Doors went on this weekend, and it’s basically a driver now, but all that sitting around made the lifters angry. Oil pressure is at about 15psi at idle so it probably needs a new pump, hopefully that’ll be enough to open the lifters as the noise comes and goes. But got damn it sounds good!
All the windows are in, took dad quite a while to get all the electric window assemblies in because each one was a custom install and there is so little room to work with. He also started hanging the front fenders, which made him realize the front of the body needs to be spaced up a bit to match the fenders correctly. Should just be a couple more weeks until it’s on the road.
Dad’s been making lots of progress, in a big push to get it on the road before the weather turns this year.
Hood latches installed
All switches are now functional
Test fitting the grill and adjusting fender alignment
Ready to install the hoods, yes plural, haha
Headlights with built in led turn signals installed as well
Finally got to drive it up and down the driveway a bit, it’s been about 5 years since I drove it, man does it give you goosebumps
Still has quite a bit to do to it, like mirrors and setting the front ride height since the tires rub, but it should be insured shortly, and then hopefully we can make it to a few cruise nights.
Looks pretty nice! I think it looks cool without the grill lol
I was thinking the same thing, especially after getting a quote for $1500 to re-chrome it, woof, lol
this is still an awesome thread. Thanks for updating!
Well it’s on the road, dad’s been putting some decent miles on it, but as expected we’re finding lots of little things that need to be fixed, like little coolant leaks, bad O2 sensors, and tracking down clunks in the suspension. We’ve been pretty sure for a while the engine has been misfiring here and there, so I finally set my HPTuners up to log misfires and went for a cruise, turns out cylinder 5 and 8 are missing pretty bad on occasion. He’s also going to add a second O2 bung in each downpipe so I can install my wideband in it and do some VE tuning. The stock truck tunes are knock central.
Dad spent the last couple weeks polishing and installing the stainless trim and installing the “Buick Eight” badges in the hoods. Electric window switches are now wired as well, however the Painless wiring harness didn’t have them on switched power, not a huge deal but something to change in the future.
Trunk is also now sound deadened, amazing the difference that makes.
I’m still chasing upstream O2 sensor codes, New sensors didn’t help, but HPTuners is seeing fuel trims, going to have to do some research on that. HPTuners also isn’t seeing throttle position, I’m not sure if that’s a problem with my logging setup or if the sensor is really bad, haven’t had a chance to dig into that either.
Figured out the O2 sensor codes, I accidentally shut of the upstream sensor error reporting instead of the downstream, duh, haha.
This weekend dad put sensor bungs in both sides of the exhaust, installed and wired the Innovate MTX-L I had laying around from my Cavalier, and we spent the afternoon troubleshooting it with HPTuners because I’m feeding the 0-5V wideband signal into the unused EGR position signal on the PCM, and logging it as an air fuel ratio through some HPTuners wizardry. The only problem ended up being we were feeding the signal into the wrong wire, the guy that custom made dad’s harness must have misunderstood what I needed and pinned it incorrectly. So after moving the signal write do the correct blue PCM pin and a couple tweaks to the equation in HPTuners it’s logging the wideband and I can actually start running the thing.
It cruises around at like 14.7-15.7, which is better than I thought it would, but at load it’s only going down to about 13.5, should be some decent power to be had by bringing that down to 12.5.
Before I get to really do some tuning we have to find the cause of what I think is just a fuel line or something vibrating, and dad thinks is spark knock. Gong to throw some new knock sensors in since I’m not reading any knock at all in my logs and even banging on the heads with a hammer doesn’t set them off.
Lastly, in correcting the Speedo we figured out it has 3.08 gears in the rear end, that needs to be remedied…
Took two tries but Dad finally made it up to New Era this morning for a dyno tune. The stock tune definitely wasn’t happy with it’s new found airflow. My wideband was showing it to run towards the lean side.
Starting numbers were 220 whp and 233 wtq, ended up with 235 whp and 244 wtq, peak gains of 15 whp and 11 wtq, but the low end area under the curve gains are the real story, and are substantial.
cool! how are the burnouts?
Haha, haven’t tried yet, and I don’t think Dad will be any time soon. He just want’s to cruise.