First GN

[IH8FORD]

Ok I have 2 f-bodys a 97 z-28 with a 383 and a 99 SS with a 408. I have been building these cars for about 10 years now. Now I have a my first GN project that I am helping a friend build. The poor car is rough and needs a lot of TLC.

I have several questions about this car.
1. The valve train is very noisy is this a common problem?
2. The car seems to not make any power, Maybe the cat.
3. I think i hear a rod knock or main bearing going out in the bottom end. Is this in the bottom end or could it possibly be the tranny since I know it is losing 3/4?

Our plans are to Build a nice trans. get a stall. I am going to rebuild the engine back stock with the exception of maybe a cam. We basically want a real good driver w/ possibly a small turbo and exhaust upgrade.

Any help will be appreciated. And any preferred type of cam, turbo, stall and tuning method ie. a chip or maybe a fast set-up would help since I dont know what the best products are out there for these cars.

 

[qwksht]

Sounds like time for a rebuild...No power,knocking bottom end,noisy valvetrain?..Time to take it apart,my motor was doing the same thing,had a spun rod bearing,complete rebuild time....

 

[IH8FORD]

Kind of what i figured just didnt want him to spend a bunch of extra money unnecessarily. the car supposedly had the engine rebuilt about 15000 miles ago.

 

[IH8FORD]

Anyone have any good suggestions for a cam and exaust?

 

[DJ Red Barron]

First, welcome to the board.

Next, what I would recommend is to do a lot of searches and reading. This place is full of very valuable info on just about every possible build configuration you can imagine, and there are a lot of options. Cam, exhaust, turbos, intercoolers, radiators, transmission setups, stalls...... Pretty much everything you can imagine from the absolute most basic item to the big ticket stuff like stage motors... The info is here.

I am not trying to be rude in the least, so please don't take it that way. But I learned that folks here are a lot more apt to help answer questions after you have exhausted the search feature considering that many of the basic things you will probably look for are archived throughout the forums. So far, I think out of the thousands of questions I've had, only maybe twice have I needed to start a thread asking for info I couldn't find already posted in a previous thread.


As far as the two items you have already asked about, I have no good answers for a cam. However, my car is pretty mildly modded and I went with a Pypes cat-back exhaust. It's not overly pricey, sounds good and seems to flow very well. Summit Racing was my source.

Good luck with the new build & enjoy the board!

 

[IH8FORD]

I have done some searching and wanted some of the latest
Tech as far as cams go I know through building ls powered cars that sometimes what you find is some out of date info. But I knew before I posted that someone was going to reply with" try a search " lol.