🔧 BUILD LAME Turbo V6 Camaro

[v6buicks]

Oh no. The only Volvo swap mounts that I know are readily available are for LS swaps. Not my cup of tea. I'm a glutten for punishment.

 

[v6buicks]

I found this on sale for $40 including shipping. It's a bit crude, but sometimes you get what you pay for! Assuming the bolt holes line up and everything it will fit the crude nature of the rest of the car just fine.

Sooooooooo.... I'm probably going to regret even bringing this up. but I'm considering the idea of abandoning this car. Don't get me wrong, it's been a ton of fun and that hasn't changed. Hence, still buying parts! However, I personally do not like F-bodies. Even the sentimental attachment doesn't outweigh the fact that I would rather have another rust-free car with a Buick nameplate on it.

I'm torn. I think there's a lot of power that is yet to be unleashed. A good tune alone would do a lot for this car, but if I put a better turbo, transmission, and suspension in it the car would be a rocket. On the other hand, those things alone would cost more than the other car I want to buy. I have no idea what's it's worth, but I'm sure it's not much in it's current state. I'm not listing it yet because I'm still driving it while I fix some rust problems on my girlfriend's Volvo 240, but let me know if any of you are seriously interested in the car.

 

[GTPpower]

T TurboTJ

 

[TurboTJ]

Ugh. dont @ me broseph LOL

 

[v6buicks]

More Camaro parts came in, and I'm itching do get done patching rust holes in this sorry old Volvo. I couldn't help but to install the only part that would possibly increase performance since it would only take a couple minutes. I'm so glad I did!

I've been picking the brain of a very smart engineer at work. He's built and raced some pretty impressive DSMs and loves to talk about it. However, I typically take his opinions with a grain of salt. He has a hard time grasping the idea of a car that's getting built up, but still needs to be driven on the street reliably and comfortably. Anyway, we were talking turbos and he mentioned that a restriction can actually help with spool. It's hard to grasp the idea of your oil adding friction, but if you have a lot of oil pressure, no restriction, and heavy oil you may be leaving some lower rpm boost on the table. The fittings were cheap and nicer than the steel one I had in there anyway, so I necked it down to -3 to see what would happen. I've been a little paranoid about blowing my Chinese turbo seals without a restriction anyway.

It made a very noticeable difference. I can finally feel the car pulling harder in normal driving situations. It's like a totally different animal.

 

[SleeperLS]

I had to restrict oil flow on my turbo set up as well. Good idea.

 

[GTPpower]

Interesting. Never would have thought that would make a difference.

 

[v6buicks]

Interesting. Never would have thought that would make a difference.

Me neither! The turbo doesn't even sound the same anymore. It's sounds and feels a lot more in line with an 80s factory turbo car now. There's still a lot of lag, but I can deal with it now.

 

[v6buicks]

I wish I had a real update, but I'm still doing body work on the Volvo which is why I'm dreaming and "planning"

The first thing I plan to do when this car gets back in the garage is install the firewall plate. Originally, I was going to delete the heater core as well, because I was "nEvEr GonNa dRiVe iT iN tHe WiNTer." Well look how that turned out. Besides, defrost is a good thing to have even in the fall. I took this picture so that I could dream up ways of running heater hoses while also leaving room for a future down pipe. I was pretty excited to free up space on this side with the HVAC box out of the way, but it sounds like I've already filled it back up.

I'm not sure if I want to go with some hard lines that run along the valve cover or what. I might have to do something ugly to start.

 

[10sec]

Wait... so you already deleted the core?

EDIT: Or deleted the hoses that go to it?

 

[v6buicks]

Wait... so you already deleted the core?

EDIT: Or deleted the hoses that go to it?

No, I haven't deleted anything heat related, and I don't want to. I just want to delete the evaporator and get rid of that bulging plastic box. It's not as easy as deleting the whole HVAC system, but it can be done.

 

[10sec]

Ahhhhhh. Put that AC back together and make it a year round daily.

 

[v6buicks]

Lol after the ridiculously humid summer we had I would love that. One issue is routing the exhaust. Usually those who run turbos and AC on these cars have to run pipes under the k-member which I'm not a fan of at all. Besides, my whole system was jacked. When I pulled the condenser out the fins were so corroded that they broke. I ended up pulling it out of the car in three pieces. I can handle not having AC. I don't like it, but the car gets really good air flow through the cabin even without t-tops.

I'm pretty committed to no AC at this point. My gauge pods even eliminated the center vents. lol

 

[v6buicks]

Alright, I'm having another issue that I'm hoping you all can shed some light on.

Ever since the cold weather started (like someone flipped a light switch), I have noticed that KR is showing up a lot more when I push the car. That was a big disappointment! I started monitoring IAT to try and find a trend. When I drop a couple gears and punch it, KR will go up to 4 degrees or more and stay there until I let off. However, If I creep up on boost slowly and let the IAT rise up about 10 degrees I will see 0 KR all the way up to full boost.

Should I move my IAT sensor close to the throttle? I have mine in the intake pipe upstream of the turbo. My previous tuner who turned out to be kind of a quack told me that it should be where I have it. I took his word for it since that's the stock location for the GN, but I would think that intake air temp would be literally the temp of what the engine is taking in.

I'm not super worried about it because I still haven't gotten the car dyno tuned, and I shouldn't be pushing it on this mail order tune anyway. I haven't even asked my current tuner what he thinks yet. I just want to know what others do and why.

 

[GTPpower]

That iat spot is fine.

Depending on what he did with the iat table, that could be the problem. But I would lean more towards your afr being lean.

 

[Mr_Roboto]

http://www.stealth316.com/2-turbotemp.htm

If you're pre-IC with your sensor and running SD it's probably lean. What's your O2s say? Punch some #s into the calulator above, just running the defaults and dropping the ambient temp from 80 to 50 gives almost a 24 degree difference in outlet temp. That could be quite a bit of power that you're not accounting for. I'd think you'd have to re-formulate the whole table if you moved it tbh. You may be able to mask it with some AE if it's only happening on acceleration.

 

[v6buicks]

Interesting. I'm not SD though. This is all stock EMS. I will have to try watching my O2 a little closer because I don't know what's going on there. I assumed that there was a timing issue. I'm starting to dislike the analog WBO2 gauge because it's already not in my line of sight and not the most legible. I have to turn my head off the road to see it, and that's the bigger issue. Nobody makes a nice A-pillar gauge pod for hard top F-bodies that I've found.

 

[TurboTJ]

i dont think theres a difference between the hard tops and t top cars for a pillar pods, i could be wrong though.

 

[v6buicks]

It's different. The a-pillar trim goes all the way to the backs of the side windows on a hard top car. Could I get a t-top pillar trim and just cut both so that they fit together? Sure, but it will look like crap and I will have cut up a good hard-to-find hard top trim in the process. I would probably be in better shape if I got a spare hard top trim and just screwed in the universal pods. Realistically, I'm not doing any of that. I'll probably move my AFR gauge to where the boost gauge is and vise versa. Boost isn't as critical to know.

There are also those gauge pods that are molded into the IP trim. That would be pretty slick and easy to see as long as my steering wheel isn't in the way.

 

[TurboTJ]

Thats what i mean about the difference of the t top car to hard top aftermarket pillar pod is the piece isnt going to continue all the way to the back. Its going to stop in the same location, just matters how you want to fasten it to the car or over the current pillar. But yes ive seen the dash mount ones turning out nicely.

 

[v6buicks]

Ah okay. I gotcha. Yeah, I don't think it would be super difficult to make it work. I just have a thing about cutting my stock A-pillar trim. I just have never been a huge fan of how those triple gauge pods looked. I'd hate to get it in there perfectly, hate it, and then need to find an un-cut hard top A-pillar. We'll see. I may change my mind if the line of sight starts to be more of an issue.

 

[v6buicks]

I started paying a little more attention to the WBO2 as I punch the gas. As I thought, my readings are quite rich. I saw 6-6.5:1 and about 4.5 degrees of KR on bank 1. Bank 2 wasn't as bad, but it was showing some. I'm hoping a better tune will fix it. Winter blend E85 might be screwing with it too. I don't know what the difference between the two blends are, but I can imagine that could be a big factor.

 

[GTPpower]

Do you have it calibrated for e85? Or is that on the gas scale?

 

[v6buicks]

It's an E85 only gauge

 

[GTPpower]

You can't calibrate it for regular fuel?