🔧 BUILD Turbo 3800 T56 Swapped G-body Grand Prix w/ Holley EFI

[bs009]

Been a while since I've updated. Appreciate all the support guys!


I ran this thing at the track finally the other night. I was only able to get 2 passes on it though before the track closed. The first pass was the best it got though.
The 2.41 rear gears in it made it absolutely terrible off the line, but I was pretty proud of the trap speed! It did that without leaving second gear lol:

This thing needs a higher stall in the converter, better gears, and a locking diff big time!

I'm at least fixing one of those issues right now though.

New to me 3.73 rear end from a Monte Carlo SS.

Still a 7.5" 10 bolt, but I'm not going to worry about it.

I modified it for a set of F-body brakes over the weekend and apparently had to replace every brake line on the car since all of the hoses were stuck on the old proportioning valve.

The rear rotors are pretty crusty, and the calipers are kinda sticky, but I'm just gonna send it.

I'm planning on running it again before the year ends. It still has an open diff though so it's just going to shred the right rear though.

 

[10sec]

Those are all things you can upgrade over the winter, just go out and enjoy old girl while you can!

 

[v6buicks]

Sweet build! This thread gave me a lot of inspiration while doing my turbo V6 Camaro. Did you ever get the AC working?

 

[bs009]

Sweet build! This thread gave me a lot of inspiration while doing my turbo V6 Camaro. Did you ever get the AC working?

Thanks! That's awesome to hear!

I never tested the A/C yet
I have what I think are the correct gaskets for it, but the car has had an issue staying cool since I put those fans on the thing so I never tried to stress it even more.

This year though I'm planning on getting the A/C working properly and cleaning up the engine bay around it as much as I can without redoing everything.
Right now I kinda want to pull everything out of the passenger side of that area and redo the bracket and the exhaust on that side



The car is back in my main garage now due to our very mild winter this year. I'm planning on sorting out all of the cooling issues this year, working out a few kinks, and generally cleaning up everything under the hood. I'm also working on a center console to hide all of the interior wires and so I can have cupholders for Power Tour this year

 

[v6buicks]

I'm glad to see this updated! Power Tour huh? I was thinking about going from Indy to Norwalk. I have to get my car running and stopping first though! Maybe I'll see you there.

 

[bs009]

That'd be awesome!

I'm planning on long hauling again this. My brother [MENTION=11426]Mattstrike[/MENTION] should be long-hauling too so I'm sure he'd love to see whichever car you bring too if you do make it! Right now it sounds like he'll be taking his Camaro but you never know with him.

 

[v6buicks]

Cool! I'm a lot more motivated to go now. I just need to get my butt in gear and get this thing done.

 

[Ron Vogel]

I wouldn’t worry to much about the 7.5 on that power. I had a g body with a 428 Pontiac in it. Even with tons of constant street launches it would last a season. On a turbo 6 you probably will get it to last unless you stall the shit out of it on slicks. I ended up putting a Chrysler 8 3/4 with a 4:30 in. I don’t remember the model, but one of the old mopars has the same track width, just needs the mounts for the suspension. At the time it was cheaper than an 8.8, and way cheaper than a 9”.

 

[bs009]

2019 Season Prep turbo 3800 swapped RWD old AF Grand Prix

Slowly getting this thing ready for the year. I'm keeping my budget for the car pretty tight this year. I have a tendency to spend too much on this thing so I'm going to try to keep things simple.

Generally I'm just going to keep everything the same and clean up a few things.
The car is going on Power Tour again this year so I'm trying to get everything ready before-hand.


Junkyard 4l60e v2 going in. The last one wasn't shifting out of 2nd gear at WOT. It wasn't an issue until I put the 3.73's in though. I'm hoping the torque converter locks too so I don't have to cruise at 3,300 rpm at 80. This one is a few years newer with the updated case.

I also grabbed a torque converter from a 4 cylinder s10. These have a higher stall so maybe I'll get some better launches out of the thing. Hopefully the axles can hang on though lol

Finally got rear rotors for it. Something in the rear of the car was giving me a crazy vibe/noise that gets louder with speed and I thought it was the rotors. there isn't any correlation with throttle input though. That's going to be one of the biggest things that could give me an issue on the trip so I'm hoping I can resovle it before then.
When I pulled the wheels off I found a bent axle flange on the driver side so I swapped axles too. Hopefully that was it.

Over the winter I built a kinda crappy center console for it. I got a lot of shit last year about all the wires in the car for all of the switches and the radio so this year they'll all be hidden lol. I added some dummy lights and finally mounted the radio, and added a GMRS radio.

The best part though is the cupholders




The next big issue I'm working on solving is the cooing. Last year the car overheated the first day sitting in traffic. It was pretty damn hot out and I'm sure it was at least 10 degrees hotter surrounded by every other car putting their heat out. I sat in traffic in >90 degree weather for probably an hour that day and after that I had to deal with air bubbles in the system the next day.
The rest of the trip I ran the heat on full blast to help keep things cool. The fans I bought last year were just not cutting it. I'm hoping I've solved that for this year.

Fix #1 is a radiator shroud. I made a sheet metal brake to build this thing, then used my cheapo plasma cutter to cut holes for the fans. It's made out of stainless so it'll look sweet once I pull the film off.

Fix #2 is better fans.
New fan on left, old on right.

The new fans are Spal medium profile fans with curved blades. These are advertised to pull 1328 cfm and draw 13 amps each. The fans I had before pulled about half the power and were supposed to pull 1500 cfm. Obviously that was seriously overestimated.

fix #3 will be exhaust wrap on the manifolds. The turbo is really close to the radiator so that's gotta be a contributor to the heat especially since I didn't have a shroud. In general though exhaust wrap should help keep the under-hood temps cool. I just hate touching the fiberglass though.


I also cleaned up some of the intercooler plumbing to help smooth it out and make it look better.

I've got a few small things left on my list to get done before June.
I'm replacing all of the factory gauges with autometer gauges. I've been using the factory sensors but still the gauges are wildly inaccurate. This year I'll actually know for sure what my vitals look like and if I've got oil pressure issues.
If I do have oil pressure issues with this motor I do have a spare L67 block ready to go in from my Regal as a backup.

I'm also planning on finally replacing the factory driveshaft with a larger unit that can handle the power. The factory driveshaft is super small and I've been worried about it especially now that I'm spinning so much faster.

I'll keep updating this every week or so as things change.

 

[bs009]

So I took the car for a drive recently and realized how many things I want to change on it.

The cruise still doesn't work even after my most recent fix.
Something in the driveline is still vibrating like crazy above 75 mph - hopefully it's just U-joints.
The torque converter still isn't locking up at speed either. Probably going to check the wiring and after that the solenoids.

The motor mount bushings are worn out too so the mounts are resting on the frame resulting in some ridiculous vibration at idle at stop lights.

I stared at it long enough and got tired of seeing them so I pulled the motor mount over the weekend. I've been wanting to do this for a while so why not do with less than 4 weeks to go before the trip. The mounts really were just thrown in there originally, things weren't centered properly and it was just a mess.

Out they go:

It's nice to have some metal pads bolted to the frame that I can just weld onto.

Motor side plates cleaned up:

I had some spare w-body trailing arms lying around that I'll never use so I decided to cut them up.

They don't have as much give as I would have liked, but I'm sure it'll be better than metal on metal like it was before. Plus I'll have a lot of cheap options for bushings now.


I added a power steering cooler this year because of all the heat last year and because of all of the twistie mountain roads we'll see this year. Just seems like a good idea to have one, no other reason why.

Also made a bracket for the catch cans, FPR, and p/s reservoir. No more zip ties here!

probably need a shorter AN line for the fuel line.


Icing on the cake here is that I finally got the wipers to work properly! They've never worked properly in the 13 years I've had the car.

Next big things are fixing the exhaust flex pipes that broke when I pulled the motor and replacing the driveshaft.

 

[Mr_Roboto]

Always liked this car. Can't wait to see what she does this year.

 

[bs009]

Long post incoming

Wellll the rear end noise still won't go away and I'm thinking it's the ring/pinion gears that are worn out or not set properly or something.

- The pinion feels tight so I don't think it's that bearing.
- I don't have any reason to think the u-joints are bad. I checked the angles on them too and they're really good actually. There's almost exactly 1* of angle on each one so there's no reason why the u-joints should be worn out.
- I just have a gut feeling it's something more in the axle that's the issue.

It's not in the budget right now to get it fixed and I don't want to throw another dime at a 7.5" 10 bolt rear. So now the 2.41 differential is going back in at least for power tour.
On the bright side, my gas mileage should show a slight improvement. The s10 torque converter should help it from feeling so lazy off the line too.

I also replaced the TCC solenoid and TCC valve so I'm hoping I can get some lockup going on this year. There was a setting in the tune for a DTC I forgot to disable too, but I doubt that was the issue. The wiring was all good so that wasn't the issue either.
I have a few ideas to try with the tune if it still doesn't work.

I swapped the discs onto the 2.41 axle too so it had to be modified also.
Deja Vu

So I got that installed today. I'm looking at replacing the rear springs too to make the car ride better.

New driveshaft installed too! It looks so much beefier and is a lot heavier than the one I took out. I'm going to have a lot less to worry about with it:

Now that the motor is centered and leveled properly the exhaust has some minor fitment issues. The driver's side manifold was touching the shield on the steering shaft after that so I went and did the jeep shaft upgrade people are always talking about.

Seems to have done the trick of giving it a bit more space.

I pulled that one out of the junkyard and it actually had a lot more play than my rag joint did.

$100 later and now I have a new one

Then I went ahead and fixed this mess:

I think what happened is we cut the flex piece too short last year so it wouldn't hold together properly anymore. I went and replaced it and just mig welded it on this year. Hopefully replacing flex pipes doesn't become a yearly maintenance item.

Wrapped it all this year at least before the turbo

Fun thing about taking off the downpipe is that there's 5 bolts holding it to the turbo and their a huge PITA to get to and take it off.
Well I finally fixed that issue. I welded a v-band directly to the turbo piece. Took some clearancing on the bolts but it looks like it'll work.

Now it'll just be one nut to get that off.

So now that I did that though I had to modify the rest of the pipe since it sticks out further. If I could do this all again though I'd move the turbo so I wouldn't have to make this crazy tight 90.

I managed to get it all mounted up with some pie cuts. Mandrel bends cost too much and this was easier to mock up and play with it to get the angles just right.

Also aimed the wastegate exits downstream too this time.

Seems smooth enough for who it's for.

It should flow a lot better than what I had there before too.

black paint to hide it all and highlight the turbo instead.

Moved the wideband sensor to the other part of the downpipe too and finally installed a flex pipe to the down pipe!!

Should have done that a long time ago.

I put on a threaded intake air temperature sensor this year too:

I'm hoping to see what the air temps look like coming out of the intercooler. Should get some pretty interesting data out of it.

My list of things to get done this year is much shorter than it was last year at this time. I've already finished most of the things on my list so far, just have a few small things left before it'll be ready to go.
One of those things is to try to get the A/C working too. I'm not very confident that it will work, but I'm going to do what I can.

It's so hard to find the right A/C parts out there. Luckily I was able to find a way to get a high side pressure port for the sensor the PCM wants. 80's cars don't seem to have these so I needed to add it if I want the PCM to control the A/C, bump up the idle and automatically turn the fans on.
It took way too long to find this piece:

And it's still the wrong one! I finally found the right one, but I already ordered the part to make this one work. It's too bad though because I spent $40 when I could have just spent $20 instead. That's been the whole theme of this A/C project though

Even if the A/C doesn't work though I don't really care that much. Power Tour is going to be a blast this year anyway. Going to be going with a couple other people this year showing off a couple different 3800's instead of flying solo like I did last year. Driving through the Appalachians will be awesome too!

 

[bs009]

Getting pretty close to the departure day here.. but the car's basically ready to go now. There's like 2 more things left I want to do before it'll be ready to head out.

New rear springs with a higher spring rate. Supposedly this will give the car a 1/2" drop compared to the stock ride height. My springs are so saggy though I think it raised the car.

Finally got around to vacuuming and charging the A/C system and it looks like it might actually work

It has held the charge for about a week now and blows plenty cold too! I might actually have A/C this year in this car!


I did need to revisit my belt situation though. The bottom portion here moves around a lot with the compressor working and it'll actually contact the other portion of the belt.

I moved the tensioner and went with a shorter belt now. It's a PITA to install now, but it looks like it should do the job.

With that taken care of I actually have time to make it look decent! Did a 3 step process here with my Griot's garage buffer. Came out pretty nice for how bad the paint is.

Hit the wheels with the red ball again too. Looking mighty good

Friday morning this thing leaves for Power Tour. If you're there any day of it this year look out for it!

 

[bs009]

Soo been wayyyyyyyyyy too long since I updated you guys here. Life's been crazy for the last few months with traveling for work so I haven't been bored enough to put time into an update.
Here it is though 6 months later lol


The car was great this year, just a few small issues here and there with some of the rear shock bracket bolts backing their way out every day. I finally welded the brackets to the axle this week though to solve that issue haha

Was able to get some aftermarket gauges in the car before heading out. Stock gauges were horribly inaccurate

Loaded her up and ready to go with almost everything I'd need if it breaks down

Not even into the first venue this year and already one of the power tour trucks was in an accident:

Got to see blasphemi and Finnegan again this year!

Really clean supra:

A really clean lesabre t-type with an L67 swap:

Got to meet the guys from Deboss Garage:

They did an engine install on their GTO during the last day of power tour with tons of help:

This year the weather was pretty crappy for the majority of the tour. It rained almost every day, but the scenery and the roads were goddammed amazing

This road was sketchy AF in the fog

This year I was with a group with my brother's top-swapped Camaro, and an intercooled L67 swapped early Bonneville.
We managed to get a 3rd gen camaro to roll with us for most of the day on this leg:

B-Ville:

Camaro:

Mine again:

We found an AWD swapped Impala with the system from a Denali!

F'kin wild

This is a view of the cars that braved the rain in Bristol while we were there.

The road to bristol was unbelievably awesome with all of the twisties. I have 0 pictures of it, but once we broke from the pack we had a bomb ass time mobbing through some of crazy winding roads that it offered.

Managed to get front row parking at the hotel next to another g-body:

Also learned the car does great one-legged burnouts lol


My car is at 55 seconds into the video

Jacob Davis from HotRod magazine broke his El Camino in our hotel parking lot that night too haha!

Got to meet Lucky Costa and see his Chevelle:

So I was dealing with an exhaust tick throughout the whole trip that gradually got worse. Eventually found broken manifold gaskets. Ended up replacing them with a better version of them that I had no idea existed:

First 4 Camaro generations lined up next to us while we were in the Deusenberg museum!

Random burnouts from people bored out of their minds in traffic:

only other 3800 car I noticed outside our group during the whole trip:

Other pictures:

So the trip ended this year in Norwalk Ohia at Summit's dragstrip. I was brave enough to run the car there since we were so close to home. Manged to make the best ET the car has had so far with a 13.483 @ 104.7. It's done better trap speeds but that's its best ET yet. I'm stoked on that too because there's so much more left in it if I can get right springs in the wastegates.

The whole gang back home finally:

 

[Yaj Yak]

that's a big, sweet update.

 

[Mr_Roboto]

Damn dude, that's some epic win right there. Probably more miles than I've driven in my project heaps in the last decade.

 

[RICH17]

Hell yea dude! If you're that close to Norwalk then you should come to Pontiac Nationals

 

[bs009]

Thanks guys!

I might check out the nationals, I thought all of the "nationals" events were in Pennsylvania for some reason myself.

Latest issue I forgot to mention though is that the transmission is slipping really bad now under boost. I've been thinking it was the s10 converter letting go but the more I think about it the more I'm thinking it's the transmission itself.
I really don't want to put any money into a 4l60e so I'm kinda weighing my options here. Ideally I'd be running a T56 behind it but that's a ton of money. The s10 converter works great at getting the car off the line but I really hate the way it behaves when cruising.

Naturally I'm getting bored with this car though so I've listed it to see if someone will buy the body. I have another car in mind that I'd like to dump a turbo 3800/t56 into and if I can sell this car it would easily pay for a good T56.

82 Grand Prix Roller

The car is a 1982 Pontiac Grand Prix Brougham. The car has just over 70,000 miles on it and has very little if any rust on it now. It has been owned in the family for a long time, and kept in a...

detroit.craigslist.org

If I don't get any real bites I'll probably keep the car around pretty much as it is though. Right now I'm just tired of the g-body platform.

 

[v6buicks]

I'm glad to see that the dream hasn't died! I'm with you on the transmission debacle though. I change my mind regularly, but I think a TH350 is in my future. I like driving my car regularly, but I'm not doing roadtrips in it like you! If you go T56, I'll be looking forward to seeing how it goes.

I'm still kicking myself for not trying harder to find you guys on the tour.... Oh well. Any ideas on what platform you would like to switch to?

 

[bs009]

Yeah these things really seem to punish them. I'm on my 2nd 4l60e right now, and already destroyed the T5 I had. The t56 is definitely the end goal for me unless I find something better/cheaper for it. It will be interesting at least, but thankfully it's been done before a few times. I'm thinking I'll use an adapter that lets me use the T5's bellhousing and clutch if I can though so if that works it'll be a really simple swap.

I like to do roadtrips a lot so my next build will definitely be making its way down that way at some point if this car never does. I won't spill the beans on the next build because I know I'm going to take a lot of shit for doing it before it's done, and I may not end up following through with it. It's going to be really cool if it works out though.

It's going to be an IRS car though, hopefully with an 8.8 in it depending on what I can find. I think I can make it happen for pretty cheap too.

 

[Mr_Roboto]

Thanks guys!

I might check out the nationals, I thought all of the "nationals" events were in Pennsylvania for some reason myself.

Latest issue I forgot to mention though is that the transmission is slipping really bad now under boost. I've been thinking it was the s10 converter letting go but the more I think about it the more I'm thinking it's the transmission itself.
I really don't want to put any money into a 4l60e so I'm kinda weighing my options here. Ideally I'd be running a T56 behind it but that's a ton of money. The s10 converter works great at getting the car off the line but I really hate the way it behaves when cruising.

Naturally I'm getting bored with this car though so I've listed it to see if someone will buy the body. I have another car in mind that I'd like to dump a turbo 3800/t56 into and if I can sell this car it would easily pay for a good T56.

82 Grand Prix Roller

The car is a 1982 Pontiac Grand Prix Brougham. The car has just over 70,000 miles on it and has very little if any rust on it now. It has been owned in the family for a long time, and kept in a...

detroit.craigslist.org

If I don't get any real bites I'll probably keep the car around pretty much as it is though. Right now I'm just tired of the g-body platform.

What gears? I'm guessing 3-4? Honestly just rebuild the damn thing and install a shift kit. If you have your old one bust it out and start tossing parts in it. You could make something pretty decent for under 500 bucks if you've got a bit of patience. Truthfully the biggest pain of it (besides dropping the box) is getting the snap ring out of the middle of the case to drop the output shaft out. You may need some bushing drivers and a way to press the clutches out (a lot of people wing it with a drill press, YMMV but it's been done a few times.)

This kit

This Sun Shell

Some pump rings

This Boost valve

and toss either a Superior or Transgo HD shift kit in.

If you're cheap and it's just 3-4 that's going what you do is pull the box out, pull the front pump out and then pull the input drum out. There's a simple snap ring you can pop out with a screwdriver. Take the clutches out and stick the new ones in after soaking em for an hour in ATF. put em in, check clearances and re-assemble. Flush the box afterwards. If you're careful I bet you could do that for less than a hundred bucks.

There's a lot of YouTube videos online of how to deal with them. My advice is watch a few and do your homework. ATSG makes a book that's well worth the cost for 4L60Es so I'd pick that up too. The first one I did was truthfully with probably $30ish in home made tools.....If that.

 

[bs009]

Thanks for that write-up and the parts list. I don't know a ton about the 4l60e, but my brother Mattstrike has done a few of them so I'd probably enlist his help if I decide to build one of mine.

Right now it's slipping pretty bad in 1st and 2nd that I know of. Fluid level is fine and there's no fluid leaks anywhere but when I get on it hard it'll slip and I'll see smoke coming out of the trans tunnel from the shifter hole. No idea where the smoke is coming from though because there's no leaks that I've found unless it's coming from the vent tube or something. It could be the torque converter I guess though.

thing is that even if I did sort out the trans itself I'd still need a good torque converter to be happy with it. The s10 converter works great at the strip, but I hate it everywhere else. I can get a proper converter built locally, but that's another $600 on top of the trans rebuild and I'd want to replace all of the solenoids in it too.

I found a pretty good deal on a t56 though so that might actually happen sooner than I thought. Not sure if it will go in this car though

 

[TurboTJ]

Damn ive never seen this build and now i happily have! I still wana do the rwd 3.8 setup myself, and its too bad your so far from me to possibly buy it. Very cool build and car man!

 

[GTPpower]

Sweet build. You should buy it TJ.

 

[Mr_Roboto]

Thanks for that write-up and the parts list. I don't know a ton about the 4l60e, but my brother Mattstrike has done a few of them so I'd probably enlist his help if I decide to build one of mine.

Right now it's slipping pretty bad in 1st and 2nd that I know of. Fluid level is fine and there's no fluid leaks anywhere but when I get on it hard it'll slip and I'll see smoke coming out of the trans tunnel from the shifter hole. No idea where the smoke is coming from though because there's no leaks that I've found unless it's coming from the vent tube or something. It could be the torque converter I guess though.

thing is that even if I did sort out the trans itself I'd still need a good torque converter to be happy with it. The s10 converter works great at the strip, but I hate it everywhere else. I can get a proper converter built locally, but that's another $600 on top of the trans rebuild and I'd want to replace all of the solenoids in it too.

I found a pretty good deal on a t56 though so that might actually happen sooner than I thought. Not sure if it will go in this car though

Are you still running 2.41s?