Couple more weeks of driving.

A few more weeks have went by. I've been driving the car every day now. It has done quite well. Even with me getting on the gas quite a bit it makes 18 miles to gallon on my to from work drive. A little less than my other car but much faster and bigger. The biggest complaint I had with this car is the noise. I finally took a stab at fixing the noise. I added a 3" high flow cat and a Magnaflow Straight through muffler in place of the prescilencer. It has brought the volume levels down to liveable. On the freeway I have begun to notice wind noise again. Which with the previous exhaust i couldn't hear.

In addition to the exhaust changes I finished replacing the trailing arm bushings and bearings (now both sides are done) and replaced the rear springs and shocks with M series springs and shocks. I think the next most annoying issue may be the front struts. Looks like the next project.

2nd week of Driving.

I've now completed my second week of driving the car. It's all been quite uneventful. Car starts right up and runs great. No new noises. Biggest issue this week was the heater not working. If it weren't for the heated seats I would have had to switch cars.

I finally got a chance to really look into what was going on. I removed the heater valve which I suspected was the problem. I found it worked perfectly but noticed it only allows flow in one direction even when open. Could it be I had the in and out on the engine switched? I went in the house and found my original heater line sketches. Car matched the sketches. Looked at some information I had on the computer and Uh Oh. I had them backward.....how'd that happen. Oh well. Trouble is that the outlet from the LS1 is 5/8 dia and the return is 3/4 dia (I have it right this time. Outlet is smaller than inlet) So it wasn't just a matter of switching the lines. I had to change the connection dia of the hard lines I made. Not all too bad as I used all the same dia lines for my hard lines but just soldered on different ends depending on the dia of rubber tube that it hooked too. I removed one line and cut off the 3/4 dia end leaving just the ring on the end of the pipe making it perfect for the 5/8 dia hose. Then I heated the other pipe and removed the ring it had and soldered on a new 3/4 dia end. All and all not too bad.

I filled it with coolant and test ran it and HEAT again. Driving it this week will be much more enjoyable. For the record the right way to hook it up is: 5/8 dia line on the engine goes to the Heater valve. Mine is dual zone so it goes to the lower port which is centered. The 3/4 from the engine goes to the return line from the heater core. On mine this is the line on the passenger side.

Also this week I took the car in for it's required anual "saftey" inspection. It passed. I've also ordered a 3" high flow cat and muffler to install on the car. It is to the point where the noise is definately the biggest issue I have with the car now.

Video of an accleration test

I up loaded a little video of an accleration test. Not much but you can hear what it sounds like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxH6SKT7IVM

 

First week of Driving

Well the car has now made a complete week of to and from work duty and weekend running around. So far that's about 200 miles. The engine has run great and strong. The tires are just about at the limit for traction just standing on the gas with the RPM's over 4,000. I've been real easy on the drive line as I haven't strengthened the diff mounts. So no clutch dumps or hard shifts. Even with being easy on it 0-60 comes in 4.5 seconds (per G-Tech).

So far the issues I've found with the swap are: The exhaust is too loud for my taste. I feel like I'm a specticle driving around and the heater doesn't work. I haven't had time to look at the heater yet. It could be the heater valve or the controler.

This saturday I finished replacing the traling arm bushings on the LH side of the car. The car feels more composed with the new bushings. I also put new parking brake shoes on the LH side.

Things on the to do list:
Put the new parking brake shoes on the RH side.
Add another muffler and perhaps a Catalyist to quiet the exhaust down some more.
More suspension upgrades (springs and dampers, Maybe sway bars too)
Reinforce the diff mounts and subframe.