šŸ”§ 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 Iā€™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 buddyā€™s dad handed me the keys in hopes that I would enjoy it and make it a race car. To be honest, I donā€™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 3ā€ downpipe
-Custom 3ā€ 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. Itā€™s been fun to build!

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v6buicks

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v6buicks

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The Grand National guys used a smog pump from an LT-1 forever ago. at least 15 years at this point.
Interesting. I hadn't heard of them doing that! I wanna look it up for fun, but I don't really have the space or will power to add more belt driven stuff. If I did, it would be for an AC compressor.
 

Mr_Roboto

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v6buicks

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I'm seeing now that they're doing this in conjunction with the PCV valve. I was kind of guessing this was an old school thing made before "HD" PCVs were available, but it actually makes more sense to me this way. PCV works at idle/cruise. Evac pump works under boost and if your engine is healthy you shouldn't have an oiled intake.

I might try buying an NOS PCV. I saw one on ebay the other day. The originals are good because they have an oring that will actually seal boost. Nobody that I know of makes them like that for 3800s anymore. :(
 

Mr_Roboto

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I'm seeing now that they're doing this in conjunction with the PCV valve. I was kind of guessing this was an old school thing made before "HD" PCVs were available, but it actually makes more sense to me this way. PCV works at idle/cruise. Evac pump works under boost and if your engine is healthy you shouldn't have an oiled intake.

I might try buying an NOS PCV. I saw one on ebay the other day. The originals are good because they have an oring that will actually seal boost. Nobody that I know of makes them like that for 3800s anymore. :(

Why not an external check valve?
 

v6buicks

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Why not an external check valve?
Isn't the amount of air/oil vapor to the intake was supposed to be metered? I thought the valve was supposed to do that. I mostly just like that adding an NOS valve back in the intake because it would be completely unseen and already in a pretty ideal spot over the valley. If this NOS valve does not seal like its supposed to (I went ahead and bought it) I might be interested in the external check valve idea. Are you saying just to plumb it from valve cover to intake?

This crankcase evacuation stuff gets complicated. Both sides of turbobuick.com have good arguments for and against the vacuum pump. For now, I lean towards it. A lot of the issues I have could still be inside the engine. For instance this engine has a high mile bottom end with at least one worn out cylinder head. I probably have decent blow by along with worn guides just huffing into the crankcase like crazy which not only crates the crankcase tornadoesā„¢ Turbocharged400sbc Turbocharged400sbc which slows the crank down, but also cause some pressure build up that is not fully escaping via catch can. I know it's not happening now because there's only ever fuel and water in it. However, I have few intentions of actually fixing those engine problems. :LOL: I will continue running shitty SBEs, so blow-by is just the nature of my game. I may need a little extra help in the ring sealing department especially when I'm running a stick shift and do a fair amount of engine braking.

What confuses me a bit here is the actual steps and order of operations. This Pablo guy is about as clear as his pictures, but one guy specifically says he has a similar system with stock PCV valve and intake hose. Then he added a valve cover vent -> vacuum pump -> to vented catch can. Seems like a solid system. I'm not sure if the water separator between the valve cover and pump is necessary but the amount of water I get running E85 has me thinking it would be smart. Does anyone think this order could be switched up? Maybe valve cover -> sealed catch can -> pump -> atmosphere? I'm sure the pump would appreciate that.
 

sktchy

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I'm not worried about the idle airflow thing so much as what the oil vapor does to the octane of your fuel and what happens when you start sucking it back into the intake. Like, I've tried this, it really didn't end well, and I hope you have better results if you continue to pursue it.
 

v6buicks

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I mean throw a check valve in series with a PCV. yeah you'll fuck your idle up if you don't have air leaking in a controlled way from somewhere quite plausibly.
Ohhh In series. I would have to snap a picture to illustrate this better, but that may be a tough order to serve. The PCV is internal to the intake. Here's a poor diagram.
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The valve (bottom) sits in a bore in the upper intake plenum with a passage going directly down to the valley. The valve is held down with a spring (middle) between the valve and the cover plate (top) bolted to the outside of the intake. I cannot remember how far this spring is compressed. To ensure that the valve was actually being a valve, I think I could drill a hole in the cover plate, install a bulkhead fitting with a barb on the inside and replace the spring with a hose. Then the check valve could be in series on the outside of the intake. The locating pin for the spring on the valve also doubles as a hose barb for other GM applications like the GN. If there's enough room even for both fittings, the hose would have to be slightly too long just to ensure that the OD of the valve is sealing on it's oring when the cover plate is bolted down. This could would be a pretty tough and critical measurement becaue hoses aren't springs. lol

OOO ?

What if my PCV plug isn't plugging at all? Could the extreme vacuum from my intake while engine braking and crank case tornadoes underneath be overcoming that spring pressure? If I recall correctly it's a pretty tough spring, but this too is worth looking at.

I'm not worried about the idle airflow thing so much as what the oil vapor does to the octane of your fuel and what happens when you start sucking it back into the intake. Like, I've tried this, it really didn't end well, and I hope you have better results if you continue to pursue it.
Even the wildest of racecars have PCV systems that use intake vacuum for certain functions. It's just a matter of getting the right check valves and amount of volume caught in baffles so you don't suck up anything but air. Some of those racecars have catch cans for catch cans and hold multiple gallons so that there's 0 chance of engine damage. I'm not going that far, but I should be able to make something work safely.
 
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sktchy

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I guess if your gonna keep after at least make sure it's pulling from behind the maf, I feel like the vapors hitting it contributed to what happened with mine but that engine did fine up until I tried to run the can back in pre turbo and as soon as I did that car has been parked out back getting parts stolen off of it ever since lol
 

Turbocharged400sbc

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Yes to run an external coalescing filter/oil separator on panda's GTP i ended up drilling and tapping the top of the PCV cover for a right angle nipple that let me shove a hose over the PCV and over the inside of the 90ļ¾Ÿ nipple in place of the spring.

I also Drilled and tapped a port on the side of the PCV tower for the return to the air inlet from the oil separator. ....
 

Turbocharged400sbc

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I deep threaded the cover I made it so that the elbow screwed almost all the way down to where you could barely put a hose on the nipple on the outside......

Then before final install I ground away the threads on the end that stick through into a small short nipple for the hose to slide over/center on.

If I recall I cut the hose so that it stuck up a little over an 8th of an inch before bolting down.

Hd trans cooler hose leftovers.

No cheap shit fer the inner "spring" hose
 

v6buicks

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I deep threaded the cover I made it so that the elbow screwed almost all the way down to where you could barely put a hose on the nipple on the outside......

Then before final install I ground away the threads on the end that stick through into a small short nipple for the hose to slide over/center on.

If I recall I cut the hose so that it stuck up a little over an 8th of an inch before bolting down.

Hd trans cooler hose leftovers.

No cheap shit fer the inner "spring" hose
Old School Yes GIF
 

v6buicks

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Machining stuff is where I start to get a little iffy. It sounds like that's the best way to get a short nipple close to the cover though. There is not a ton of room in there.

Let's say I have the stock PCV ran externally. Now what? My guess is water separator -> catch can -> check valve -> back to intake. Then the valve cover set-up ends up being a totally separate system with the vacuum pump. It's just too bad that the I wouldn't be pulling from all three spots at the same time.
 

Turbocharged400sbc

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The right angle nipple coming out the top that is connected to the nipple on the piece of evolve goes to your catch can/centrifugal oil separater.... It leaves there devoid of as much oil as your extractor can do and enters into the intake of the engine behind the throttle.

On the M90PCV tower I do this by tapping the side of the tower and putting a port there so that the gas flows around the outside of the rubber Spring nose And goes through the factory pcv hole before the rotors.

You are basically splicing into the factory PCV gas path
 
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