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Modified an ebay surge tank to include a Wallbro 450 fuel pump. The stock fuel tank is notorious for picking up air under high acceleration and I didn't want to weld on one of those sump pickups. A low power helper pump keeps this tank full of fuel.
Installed Oil and transmission coolers. They are 10AN in/out type with a 7 inch fan. Since I have a single side exhaust, I had room under the seats for these.
I really loved what you did with be Arduino! I have been playing with those for the last couple of years on a variety of projects, never anything practical. What you did with the transmission controller completely blew mind!
The Fuel line in is an 8AN. The return is a 6 AN. Seemed like there was limited space to route these in the original fashion. So I decided to route these in the chassis.
I felt the spot where the lines enter the frame needed to retain its strength, so I welded an extra plate to make up for the new holes.
Installed new brake lines.
This car had manual steering, so I went with a Borgeson.
re-assembled the engine. This time it's the forged LQ4 6.0 instead of the stock 5.3.
I'm not sure if I mentioned this earlier in the thread... I decided to supply fuel to the fuel rails in parallel instead of one after the other. I'm hoping that this will provide more even pressure for all the cylinders.
LS engines have steam vents in the front and rear of the engines. I'm not that familiar with the operation of these vents. The rear ones are blocked off and I wasn't sure where the front one went. So I tapped a hole into the exhaust side of the water pump. I hope this is not a no-no. Anyone feel free to pipe in if you know a better pace for this to go.
LS engines have steam vents in the front and rear of the engines. I'm not that familiar with the operation of these vents. The rear ones are blocked off and I wasn't sure where the front one went. So I tapped a hole into the exhaust side of the water pump. I hope this is not a no-no. Anyone feel free to pipe in if you know a better pace for this to go.
They say it's a no no. Some have done it and don't have any issues. I tied mine 2 front steam lines into the upper radiator hose with a tee fitting from jegs. I had to splice the hose to make fit anyway. I still had issues purging the air in the cylinder heads when i cranked it. I ended up buying a tool kit that pulls a vacuum on the coolant system and then fills it. Worked great. Others back fil the motor through the upper radiator hose and/or steam hose.
Since the radiator sits so much lower than the engine in your build- I would definitely "vent" the steam port to the highest place in your cooling system. Looks like you have plenty of tube between radiator hoses to hit.
Not a LS engine- but here;s my steam vent connection using AN6 hose -
BTW, I'm probably going to follow in your footsteps and do an EPS. Already scored a Hyundai for free. I'd like to get a list of the CAN BUS messages needed to make the EPS vary the feel with MPH. I can easily generate any CAN BUS messages.
I'm looking through my phone for more pictures to post and came across this one. It's not about the corvette, but I had to post it. My older son is into the old Shelby Turbo Dodge scene (my turbo roots). He invited lots of his Turbo Dodge friends and we had a Turbo Dodge barbecue in my back yard. There were cars all over the yard. Looks like 3 shelby chargers and a dodge neon in front and a bunch of other cars in every nook and cranny of the yard. Including Daytonas, a spirit R/T, a turbo K car, a Shelby CSX, my sons sons daily 5 speed, 4cyl turbo minivan as well as his other daily driver turbo, 4 cyl, 5 speed, 12 second minivan. And if you look carefully, there is even a vette in the garage.
I do miss my Shelby Charger (in the sig). Huge mistake when I sold it. maybe one day we can have a corvette barbecue.
When I bought this project vette, it came with boxes and boxes of brand new parts, some of which I planned on using and others I've sold or will sell.
One of the things I was considering selling was a mostly complete A/C and heating kit from Corvette America because I could not figure out a way to fit the A/C compressor along with all the turbocharger stuff. No A/C wasn't going to be a big deal as this was planned as a track car and cruiser. Well ... my local drag strip, Englishtown, has closed all drag racing. A knife in the heart. So now if I want to go drag racing, I have to drive an hour and forty five minutes each way (without traffic). The vette just became more of a cruiser than a drag car. Air conditioning is back in the mix, but this presents a few problems. One problem is having to give up power steering to trade the space taken by the power steering pump.
This is the A/C kit.
And the compressor is a V belt, but my setup is serpentine: Sanden does not make a 6 tooth V belt setup for this compressor.
Also, I couldn't find the instructions in the box, so I'm going to have to ask around. If anyone has instructions for a similar kit, please let me know.
No matter what i did, the upload of the picture came in upside down. Sorry.
Took apart the A/C compressors clutch and pulley assembly A friend had a 7 groove serpentine Power steering pulley from a Range Rover that he donated. I then machined off the V Belt part of the old pulley leaving a 1/4 of the v belt pulley and a flat for the rest of it. Then I machined a hole in the Range Rover pulley with a friction fit to the flat part where the rest of the 2 V belts used to be. And I machined off one of the 7 Range Rover grooves and joined the two together. So now the outside of the first groove is from the Vbelt and the rest of the six grooves are from the Range Rover. Then I gave it 4 tack welds (it was already very tight and might not have needed the welds) and it came out great.
The original kit's compressor brackets were for an SBC and on the passenger side. I modified them to fit on the LS and on the drivers side.
There is a common problem in LS swaps where the water pump heater hose outlets are too close to the upper control arm.. I cut the two steel coolant outlet bungs and re-welded them shorter and angled toward the back of the car. It was better, but I still wanted more clearance. I don't have a good before pic, but this will give a general idea of the problem area hidden behind the down pipe.
I then modified the rear of the upper control arm to make it stick out less and that was better, but the alignment shims still stuck out pretty close to the heater hose outlets.
I got lucky and scored a set of SPC upper control arms that my C3 road course car buddy is no longer using, for a great price. (BTW I hope he does a build thread. Serious skills there and amazing innovation).
With these arms, the alignment adjustment are no longer near the heater outlets and there is way more clearance.
I installed a new 300 amp alternator. In addition to the 2 fuel pumps fuel pumps there are 2 intercooler fans, 2 radiator fans, an oil cooler fan and a trans cooler fan.
I also header wrapped the headers and down pipe.
This car has alot (6) of fans and 2 fuel pumps and needs to have some way of controlling them. I don't want the fans on when the engine is cranking. The fans don't need to be on at full blast when the temps a barely over a limit, It's noisy and takes a huge number of amps. So relays are a no-go.
Not only do I want better control of the fans and fuel pumps, but I want different characteristics depending on what kind of driving I'm doing.... cruising, sport mode, at the track or the dyno where I will want different temperature settings. For example at the track, I may want a cooler oil temp and especially cooler trans temps. I may also want to pre-cool the intercooler for example.
Just so happens my arduino DIY 4l80E transmission controller knows all about the various temperatures and fuel pressures in the car and it knows what type of driving i'm doing.
I added code to have is send out a PWM signal, actually 8 different PWMs (not including the transmissions line pressure and convertor lockup PWMs) based on settings that the controller remembers when powered down and and I can easily change and store through the new touch screen interface. So for example, lets say I want the transmission fluid at 154 degrees in a cruise mode, I can have a low and high setting for the trans cooler fan. At 150 degree, the fan will come on at 10% power and at 160 degrees it's at 100% power. At the track, the limits might be 140 degrees for the low end and 151 degrees for the high end. Also when I'm not if boost, I don't want the 450 fuel pump running at full blast and overpowering my Fuel pressure regulator.
The arduino's PWM signals can't handle anything near the power of a fan or fuel pump. Instead, they go to two power units that I'm designing now. One in the back of the car and one in the front. The back one handles the oil cooler, trans cooler, the primary 450 fuel pump and the helper pump. The front one takes care of the primary and secondary radiator fans and the two intercooler fans. I've had less than stellar results (puffs of magic smoke) with my first design for the power units, but I think I have a more robust design in the works. I'm willing to share with anyone interested and willing to make the effort to experiment. Any discussion in this area is welcome.
I can post a video of some testing if anyone is interested.
I'm just drooling over what you are doing with the Arduino! I strongly believe things like these microcontrollers are what kids will be learning on in school, like we did with director sets and Legos. I'm trying to bring myself up to speed with these so I'm ready when my kids (7, 3 and 3 - twins) get of age. Starting on some home automation projects now, like LED Xmas lights and such.
Wanted to use an Arduino for a pulse wiper solution and made some good progress. Got sidetracked with a TPI install.
07-23-2018, 01:45 AM
