🔧 BUILD Turbo 3800 T56 Swapped G-body Grand Prix w/ Holley EFI

[Mr_Roboto]

Any chance you have the FP Safety switch omitted?

 

[bs009]

Any chance you have the FP Safety switch omitted?

Not sure I've heard of this before.
I know it has good fuel pressure even when it does shut off. There were also two wires that I needed to ground for the VATS.

 

[Mr_Roboto]

Not sure how it works with the newer stuff, but on the older stuff you'd have a switch that would connect to the fuel pump where it would shut the engine off if there wasn't enough oil pressure. It would be in parallel with the FP relay so that the relay would let the engine turn over and build up pressure, then the switch would kick in and keep the FP going. The reasoning is that it would shut fuel down if the engine shut off, thereby stopping it from pumping in case of a line break and feeding an engine fire.

 

[bs009]

Gotcha, yeah not sure about how that works here, I would think the PCM handles that sort of thing.
I know it has good fuel pressure though so I don't think there's any issue there.

 

[Yaj Yak]

this is awesome

good luck with the gremlins

 

[bs009]

Sorted out the security issue. Turns out it was backwards day at GM when they programmed that table.

The car runs now and everything seems to be working pretty well, but it is misfiring pretty bad. I don't have an oxygen sensor connected at the moment because the one's I pulled from the Camaro seem to have disappeared. Hopefully though that's the reason for the misfiring...

internal wastegate bolted down to prevent it from opening:

downpipe:

I'll need to replace the pipe on the turbo for the outlet on the cold side

This took way too long to do:

Out of the garage with the bumpers bolted on, bumper trim still not installed:

video of it "running":

 

[RICH17]

 

[bs009]

So I finally sorted out the issue with the misfire.

I started by replacing the cam and crank sensors. When I put the balancer on I put it on wrong though and had to replace the key on the crank and the crank sprocket. I ended up replacing the whole timing set after that and put it all back together.

After putting it back together it was still running pretty bad so I started to trace out the wiring again to make sure that everything was okay with the harness from the Camaro. I stopped after the fuel injectors and switched PCM's with one from a 98 L36 Grand Prix. I flashed a quick tune on it to disable EGR and adjust for my injectors and the tranny and fired it up. It runs perfect now!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgXnIh8NxpU

Now I just need to finish up a few things, tie a few loose ends and she'll be road worthy!

 

[SleeperLS]

Freakin awesome!

 

[bs009]

finished up the exhaust from the downpipe back finally and started working on the wastegate exits.

Here is what I made for my "downpipe-back"

muffler and glasspack:

raw materials:

Everything tacked together:

in front of axle:

axle-back:

cutting the tip:

Over axle hump with suspension all the way down:

with the car's weight on it:

tip installed:

wrapped exhaust manifolds. Man this stuff gets everywhere, I finished these up and found little strands of fiberglass everywhere.

Here they are installed again. These two would be connected had I not broken my v-band clamp tonight.

If it weren't for me breaking that clamp I would be buying plates for the car this weekend and taking it for a test drive. Looks like that will have to wait until I get a new clamp.


wastegate exits plumbed:

I'm also working on putting together a gauge pod to go underneath the center console.

couple things left before the car will be good enough to come out of its cave:
- front brakes: going to be swapping over to S10 knuckles and hopefully blazer calipers
- parking brake cables (those are on their way)
- modification to fuel rail to fix leak (have an aeromotive FPR to install)
- new rear tires
- possibly a brace to help support the turbo

After all of that, I'll feel very confident in driving this car pretty much anywhere.

 

[frosty23_45]

Very cool, nice work

 

[guspech750]

Such a cool car and awesome build!!

 

[bs009]

Thanks for the motivation! It really helps!

 

[bs009]

Did some work on the brakes recently. I found a 2wd blazer in the junkyard near me and pulled the spindles and brakes from it.

ball joints removed:

These new ball joints were a PITA to press in.

stock brakes:

New brakes:

Also, my parking brake handle is no longer just for show. I used brake cables from a 4th gen camaro that had drums and made this bracket:

new rear wheel cylinders:

and painted!

I'm still chasing down some air in the lines right now. the master cylinder is new and I didn't bench bleed it when I put it on so I think I'll have to take it off and do that.


I spent way too much money on this:

going to use the stock fuel rail. I gutted the OEM FPR and will be welding the vacuum port shut.

Made room for the filter!

 

[SleeperLS]

Great work!

 

[10sec]

Hell yeah! How did I miss this for so long?!!! Sub'd.

 

[SleeperLS]

I am surprised more people aren't following this. It is some good shit.

 

[10sec]

It's the name, should be named project turbo 3800 swapped RWD old AF Grand prix. That definitely would have gotten my attention

 

[SleeperLS]

I can't disagree with that.

 

[bs009]

I am surprised more people aren't following this. It is some good shit.

It's probably because they know this car will either be really slow, or it will just break the trans and the diff before it ever does anything too cool haha

It's the name, should be named project turbo 3800 swapped RWD old AF Grand prix. That definitely would have gotten my attention

I did actually attempt to change the name a while back by changing the title of the first thread, but that didn't seem to take lol.

 

[bs009]

So the car still has the stock 7.5" axle in the back right now with 2.41 gears. Doing some quick math, this thing should love the freeway and hate anything below 10 mph

70 mph at 1700 rpm in 5th or at 2300 rpm in 4th

 

[bs009]

Road-worthy!

FPR installed and braced:

stock FPR blocked off:

twin catch cans!

the outlet that came with my turbo stuck out too much being at a ~75* angle.
I replaced it with one I found one on ebay so I could close my hood:

Hood installed again for the first time in almost 3 years!

New rear tires!

Using BFG G-force Comp2 all seasons in 245/50-16's for now. Will be running the same on the front soon too! The front has a set of 205/60-16 Michelin symmetry's right now.


So the car has plates on it now and I took it down the street a couple of times. The alignment is way out of wack and the brakes still feel mushy. It developed a coolant leak since I had a loose radiator hose clamp. I also found an oil leak at the dipstick; looks like when it went into boost it started blowing out oil there. I shoved it in properly again and it should be good now.
One of the other issues was that it was misfiring under boost. I'm running a set of autolite 104's gapped at .050". I lowered the gap to .045" after that drive so hopefully that solves the issue. I won't know until tomorrow though because now my junkyard starter decided to take a shit on me and stopped working.

So now, I should just have to replace that starter, pump the clutch a lot, replace a parking brake cable that I broke, and keep an eye on fluid leaks and it should be in good shape. I'll also try to get an alignment in this weekend if I can.
I'm going to try to take a roadtrip with it on sunday. I'll bet it'll do great as long as I solve those issues. it's sort of a roadkill inspired idea so I'll see how this plays out here.

 

[Smokinhot]

Monte SS wheels look good on the G-body too

 

[bs009]

Monte SS wheels look good on the G-body too

Oh yeah, definitely a fan of that myself too. I know you can get 17" replica's of those from year one too

 

[bs009]

So I fixed the crap that came up during thursday's adventure only for the car to develop some sort of kinda quiet backfire at idle. Wideband is showing that it's running super lean (maxed out at 17.0:1), and it seems like my computer is having trouble trying to scan it with DHP.

Basically it's kinda running like poop right now and I'm getting really tired of dealing with this car's shit. I was hoping to get it aligned tomorrow but I suppose chasing down this garbage will be more fun.