🔧 BUILD LAME Turbo V6 Camaro

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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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On Thursday I decided that cars weren't for me anymore. There are more important things in life than shitty cars that don't run right.

So I abandoned the Camaro. I mowed the yard, picked weeds, drank some coffee, watched a movie, went for run for the first time in years, quit in less than 2 miles, ate a salad, and began to hate the direction that my life had taken. It was a terrible three days without cars. Now I'm back out of retirement for the billionth time like Elton John.

I came up with a new and easy test for the logging issue. I'm going to unplug the HPT pro link, hook up a meter between the output signal wire of the wideband and ground, and observe the meter display with the engine running. If the gauge is shit, I'll see a steady 0 or 5+ volts. If my signal is being pulled up or down through my HP hardware somehow then I will see something between 0 and 5V. Of course I will attempt to log first, since the condition is intermittent. If it still doesn't work, I will do the meter test. If it works fine, I will proceed with logging MAF error.

This brings me to another observation worth mentioning. The logging works fine once it starts. It doesn't just drop out in the middle of a log. If it acts up, it acts up from the start. I haven't figured out any other patterns like un-plugging/plugging in the dongle, key on/key off, ect.
 

v6buicks

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So I got a reply on the HPTuners forum which kinda threw a wrench in my plan. It seems that I may have wired my stuff wrong twice. I had no choice but to make assumptions because of the poor instructions provided by HPTuners
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Thanks HP.... Body ground? Sensor ground? Battery ground? WTF is it?

Long story short, this was the (simplified) wiring I came up with many moons ago.
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The random guy on the HPT forum says that I need to do this:
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What did everyone else do? When I think more about it, it doesn't make much sense for the link to be grounded elsewhere when the MPVI2 that it's plugged into is powered and grounded through the DLC. So what would you assume? Is the black wire on the link a sensor ground for my analog inputs or is it to ground the link itself?
 

v6buicks

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I'm posting a picture not because I think it's going to add any value to this build, but because I feel the need to prove that I actually did something instead of just bitching about the car. :ROFLMAO:
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The wide band signal negative is now hooked up as Intel Intel and a few people on other forums have suggested. Does it work now? Who the hell knows?! The car's battery is dead of course. See what I mean about how there's always another step being added? I'm going to keep it on the charger for an hour or so. Hopefully then I'll at least come back to a car that starts and a 100% functional wide band. I know that's a lot to ask of this car though. It'll probably make me buy a battery first. :cautious:
 
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v6buicks

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Did you ever try just logging the voltage on the red and blue prolink wires? Or are you trying to match that data to what the meter says?
I never did that test, but.....
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I'd say I fixed it! ? It was super easy to do with all my nice clean new bundles too.

Now I just need to do something with this tune... As we can see, it is still running lean and my MAF error chart is reflecting that with percentages as high as 10. I guess I'll adjust accordingly until it stops breaking up and give it more throttle as I go. Wish me luck. Nervous. ?
 

v6buicks

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That didn't do much. The fueling is mostly corrected, but it's still popping like crazy. I'm thinking about tossing in another ICM just because I found another one and the pops remind me of when my coils went to shit. I have no idea if this other one is good, but it's the only thing that seems to make sense anymore. Breaking out the IR temp gun and checking individual exhaust runner temps might tell me something too.
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Update: All the exhaust runners are close in temp.
 
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v6buicks

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I've never had to do a case learn before, I would think the issue's a bit more serious than that.

I might have missed it earlier but it's just popping under boost or something? or is it not consistently happening?
All the time. It's not as bad at low idle. It's progressively worse with RPM. It doesn't like any load at all. I don't think boost is possible.
 

sktchy

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This ish is what made me lose it with mine for a while. I had a guy tell me he had issues with the cam and crank sensors today and told me it might be a good idea to replace mine before going back together. Seems like those are the two things that I never really checked but would sure think those to show a code as well
 

bs009

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This ish is what made me lose it with mine for a while. I had a guy tell me he had issues with the cam and crank sensors today and told me it might be a good idea to replace mine before going back together. Seems like those are the two things that I never really checked but would sure think those to show a code as well
So when I first put my car together I put in a brand new crank and cam sensor and was chasing a ~3,000 rpm misfire like crazy. Turned out my new crank sensor wasn't working properly. I think I found a bent pin on it after I pulled it off but swapped it out anyway. Once I replaced it the car ran perfect afterwards.
Crank sensor can cause all sorts of weird misfires if it's having issues. I finally figured out that it was my issue because I would see RPM drops in the log files when the engine wasn't actually running that slow. It would be 1 log line with like 400 rpms while I'm on the gas and the car is in gear with a stick trans.
 
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bs009

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Turbocharged400sbc Turbocharged400sbc does the pcm use the cam sensor for misfire calculations?
Looking at my service manual, it does correlate the cam sensor with the crank sensor to figure out the crank position for misfire detection.
If it figures out the camshaft sensor isn't working though then it sets p0341 and disables misfire detection, and also guesses which cylinder to start sequential fuel injection on.
 

Turbocharged400sbc

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Yes it does. Aftermarket timing sets can sometimes f*** with the sensor to magnet distance which does affect the sensor Acura. One thing to always remember guys is that these harnesses are getting older and older so grab a spare sensor or whatnot and break out one of the terminals and use it to check all of your connectors for any possible week points.

If you need to grab a sewing needle or safety pin that measures slightly thinner than the factory tabs that go into the terminals I should say into the female terminals go over your harness f finger blast every terminal to make sure none are loose. Many people wiggle connectors excessively when disassembling and assembling so it's not unlikely at this point in age for you to have weak terminals that can cause fretting and or intermittent connections.
 
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v6buicks

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Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I think I still have my original crank sensor somewhere. It was replaced unnecessarily when I was chasing a similar issue a couple years ago that turned out to be a bad coil.

Come to think about it... Something is sticking out in my head. I seem to remember having a bit of a hard time reinstalling the sensor when I did the timing cover gasket. I guess I'll pull the balancer off after work and see if I find any wonkiness there or in the harness.
 
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v6buicks

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So far, nothing seems out of the ordinary.
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...but I'm not insane because removing the sucker was a bear. That dowel is crusty.
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I don't see any real damage, but who knows how much I might have been warping the sensor by driving it home with the bolts. What would you do? Is it worth worrying about? Should a buy a new one and clean up the dowel until it slides on nicely? There's no great way to get a brush in there. Naval jelly might be the better option
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