93 ragtop

Hey Steve, I thought you did a SB2 at one time as well. But I guess I was wrong. FWIW I blew mine up 4 years ago, but Im starting to get it put back together now. I have Will, (rklessdriver) helping me with it. He is going to build a 383 for me!! Hopefully we can meet up sometime this summer..... I really look forward to watching this thread of yours.

Steve85

Close, not quite SB2 though - the 434 had 18° heads so it was a notch below SB2. I got the stuff relatively cheap since everyone was going SB2 at the time.

I remember talking to you about the blow-up a couple years ago. I know you've had some other setbacks too, glad to hear it's going back together. Yes, I work in Chantilly so maybe some lunch...I'll be in touch.

When Will was building Noland's engine (BlackHarleyMan) they came to my work (in Winchester at the time) and I showed Will the issues I had with the 434. I still wish I would have handed him everything and said "call me when it's done".

Steve85

Heeding the oil pressure switch warnings and also having another person confirm my suspicion that the temp sensor is not in a good place to deliver an accurate reading I made some changes.

This is how the pressure switch is fit on a stock 85


I used just the angle piece to go into the metric to NPT fitting




Installed with plenty of clearance


And temp sensor refit so that it is in the flow of oil and not at a dead end to give a much more accurate reading.

Black89Z51

That looks significantly better! Very nice job.

Steve85

thanks for the push in that direction.

To others doing this, when you tap the temp sender fitting from the LS block, take your time and do it a little at a time checking the fitment of your original sender. If you tap too deep, the longer L98 sensor will bottom out before you're tight enough to get a seal on the threads.

Steve85

Exhaust.

So this is not going to be the permanent solution but I wanted to get something together using only what I already had and made it happen. The trick was that C5 manifolds have 2.5" outlet and everything on the car was 3".

I started with these from a company that put together a few LS into C4 parts.


In the shed I had:
2 - 2.5" J-bends


2 previously welded in 3" Dynatech cats


2 previously installed and hacked 3 to 2.5 inch reducers


and it need to connect to this - you can just barely see the 3" h-pipe at the bottom of the pic



First thing I needed to do was get the welded-on cats fixed so I could use them again
the one on the left is a finished product and on the right where i started. I cut a sliver off the end to remove the welded section.



then cut a slice in the section i needed to pull out


used a screwdriver to curl it and then slid the insert out with ease



Next up was mating the flange adapters to a section of J-Pipe. I installed the adapters and then held an angle finder to the outlet and just traced that onto the J-bend. Worked out great, one J-bend did both sides. I had to cut the flange adapter shorter to get the exhaust to higher. It's still a bit low, I wanted to leave room to cut again when I go to an all 2.5" exhaust.



For those looking at doing a swap - this flange to j-pipe connection is all you need for connection to your stock exhaust or for you early C4 guys like me, connect to an exhaust from an LT car. LT exhaust can be had cheap and would work great in this application. It's something any exhaust shop could perform quite easily and for way less than the $800 headers which would need a little custom tubing anyway to get into the rest of the exhaust


I put everything loosely in place under the car and twisted and finagled until it all lined up and spot welded everything in place. I used the reducers as increasers and short section of 3" as a coupler since the increaser and the cat want the pipe to slip inside the ends. (f-you Mozilla, you can red squiggly-underline "increaser" all you want, I'm going with it)



Pulled it out and welded everything that needed to be welded and used a few of those stainless straps I had laying around to complete the left and right manifold to H-pipe (cat-back) pieces. Also re-purposed an old heat shield to cover the cats. Floor gets hot, hot-hot without them. The 2.5" cats waiting to be installed have heat shields incorporated.







It's all bolted up and works great. I had to remove everything to fix a clutch hydraulics issue and with the flange style and strategically placed clamps instead of welds it was very easy to take off in manageable sections.

So why go through ALL this for a temporary solution? Sound experimentation. It needs to have the right sound and I wanted to hear it with cats and the Corsa mufflers. I had grown tired of how loud it was, I liked the sound and there was no drone but I guess I'm getting old.

Sound is part of the experience though and as suspected with the stock manifolds, converters, way more tame engine, it's pretty damn quiet. I can start it in the garage and wife doesn't hear it inside. Ultimately I want something between this and what I had. I'll put some miles on it and decide what direction I want to go. Cutouts are a possibility...

Steve85

Dash Coolant Temp

a bit out of order here, this was obviously done before the engine was installed

I took care of the oil temps and pressure in another post and this is the dash coolant sender, goes directly to dash, does not talk to PCM.

Since the left and right heads are the same, they plug the the hole for the PCM sender on the passenger side head. Here it is with plug removed:



Stock sender of course has english threads so I used a big fat drill bit and a 3/4NPT tap


and done with sensor installed. dash has no idea it's not talking to an old truck motor anymore.


It works great. Dash says 200, fan comes on, then goes off at a reading of 190. It's dead on with the PCM sensor on the other head.

ch@0s

Looking good brother

cadmaniac

I am impressed. Very ambitious project.

Steve85

Thanks! Big test drive tonight! I put a couple miles on it already with a poorly actuating slave cylinder. That's fixed and it's back on the ground.

I'll try to get my clutch slave, throttle cable and plumbing solutions posted over the next few days.

Thanks. Honestly most of the credit goes to the few done before me that have figured a lot of it out and shared it here and elsewhere.

ch@0s

It's video time .. you know we like videos.

5abivt

Wow beautiful stuff!!! Great work and I'm loving it!

I must say.. I love the hood scoop from the angle in the picture at least.. Any more pics of it??

Steve85

Took a little video of the first real drive with some rev sounds. Not too quiet after all.

ch@0s

Sounds awesome

3D87C4

Soon...

Steve85

Thanks! Glad you like

Here are a few other shots with the scoop. It was silver then black. I need to put finishing touches on it so I'm deciding which color to go with. Liking the silver better.





Yeah, I'm really liking it myself. I thought it was too quiet but it really wakes up when pushed. Cruise and idle are nice with a just a low volume rumble inside.

And yet another engine / exhaust combo where just Corsa mufflers, without their resonator, eliminate any resonance.

Steve85

Drove it to work today, 55 miles, will fill up when I get home and see what kind of MPGs I get with mixed driving.

Also have a little track time scheduled for this weekend at Summit Point. Doing a "Hyperdrive" which is a 20 minute session on the Jefferson Circuit and if all goes well might sign up for a second one.

ghlkal

Wow, impressive job I can't wait to see some performance data.

FWIW, I like silver on the scoop better ...

Steve85

Success! All the metal parts and fluids stayed in and all the smoke stayed inside the fluids and wires!

Not a particularly exciting video but what the heck. This is the 1.12 mile 7 turn Jefferson Circuit at Summit Point. Not much room to open it up but a good low risk / low cost way of making sure all is good.

ch@0s

Too cool Steve I watched the whole video just listening to that LS sing.
I'm actually ready to start mine up xept for I forgot about the oil sender. I really don't want to crank it until that is resolved. I took the week off now i have to wait on a part.