Awesome!!! But do crawl underneath it again just to check everything out after some decent beating has taken place. These high powered engines do put a lot of stress on stuff and loosen things up quick!

 

nice, what did you do for a thermostat? I left mine out for now. I think I have the same forward facing water outlet as you.. Still plugging along on my exhaust.

 

Absolutely, I've tried to use blue threadlocker on most everything but still always a good idea to check things after a couple runs.

 

I used a stant 180 degree thermostat. And a $20 housing, not sure of the brand.
The exhaust was a lot of cutting and checking fitment since the headers are completely custom and I wanted to reuse the system I built back in 2013. I may end up with corsa mufflers though, the summit 40 series on there now have quite a bit of drone.

 

Looks like your getting real close to having ot running!

With the mufflers, I have a corsa on my 6.2L CTS-V and they sound nice and no drone, but they are pretty darn loud all the time, after 5 years i'm thinking of getting something quiter, although the WOT sound is pretty awesome

On the corvette ended up just putting (new) stock mufflers with a true dual 2.5 in X pipe system on and was very happy with it when I had the Super Ram sbc, no drone, not too loud but still a nice rumble. I'm going to keep the stock mufflers when the swap is done.

That is my experience, but exhaust sound is very personal taste, so its up to you...

 

I'm currently running a 180 deg thermostat, I plan on going back to the 160 deg. My fans seem to run too often for me. I run a 3in exhaust complete from front to back, flow master something. The exhaust works pretty good for just using pieces that I had laying around my shop.

The 3in exhaust gets pretty busy by the transmission tail shaft area.

 

This weekend I plan on tackling the wiring, installing the torque converter bolts, trans fluid lines and starter. I will be using some weather pak connectors to integrate the Holley wiring to the body wiring so it can be removed if ever needed. In the engine compartment I'll have one connector for two wires: secondary cooling fan and oil pressure guage. Right now there is no wire for the oil pressure gauge since that wire was tied to the ecm harness that has been completely removed, so I will make one, run it through the body wiring harness to the connector, then run another wire inside the car through the Holley harness to mate up to the terminal that used to connect to the ecm harness. Hope that makes sense. Then use more connectors to join the Holley harness to the wiring inside the car. There will also be at least one more wire to run to the a.c. compressor since mine is only one wire. Stay tuned.

 

Aren't the stock replacements 2 1/4" pipe? I wouldn't mind using a stock muffler of it was 2 1 /2" pipe I'm not too particular about sound, as long as power doesn't suffer a great deal.

 

To be precise my muffler is the Corvette central no drone dual outlet muffler for a 1991 Corvette. Its basically stock but uses dual outlets instead of a single outlet like the stock muffler had. Mine is definietly a 2'1/2 pipe, I've got no cats and an X-pipe as well, which helps flow a bit.

But yes, I think the stock mufflers prior to 91' are 2'1/4.

I think at your hp level (and mine) 2'1/2 pipe is proabbly sufflicent and helps to keep the sound under control, its possible there might be a slight gain with 3in but proabbly not too much.

Best of luck with the wiring this weekend, sounds like you'll have it started in no time! My cars still got a ways to go before we get to that point.

 

Body harness complete
Used some 1" and 1/2" loom from Amazon and a 2 conductor connector for the auxiliary fan and oil pressure. I cut off the connectors for the coil and tach, heat shrinked and taped the ends and tucked them into the loom. It looks very close to the holley loom which is nice.

 

Holley fuel injection and transmission harnesses installed. There's a lot of extra wire to work with for sure, my original plan was to install the computer in the original location but I'll definitely have to do some wiring gymnastics. You'll have to remove the fuel pump relay from the socket to get it through the hole, its very tight but it will get through. I was going to test fit it, mark a spot for the fan/oil pressure connector, then take it out and route the wire through the harness but since it was so tight getting the fuel pump relay plug through the hole I'll have to figure something else out.

 

Definitely getting busy under the hood. Wiring with intake mocked up and in my opinion doesnt look too bad. I'll have to extend the fuel pressure sensor connection and probably the iat sensor connection as well after I figure out the cold air intake system (may hand build?)

 

Looking good, what's the silver tube running across the top of the engine in the last picture?

 

That is the braided PTFE fuel line. Picture quality wasn't great on that pic. The way I ran it, it lines right up with the fuel rail inlet and stays pretty far away from the exhaust.

 

Cool thanks. Ya should be no worried about exhaust heat with the fuel hose there.

Nice work on the wiring also. Your making great progress.

 

For the fan/oil pressure sensor connector I was able to fish the wires through the main holley power wire loom. Easy enough. Then I went to install the starter and realized it has a weather pak style connector for the relay. Ordered one and it was wrong so after lots of digging I think I have the right one one the way, but have to wait til Monday. I guess the change to the weather pak style connection was made somewhere in 2005-2006. Oh well

If youre going with an aftermarket system and need to connect directly to the battery but dont want to replace your side post cables or use a dual post battery, I recommend these. I didnt want a dual post and the original cables are in great shape and reached out to where they needed to be so these should work and look pretty clean.


Roughly $20 on Amazon.

 

The wire covers have a slightly loose fit over the brass terminals so I'll use washers that are a larger diameter than the terminals to tighten them up.

Going through the wiring diagrams in the FSM I discovered that circuit 959 provides a +12 volt input to tell the computer that the A/C compressor is engaged. The same circuit also provides power to the compressor clutch. Thats a problem for the holley ECU IAC kick input as it needs a ground signal not a positive signal. So my plan is to purchase a DPST (double pole single throw) relay, run the pressure cycling switch output circuit #959 to the coil side of the relay to trigger the ground for the holley ECU on one pole, and trigger a +12 volt power source for the compressor on the other pole. It can also be done with 2 single pole single throw relays which, depending on the wiring and available space, may end up being the way it goes.

After more review I think I can just run the 959 circuit straight to the compressor as it was from the factory and just add in a relay to trigger the ground for the IAC kick. This circuit was also providing the input to the factory computer telling it that the compressor is engaged so at this point I'll just get a single pole single throw relay (much more common) and run the 959 circuit to the relay coil to trigger the ground for the IAC kick.

 

Between yard work and rain I tried out the new battery terminal screws and they work well and clear the wheel well.

 

This is a 1/4" thick aluminum plate I had laying around that was perfect for an adapter to install the ecu in the same location as the original computer. I used the old bracket as a template, drilled and countersunk the attachment holes, then used the holley ecu as a template for the screws sticking out. Drilled those out and tapped for #8 screws.

Plate installed with countersunk trim screws in the original location of the old bracket

ECU installed! I used some single sided foam tape to help with the vibrations. I'll probably go back and used blue loctite on the screws but its in and all the connections are fairly easy to get to.

 

This afternoon I was able to get all but 4 connections made to the car. I need to order the dakota digital box for the tach/Speedo corrections and am waiting on a relay for the ac kick but besides that she is wired in!