How to tell you're getting old..

I recently had the 'pleasure' (not really) to drive around a few times in a certain Scandinavian Sedan (not Volvo - I LOVE Volvo's!)  This particular car was a  2011 'Turbo' Version of a '95'  and I was told it had 'a lot of pull' etc. It obviously felt much better/zippier than say a Civic, but looking at the specs we're looking at 0-60 in 8.2 seconds, 220 Horsepower and all for a 'measely' $38k... are you kidding me?? Consider me severely disappointed!Flooring it - yeah it pulls a little, but boy not even a serious contender for the G8 and the G8 was even cheaper when new! It did however remind of a few things that have been on my mind about my G8 regarding how it drives & sounds..

It also made me realize I must be getting old!

Gripe #1) My car is too loud

The other Sedan was WHISPER quiet inside & out.. and I LIKED it...
Can you say Old fuddy-duddy? But it's true! Even with my stock Mufflers, and the extra 12468 Mid-Muffler, here I am complaining my car is too loud.. Not from the exhaust mind you - you can barely hear it's even running at idle from the rear - but from the front! While the engine sounds a LOT smoother since I had Ellis install the new trunions I still sometimes cringe at how it sounds on the outside especially at idle/startup. Driving it, really is not bad at all - obviously it's not as quiet as a run of the mill European or Asian Sedan, and it never will be with the stroker under the hood,  but sometimes you just want to have it quiet! I'm seriously tempted to see if someone still has their manifold cover and put one back on (I threw mine out a few years ago) to see if that quiets down the engine noise a little bit (the whole reason why GM supposedly installed that piece).  Another option I've even started to consider is to get a smaller cam with less lift etc to quiet down the engine noises.. but then giving up power... not a big fan of that.. Of course it's all relative since I'm pretty sure for having a modded car (with a STROKER even) etc mine is one of the quietest ones, so maybe I should just suck it up and turn up the Stereo, because how often are you outside of your car when it's running anyway? ;)


Gripe #2) My car rides too stiff
 Again the other Sedan felt like it was gliding on air over the road.. parts where normally I'd be driving carefully watching for potholes, & other uneven sections it just went over with barely even noticing they were there.. Man it's nice to not always have to examine the road with a magnifying glass as you're driving!

Getting back into my car I felt everything (where sometimes it feels like you've hit a brick wall with your car.. THAT type of bump) and I had started to feel driving was actually getting laborious since I had watch for anything & everywhere (ok big bump in left lane in 50 yards so get in right lane, stay more left by this sign, stay more right by this exit etc etc) and I suddenly had enough..

I talked to Crazy Paul to see if it would be viable to install the Magnetic Ride Control from Holden in our cars. That unfortunately wasn't an option..

Now if you recall I'm actually running Pedders XA Coil-Overs and of course one thing about them is you can set how stiff they are. When I first got them I was running high 20's (INSANE), then high teens, then something like 12.. and then I thought I had them put softer still.. Apparently I hadn't...

So what does this old geezer do? That's right.. Bump those suckers down to ... "ONE" - you read that right.. "1" , One, Uno, Eins.. Whatever you wanna call it.. and WOW.. whilst not as soft as previously mentioned Sedan it is SO... MUCH.... MORE.... COMFORTABLE... Yeah you're not going to corner as fast on the 'twisties' blablabla, but for my daily commute that's the way to go! My rear-suspension is still set to something like 10 because I haven't had time to crawl under the car yet, but I'm actually sort of liking this combination. It is actually nice & relaxing driving to & from work now!

I have been thinking though that It would be awesome to install something like Electronic Damping Control in the car so you can just change it as you're driving!
http://www.tein.com/products/edfc.html
http://www.tanabe-usa.com/teas.asp?id=17

Gripe #3) I still Bottom Out in some places
Now usually these are really 'f-ed' up driveways that already to me look like they would be an issue for a civic or any 'low' car. and though I love the look of my 'lowered' car, I'm ALMOST tempted to perhaps add at least an Inch to the back to get it off the ground a little more. Of course if the engine were a little quieter I could take out the mid muffler which is the new 'rubbing point' and all would be well too..

Decisions Decisions...

Trunions Upgrade Kit Installed

So I finally had some time on my hands to get my Trunion Upgrade Kit from Brian @ Reckart Performance Tuning installed. I decided to make the drive up to Ellis Groo over at Speed Secrets who had rebuilt my stroker since he had tuned it and it also needed a little tweak to the tune.

The trip going the 'long' way turned out to be about 70 miles. I had reset my trip meter when starting and I was pleasantly surprised to see that my total was 21.2 mpg including a bunch of stop & go traffic on the freeway! Not too shabby :)

403 Stroker getting 21.2 mpg? NICE!

I had never been to Ellis's Shop before but seeing how it's a bit of a drive I definitely got a renewed appreciation for him coming to pick up my car & delivering it back to me when he was doing my stroker rebuild! Not a drive I'd like to make frequently because the roads are horrible and let's be honest here.. Seattle Traffic SUCKS Big Time! Next time I think I'll try the east-side approach through Bellevue instead.

The shop had 6 bays and 1 lift, and every spot was full! Good to see business has been steady for Ellis - he definitely knows what he's doing and deserves the business.

The official "Speed Secrets" Shop

Ellis is a busy guy!

We decided to simply pull the nose of the car in enough to work out of the on & off drizzle that was happening at the time. Obviously the engine was hot from the drive so Ellis put a fan on the manifold for a bit to get things in the workable temperature region. Once the actual work began it was as Brian @ RPT had mentioned a fairly simple job (but one I'd still prefer the professionals to do for me ) and didn't take very long.

Coils & Valve Covers Removed

Stock Rockers Removed

New Stock Rockers w/ Trunion Upgrade Installed

After the install Ellis took it for a test drive to make sure everything was running as it should. Then it was on to the tune. Since Day 1 I had an issue where if you tipped in the throttle just a tiny bit, much as someone unfamiliar with the car would do, the RPMs would drop to around 700 or less and sometimes it would stall all together. This was painfully evident at my last oil-change where the tech could NOT get the car going because he kept stalling it and I had to drive it up the rack for him (& off too because he didn't wanna touch it anymore). I had learned to just wait for the car to start rolling before applying the throttle and then to push through that first 2-5% throttle travel so it was second nature for me.

However, I wanted it fixed. That way if I ever had to drop the car off at the dealership, or the wife needs to drive the car, there are no unfortunately accidents with the car stalling when it's supposed to get going. Ellis probably spent more time on the tune than the rocker install as we kept stopping & going through the area while he monitored data on his laptop. He did indeed find that for some reason the throttle was actually closing in that scenario causing the issues. After a few revisions & relearns the car seemed to respond MUCH better and I was totally happy with the tune.

After a quick oil-change (& switching to synthetic) I was ready to head back out by lunch time. The drive back was a total joy and the car practically felt like new again. The engine was DEFINITELY much quieter than before and especially when warmed up, which is what I was hoping for. No matter what speed the car just purred along so I am definitely VERY pleased with this upgrade and would highly recommend it to anyone!


Also if your LS based car needs ANY work and it is at all possible to drive to Snohomish, GO SEE ELLIS!

Speed Secrets (owned & operated by Ellis Groo)
Phone: (425) 922-8944
Address: 1422 Ridge Ave,
Snohomish, WA 98290
http://www.ssefi.com/

Trunion Upgrade Kit

There have been some posts in the last months on the GRRRR8 Forum about upgrading Trunions in our engines since Comp-Cams released a trunion upgrade kit (part# 13702-KIT ) which replaces the standard needlebearings with some nice upgraded ones. Per Comp Cams's description:
"... rocker arm retro-fit trunion kit that replaces the cageless, loose OEM needle bearings and powdered metal trunion with a premium 8620 steel alloy trunion and caged roller bearings for added durability. The new design from COMP Cams® utilizes caged roller bearings that greatly reduce the possibility of the bearing failure experienced with stock LS1 needle bearings, which can send loose needles throughout the engine upon failure."

While a lot of people would say this may not be a common failure (or at least not until you start getting into serious HP) a lot of people are doing the upgrade just for peace-of-mind. Also the people who have done the upgrade say it also quiets down the valve-train noise a decent amount. This instantly got me curious since I'd still like to quiet my engine down some more (exhaust is SUPER quiet ever since the mid-muffler install, now it's just the engine noises that are loud ).

I contacted Brian of Reckart Performance Tuning who seemed to be the go-to guy for this upgrade. What's really nice is that he doesn't just sell you the bare kit like most other vendors - he also offers to install the kit in either new or core-exchange rockers, so that you don't have to have any downtime (or you can even send your rockers in and he'll install the trunion upgrade for you and ship them back ASAP).

I recently received the rockers and I must say they look & feel super solid yet rotate very smoothly. I've heard people compare the stock rockers to feel/sounding like loose marbles in your hand when you shake them, but these things are solid!Now I just need to have them installed so I can give a full comparion to the 'before' vs 'after' sound.

So if you're interested in this upgrade, contact Brian over at Reckart Performance Tuning or find him on the GRRRR8 Forum as 'Brian@RPT'

Fuel Mileage

It's been a bit of a boring few weeks - no new developments, no new mods - just commuting to work and that's it. A while ago I found myself getting gas at a different location (& different brand) than I normally do; I usually fill up with 76 Premium (which is only 92 Octane here + of course the lovely 10% ethanol...) at various gas stations, but instead I filled it up with Chevron 92 Premium. Driving around for a week or so on that gas I checked my avg fuel mileage and I'm seeing 13 mpg instead of my usual 11-12.. now that's not much to write home about, but I still found it interesting.

Then I've recently found there is 1 particular '76' location where with the gas from that station I swear my car runs/idles smoother and I saw even a 13.5 mpg average - I've repeated this experiment 3 times now and between the two different 76 stations I frequently visit, this one consistently gives me a smoother running engine (at least that's what It sounds like to me) & better mileage. Obviously this measuring is not a fully scientific method and there willl be tons of people saying : Premium 92 at one place is the same as Another or All brands are the same etc etc, but I tend to drive similar/the same enough on my commute and based on how I hear the engine run and the dash-display I have to believe there's something to this. So it looks like I've found a new place to get gas ;)

Also just for fun - one day I happened to get gas and did only in-town driving. Lots of errand-y stuff and it totaled out to be about 13 miles all together. The gas-mileage for that little jaunt was a whopping 5.3MPG!
No wonder that while I can hit 22-25mpg on the freeway, as soon as I get into town it just starts to plummet down towards the low teens!

So today's word of advice: If you're concerned about fuel-economy... don't build a stroker ;)

Transmission Linkage Redux

So Before Christmas last year (hey does that mean I've already had my car back for over 6 months since the rebuild?? woohoo!) I had the - from what I gather rather common - Transmission Linkage come out. I had manually pushed it back in, but didn't have any E-clips at the time so it was just a ticking timebomb for it to happen again. Meanwhile I had been driving very carefully, never even popped it in Sports/Manual mode! , since I wasn't too comfortable with how it was put back together by yours truly.

Few nights ago ( so after about 4 and a half months) I notice the 'looseness' again in the shifter where N doesn't really line up with the real neutral, R is past 'R' etc.. it just feels wobbly so I already know it's on it's way out.  Jack up the car and what do I see? ( well what does my cell phone see, because my jack only goes up so high and it's really hard to fit my 'rotund' torso under the car ;) )

Excuse the shaky camera work - hard to figure out what you're recording when you can't see the screen... But as you can clearly see the linkage was out yet again & barely hanging on..

Of course this time I was prepared with my 1/2" inch E-Clips. Was a PITA to get one on so I actually used a little squirt of wd40 to get it on there. I did have to cut the longer legs of the white plastic clip that was on there and I accidentally ended up snapping off one of them.. at this point I was getting aggravated and instead of trying to trim them to length with a knife under the car I just snapped all 4 of the longer legs off and called it a day - it slid right through the shifter hook-up and once the E-Clip snapped into place it seemed like a pretty solid fix. I probably should've tried to snap it on from the top or spun it around (anal - i know lol) but at this point I was tired and figured good enough for now ;)

Maybe I'll actually get to enjoy some sports-mode or manual shifting this weekend without fear of getting stranded! ;)

3 Year Anniversary

Well it's hard to believe by today it's been 3 years exactly since I picked up my Pontiac G8 GT #470 out the First 888 series. Is it me, or as you get older do the years really fly by FAST? It's been quite the journey, especially the disastrous last year but I'm optimistic that's all behind me.

What's also sad is that looking back many familiar faces in the community who had been involved moving on to other vehicles etc. Luckily a lot of them, if they move to a Camaro or new Ford Mustang tend to stick around over on GRRRR8.net, but with others you just can't help but wonder where they disappeared to - for instance, where did the infamous 'Penguin' go? Also then there's the inevitable wrecks.. Dwindling numbers on a car that's no longer being made is pretty depressing - especially from a mod-market perspective.

Anyway - My , what i'll call 'lifter tick', issue seems to have corrected itself after Charlie suggested I'd at least get an oil change with some quality oil instead of whatever the muffler shop who installed my Magnaflow 12468 decided to throw in.I did and it's been a few weeks now and it sounds much better.

Here's some videos of a cold start :

And after a 30 minute drive:

 As you can tell the TAP TAP TAP TAP is gone and now it sounds much more like it should (best way to describe is it sounds like a 'Rolling R' sound).

As far as what this year will bring - not much I'm afraid - the mod money is basically dried up so I have to pace myself. I still have a wishlist of several things like getting a Bear Brake Kit and some kind of supercharger. I've been going back & forth between  Maggie or the EdelBrock E-Force/Harrop Stealth-Force for it's OEM Look. I sorta discounted the Pro-Charger setups because of the AirIntake location eventhough for my needs (daily commuter car) it's behavior actually would probably be a better fit. Then WreckWriter on GRRRR8 posted this little nugget and all of a sudden I'm back at square one, because IMHO this, with maybe the cog-drive upgrade, would look BADASS on a G8!

But I've got plenty of time to make up my mind at this pace ;)

30,000 miles

Well today I'll be hitting 30,000 Miles - of course this doesn't mean much since barely anything bar the block itself is stock (so I've probably only got around a 1000 miles on this current setup). I've had my car back now for about 4 months and I recently made it a little more quiet with the extra mid-muffler. I'm not sure if this is the cause for me paying more attention to the noises coming from the engine, but a LOT of people have been writing about bad lifters recently so any sound instantly becomes suspicious. I decided to record a few clips of my car on my phone (not the best quality) so you can hear how quiet it is in car, but how loud the engine is (then again it IS a 403 Stroker with a pretty chunky cam) and a noise which has been bothering me.

Here's a video of it when first started in the morning - there's is a distinct knocking/tapping sound (which I guesstimate to be 4 times a second )I am concerned about but it usually goes away (or at least seems to lessen) when warmed up.It also seems to be slightly louder on the drivers side. Perhaps (hopefully) it's just the valvetrain echoing in the headers.

Next up is one driving down the street after getting in - you can tell vaguely that same sound is present (hard to tell in the video) but overall you can tell how quiet it is inside the car. (yeah I know it's rotated 90 degrees - sorry about that ;) ) I accelerate slowly near the end (last 5-10 seconds) and you can hear the tapping turning into more of a gurgling noise. You can see also that my oil pressure is doing quite well at 4-5+ lines at practically idle

Lastly a video of what the car sounds like after a 20 minute drive - you can tell it has smoothed out a bit, but still sounds pretty 'unpolished'; again I know i'm running quite a setup here and I'm just paranoid about any noises.Oil pressure at idle sits at 4 lines on the display so that's nice & strong.

Anyway so far i'm still really happy with my car and just hope that these noises are 'normal' for my setup and that I don't have a case of lifter eating cam-shaft like others have had..

Update 3/14: Here's another sample that shows the sound at cold start on the inside... sounds like a sewing machine/machine gun