2004 Turbo Regal intro - Dave

[dezldave961]

It's buttoned up and running, with some typical bugs to address...
- Squeak somewhere in accessories that I'm chasing down
- MAF coupler not staying on due to being sized for the larger LQ4 I'm not tuned for, yet (LS/LT1 style currently)
- Aeroforce OBD2 gauge somehow disconnected while setting up oil and boost gauges

Got TurboGuard in and installed as minimal protection for now...

Special delivery from Australia just arrived, for custom appearance project that it'll get once it's behaving & I have time...

(Hint: a 1/4" sheet of Lexan is sitting just out of frame)

 

[dezldave961]

Found the squeak (PCV drawing too hard from valve covers, swapped to open breather on catch can)... might actually mean my old ring gap was a bit worn despite only having 60-70k on the previous engine, since these fresh 67k cylinders look so good.

New throttle cable arrives at O'Reilly's tomorrow, and I'll start street tuning tomorrow night (my 2010 cal is still going strong, but we'll see what needs tweaking as I turn it back up). VMP below Richmond has a TnT on Friday that I'm aiming for.

 

[dezldave961]

Haven't done too much on the Regal since getting the new refresh going this fall. Tried a track trip in Nov, but it rained and I barely got a single shakedown pass, did 12.0-something after pushing thru the beams trying to load the new 3500 stall up.

Then, driving to work a bit since then it got louder... Flex blew out on downpipe, possibly from new angle I have engine at for lowering on coilovers. $275 or so ZZP part soon...

Next up was/is my 2006 Grand Prix GXP transmission that finally died at 142k (same basic 4T65e-HD as the Regal, with TapShift but no aftermarket parts besides a Transgo kit). Going to do fresh gaksets all around the engine, and drop in a new-to-me junkyard trans while adding a 2nd cooler.

This will be a big relief to get going again, because it's a great daily car and my truck has been getting too many miles on it. Fighting the urge to drop ~$2-3k to mod it up with heads/cam/headers/etc. that are available, because it's not the platform I wanna keep spending money on. It'd be kinda fun to have a ~450hp daily in this configuration, though, so if I still have it in a year, maybe.

 

[dezldave961]

No idea what happened to the images since my last update, but none of those pics since mid-page1 are mine. (website database freak-out?)

Anywho, might start a fresh post when I get the latest round of updates back on the road.

 

[Jon Early]

That is really odd. I noticed some of my older pictures are gone too.

 

[MikeS]

How is the spool with a 72mm turbo and 3500 converter? I see you're using hp tuners, is this using the stock ecm? Great build.

 

[dezldave961]

Spool was fine, and actually pretty snappy with the longer runner Holden intake. I'm now running the 67mm again with the Holden, to see how it performs. Might swap back to the 72mm once I've got this one optimized, to see if there's a difference. The T4 exhaust turbine A/R is the main thing determining spool characteristics and such, and I've stayed in the ~0.68 realm for that. I may jump to a turbo with 0.8 A/R or higher once I'm pushing harder.

I've been using my old DHP PowrTuner (2002-7 era 3800-specific tuner, with similar old clunky cable hardware as EFILive), along with now having HPTuners as a more modern option that I'll shift to eventually... so Yes, the stock PCM for Series 2 & 3 cars from 1998-2007 is very useable for tuning (1996-7 is still in the OBD 1-2 hybrid realm with limited mapping by tuning options, and 2008 was when they got fully CANBUS'd and even HPTuners didn't try too hard to map it).