What's new
By:
TurboTransAm.com

Register today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members.

What have I done...lately

Yours heads have been off before and appear to have "nail head" valves in them versus the stock tulip vavles. If I had to guess your springs appear to be LT1 Z28 springs which are a common and affordable upgrade for our cars. The only reason I say this is your heads look just like mine now. Below is a link to my PB account with pics of my fresh heads from the machine shop.

camaroguy1969/Turbo TA Heads - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
 
Explain "nail head" vs tulip? These also have the intake style seals on both the intakes and exhaust valves, which from my understanding, should only have seals on the intake stems.
 
Well? The cam finally arrived! Apparently these aren't just in inventory, they are built when ordered. And that held up the bearings too. The crank checked out fine and spec'd near perfect so I had someone with more experience then me install the bearings and set the thrust bearing. I have the heads back on too. Now if I can find some time I can get this thing back together and see the fruits of my labor before snow flys.
 
Tulip valves have a recessed "cup" on the bottom of the valve where as the nail head valves are just flat like a nail head. The cup in the valve aids in keeping the compression ratio low. Check out the link below for a picture of some Manley tulip valves. You can also do a google image search for them as well.

http://www.cas4.com/engine/valves/valve3.jpg
 
Your head bolts are ARP correct, id hate to hear the TTY headbolts being used 3 times.... They probably wouldnt do the trick :)

Definitely use the shims for the torque convertor if there is too much slop between the flywheel and the nubs that come out of the convertor.

Dont push the convertor back or you will end up prematurely wearing out the convertor axial bearing.
 
After a couple of problems, I got it all buttoned up and hung back on the cherry picker. From there I had it set in and bolted down in about 15 minutes. But that's where it sits for now, hopefully I'll get a few hours this weekend to get it everything plugged back in and fire it up.

The problems were that the oil pump has had a high volume plate and gears installed and I didn't use the right thickness of gasket and the gears were bound up on the bottom plate. Solved that... but upon cleaning the headers up I did indeed find a crack on the inside of #2 at the flange and I had a day or two wrapped up in that. I'm now waiting on the new alternator that I totally forgot about needing(mine has a bad bearing), but I mocked up all the accessories using the old one for now, so I could put the engine down fully assembled, serpentine belt and all.

Head bolts...I didn't re-use the originals, but I didn't opt for studs either. rather I bought new Federal Mogul TTY bolts as a kit for the turbo 3.8's.
Reason I chose them is two fold, one I'm running no more than 20-22 psi, as I was on the originals and the headgaskets weren't a bit abused. Secondly, I was feeling particularly cheap when I made the decision, truth be told.

Now that I'm nearly finished and the money has been spent, I suppose the extra $200 may have been well spent for the piece of mind studs provide. Too late now....
 
The TTA head bolts are different lengths than the GN's...

Did you stand a head on its side and shove all the bolts thru to make sure they were the correct length?

Im not trying to worry you, i just have never personally used the aftermarket TTY bolts on a TTA motor.

I just went and looked, i opened up a used set of TTA head bolts and they are different lengths than the new arp buick studs and new 12 point arp turbo buick bolts.

Are you sure the bolts dont protrude down farther into the water jacket than they should be? I believe this will not give you much clamping force no matter how low boost you run??????
BW
 
No, I ordered them through advance using the TTA as the application,sooooo? I don't know. I did not compare them, but I just chased all the threads and and used high temp thread sealant. I'm sure they extend into the water jackets, but still use the same amount of threads so I don't understand where the lack of clamp force comes into play. If the replacements were shorter? well then...

FWIW, I did hours of reading about head bolts,TTY, studs,gaskets and never a mention of TTA specific bolts or studs. Not that I doubt what your saying. But it's too late and I'll be the guinea pig on this.

I'm a pesamistic about this whole thing anyway, so this could be just one of many things that may go wrong. I just want to get back behind the wheel and flog it for the rest of the fall...or till it pops!
 
Hey, you know what, if it works and you can enjoy it, so be it right? :)

Here is the link ARP HEAD BOLTS - Turbo Trans Am Forum

I did compare the bolts, and they are different lengths.


Here are the 2 i am redoing right now as we speak,
1 in the back is a 4.1 and the close one is a 3.8 with caps and trw pistons, i have to order new dowel pins for both motors as im typing.

All i want to do is drive this car down the track and bust into the mid 10s.

BW
 
So it looks like I have 2 that are short, of the long ones. I certainly wasn't paying attention when I took them out of the box, but for what it's worth they all seemed to start threading at least an inch out from the top.

We'll see?
 
UPDATE: well it roared to life yesterday with only a couple glitches...so far...I forgot to fill the PS resevoir so it spent a few minutes of groaning till I realized what the noise was. and #5 plug wire wasn't seated on the plug and was throwing quite a light show of arcing to the steering shaft.

I took a bunch of extra time filling the block with anti freeze at the heater core tube so I wouldn't have to play the panicky fill the radiator game at 2200 RPM's.

So far no leaks but I only have just broken the cam in for 30 minutes and the car is still up in the air. Maybe today I can get it down and get it one the road for a little more break in and put it to the test...a little boost!

It's nice to not hear that lifter ticking and even nicer not hearing exhaust leaks!
 
I think I'm in the clear on this latest project. Took the afternoon off to tune a little and flog the crap out of it. So much so that I used one full tank of methanol and then some. I still have some false knock down in the low gears, under hard launch. Like 19.9 then it goes to 2.3 then 0.0 all the way up through 3rd then 4th at around 805-825 O2's at 110 MPH. I'm still at 17-18 PSI but it saw a lot of that today. It runs much cooler(not that it was too hot) now because I blew a whole bunch of lint out of the radiator when it was out. I'm still loading up at extended idle in gear, so I need to chase that down and this new cam is somewhat more tame than the old one.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top