TEAM PRODIGY 2009 Bull Run Rally Project - Page 4 - Lateral-g Forums

ProdigyCustoms · #31 07-02-2009, 10:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tones2SS

Very cool.
I hear nothing but good things about Wegner. Are these the same guys that "specialize" in LSx engines as well?
Keep us posted Frank!

They do. One of their main business is building Nascar Spec LS engines.

**tones2SS** · #32 07-02-2009, 01:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ProdigyCustoms

They do. One of their main business is building Nascar Spec LS engines.

Very cool!!!

ProdigyCustoms · #33 07-03-2009, 11:59 PM

It's alive!

So we had a little set back yesterday with the 4L80E transmission torque converter and the LS flywheel hating one another. Long story short, it requires a special flywheel from TCI (part number 399754) to run a 4L80E behind a LS motor. It has to do mostly with how deep the torque converter snout goes into the back of the crank, or in our case how far is doesn't go into the crank. The factory LS flywheel puts the converter .300 farther away from the motor. We realized this at 8PM last night long after Summits cut off for overnight air. Because it is July 4th weekend UPS nor Fed Ex are running on Saturday deliveries. So there was no way to get a flywheel here even for a Saturday delivery. it would be Monday at the soonest before we could get one here.

So I slept on it, dreamed about it and came up with my best Macgyver solution I think will be OK for the weekend until the correct flywheel comes in. Besides the converter depth being wrong, the bolt pattern was too short on the converter bolts also. Since the converter will not be centering in the crank right now, I very carefully machined each hole to the exact distance from center of the flywheel to the outer most edge of each converter mounting hole. I got every hole to the 1/1000th with zero extra clearance in outside of the flywheel to converter holes. So the converter has no wiggle room to bolt up off center. I have measured it every way I could dream of and am convinced I have it as perfectly centered as it would be if the converter snout was in the crank like it should be. We also shimmed the transmission back .250 so the converter is not buried to deep in the pump so it does not cause pump damage.

This is by no means a proper long term fix as I would have to think over time it could wallow the holes as the torque converter is not designed to ride on these bolts. But I do I think this fix will allow us to drive it around a little, do some drive ability tuning, and check out other systems like brakes, suspension, rear, etc. If it is vibration free, smooth, no problem, if it vibrates, we simply will wait until Monday to drive more. But this is something we had to try to avoid losing the entire weekend.

So anyway. After a long day at 12:30 4th of July, we fired it up in the car for the first time. As always, the videos below are "real starts" not staged starts. So they are not without incident.

The Bull Run Racer was flooded badly and had to much fuel pressure first time we cranked her. She made some big backfires out of the headers. But after a couple time we dry fired it, let is run 15 seconds or so and called it a win.

I am really proud of the guys. Not one leak anywhere. No fuel system connection leaks, oil drips, nothing. They have really done a thorough job of double checking everything on this car.

So here are a couple raw videos, I am to tired to blend them into one. Car sounds fricken NASTY on open headers. Tomorrow we will muffle that a bit though.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImFO6ruwBXQ

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGjEie6BBr8