[66sprint]

Nice score lots of good hi-po parts there. Is that a Vortec 4 valve head in there?

[TheSilverBuick]

That is an Atlas DOHC 4.2L head.

[TheSilverBuick]

I've started putting that score to use. I took the junkiest looking 230 in the collection and decided to use it for some piston oil squirter experimentation. I had kind of walked away from the idea, but since I now have something like 34 spare connecting rods, I figured I could sacrifice three or four for testing, and likewise for the cast 230 pistons. Another motivation is I'm starting to get nervous about piston pin oiling as I'm pulling a fair amount of crankcase vacuum and with at least one block I'm pulling the return oil completely away from the crankshaft, so to throw some oil up that way would help in that area.

Taking this idea and trying to implement it on the OHC engine. The thing I like about this design is they are always pointing at the bottom of the piston, aka parallel to the rod. However I am skeptical of their effectiveness since they are essentially after the oil is cast off from the rod bearing I am unsure how much pressure it will actually have there to make the distance to the piston. After some more googling, I was shooting for ~1/16" notch since I really want volume for cooling the piston.



The second step is to actually be able to see how effective it is, so I took two pistons, drilled a couple holes in the crown then saws-all'd the openings larger so I could see how effective the spray pattern is at different oil pressures. So I've modified one rod, the other is for the next test, and by the time I smoothed out the cut edges the opening was a bit bigger than I wanted, but will see how it performs anyways. It does not intersect the bearing shell at all, so I didn't have to modify the bearing. Unfortunately when I went to test it the oil pump wouldn't take a prime so I primed it and then oil leaked around the oil pump base, so I tightened the bolts on the base plate and the gears wouldn't move. Turns out it's a pump I've disassembled and didn't put a gasket back on. I have a stack of pump gaskets, but at that moment I didn't feel like making an oily mess pulling the pump plate off so called it the day. Maybe today or tomorrow I'll get back to it. I will likely also have to replace the pressure relief spring to get over 35psi of pressure, but since it's external its an easy modification.

Looking down through the piston. I put the notches on the front side, figuring as the vehicle is accelerating the spray will move rearwards. No getting around those physics. Interestingly enough this block has the old style small "Chevy style" rods in it. Still forged, just less material around the big end.

[TheSilverBuick]

I put a gasket in the pump and it worked perfectly. First set of test show no oil coming out of those holes, at all. There is oil dripping through the sides (bottom?), but not out the top. Initially it had 30psi of oil pressure, so I stuck a Buick 455 high pressure spring in there and got over 60psi, and still nothing. I rotated the crank a bit and still nothing, but I have not tried rotating the crank while the pump is going due to an oil return line I don't trust...

I am thinking of naming this test rig "Grease Ball" or "Exxon Valdez" because how grimy it is. Gunk everywhere but the crank turns freely. The oil return line is just a scrap piece of 3/8th tubing I jammed into the oil passage that feeds up to the lash adjusters and cam housing, there is no positive hold down on it. I may weld a tab to it and bolt it down at the nearest head bolt or something. As kind of apparent, I had one "oops" where the line popped out and a geyser of oil shot up at least 5 feet and splashed on the ceiling, among other things.


Due to the line popping off once, I hold on to it while running the drill and observing, but out of curiosity I wanted to see how efficiently the pump moved oil and it seems pretty good. Using a simple hand ratchet it pumps pretty well to the top. Each pulse is a 1/3-1/2 rotation of the pump, so when the engine is going, plenty of oil is moving around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKwQ8DD3ePc

And it seems some one else had tried to boost the oil pressure of the engine as I found a nut in the relief cap shimming the spring up, lol.

[TheSilverBuick]

Yesterday I got a package from DIYautotune.com that had the 16-pin 4L60e transmission plug and a generic wiring harness, which is the last computer part I needed to install a 4L60e in the Firebird. I have a MegaSquirt 2 I removed from the Thunderbird that can be re-purposed as a transmission controller.

The next question is, do I gamble and install the 4L60e, I bought a while a go, as is (or with a slight shift kit) and see how it does, or do I completely disassemble it like I did the 200-4r? The rebuild kit with stronger internals and new electronic's, etc is $625. The guy I bought the trans from was also selling the Chevy 350 with a rod knock it was attached too, so I have some faith it's in somewhat decent shape. It's got a rebuild sticker on it from a shop in Utah, which he said it was rebuilt in 2008. For about $120 I can do a shift kit and external servo. Which for a naturally aspirated six would likely last a long time.

I probably should at least take the pan off and see if there is anything "suspicious" before committing to one direction or another. I also already have the adapter plate and shims needed to bolt it to the Pontiac block.

Looking around, a professionally rebuilt units run around $1100 plus shipping. Some require a core, some do not.

[Formulabruce]

looks good, didnt like the TH2004R ?

[TheSilverBuick]

The 200-4r does okay, but has plenty of short comings, particularly with calibrating the governor and shift points. The more changes I make the more limiting or more work it'll take to get it back on point.

With an electronic transmission a few advantages are it'll always shift right when I want it to at WOT, in every gear, by actual engine rpm, when I change the rear gears or tire size I just type a couple numbers and the speed will be corrected (I'll probably remove the OE mechanical speedometer at some point), simpler to set line pressures at various operating conditions (like towing a small trailer versus not, etc), easier monitoring of transmission health, etc. And lastly when things go awry it's going to be easier to get 4L60e parts than 200-4r parts.

I'm using a semi-recently rebuilt first year 4L60e, but figure eventually I'll get a more recent, updated, version and/or have a performance one built, but the electronics will swap over with just a setting change on how the torque converter locks up.

I put the trans on the bench and opened it up. There was some dirt piled up under the brush cover and it got into the pan when I popped it loose, but otherwise it looks pretty good over all. I think I'll get a Trans-Go HD2 shift kit and a "Corvette" 4th gear servo and call it good.


Looks like it got a new TCC valve when it was rebuilt.


The pan easily wiped clean and minimal amount of material on the magnet.

[Formulabruce]

Lock up converter?

[TheSilverBuick]

And I've been driving the car to work too.

[TheSilverBuick]

Originally Posted by Formulabruce

Lock up converter?

Yes. Fancy Megasquirt controls even.

[TheSilverBuick]

I looked some more at possibly installing piston squirters, and took a short section of tube and welded another section onto it and was planning on hooking a rubber hose to it try it out, but after a few bends and tweaks, it was pretty apparent I wasn't going to get a pipe to run down the right side of the block (up throw side), nor get the lines to easily clear the counter weights, connecting rod, and the piston skirt hanging down below the cylinder walls. The clearance between the piston and counter weight just don't leave much room to work, and running ~5 inches of unsupported tube is looking plenty like a bad idea. Tabled once again.

I also ordered the Trans-go kit for the 4L60e as well as two sonnax pin-less accumulators and a corvette servo. Should show up in the mail later in the week. And a fellow Drag Weeker was going to throw out a set of 4.56 gears for a 8.5" rear end if no one wanted them for the cost of shipping, so I took him up on the offer. I had 4.56 gears on a mini-spool with the 8.2" rear end. I got tired of the spool and swapped in the 8.5" with a GM positraction and 3.42 gears. So will probably swap those gears back in after the 4L60e is installed because screwing with the governor speedo drive gears on the 200-4r sucks. The 4L60e will just be a few clicks on the computer and call it done.

My mock up. Unfortunately I couldn't find a configuration that would allow me a full crank rotation without hitting or pinching something.


The piston/counterweight clearance.


The oil tube complicated things as well.

[TheSilverBuick]

The shift kit showed up this last week, as well as some Sonnax pinless accumulator parts. It seems the sonnax pinless accumulators have a different shape that make the transgo springs come up short. Glad I googled it now rather than after opening it all up. I'm waiting for the corvette servo to show up, but that is an easy external piece if I get to installing the kit before it arrives.

At this point in time I'm not going to worry about installing the rev' kit (>5500rpm) which requires disassembly of the transmission because I don't anticipate really going over 5500rpm at this point. After installing the turbo, if I find I'm making decent power and want to install some good hard parts internally, then I'll install it at that time.

The 4.56 gears arrived in good shape. I'll get the 4L60e installed first and make sure it's working well before I swap the rear gears.

I'm hoping to order a turbo kit (turbo, IC, piping, etc) this week, then some real fun can start!

[TheSilverBuick]

I had 30 minutes to kill and decided to poke around the transmission some and much to my surprise I could have saved myself $25 as the transmission already had the Sonnax pinless accumulators in it! Pretty interesting considering it was a medium sized commercial rebuild shop sticker on it. It doesn't seem to have the extra springs or modified valves from the Trans-go kit from what I seen. Tomorrow I hope to pull the valvebody off.

[Formulabruce]

Better put in a new" Beast" sunshell if you get past the pump... The stock ones are weak..

[TheSilverBuick]

Yeah, only now I'm not sure I want to order one in advance! Actually I don't intend yet to go into the case, just the valve body. As a friend of mine said, probably better to make sure all my electronic controls work first, that way if I screw something up I'm not going into the case twice or burning up new parts. I'm not overly worried about messing it up though, the default Megasquirt 4L60e settings should be more than adequate for a six cylinder engine.

[TheSilverBuick]

Finished up installing the shift kit yesterday. The 4th gear accumulator also had a sonnax pinless accumulator in it, but the servo was a standard smaller truck servo, so I put a larger "Corvette" one on. I couldn't see, or know well enough, to tell if it had any upgrades internally to the drum or sun shell. Overall, everything inside looked about as expected. I'll have about $275 into this transmission (including the cost of the transmission and the accumulators I ended up not needing), so if it doesn't work I'll backup and get a full rebuild kit.

[Formulabruce]

You going to use a Lock up converter?

[TheSilverBuick]

Yes, going to start with the torque converter that came with the transmission. It's probably 1,800 stall. When I put a turbo on it, I'll most certainly want a new converter, still lock up, but won't get a new one until I rebuild it for more power.

[TheSilverBuick]

Things hopefully will start to get more interesting now....



I picked up one of the Sloppy Mechanic's "Denmah" turbo kits from VSracing. Not all the pieces have arrived yet, but I got the turbo and intercooler in. It's their standard Chinese GT45, 69mm inducer wheel, 77mm turbine wheel and 1.05 AR, T4 flange. I'm going to do the first install pretty quick and dirty. I'll get some non-mandrel bent 1-3/4" pipes made up from a local shop and run it as a twin scroll set up. Front three cylinders and back three cylinders. If my calculations are right, I have enough fuel injector on the engine to cover about 350 horsepower, and based on 1/4 mile data the engine N/A is making around 175HP.

I plan on having the turbo sit right about here. I'll do some clocking of the turbo to get the cold side outlet where I want it for the intercooler. I'll probably require some minor re-plumbing of the coolant and transmission cooler lines to keep them from interfering/melting.


Looks like I'll just have to do some minor hood latch support cutting to fit the intercooler in front of the radiator. Fortunately I have a spare core support to use to reference where I'll need to make the holes for the piping in the car. I'll likely need to re-locate the battery too, which is a bummer, but not unexpected.


And a reminder on how the exhaust manifold is. I've since cut out the cross over, and later I may build my own headers (I have a header pipe kit on the shelf), or even bolt the set of fancy headers I have on. I rather get the fancy headers coated before using them and not ready to spend dollars on that yet. If the twin scroll plumbing isn't quite enough to get it to spool up reasonably, I'll try some EFI tuning tricks to try and move it along better.

[TheSilverBuick]

I'm going to make another go at building my own headers. I have some 1.5" primary pipes that I thought are too small to use as a high performance headers, plus I have larger header pipe on hand as well as an assembled equal length header that has a larger primary pipe diameter, so didn't think much about using them. But now, given I'm trying to make a twin scroll exhaust setup, the guidance I've gotten was to keep the secondary pipe fairly small, so with that in mind I could keep the primary pipes smaller as well.

So the plan is to use the 1.5" primary pipes into two individual collectors, keeping them as equal length as I'm capable of, then run two 1.75" secondary pipes to the T4 flange, and again keeping them as equal length as I'm capable of. I have several 90º 1.75" bends on order to get the piping to the passenger side of the engine. I was going to simply have a local shop bend me up a few non-mandrel 90º's and plumb off the exhaust manifold, but I was getting the run around by the shop I was going to use. So I'm abandoning that idea until I get frustrated with these headers, lol.

When I digitized the exhaust ports to calculate the area, they averaged 1.82sqin, and 1.5" pipe should be around 1.77sqin, so fairly close. I'm going to keep the pipe tucked up along the top of the port as best I can and stretch the metal downwards from there. I believe there are two headers worth of pipes, hence the huge pile of U's.