🔧 BUILD LAME Turbo V6 Camaro

General Information

Hello! Welcome to the shit show! I am updating this post in 2021 to explain what new readers are about to witness. If I knew that this thread and build were going to explode into what it is today, I would have started it out a lot different.

This car was (and still is) a basket case. The whole inspiration for starting this project was to start learning how to modify engines in a car that I didn't like. That way, if and when I screwed up, I wouldn't be ruining a nice car. It spiraled out of control from the first moment that I felt boost. I loved what I had created, but it took a ton of work to get to where I was. As soon as I got the car running nicely I was always saying "I'm going to fix______, and THEN I'll just enjoy driving it." You know the drill. Drive, break, fix, repeat! Before I knew it, I enjoyed driving and working on this turd more than the nice car I was trying to preserve!

The point is that the focus of this thread shifts A LOT. To complicate matters, I never have just one ongoing project open at a time. I listed some thread contents with links below. I will update this as new milestones or big updates happen. Just know that even if you click on the shortcut, you may have to scroll past other project posts to reveal the outcome. There are also some mini-projects and very helpful advice from other members in between, so read the whole dang thing if you want!

2018-2019
1. A late introduction
2. Discovering how a PCV works (and plugging it)
3. Custom grill for intercooler
4. Fuel pump trap door
5. Learning that I'll never learn anything from my goofy wide band gauge
6. Deleting AC completely, but retaining heat
2020
7. Low profile heater hose fittings
8. Deleting an air bag without setting a light on the dash
9. Starting a second round of floor repairs
10. ABS delete and line lock installation
- A separate thread for the electrons
11. Installing catch cans with nice brackets (Way overkill)
12. Figuring out the "blow by" problem once and for all (F-body intake plug)
13. Second clutch job, first rear cover job, and preliminary transmission swap research
14. Floors are "done", and Interior is installed.
15. I don't know how to tune, but this wide band might help.
16. Poly trans mount. Yeah, it actually deserves a link.
17. I waved the tuning white flag. Dyno Brian sets me straight!
18. T5 Pro5.0 shifter
19. New shifter was too much fun. OG T5 explodes, and my transmission conversion ideas start to get serious.
-TKX conversion
-TKX swap official write-up
20. Reconfiguring my exhaust for a quieter and less leaky future
21. I'm not done enjoying this car for the year, so I install a $100 T5 instead of a bulletproof conversion. SPOILER ALERT: It only lasts two months.
22. Minor repairs/updates that make the car livable (lighting, stereo, speedometer re-zero, and a clutch master cylinder that actually does it's job!)
23. Wheels and addressing rust again since I got time!
2021
24. Custom center caps
25. 1.9 roller rockers and LS6 springs
26. CAI V2.0
27. TKX is delayed so it's time to address the little annoyances.
-OE pan is junk. Dorman pan gets hot rodded
28. TKX is still delayed, so I install just one poly engine mount and beef up my flimsy turbo drain plumbing
29. TKX does NOT ship the following Monday. Flywheel bolts upgraded to ARP M10 x 1.0
30. When you're on a Chinese garbage budget, you better be ready to work harder. (Oil drain fitting hot rodding)
31. Finally repairing the oil sender pig tail, replacing the other engine mount, and test fitting the TKX.
32. Finally addressing rear brake lines while I wait for more transmission parts.
33. Modifying an ICM for a WOT box
34. Dash gets re-instrumented so that diagnostics become possible.
35. N2MB WOT box
36. Porked crank key. PSA: Be careful installing your balancer!
37. Car runs great after plug change, but the rear main seal needs to be changed again.
38. BURNOUT! Also, I kinda bought a cam.
39. Turbo drain finale (better be) and full exhaust commenced
2022
40. Downpipe V3 and BMR strut tower brace
41. Panhard bar and relocation for bro truck exhaust
42. Muffler, driveshaft, torque arm, and giving up smoking.
43. First trip to the GS Nationals (feat. time slip)
44. The very custom AC project is born
45. New dyno results (up 50 hp!)
46. Exhaust hanger repair before Michigan/S.S. Badger/Wisconsin trip
47. Sizing a better turbo
48. Painting but still not installing the IS3 heads and Monster clutch unboxing
49. Firewall brace
50. New ECM
2023
51. Out of storage and SC engine buy failure #3
52. Modified double roller and spitballing crankcase evac ideas
53. Completing the rear suspension. UMI rear control arms.
54. Cracked headers and L32 swap begins
55. My newest L32 was trash. I'm upgrading the L36 instead
56. Side project: The ultimate-ish intake manifold takes shape


Now back to 2018!
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Now that this car is running and driving, I figured I would start a thread dedicated to all the questions I’m about to pummel this group with. This is the first time I've really built anything to move quicker than stock, so I'm hoping to learn a lot from you guys before I make unnecessary mistakes. I also have a thread in the Turbobuick.com 3800 section, but I'm not getting as much input there due to a lack of audience. Here goes nothing...

The car I have is a 2002 Camaro with only ONE factory option (rear window defogger). The story supposedly goes that my buddy's dad was looking forever for a new Camaro because he never buys anything for a penny more than the best deal. He almost ran out of time as this was the final model year for the F-body, and '03s were already on the market. The dealer from which he found this car bought it for the sole purpose of being able to advertise "Brand new Camaros for under $10k", so this was the one he took home.

Fast forward to 2018. The car was structurally a wreck from living in the rust belt, but has a great interior, okay black paint, a third pedal, a 3800 (which is a plus in my book), and a lot of sentimental value since I remember riding in it when it was brand new. My buddy’s dad handed me the keys in hopes that I would enjoy it and make it a race car. To be honest, I don’t care for F-bodies, but I couldn't resist this one for the reasons above despite knowing that the floors were in desperate need of existing again.

I already had my dream car which is a 1986 Buick Regal Grand National. As much as I love that car, I like it the way it is in fairly stock form and modifying Buicks has gotten terribly expensive anyway. I figured a black 3800 Camaro could easily fulfill my childhood dreams of racing a badass turbo Buick V6 car while being on a budget, so here I am.

The car is now equipped with:
-6765 ebay turbo
-Precision PW40 wastegate
-Custom turbo exhaust utilizing a stock Camaro and FWD manifolds
-Air to air ebay intercooler
-AEM 50-1200 fuel pump
-Siemens Deka 80# fuel injectors
-Open 3” downpipe
-Custom 3” charge pipes
-Intense mail order tune
-Very ugly but functional upright radiator conversion (the core support was all just rust anyway) :dunno:
-Custom space saving AC delete without bypass pulley
-Midwest Chassis bumper support modified to mount my intercooler
-Spec Stage 1 clutch kit

The car is far from refined and has a lot of little issues to sort out, but I will leave the first post as sort of an introduction to that. I hope you enjoy hearing about it. It’s been fun to build!

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v6buicks

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Here we go! The crank gear was a tad stuck. lol
1635815352522.png


Yep. That's not supposed to be like that.
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New on top. Old on bottom.
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I had that happen once in my car. Didn't align the balancer perfectly and ran the bolt down and destroyed the keyway. Had to go find a new one and dig out the old one. Huge PITA
One of my new favorite tools is my air hammer. I would have been sitting there struggling for days trying to remove that smashed key without one. The air hammer with a pointed attachment got it out in about five seconds!

Much better
1635815442364.png


This is where I called it quits for the night. It had been a long day, and I didn't really get started on this until 7:00. Besides, I decided to get a new timing cover gasket and front seal. Yeah, I just did the front seal, but it got a bit dented by the hammer. I'm not taking any chances while it's super easy to reverse.

Oh yeah. Here's the damaged balancer. It's a bit more messed up than I thought, but I don't think it's bad enough to warrant a new one.
1635815717864.png
 

bs009

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Glad that worked out so well, I never considered the air hammer as an option but I'll keep that in mind for the future! I'm pretty sure I spent at least a few hours digging mine out. I remember it being the only thing I was able to get done that day.
My balancer looks a lot like that too and I've been running it ever since I did that :ROFLMAO:
 
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v6buicks

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So if there was a single fix for the car, the crank key was most definitely it. It starts quickly, idles smooth, and runs through most of the power band.

Part of me is incredibly excited because I just beat the hell out of this car and had a blast. I broke the 275s loose around a couple corners at part throttle and the bald eagles shed tears of joy. The other part of me knows that it's not yet time to drive this car regularly.

It's not letting me go WOT. If I give it too much throttle it pops and backfires. It even popped my intake hose off the turbo inlet. That's all I'm going to say for now though. There are other issues as well that I don't want to think or care about yet. Lol
 

v6buicks

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I just had a thought. You think the car could need a retune with just a valve spring upgrade? Hear me out, my car had valve float issues before the spring upgrade. Now that my valves actually open and close when they should, I suppose that's like doing a cam swap, right? My only reservation would be that the popping I have now starts before my valve float would have been noticeable. Then again, I was driving the car like a pissed off teenager last night with no regard for third gear's well-being :cool:, so I might be seeing something that I just never could before. I don't know. I'm just a chump. What do you all think?
 

v6buicks

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A retune from just valve springs doesn't sound possible to me. You may benefit from it a little, but if it's popping and breaking up, I doubt a tune would fix it.

Will your scanner now pickup misfires?
Good question. I doubt it. Even with the balancer set incorrectly, I would think it could pick something up. I'll have to try it though. Just thinking about trying to log data again makes me cringe. Fucker never works right even after three re-wiring attempts. ?
 

v6buicks

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Glad to hear it's at least progress. If you were floating up top I wouldn't trust the part of the tune up there if you changed the springs.
That was kinda my thought too, but every time I question GTPpower GTPpower about tuning stuff I always find out that I'm wrong one way or another. :LOL:
 
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v6buicks

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It sounds to me like maybe you've got some spark break up but we really kinda do need some data lol. What's your plug gap at? How much boost are you seeing? afrs look good?
It sounds exactly like that. I know I need real data and graphs, but the AFR seems to sit around 12.5:1 even when it's breaking up. Plug gap is .020", and boost is still only set at 10psi. It's hard to put a finger on when the problems start though. Time to put my game face on and prepare to slide face-first down the Pro Link cheese grater again. ?
 
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sktchy

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That seems pretty tight for that amount of boost and 12.5 is pushing your luck. I'd try and get it between 11 and 11.5 and give yourself a little headroom.

I'm going to try going back to a stock maf curve and use my mini afc to get fuel down this next go around. Seems like messing with the maf curve likes to cause issues in itself.

Your icm grounded well?
 

sktchy

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I wonder if whatevers going on is tied into your issues with logging data as well tho. But you've been through the harness, ignition, and injectors already.

What if you put the stock file back in and just change your injector rates to what's in there and see if it's anywhere close at idle? I remember having to do that a time or two trying to hunt down issues
 

v6buicks

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I replaced the ICM with the spare. No change. I also did a case relearn since I thought that I might've screwed it up before replacing the key. No change.

This isn't a negative post though. First of all, I drove this car 100 miles today and had a blast. It pulls so much harder than I remember and even felt good enough to go through the auto wash. Second of all the logger worked pretty darn great. I did run into a new issue with it, but I want to see if anybody picks up on it.

Back to techy shit. I noticed this goofy hunting sort of deal going on which happened as soon as I started coasting. WTF
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Here's a break-up event.
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Another one with actual WOT
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and another
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So sktchy sktchy3.8 seems onto something. I guess 11.5:1 IS my commanded ratio. I'm just not getting there for some reason. It might be time to break out the ghetto rail pressure gauge hose again. If I need I pump, I'm definitely upgrading to something from racetronix. Adapting a universal pump to fit into the goofy F-body bucket sender was a PITA, and I wouldn't be surprised if I'm sucking the bucket dry on hard pulls. It makes sense to me anyway. I'll look at this closer tomorrow.
 

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v6buicks

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It looks like it's more of a problem when my AFR is unsteady. Idk if that means anything though.

I'm gonna spill the beans on one of my other "concerns" real quick. The transmission needs to come back out. :rolleyes: I don't think my TOB has enough clearance with the pressure plate because I have a pretty gnarly growl unless I press the pedal in. I'm waiting to deal with that until the salt pushes this car into the garage for winter though.

I just came up with a new organization idea for this thread. I'm at work, so I can't do it now. However, I think I'm going to attach my current tune on the first post of the thread. That way, it's easily referenced for anybody who needs it.
 
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v6buicks

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For now, my tune is on Post #1175.

Looking back at why I had to post my tune a year ago reveals that I'm dealing with the same exact issue now as I was then. I likely just forgot about it because I promptly blew the second T5 after that. This is good news. Now I know that this is something that just sorta developed instead of something that I messed up. It's not exactly clear whether or not I changed my plugs. If I did, I probably didn't open up my gap like I was advised. If I did, the old plugs will be sitting in the back seat. I forgot about those... I probably have 12 brand new plugs. lol

If I DID change them, Turbocharged400sbc Turbocharged400sbc suggested that I have a coil winding going bad. Do small gaps wear out coils too?
 

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