It thinks you’re spamming, I’ll fix it.
Also you’re using vB IMG tags which you don’t need to do anymore with a modern platform 
All fixed 
Well let’s see if we can set it off again, lol
Thanks for the fix.
Ran to my parents to throw the wheels on Friday, pretty happy with how they came out. I’m going to have to lower it soon.
Also finished wiring in the fused and relayed power to the harness, then bench tested it to make sure everything was working as expected.
Shortened the drive by wire truck pedal to match the pedal from the Corvette, pretty happy with the welds considering how long it’s been since I did anything other than tack welding sheet metal. Also lengthened the slave cylinder mount to push it away from the firewall so there’s room to plumb it.
I have a couple more things to finish up on the harness and then I’m pretty sure I’m ready for a mad grind Saturday to get this thing fired up.
Harness is finally finished enough to throw in the car, still have to wire the O2 sensor I’m spoofing with my wideband, but it can just throw the CEL for now. On the bright side I’ll be able to test the custom PID I made for the CEL on the tablet dash. I’m glad I did the harness myself, but I now see why they cost what they cost for a standalone harness. I think I easily have 60 hours into it, most of that time is digging through the old harnesses to steal the right colored wire from.
All connections to the car are getting waterproof connectors so the harness is easily removable when I inevitably need to pull the engine or modify the harness.
And the short list of what’s left to fire it up. It’s going to be a long day, but I’m shooting to get it all done this Saturday.
- Add oil to engine
- Wire starter
- Install and torque manifolds
- Install transmission kickdown plug
- Install throttle pedal
- Install clutch pedal
- Install clutch master
- Bleed clutch system
- Plug heater lines
- Install accessories
- Install radiator
- Plumb coolant and power steering
- Wire alternator
- Flush coolant system and add coolant
- Plumb steam vent to coolant overflow
- Install wideband
- Mount slave cylinder
- Install firewall bulkhead
- Install harness
- Install battery
- Wire harness switched power
- Wire fuel pump relay
- Wire fan relay
- Wire OBDII plug
- 'Merica
Got started on it Saturday nice and early, installed new gas struts on the rear glass so I could stop fighting with the glass every time I needed something out of the back. Installed the clutch pedal, master and slave, and made an extended clutch push rod. I was having a hell of a time bleeding it alone so I gave up and moved on to the engine.
Installed all the exhaust manifold bolts, added oil to the engine, wired the starter and tried to use the key to turn the engine over without plugs to get the oil primed. Of course the stock wiring wasn’t turning the engine over, so gave up on that and jumped it with a screwdriver on the starter. Pulled a rocker cover trying to see oil flowing, couldn’t see a thing so I pulled the oil pressure switch and blipped the starter, which put a cup of oil on the floor, but also proved the pump was primed.
Then I threw the water pump, alt, and power steering on, plumbed the water and power steering, and added fluid to both. Using the upper radiator hose to get some height on the system made it easy to fill from the top,I had water running into the radiator from the steam vent line so I’m hoping I don’t have any air trapped.
Then I threw the harness on, had to cut a couple zip ties to make things reach since the stock harness in the car is in the way of where I thought I was tucking the wires. I’ll have to fix that later.
Right about then Danger stopped in to give me a hand. With his help we pressure bled the clutch, which pushed more air out but didn’t fix it. We then spent about 45 minutes tracing wires trying to figure out why the key wouldn’t turn over the engine. We finally found that the clutch safety switch was bad. So I jumped that and started wiring the fuel pump control.
The stock fuel pump is switched ground, I mistakenly thought the LS PCM was too, cue lots of confusion as to why the PCM wasn’t running the pump. Gave up on that and grounded the relay with my test light. Which led to thankfully my only fuel leak. I tightened that clamp and fuel was good to go.
I fired up HPTuners and started a log, we turned it over and nothing. We checked for spark, nothing, but there was power at the coils, super weird. It finally occurred to me that I didn’t plug the crack sensor in, duh… And with that after about one revolution it came to life!
And after it warmed up the idle came down and got nice and choppy
It was right after this video that I noticed my red top was boiling. I threw the volt meter on it and found out the alt was putting out 18.5V, holy shit. Apparently the regulator didn’t get supplied 12V, it’s supposed to get about 8V, so I’ll have to get a resistor, hopefully I didn’t damage anything.
Lots of little things to sort out, but this was a hell of a payoff for 8-12 hours every weekend since Christmas, and countless hours on weeknights.
Thank you very much Matt for the help!
1 Like
Saturday I modified the heater box to make more clearance for the cylinder 8 exhaust port and plug boot.
Then Sunday I spent the day cleaning up wiring in the bay, running wires through the firewall, and getting the battery installed. Also got the fuel pump and fan wired into the LS PCM so it can control both.
Had to trim the throttle pedal to fit, not happy with how it’s currently installed but it’s fine for now, I need to tweak the pedal a bit, consequences of working on stuff without the car to mock stuff up in.
And I finished welding the C5 downpipes to the C4 stock exhaust, as well as welding the EGR port on the cat closed. It’s way too quiet, but I think a cat delete and cutout will solve that problem.
Also spent way too much time messing with the clutch, got more air out of the system, pedal finally has some feel, but it still won’t disengage the clutch. I’m going to try vacuum bleeding next, hindsight, probably should have opted for the hydraulic throwout, oh well.
It starts up and idles great, and I’ve got some rattle I need to find in the exhaust, I think it might be the hanger near the cat.
And even though the clutch isn’t working I can still start it in gear and go for its first drive around the front yard, lol
Finally made it back out to work on this, after the 30 minute drive I realized I left the new clutch master at home, the one part I needed… So I decided to mount the nose and venture around the block just rev matching with no clutch. Crunchy.
After messing with a few other small things I decided to make the hour round trip to go grab the clutch master. Then spent about 30 minutes under the dash of a black car that is also all glass. Hot was an understatement. I finally figured out the new clutch masters weren’t meant to be installed with the OEM spacer on the firewall, so after that fun install and a 20 minute vacuum bleed the clutch finally worked!
Right after this video the clutch pedal and master came apart and I had to limp it home without a clutch again. The plastic locking bushing got a little marred up installing it, so I think I just need a new one of those. Hopefully I can find one. Either way, WIN!
Saturday morning with the help of my dad and cousin we got the hood installed. It still needs final fitment but it’s on and working good enough for now. I then went to replace the clutch pedal bushing only to realize I bent the rod when the linkage came apart. So I got to pull the clutch master again to straighten it… I think the clutch pedal being bent up and having a lot of side to side play is the real issue. I’ll have to dive into that soon.
I then spent half an hour trying to figure out why the key wasn’t turning the engine over, come to find out the starter relay had up and died on me. Yay 35 year old electronics. After jumping the relay it fired right back up and with the clutch working good enough I decided to attempt the 30 mile drive home.
I got the feeling it was running lean from the way it was surging at part throttle, so I babied it down country roads all the way home, with a stop in Mendon for a tank full of 93. This thing has an 18+ gallon tank, holy crap. The drive home was surprisingly and thankfully uneventful, other than a clutch in stall due to the computer not having a speed signal leaving me stranded at a light because the starter relay jumper fell out, lol
Then last night I wired in my wide band quick to get a good look at my fueling situation. It reveled it was running anywhere between 15-17:1 across the board. I started adding 10% at a time to the whole Primary VE table above idle, and started watching the AFR’s work their way down to a safe level. I added roughly 40% to the whole table and it’s now running loads better and safer with 10-12:1 AFRs. There’s still quite a few holes in the part throttle fueling but at least it’s in a safe range now, and now I just need to get the wideband logging into HPTuners to start working towards some target AFRs. Lots of clean up and unrigging to do, but at least it’s home now so I can work on it in my spare time.
Scrubbed 4 years of grime and mildew off it, looks a lot better but the paint has some major contamination that I’ll have to work on some time.
Air filter showed up so it can’t eat small rocks anymore
And got the tablet dash mount mocked up, needs some tweaks still.
Also found the main bolt that the clutch pivots on was loose, tightened that up and the clutch is twice as easy to push. Sooo much better.
And lastly I think I’m going to need a new steering rack, the drivers side of the rack has started leaking oil pretty good, and $7/qt for fluid will pay for a rack pretty quick. 35 year old parts are fun!
I’ve just been messing around with the tune, slowly figuring things out. Threw a bunch more fuel at it above 6000 rpm, so now it’ll safely pull all the way to 7k, which is a pretty wild sound. Although it’s still making power all the way to 7k the torque starts dropping off at about 6300, so I won’t need to wind it out that far.
Did some logging on timing, not to mess with timing, just to see where it is. I ended up having a bunch of false knock due to my rattly exhaust, suddenly the random loss of power and no low end power makes sense. So I need to track that down and it’ll stop pulling 8 degrees of timing on me randomly, lol
In other news I think I need to move my wideband sensor further down stream, it works great for about 15 minutes and then throws the overheat code, so I’ll have to weld in a bung.
Been making some decent progress on this. I have an exhaust rattle that I’ve been having a hard time finding, normally it wouldn’t be an issue but it’s causing false knock which pulls a ridiculous amount of timing at low RPM. So I drilled through the dual wall downpipe and tacked it to the inner pipe hoping that was the source, it seemed to help but didn’t fix it completely. I also finally installed the transmission kick down, not to actually use, but to plug the 3/4" hole in the top of the trans. I cut the cable so I didn’t have to stow it somewhere, so it’s just the plastic past the bolts to the trans.
Finally found my headlight and fog light switches, plugged them in and surprisingly the lights actually work. Ended up having to reroute my PCM wiring to clear the headlights so they wouldn’t bind up, but they work great now.
Friday night it cooled off enough after the rain to go for a cruise with my newly working headlights, and with a damp parking lot I finally had a chance to do a real burnout, haha
Saturday I pulled the driver’s seat out and went to town cleaning. Everything got hit with simple green and wiped down, man was it bad, especially the wiring in the dash. Thankfully the spots where the mouse nests were the wiring was wrapped, so it just wiped off and didn’t get down into the individual wires. After that I soaked everything in Nature’s Miracle and let it air dry. Wow what a difference it made, it finally doesn’t smell anymore.
I’ve also been having intermittent starting issues, I thought it was a charging issue at first, which led me to finally wire in the search wire for the alternator. That made a decent difference, but it would still randomly barely turn the engine over. After bouncing the issue around with friends they pointed me towards the ground that I thought was completely fine. Turns out my engine to chassis ground was so weak the connector broke off when I touched it, and the bolt I used bottomed out in the block just before it clamped on the grounds. After adding a couple washers to the bolt and replacing the engine to chassis ground with a 2 gauge wire it turns over better than ever.
And lastly while I was working on the grounds I finally wired my speed sensor into the PCM. LS stuff wants 40 pulses per trans revolution, the speed sensor in this transmission only puts it about 2.5. So after a bunch of math and a few correction iterations I have it working and matched to GPS speed decently. Because the pulses are so far between the speed jumps around 2-3mph, but it’s good enough to start using the idle at speed function in HP Tuners and stop the stalling issues I was having when coming to a stop. Makes a world of difference for driveability.
2 Likes
Good work! that is sweet!
Good read! nice progress