96dreamer's Never Ending Build Thread

96dreamer

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Pretty much. But I don't believe that stud was ever supposed to be there in the first place. Having never owned a blower before I didn't know what to look for and the stud didn't stand out to me. I think what happened is the previous owner stripped out the thread for the bolt and epoxied the stud in place. At some point between the first drive and second it backed out bounced off the impeller a few times and fell down into the air filter. Crazy part is I never heard it happen, it still built boost, and the only reason I even found it is an idler pulley bolt backed out and when I pulled the belt off to fix the idler I heard grinding in the headunit. I bought the blower so long before it happened I was kind of out of luck as far as getting any money back.
 

nomoretickets

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And for the first time in about 6 months powered up the car to start setting up the project file on the ms3. I opted to buy a bluetooth adapter for the ms3 which is absolutely worth its weight in gold. Here im sitting outside the car setting up the .msq. You also get a peak at the drag pack I picked up during the build process.View attachment 1649446
What changes did you have to make to fit the SVE drag pack? GT rear brakes, the MM banjo bolt/stainless lines kit, or.....?
 

96dreamer

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What changes did you have to make to fit the SVE drag pack? GT rear brakes, the MM banjo bolt/stainless lines kit, or.....?
The only thing I did was grind down the factory banjo bolt and part of the brake line end on the factory cobra brakes. Clearance was tight but it fit otherwise. I've been keeping an eye out to pick up another set locally. they looked awesome on the car. I was bummed when I had to get rid of them.
 

nomoretickets

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The only thing I did was grind down the factory banjo bolt and part of the brake line end on the factory cobra brakes. Clearance was tight but it fit otherwise. I've been keeping an eye out to pick up another set locally. they looked awesome on the car. I was bummed when I had to get rid of them.
Thanks for the info. Those SVE wheels look great and are priced well. Ive just always heard that fitting 15x10's can be a mess with the Cobra brakes
 

96dreamer

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Back from the dead! After the first blower blew up I did compression and leak down tests in addition to borescopping every cylinder and it all checked out ok. After feeling a little more relieved everything was ok I took the blower setup off and drove it around N/A a while and got more comfortable with tuning. Bought a used blower and went through a debacle of it having bad gears and getting my money back. Bought another used blower that had sat for a while and had some pitting on the gears.
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I took a dremel with a brass wire wheel on it and polished every tooth on each gear and it cleaned up good enough that I decided to run it. To my surprise and relief it sounded ok. No weird wines, rattles or vibrations. So I threw everything back together and took it for a drive.
A few miles later....
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Was driving it and it developed a bad miss first under load then at idle. Decided to stop and call a buddy to take me to get my truck/trailer and take it home. Luckily it didn't turn out to be anything major. The coil covers don't sit flush on the valve covers with the ls2 coils so when washing the car/motor water was able to get down into the spark plug holes and cause some corrosion. Cleaned up everything and put it back together with a liberal amount of dielectric grease and all seemed good. This happened pretty late 2019 and after swapping out a slightly heavier bov spring I washed it and stuck it in the garage for the winter.
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96dreamer

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While it was put away for the winter I decided to upgrade the front brakes to the ATS brembos. Picked up a used set off ebay, got both for under $100 shipped.
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I sand blasted them to prep for high temp vht paint.
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My plan was to paint black, install a decall, paint red and remove the decal then clear coat over everything.
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Unfortunately that did not pan out and when I removed the red decal it pulled some of the red paint with it so I went to plan B which was just paint red with a high temp decal on top.
Coated in red after being baked.
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Installed on the car with the black decals
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When getting the car ready to get out in the spring I finally removed the painters tape that had been on the core support for way to long. Unfortunately it took a good amount of gloss black with it. After trying unsuccessfully to rattle can it black it was suggested by a friend that I paint it wrinkle to match a few of things in the engine bay and to make it a little more durable. I ended up with this and was pretty happy with the result.
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Late in January I also upgraded the tow rig. As much as I loved the 7.3 trucks I wanted to start with a rust free platform. Picked up a 2015 f350 lariat ultimate with 42k on the clock and absolutely spotless. Truck as tuned and deleted before it hit 1000 miles and is blast to drive, maybe a little to much so. Took my motivation away from the car for a while. White mirrors came with the truck and I initially wasn't a fan but they have grown on me.
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96dreamer

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Most of 2020 the car has been running great with relatively few issues. I've been slowly adding features to the MS3 and fine tuning the tuning.
One goal I had was to get the two step/ no lift shift working.
The factory clutch switch wouldn't work because the polarity was reversed for the switch at the top of the movement. So iImade a bracket that used a brake light switch off of who knows what. I bought a few from the autoparts store and picked the one that worked the best.
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It uses the factory brake switch mounting holes and is adjustable to fine tune the switching point on the clutch.

Video of testing.
It builds about 4 lbs of boost at 3500 rpms and sounds pretty wicked.

A buddy wanted to get together to grab a few beers and take some video / pictures of the car and I was happy to oblige. In the startup in the video it looks like the catch can is smoking a ton but it was an unbelievably hot and humid summer day in Missouri that cause a bunch of condensation. I have yet to get any oil drain from the catch can.

In the acceleration portion of the video you might notice i'm shifting super early. I noticed early in the summer that when running on e85 fuel pressure started dropping around 5300 and became a real issue with afr's by 5700 so I had the limiter set at 5500 which is right when things really start getting fun.
He also took a few glamor shots
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96dreamer

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As I started trying to tune on e85 and make use of the flex fuel sensor I routinely experienced fuel pressure dropping off after 5000 rpms and the afrs start creeping up after 5500 rpms. The fuel system at this stage consisted of the stock system with a 450lph in tank and 80lb sd injectors.

Hoping to try and limp the system along for the year I made a few upgrades.
Hard to see in the picture but I ran a dedicated 8ga power line from the aux fuse box to a relay for the 450 pump thinking I may me getting some voltage drop through the factory wiring.
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I also replaced the factory regulator and fuel rails. I went with a fuelab regulator 10an feed from the regulator split to 2x 8an lines to fore rails in a dead head configuration. I know the dead isn't ideal but I'm hoping i can make it work due to the cleanliness it provides vs other routing options.

Everything tucked up nicely in the passenger fender well and should allow me to adapt to a full fuel system pretty easily at a later date.
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Bracket for the regulator to mount to the inner fender
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If you can manage to ignore the ugly inner fender the regulator is in there tight and doesn't contact the fender liner when installed. The factory feed line come up in the oem location where I cut the tubing shortened it about 10" and joined back up with a compression fitting. This allowed me to use an adapter to go to a 6an feed line to the regulator. The return from the regulator is 8an going to the flex fuel sensor and then to the factory return line.
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All this helped with the fuel pressure/afr issue but only netted me about 200 more rpms. I also was experiencing a wicked pressure drop when able to hook on a launch on the shifts that was causing the afr safey to trip and shut the car down. I think I'm just maxing out what is capable of the factory feed line on e85 at this point. I'm estimating it is around 550 whp at this boost level even with shifting early.
 

Twisted2

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That's great power, shifting that early, and untuned. It'll be interesting if it is, in fact, the fuel lines being a bottleneck, causing the issue. Either way, once it's solved, you'll be glad that you did all these little upgrades along the way. So much custom work.

Sent from my SM-G970U using the svtperformance.com mobile app
 

Twisted2

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You know a lot more about this stuff than I do, but one thing that popped into my mind was maybe a vacuum forming at the other end of the line--maybe in the tank. Not sure if it could pressurize and depressurize that quickly, only at high rpms, though. Just wanted to mention it anyway.

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96dreamer

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You know a lot more about this stuff than I do, but one thing that popped into my mind was maybe a vacuum forming at the other end of the line--maybe in the tank. Not sure if it could pressurize and depressurize that quickly, only at high rpms, though. Just wanted to mention it anyway.

Sent from my SM-G970U using the svtperformance.com mobile app
I would be highly surprised if that were the case. It still has the stock venting system and return line so there shouldn't be anything to cause a vacuum. I'm going to do a full once over on the system this winter when I get around to finishing the fuel system upgrades.
 

Twisted2

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I would be highly surprised if that were the case. It still has the stock venting system and return line so there shouldn't be anything to cause a vacuum. I'm going to do a full once over on the system this winter when I get around to finishing the fuel system upgrades.
Agreed. Just wanted to throw it out there. Anyhow, good luck over the winter.

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96dreamer

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@96dreamer very nice build! Were those Cadillac ATS calipers a direct bolt on or what did it take for them to fit? Also, what kind of exhaust are you running?
I originally had planned on milling the calipers to fit but ended up buying the inserts and spacer from @lowranger96 . Had to grind a little off the bolt holes on the caliper but other than that it was bolt on. I upgraded to stainless lines while I was at it also. Can't say enough about the spacer kit. Worked perfect instructions were very easy to follow and it even came with a drill bit for the roll pin.

Exhaust on the car is bbk 1-5/8 long tubes 2-1/2" x pipe and 2-1/2" borla cat back. I think the borla is a older type s system, I've never really tried identifying it but it sounds pretty good. They are smaller center in/center out oval mufflers.
 

96dreamer

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I think I've mentioned it before but I don't know how other guys keep day to day build threads going. I noticed a leak at the axle seal after a spirited drive last summer. I had replaced the seal once before for leaking and suspected something else was up. I believe the gear fluid was sloshing into the bearing on hard turns and sitting in the portion between the 9" end. After a while it started to weep through the sealed bearing, diluting the grease and leaking through. Slowly wearing out the bearing as the grease leaked out.
Here's how the axle looked when i pulled it. You can see and the grease that leaked out.
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I also noticed that the bearing retainer on the passenger side was grinding against the inside id of the axle tube. I think this was due to it not being cut back enough when it was fabed years ago. I took a carbide burr to the id of the tube to create some more clearance
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In order to prevent any more oil from getting to the sealed bearing I also cleaned the tubes and installed some seals-it generic axle seals sealed up with some rtv
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Even if it doesn't keep all the fluid from sloshing to the bearing it should reduce it. So far in the last year I haven't had any issues.
While the car was down waiting for the new bearings to come in I pulled the volute off the blower.
Since I bought it used it had a few scuffs a few of which were beyond sanding out. 20200923_183710.jpg
I tried filling it in with low temp aluminum braze. Stuck it in a toaster oven to up the base temp then used a torch to work in the braze rod.
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After filling it in I sanded it down. I was hoping it would be able to polish it but the braze rod was a slightly different color
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So instead I threw it in the sand blaster.
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And gave it a coat of wrinkle paint to match several other things in the bay.
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