You should make your own post so that everyone can make fun of you. Like you said, "now it's my turn."

Ok Mario. Got a couple shots for you, please excuse the quality. I don't have an iPhone 4S like Greg Weld.

http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/o...A/IMAG0386.jpg
http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/o...A/IMAG0387.jpg

And, because I'm so proud of my ability to make noise operating a grinder and my basic welding skills, here is a sneak peak of my new project. It is probably hard to tell in pictures, but it has been Camaro-ized :unibrow:

http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/o...A/IMAG0377.jpg

Matt

Cars are looking good Matt, I was wondering when I'd start to see pictures of the mustang.

Matt pm me your email. We have some nice shots of your car we want to send you

Matt...... Thanx!! I'm runnin 19's I may have to ask Jon if he has any pictures. I think this wheel is awsome but I would like to see the front with more of a concave ..

Hey Chris, how have you been? I want to say I tried sending a message back to you a while ago, but your pm box was full. Everything going well up in Washington? Is the Hell Camino on the road these days?

Matt

Living within a within a hundred miles of El Toro makes it just too easy to pull the car out of the garage and head out for a little fun. So... I decided that better pull the oil pan with Dick and toss in the Improved racing windage tray for the F-Body pan. My engine was sucking up and burning a fair amount of oil I could hear the thing knocking sometimes.

Turns out pulling the oil pan isn't that much fun. Since we were taking everything apart it was a good time to replace a balancer bolt that backed off while on a dyno session, as well as just clean everything up in general. Didn't really want to be thrashing on the car, but this kind of stuff just seems to happen. Hopefully everything is back tomorrow. I also need to try and get the car re-tuned, it has a horrible flat spot off idle, and if you don't slip the clutch ver carefully, and give it some revs it just lugs. It doesn't stall, but it won't rev up for a good amount of time.

http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/o...A/IMAG0444.jpg
http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/o...A/IMAG0443.jpg
http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/o...A/IMAG0446.jpg

The shop has some colorful Camaros right now, I think there will be a grand total of seven or eight first gens crammed in there before El Toro. Gregg (Gandalf) still needs to bring his '69 in for a once over, and when he does BOS will look like a bag of skittles!

Matt

Dude, you have 2 days.:wow:

Matt & the crew @ BOS probably pull & install that motor in that car faster than you take to adjust your valve lash! :D

:lol:

I don't know Matt..... those BOS oil changes always end up costing a bunch more with all the "well, while I'm in here I may as well <fill in the blank>" :lol:

I'll bet with that new baffle and some good oil you will see a nice performance gain :unibrow:

G.

Dude, WE have three days, but who is counting? Dick has plenty of experience swapping out Bad Penny's engines, in a day if he has to. I figure cleaning out and engine and checking it over is simpler. There was a little piece of aluminum casting in the bottom of the pan. No shavings or anything though. Not sure what that was about, but that's why we took it out to check over. Throw in some Royal Purple, and maybe I'll have enough power to play with Paypack :lol:

Matt

That'll buff out. :thumbsup:

Dear Matt's mom..... please tell your son he only has TWO days and then to get Barney out of the shop - I have to check my fluids and empty my mufflers.

Thank you,
G. :rofl:

Truer words were never spoken. She knows as long as it is there I will find ways of spending my money on it. She would also rather have me spend some quality time with the car than the former girlfriend who is in town this week. However, she knows as soon As I stop throwing money at my car, my dad will have a spot to throw her money at his car!

So Matt, tell me/us about the mod to the oil pan---looks like a windage tray--but it's for oil control I believe you said----would be curious as to its exact function and how you guys arrived at this paticular mod---looks like a stock LS pan.

Whatever you do, make sure it's ready to go by Friday morning--

D

Sure thing Doug. Let me do my best Todd impersonation. Hell, this is really just a long involved post about about me changing oil, and a few other things, and that's something Todd would do, right? Oh, and I was wearing black rubber gloves while working on my car, that is definitely Todd like :lol:

Let me retry this whole thing with some explanations/captions. I'm using the stock F-Body style windage tray (pictured below). I have been running this part since I got my car on the road.
http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/o...A/IMAG0443.jpg

This little bugger in the oil pan is what is new though. From what I've heard, it is a vast improvement over the stock baffled insert, which barely qualifies as a baffle when you hold the two side by side. I chose this for two reasons. First and foremost, my car has just been sucking up oil when going to the track. At Adam's Motorsports Park out in Riverside, roughly 20 laps around the little track completely filled up my catch can, to the point that it was no longer functioning, and was sucking oil through the PCV line from the valley to the intake manifold. Under normal driving conditions the catch can collects a little bit of oil, but nothing out of the ordinary. I think I've just been experiencing one of the known shortcomings of LS engines with stock oiling systems, and that is that these engines are prone to lots of oil aeration at high RPMs, as well as oil starvation. The other reason I decided to use the Improved Racing trap door baffle was because I wanted to keep my F-Body pan for two reasons. First, it is supposed to provide some structural support to the engine, and second, I'm not running a remote oil filter, which I believe is required with a Canton pan.

http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/o...A/IMAG0444.jpg

Here is a video someone posted on youtube showing how effective the little trap door baffles supposedly are:


Is that a good explanation Doug?

Matt

Not bad sir. :D To think LS engines aren't perfect and Jason Pettis was right, stock LS oiling ain't that great.

Yeah, I'm probably not a good enough driver to have blown my engine up. Not sure if that is a good thing, or a bad thing. I have been worried about it though, and hopefully this gets my oil situation under control.

We're also a day behind schedule. I was hoping to get the car dyno tuned today, but putting everything back together and getting fluids back in it took longer than expected. We had to jack the front of the car up to fill the radiator and get the thermostat working again.

Tomorrow I'm hoping that TurnKey can get rid of a few pesky issues. The car almost refuses to drive at altitude, which isn't a huge deal because I'm not in the mountains often, however, I've always had to slip the clutch more than I'm comfortable with to get the car to go, and I really want to see if we can tune that out.

As you guys can see though, she's back together now!
http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/o...A/IMAG0448.jpg

Matt

Car is looking great and ready to roll
 

I put that same baffel in my F-Body pan. It works great.

Okay so where can I buy this baffled Windage Tray

Hi, I like your exhaust tips. Where you got it ?

Marty, it can be ordered through improvedracing.com :D

Still don't know how well the pan actually works. I made only a few passes at RTTC this weekend. I figured it would be fun to keep things a little quiet, until I was there, but I swapped more than just an oil pan. My LS2 needed to be gone through, and I wanted to add more power to it. Turns out it was cheaper to buy an entire motor. I need to thank David Pozzi for letting go of Bad Penny's old 454 LS2. It dropped right in. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that something went wrong when it was being dyno'd. I'm going to figure out exactly what is wrong next week.

Moparigno, the exhaust tips are from the Mercedes parts department. They are off of an SLK, if I remember correctly...

Matt

Thank you

454 LS2 - that is Awesome. I love that motor

Maybe version 2 of the 2nd Chance Camaro will get that motor. :hail:

^^^And I never got my hush money. :mad:

Marty, it is entirely possible that in the time that it takes you to get the 2nd Chance Camaro on the road, you might have the opportunity to by a newer one of Penny's engines - and I'm not making a jab at you based on how long the last project took. If the second chance Camaro took that long you'd probably get Penny's old flux capacitor :unibrow:

Bryan, sorry but the hush money I had stashed away for you will probably be going towards a new head gasket, and whatever else carnage I will be looking at once it gets torn down. I'm hoping for the best, (but the coolant, of which there is a noticeable amount missing) appears to have some oil in it. It spit a bit of white smoke when I picked it up from the dyno shop, and got up between 210-230 on my way back home from RTTC. I'm guessing that when the radiator cap blew off on the dyno, it was because of the blown head gasket. I'm certainly no mechanic, so hopefully I'm wrong...


Matt

Dude that hurt :rofl:

Sucks to hear about your motor problems Matt :/

Good luck with an easy diagnoses.

Thanks Chad!

Had the guys down the street at JR Competition do a leak down test on the car. Cylinders 5,7 and 8 are all pushing air into my coolant. Needless to say, I'm pretty upset. Re-sleeved blocks should be brought up to temperature and then need to have the head bolts re-torqued, so long as you're using ARP bolts, for example, and not torque to yield factory ones. This is expressly stated by Steve Demirjian of Race Engine Development who re-sleeved the block for Steve Rupp. Between Dick and I we must have asked the shop that dyno'd the car to be sure to re-torque the head bolts half a dozen times. The last time Dick asked, they said they checked a bunch of them and they were tight. What the hell does that mean??? I wouldn't be so upset, except for the fact that in this scenario it is hard to imagine the head gaskets failing for any other reason...

Good news is that it doesn't look like I have water in my oil.

Matt

FCUK...!!! You know how I feel about that Matt. Remember all the smoke at the gas station? How wierd was that? :(

Hope the repair goes quick Bro. At his point I'd check everything. JR knows what he's doing...

Not cool Matt. I hope it gets resolved without too much hassle. This just makes me even more nervous about finding a quality shop to work on my 454.
Let us know how you make out.

Bummer Matt. Hopefully you get it squared and can make the Socal Challenge at Adams later this month.

Damn... that sucks Matt.

At least you have JR on it... he's the man!!

Yeah Josh, I think I'm going to have JR put things back together. I'll probably break the top end down myself and I'm thinking of pulling the accessory drive off the front so that I can shim or replace the oil pump so that I'm getting more oil pressure. Ordinarily I'd be fine with 10-15 lbs at idle because the pressure jumps up as RPMs climb, but with the abuse that the car is going to take, it is always better to err on the side of caution. As much as my wallet would probably like me to take it back to the place that dyno'd and built the engine with Steve, I'm fed up with their lack of attention to detail, and despite the fact that I think they're a good group of guys, and more than reasonable to work with, at some point, I have to say enough is enough. I'm a firm believer that you always need to give a shop a second chance, sometimes a third because stuff just goes wrong in this hobby. However, the weak point of my car has always been its engine. The old engine never ran right, and well... the new one was likely broken under their care. I'm no expert with LS engines, but I've come to take their advice with a grain of salt, and been justified in doing so multiple times. Writing this has been good, because as I've been typing this out, I realized, even if they put the engine back together on their dollar, I'm not going to trust that it was done right. I'd love to save a little money getting this back together, but I also want to have a car that runs well enough that I can put all of my attention towards sorting out the suspension, and the idiot behind the wheel.

The only question I have now is how much I trust them at all, because that will dictate how far I take the engine down. How many mistakes can what I consider to be a fairly reputable shop make?

That concludes my rant for today! :lol:

Matt

Sorry to hear this Matt, I be hoping for the best for you.

Heard this... makes a lot of sense IMO.

"Who you trust determines your future."

Always go with your gut......:cheers:

:thumbsup: :unibrow: :yes: :wow: looks good!

Sorry to hear about the engine Matt. Hopefully you're able to thrash that beast again soon.

Well guys... It is coming back out. the number one cylinder sleeve is scored pretty badly, so it looks like we'll be dropping in a new sleeve, which is easier than boring everything out from 4.185 to 4.200 and replacing pistons, etc. Not sure what the rings looks like yet, but we'll be finding out soon. It's a shame it wasn't something simple like replacing two head gaskets, but rebuilding it from the ground up gives a lot of added piece of mind. Just from looking at things, it doesn't look like I did any of this damage this weekend, meaning that it has been in this condition since it was in Penny, and remained this way after being "freshened up." I need to give a big shout out to Steve Rupp for volunteering to help get this thing back together. He could have told me to take it up with the company that looked it over after he pulled it out of his car, or just chalked it up to getting a used motor, but he didn't. The car will live again. It probably won't be ready to drive two weeks from now, but that's why I've got a Ford :lol:

http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/o...A/IMAG0460.jpg
http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/o...A/IMAG0461.jpg
http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/o...A/IMAG0462.jpg

Matt

Matt,

That's a real bummer. Sorry to hear the bad news. Pretty sure this is how things end up getting faster though. :lol:

Hope it's not to much of a pain.

:cheers: