99 Denali

[Snowbound]

Well, not a very productive day. Monday's usually aren't for me. Being that I work midnights, come weekends I stay up all day Friday to try and get on somewhat of a normal routine. So that means I wake up Sunday morning and usually don't get any sleep before heading in to work Sunday night. So by Monday morning I'm up over 24 hrs and it makes it hard to concentrate on the task at hand.

That being said, I did get my header drilled for wideband O2 sensor and bung welded in place.







But as far as being tired, I had a brain fart while welding. I tacked bung in place and then attempted to burn it in. The weld was spitting and splattering and I'm like what the hell. Checked to make sure gas was on, it was. Try again, same thing. Ok maybe a bad ground. Move it, try again. Same thing. Grind on pipe, now I know I have good ground. Same thing. What the..... Am I out of shielding gas? No. Then I look down and I must have dragged the wire feed hose over the speed setting. It was turned up to 8! Set it down to 3.5 and wow, what a difference that makes. Dumb ass. So the weld is a little fatter than I wanted but that's because I had to go over the splatter. Oh well, it's only temporary and it's not gonna leak so end result is, it's done. For now.
Hit it with some high temp ceramic paint and scratched that off the list.

 

[Snowbound]

Then I pulled the fans back off but I did get a pic of what they look like mounted.



Then I pulled radiator to make room to slide cam out. Next I pulled water pump and front crank pulley. Installed my dampener puller, sprayed the threads with WD40 and started pulling the balancer. Damn puller stripped the threads out of it after moving balancer about 1". Damn mondays!! So then I looked at clearance for cam removal and sure enough, I have to move condenser about 1.5". So the turn signals came out and the front grille came off. That's about where I left it. I was seeing double and haven't had anything to eat since Sunday afternoon so went and ate and off to bed at about 3:30-4. I was searching for my camshaft degree kit but I couldn't find it. I'm wondering who borrowed it and didn't return it.

Looking at my pics I don't think I posted this yet. When I was talking with LEXTECH about his truck, I asked him if he would send me a pic of his custom made headers. He's running twins and I wish I had a picture of his engine bay. It looks really good. But here's his headers. He did an awesome job on these.



My EBay turbo headers showed up Saturday. Guys, I gotta say, I think the old lady is gonna kill me sooner than later. Every time the brown Santa shows up and drops a package she turns a different shade of red. Doesn't help that the boxes keep getting bigger and bigger. This was suppose to be just an intake swap. Yeah, well, poop happens.

Anyway, box showed up and I don't have a tig welder at the house so I threw the headers in the truck and drove to my buddy Carl's house for some beer chuggin and a little surgery.

The headers are actually very well made. I was surprised but happy. They came with flanges to bolt up turbo right to header.



I'm not doing twins, I'm doing a single hair dryer so I cut off the flanges and welded on V-band connectors.



I have to go off this because I need to plumb in my wastegate and also merge the two together before going into turbo. But this will be saved for a later day.

 

[Snowbound]

I was running yesterday from when I got off work until 5pm. Went to Pepboys for some paint, brake clean, oil filter, oil pan gasket and header gaskets. The last set I got from there and they actually were really good and about half cost of going to speed shop. Got everything except header gaskets, they didn't have them. That was the whole reason I drove cross town. So I hit Autozone on my way back home and they didn't have anything worth while either. I went to Harbor Freight and grabbed some split loom for wiring and some rope for tying down a tarp. On my way out to the truck I got a call from machine shop. Heads are done. All the way back across town again and picked them up. Came home after running thru fast food drive thru, I was starving, and some more parts showed up. Camshaft, degree wheel, injectors and injector pigtails. So I started going at it. My phone was dying, I'm almost out of memory and I didn't have time to grab the go pro, I was on a mission. Next thing I know it's 5pm and I have to get up for work at 9:30 and still needed a shower. I must love being tired.

When I came home this morning I realize how much I did get done. Cam is swapped, heads are on, lifters in, intake on, pushrods in, all rockers except for #1 cylinder. I'll explain later.





I didn't degree the cam today. I need my crank turning tool. Someone had to of borrowed my degree kit. Everything is gone. I had to order new wheel, piston stop and checking springs. Springs aren't here yet and I just realized today that I don't have my crank turning tool that the degree wheel attaches to. Sum ******!! I'll compromise if I have to but it's ordered. In the meantime I replaced heater hoses, broke the damn diverter valve that bypasses heater core. I'll get a new one coming. I bolted condenser and trans cooler back in, mounted my A-pillar gauge pods, pulled all my battery cables (gonna replace them), and bolted on the headers. I also painted the water pump, radiator brackets and some bolts.

Wrapped it up at 11:30 this morning. I'm gonna go get some sleep since I only got 3.5 hrs yesterday. More stuff will be here today and I'll get back out there later until I have to go to work.

 

[Tonyrodz]

Damn! Doing a good job. You got a lot done. Soon! Real soon!

 

[Snowbound]

Damn! Doing a good job. You got a lot done. Soon! Real soon!

Can't come soon enough. AFR gauge showed up and so did fittings for FPR but FPR didn't show yet. I didn't make it back out to garage, I got 8.5 hrs of sleep. I feel more tired than I do with 4hrs of sleep. I usually run on about 5hrs a day.
At any rate, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do about timing cover. I'm pretty much at my spending cap for this portion of the project. EFI Connections has a plastic cover with sensor hole but the mounting flange is aluminum and is suppose to seal and not leak. It's $125 vs $350 for their billet aluminum one. But the billet cover allows the conversion to 24x for coil near plug and also ability to run a double roller. I'd hate to drop oil pan again, but I'm debating using cover I just took off (seal is good) and RTV the shit out of it or buy the $125 cover that will ultimately be replaced at some time in the future. I'm tired of being held up by parts, so I might just run with the original cover. If it leaks, gives me a reason to convert to coil near plug.

I'm making up my battery cables and grounds and I'll be able to get them back on in morning. Also I'm going to wire up the injectors and loom everything in morning. I couldn't get stock FPR off the fuel rail so I searched for another way. I was going to buy fuel rail extrusions (just blank fuel rails with 5/8" passage) and have them machined for injectors in correct locations. But I came across Edelbrock 3630 fuel rails that seem to be the right fit. It's for their ProFlo intake that fits the L31 engine so injectors should be right above intake runners. We shall see. I'll have to make a mounting bracket and get fittings and a jumper line from one rail to the next but at least injectors will be in and wired. I have a "to do" list and I'm slowly scratching things off it. At least I'm in the going back together stages. Still need to order my tuning software. As always, to be continued........

 

[Snowbound]

Sorry for the lack of updates this weekend. I kinda had a drunk fest all weekend. Long story short, I'm a part of another forum for a K5 GMC Jimmy I'm building and a member on there that I always talk with was moving from Michigan to Denver CO and since we've never met in person he swung by and we just sat around knocking a few back. I did manage to get some stuff done Friday and Saturday before he came over.
So I did manage to get cam dialed in. When I got the camshaft it didn't come with a cam card to give me the specs I needed to dial it in. Spent some time searching for specs and I did find them. This might be boring for some of you but here's how I set cam. It's a process to degree it in correctly but with the right tools and know how it's not hard.

First, set timing gears dot to dot. Crank gear dot straight up at 12 o'clock and turn cam so dowel pin is at 3 o'clock and when you install chain and cam gear both cam and crank dots should be facing each other. Sorry, no pic because no room on phone. I did end up getting the go pro out for the other pics.

Install degree wheel and pointer and make sure pointer is at 0* @TDC.



To make sure you are really at TDC, turn engine counter clockwise to about 40* and install a piston stop. Now slowly turn engine back until piston hits the stop and record the reading on wheel. Mine was at 12*. Rotate engine counter clockwise again all the way around until piston contacts stop again. Record reading. Now add the first reading to the second reading and divide by 2. Example 12* + 16* = 28 / 2 = 14. Slightly bend pointer to 14* on wheel and rotate engine back around and make sure piston stops at 14. Now when you remove piston stop and rotate engine to TDC on the wheel you are truly at TDC. I was perfect at 12* on both sides so I didn't have to adjust pointer but I have on other engines so you need to make sure your TDC is truly at TDC. You can do this with heads on or off so I won't go into great detail here. Any questions just ask or you can easily look it up.

So now I turn engine and watch dial indicator until it stops moving and starts going the opposite direction. Turn it back until you are at the top of the lobes lift and zero the indicator. Rotate it until you are at .050" and read the degree wheel. This is where the cam card comes into play because it gives you the readings where you should be at .050" lift.





My reading was 1* BTDC which is what my specs are on the cam. Then check .050" before valve closes and record that reading.





I was at just before 39* and that is right at spec also. So I didn't have to change anything. My cam was right at spec. Never had that happen before. Usually I'm drilling the cam gear and installing degree bushings where the dowel pin goes thru gear. My crank gear has 3 different slots for adjusting 3* in either direction but I don't have to utilize it. The bushings in cam gear allow smaller adjustments for fine tuning.

Then I checked piston to valve clearance and I was at .236" and can be as close as .100" on exhaust and .080 on intake so I do have room to go to 1.6 rockers for jump from .492" lift to .525" lift. I may go back and do that later.

 

[Snowbound]

After cam was done I ended up using cover I removed. I did silicone the snot out of it so hopefully it won't leak as bad. Bolted on front brackets, balancer, front pulley, power steering pump and pulley, alternator, adjusted valves, set valve covers in place and spliced in injector pigtails. I soldered everything and used heat shrink to ensure a good connection. Fuel rails showed up and they seem to work. Injector placement is right but I need to make a custom fuel rail hold down which I should have done in the next day or two. Fittings for rails are ordered and FPR showed up today so I should have that mounted along with distributor today. Then I'll get radiator back in along with fans. Oh, I did wire in relays for fans also. I'll get pics of all that today.



My list still consists of
Distributor
Radiator
Fans and shroud
Plugs and wires
Cap and rotor
Wire in plugs on trans switch
Tighten oil pan
Change filter
Add oil and coolant
Remove upper intake and drill for vacuum ports
Little wire loom and tape
Wire in gauges
Add 30A breakers before fan relays
Calibrate O2 sensor
Install grille and lights

Think I can get most of this done today. To be continued......

 

[Snowbound]

My list
Distributor Done
Radiator In
Fans and shroud On
Plugs and wires Heat shields on
Cap and rotor On
Wire in plugs on trans switch Done
Tighten oil pan Tight
Change filter
Add oil and coolant
Remove upper intake and drill for vacuum ports Pulled
Little wire loom and tape 1/2 done
Wire in gauges Wires pulled
Add 30A breakers before fan relays
Calibrate O2 sensor
Install grille and lights

Today I'll finish this list. But I also have to squeeze in my sons pinewood derby car sometime before weigh in on Friday. Just woke up from a nap, let's go see what I can get done. I'll report back later.

Oh yeah, picture. Let me see. These will have to work.

 

[Snowbound]

Had a few issues that needed to be dealt with. Front fuel crossover line has clearance issues with radiator hose, and throttle cable bracket. Had to order different fittings to get around things. The vacuum lines needed some rerouting. I still need to plumb in and mount the vent solenoid for the charcoal canister. I added a vacuum port for the brake booster and got the upper intake back on. Still working on a bracket to secure the fuel rails. Gauges are in and wired. Just need to tie one wire in to headlight switch that will dim the AFR gauge. Plugs are in, wires are on one side, I had an issue with cap and rotor. I ordered cap and rotor from Amazon, said they were brass terminals and they aren't. They are aluminum but I was gonna put it on just for now but it doesn't even fit right. Cheap Chinese shit. Accel parts ordered with brass terminals. Most wiring is taped and covered. A few minor details and I'll be ready to fire it up. I still have to make a bracket to mount FPR too. These little things won't take long, but I'm still waiting on fittings. I'll have everything wrapped up this weekend and as soon as fuel lines can get connected, I'll be able to start it. I'll be sure to get a video of first start. Picture coming. Won't load in garage.

 

[Tonyrodz]

Man! You're a man on fire now! Seems like you're making great progress. Think it'll be running by next weekend?