car from Premier today and drove it back to Lehi. Right now the car has a fairly rough base tune. The idle is set high (about 950) and it’s running with zero degrees of timing (there is an issue with the knock sensors being too sensitive).

Noise: I thought the exhaust drone was loud before, but now it’s nearly unbearable on the freeway. I’m going to have to explore a new exhaust system and some sound proofing on the car’s interior (if needed). Don’t get me wrong- the car sounds amazing, but it may just be too much.

Clutch: The pedal feels a little loose when it’s disengaged (up, down and side to side play). Once it’s pressed it actually feel really good. Getting the car moving initially does seem to be an issue (aluminum flywheel), but I think that can be overcome with some practice. The clutch is pretty quiet (although there’s a lot of extra noise coming out of the console- I’ll need to pull that and see about deadening the sound).

Suspension / Drivebility: The car felt a lot different than I remember. I dropped it off at Vince’s to get an alignment done and to tweak some of the shock settings. The car felt a little bouncy and less stable than before. But some of the change probably comes from the added weight in the front of the car (engine). The clutch is going to take some getting used to. Shifting seemed to be good. [Update- it turns out that the one of the steering linkages was loose and this was causing the sloppy feel]

Power: Premier dynoed the car and it put out 630rwhp at 6 PSI (with no timing). That seems pretty good, considering that’s about what I had before with 8 PSI. Driving home I could tell there was a lot of untapped power. I didn’t do anything crazy, but the car pulled hard in 3rd and 4th. Seems to be on par with what I remember with a lot of room to grow.

The Vette needs a serious cleaning. It’s been sitting around for months at this point and the inside and outside are filthy. A dirty car always diminishes some of the enjoyment. Can’t wait to get her back, do some cleaning and get the break in miles (500) put on. Then I can have some real fun.

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