🔧 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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Thanks everyone!

I know this may be an odd question to ask online, but my car has been smoking pretty good since I got it running again. Has anybody ever by chance had a problem with their header wrap smoking a lot?

The engine is not consuming oil or coolant which was my first fear after redoing the head gaskets. Besides, I know those smells pretty well and it doesn't smell at all like either one. It smells more like burning paint which I used a lot of on this engine and exhaust. I expected that to smoke for a couple drive cycles as it cures, but it's been about 100 miles since changing the clutch and it's still just rolling out. The paint would have to be cured or burned off by now. The cheap header wrap is about the only thing left that that might still be curing or straight up burning. Any ideas?
 

v6buicks

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Also...

I haven't been driving it as much as I would like because I'm scared of hurting it. Maybe you all can convince me otherwise.

Keep in mind, I have not been hot rodding this thing around as much as a turbo intercooled E85 burning Camaro deserves to be. However, it is running on a mail order tune which is likely not accurate enough to really be trusted.

My question is about fuel trims. What should I realistically see? When cruising on the interstate, my LTFTs on both banks seem to climb really high and sometimes even max out at 19.5. However, my E85 wideband at the same time starts to read quite rich. (~7.5:1) I'm not really sure how to go about diagnosing that, but I figured it would help to understand what I'm looking at. Should I look at a long term and a short term on the same bank to see if they level each other out better? Thanks in advance. You guys have been a great help.
 

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First question - If it's just paint you bought from a parts store, it'll smoke until it burns off. Turbo exhaust gets EXTRA hot and really the only good way to "paint" those is a professional ceramic coating. And the header wrap lol.

Second - Are you able to make tuning adjustments? With HPT or what have you?
 

v6buicks

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First question - If it's just paint you bought from a parts store, it'll smoke until it burns off. Turbo exhaust gets EXTRA hot and really the only good way to "paint" those is a professional ceramic coating. And the header wrap lol.

Second - Are you able to make tuning adjustments? With HPT or what have you?

Even if it's the the stuff that's rated for the proper temp? I bought the VHT "ceramic" stuff for the exhaust and VHT engine paint for the rest. I noticed that the down pipe (unwrapped) is flaking pretty bad. That's good to know!

I didn't really want to bother with ceramic coating this hodge podge of booger welds, but I will if that's actually the problem. I just really don't want to undo that wrap job just to find out it's all fine. lol



And I don't have anything to make adjustments. I'm just monitoring my scan gauge. I have the Torque Pro app, but I'm having a hard time getting it to log everything I want.
 

1quick

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Also...

I haven't been driving it as much as I would like because I'm scared of hurting it. Maybe you all can convince me otherwise.

Keep in mind, I have not been hot rodding this thing around as much as a turbo intercooled E85 burning Camaro deserves to be. However, it is running on a mail order tune which is likely not accurate enough to really be trusted.

My question is about fuel trims. What should I realistically see? When cruising on the interstate, my LTFTs on both banks seem to climb really high and sometimes even max out at 19.5. However, my E85 wideband at the same time starts to read quite rich. (~7.5:1) I'm not really sure how to go about diagnosing that, but I figured it would help to understand what I'm looking at. Should I look at a long term and a short term on the same bank to see if they level each other out better? Thanks in advance. You guys have been a great help.

If your wideband is calibrated for e85 7.5:1 afr is pretty close that would be around 11.3:1 on a gas scale, remember stoich is like 9.7:1 for e85
 

v6buicks

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If your wideband is calibrated for e85 7.5:1 afr is pretty close that would be around 11.3:1 on a gas scale, remember stoich is like 9.7:1 for e85

I guess that's true. I have this guy.

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I suppose it's not terribly rich, but it still doesn't seem consistent with what my narrow bands are trying to tell me.
 

v6buicks

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I didn’t realize you were talking about at cruising I thought you were talking wot, it’s a touch rich but should be ok, id look into having someone tune it if you can’t

Oh I will. I'm not even going to put the pedal down until I do. I'm probably going to that shop that Intense refers everyone to since they seem confident in being able to tune the semi-quirky 99+ stock ECM.

You likely won’t see knock with e85

I do get a little, when I try to accelerate in too low of a gear. lol If it were an auto I don't think it would though.

It seems that the consensus is that I'll be okay. I just like being able to watch stuff and make sure everything is okay. I have the gauge, so I might as well use it for something!
 

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Cruising tuning should be based off of the LTFT'S and STFT's. If your LTFT's are going to full fuel rich, which is a positive number, that would lead me to assume the tune you have doesn't quite have the right injector calibration for full E85, or perhaps not at all. Usually you can run E85 in a car that's calibrated for gasoline because the fuel trims can actually make up for the additional ethanol, but eventually will set a CEL because the fuel trims are maxed out.

You want to take an average over a good 5-10mile drive, stopping, cruising, accelerating for the LTFT's. If they're always hovering over 10, then the tune is lean and the enrichment under boost might not be enough. To me, it actually sounds like you need to trust the OEM o2 sensors more than that wideband, cause 2 of them are telling you the tune is lean and they are compensating, vs your wideband telling you different.
 

v6buicks

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Cruising tuning should be based off of the LTFT'S and STFT's. If your LTFT's are going to full fuel rich, which is a positive number, that would lead me to assume the tune you have doesn't quite have the right injector calibration for full E85, or perhaps not at all. Usually you can run E85 in a car that's calibrated for gasoline because the fuel trims can actually make up for the additional ethanol, but eventually will set a CEL because the fuel trims are maxed out.

You want to take an average over a good 5-10mile drive, stopping, cruising, accelerating for the LTFT's. If they're always hovering over 10, then the tune is lean and the enrichment under boost might not be enough. To me, it actually sounds like you need to trust the OEM o2 sensors more than that wideband, cause 2 of them are telling you the tune is lean and they are compensating, vs your wideband telling you different.

That was my thought process in regards to the narrowband actully telling me the condition of the tune, but I didn't think about the tune possibly being wrong for the fuel. Good idea.

I have one of those cheap little titration test tubes, but I've never used it. Do you think that will tell me enough if it's way off? I would hope that John set the tune up safely in that regard, but I don't know. I've gotten all my fuel from the same station, so I've at least got that variable in check.
 

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