Updated: December 01 2019
Diary | Costs | Disassembly Sequence | Cam Profiles | Introspective
| 4Nov05 | Discovered why the Trans-Am had been running poorly for the past three weeks. I pulled into the driveway today and noticed a flood of antifreeze coming from beneath the car. Apparently the water pump had been leaking on top of the Optispark distributor causing the engine to misfire. Hmmm... maybe now would be a good time for that engine rebuild! |
| 11Nov05 | Welp, I decided to go for it-- again. Backed the car into the garage and began disassembly. |
| 12Nov05 | Removed the hood, battery, throttle body, valve covers, drained and removed the radiator and a/c condenser. |
| 13Nov05 | Removed the remaining accessories and wiring on the front and top of the motor and transmission... |
| 16Nov05 | Removed the center console and shifter from the interior of the car. Turned the car around in the garage so the nose is pointed in (don't ask). |
| 19Nov05 | Pulled the motor with the transmission from the car from the top. |
| 20Nov06 | Did a cylinder leak-down test. Six cylinders were 80/80, the other two were 78/80. Those Total Seal Zero Gap rings held up well after 50,000 miles! Found 5 leaky exhaust valves though... Removed the cylinder heads and began engine teardown and inspection. |
| 22Nov05 | Made a trip to Dallas Exports (Stroker Motor) to have my pistons inspected before I re-use them. As I suspected-- they're fine! |
| 23Nov05 | Ordered a set of MAC headers from Jet-Hot coatings to replace the Borlas that I'm using now. |
| 27Nov05 | Spent the day removing the rings from the pistons, checking end gaps and cleaning engine parts. |
| 28Nov05 | Sent the ring set from cylinder number 7 to Total Seal for examination. |
| 1Dec05 | Spent the afternoon profiling the ZZ9 cam intake and exhaust lobes. Noticed that some of the cam lobes are spalled... crap! So much for selling this cam. I'll have to check the valve springs latter, I'll bet they're too strong. |
| 2Dec05 | The order from Summit & Jet-Hot arrived today! Headers, cam, plug wires, rod and main bearings are here. |
| ??? | My suspicions are confirmed: I measured the valve springs and discovered that they are too strong for a hydraulic roller cam. They'll have to be replaced with a more reasonable spring. |
| ??? | Made a trip to Stroker Motor to drop-off the cylinder heads for a performance valve-job. |
| ??? | Stayed up late profiling the new custom grind Comp Cams cam. |
| 3Dec05 | Spent the afternoon profiling the stock cam. I'll post the graphs of all 3 cam profiles in the near future. Should be interesting! If I can get my hands on some different cams I'll profile them too and post the results. |
| 5Dec05 | Spoke with Keith at Total Seal. My rings arrived there OK but he hasn't had a chance to look at them yet. Ordered a new A/C bracket and oil level sensor from Dal. |
| 7Dec05 | Spoke with Keith at Total Seal again today. Decided on a 'special' ring set for this motor. It's basically their Max Seal ring set (gapless top ring) with a 'special' Napier second ring for VERY aggressive oil control. |
| 9Dec05 | Made a trip to Stroker Motor today to drop-off the block for boring and honing and the rotating assembly for balancing. The valve guides in my cylinder heads are worn and will all be replaced with bronze guides. The valves are OK though! Jury's still out on the valve springs. |
| 15Dec05 | Made a trip to Stroker Motor again today with a set of rings and rod bearings so that they could be weighed for rotating assembly balancing. My cylinder heads are complete! Everything checked-out OK... even the valve springs. |
| 16Dec05 | Decided the pistons were not worth cleaning up and reusing. Ordered another set from Jeg's. |
| 22Dec05 | Delivered the new pistons to Stroker Motor today. Stayed up late playing around on the JE/SRP Web Site and realized that the new pistons -- and the pistons I had been running all along -- could potentially push the static compression ratio much higher than I had intended... to about 11.25:1. in fact! I was aiming for 10.0:1. I wouldn't be afraid of running 10.8:1 to 11.0:1 on the street, but I'm still planning on using a low boost supercharger(PowerDyne) on this car so I'm shooting for 10.0:1 max. |
