T Type Century Wagon

[MNcarbturbo]

Wagon still isn't swapped. Been just driving it as is in between working on my 2+2. It runs so good that it's tough to justify taking apart until it's winter. I have been slowly hoarding parts here and there. Grabbed a 200R4 crossmember and turbo and heat shield.

Also decided to abandon the LC2 dash swap. The guy with a SBC swapped rusty 84 GN in town decided to not part the car out. Good news is I robbed the fiber optic speed sensor and VSS buffer out of my 2+2 (since it's LS and DBW with a t56 it didn't need it anyways). I am pretty sure it will fit in my stock 80 cluster and feed the ECM everything it needs for DCFCO and TC lockup.

I did redo the headliner. My glue was about 6 years old and must have been going bad, it's already sagging in the rearmost piece after the first day in the sun. Not sure if I am going to be able to peel it off again and reglue it or if I will have to buy more fabric and do it again.

Other problems, trying to find my return fuel line situation. Have an earls saginaw line to AN adaptor and tried a AN 90 but it was too wide of a bend. Got a hydro JIC -6 90 but its also too tall. Anybody have a solution to getting a return line on the stock FPR? Hits the coolant crossover about 3/8 too tall. I could resort to having my TIG welder guy cut the hex out of the adapter and butt welding the halves together or just welding a female 90 AN line directly to this adaptor fitting but if something is available off the shelf I'd like to go that direction.

 

[Tim_D]

Other problems, trying to find my return fuel line situation. Have an earls saginaw line to AN adaptor and tried a AN 90 but it was too wide of a bend. Got a hydro JIC -6 90 but its also too tall. Anybody have a solution to getting a return line on the stock FPR? Hits the coolant crossover about 3/8 too tall. I could resort to having my TIG welder guy cut the hex out of the adapter and butt welding the halves together or just welding a female 90 AN line directly to this adaptor fitting but if something is available off the shelf I'd like to go that direction.

Is a stock return line an option? If so, you can cut it along a straight section in the steel tubing and add an AN compression fitting to it. It did this for both the feed and return lines in my '64.

 

[liquidh8]

I cut a stainless -6 an fitting and welded it directly to the regulator with stainless filler.

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[mikemcvaney]

You are definitely talented

 

[MNcarbturbo]

Well the swap was kicked off this weekend. Actually the first running driving car I have ever pulled the engine on so it was a bit tough for me to yank it but I had enough with under 100 hp.

Coming out

Made a frame extension for the 2004r crossmember

Overhead upside down welding sucks but its burned in

And wouldn't you know it

 

[MNcarbturbo]

Found a sport coupe hood off FB marketplace, it has some Bondo but the hoods aren't easy to find and I got it for $75. I'll have to study gun weld and pull that dent area and do some body work.

Also got a center console missing the lid and the turbo dash cluster. Not sure if I'll swap seats to buckets and put the console in but I'll for sure put the turbo dash cluster in.

 

[MNcarbturbo]

Also dropped the tank and put in the Astro van efi sender and a walbro 255.

 

[liquidh8]

Looking good

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[MNcarbturbo]

Put an AN tube adaptor on the 3/8 feed line and did some rewiring of the astro sender

Tanks back in

Pulled the trans pan

Its a "low performance" CRF code 2004r that came out of my 86 GP 2+2. I am going to cut the governor down to BRF specs and change the filter and put it back in. Yeah it should be rebuilt and should have this and that but ohh well. It also got a D9 converter out of the same 305 SBC Grand Prix. At least its a 4.1 with a stock turbo so I'm not totally going to get killed with lag.

And thats not good news. Trans only had 60k on it but hasn't moved a car since 1998. The 2+2 also pulled a boat in texas in the late 80's according to the previous owner so we will see if it moves. I idled it around the block behind the LS2 in my 2+2 before I swapped it to T56 so i know it at least had 1st gear and reverse in idle

Found a rough but complete 78 sport coupe with the turbo dash cluster. Going to take the clock out of this dash and put the clock delete plate out of the existing dash in the wagon and put a $40 summit tach in place of the clock.

Don't know what I want to do for the boost gage since green yellow orange light is useless and i dont have the switches under the hood to control it, but i dont want to cut that gage pod apart.

 

[turbo39151]

Great build! Sounds like a fun project. I like to see the innovation in making parts work the way you want them to. Can wait to see more progress...

 

[MNcarbturbo]

Anyone want to teach me how to calibrate the cam sensor?

I read the vortex buicks method using a volt meter.

I don't have voltage to the harness yet so i built a jumper harness putting 12V to the red wire and ground to the back wire. I should see the 0-2 to 12V switch at some point when probing between the blue signal wire and ground. I see a 0 to .2V switch.

The only time I can see a 0 to 12 volt switch is when i probe between the 12V hot in and the signal wire.

What an I doing wrong? I pulled the sensor out of the car to bench test.

This is what I get when I do the correct method probing between the signal wire with my red lead and the ground lead with the black lead of the meter.

This is the cam sensor with the reluctor wheel gap positioned perfectly in between the pickup sensor of the cap, 0 volts

Turned the sensor 90 degrees and I get .2 volts

I get the correct behavior mentioned in the how to when i use the "incorrect method" and probe between 12V hot in and the signal wire out.

The logic of the sensor I understand is to turn 12V on and off which the PCM reads through that blue wire, I never see voltage across that blue wire when measured to the ground. It seems like this sensor is switching between the blue and red wire, where it should be switching between the blue and black wires.

Thoughts? Bad sensor?

I wanted to get this sensor in position now when the radiator and intercooler is out to make easy access.

 

[MNcarbturbo]

I admitted the factory cam sensor cap was shot, bought a caspers LED one and changed that out, tests good now.

Dropped the factory open 2.73 with leaking wheel cylinders and put in a posi 3.08 with aluminum drums I had from my 2+2.

Bought another cluster. I needed an 81-83 speedometer with VSS port since neither my 80 factory cluster or 78 turbo regal cluster had the provision. This will allow me to run the stock TCC lockup wiring using the VSS buffer through the ECM. I am going to swap stuff from one speedometer to another to make a turbo spec cluster for 78-83 cars work with my 80 dash and 87 GN ECM.

Fished around parts stores to get the turbo oil feed fittings, had to trim it a bit to clear the block!

And bolted the dog house, throttle body, turbo, fuel rails, ect on. Went with some GTP white 37 lb injectors I had laying around since my stock GN injectors I got with the fuel rail were all rusty.

I also vinegar soaked my fuel rail to get the stubborn rust out. I might end up plugging injectors down the road for how bad it was, but I'll give it a shot.

That was clean when I started....

 

[MNcarbturbo]

Intercooler and the piping is done, vacuum hoses are plumbed, throttle and TV cable are hooked up. Got lucky and the stock 3.8 throttle cable was too short but I found the V8 cable from my 2+2 I removed this summer and swapped that over. Perfect length!

Bad news I was going to use the stock tiny 3.8 radiator for the time being and use the intrepid electric fans but I can't. Old rad is too narrow and the upper rad hose isn't close to fitting. I have planned to put a real better dual pass LS swap radiator in the 2+2 for some time but I think that will move up in the schedule. Remove 2 year old f body rad from 2+2 and drop that in this car, buy better rad for the 2+2.

Basically just have the engine wiring to fuse box plug thing to figure out 80 to 87 harness, exhaust, and radiator and fans to finish up under the hood, along with the maf intake tube I have to buy.

I also need to get a 37 or 42 lb injector chip either bought used or order a new one from TT.

I'll have to do it interior stuff like dash and radio wiring next. Yay..... Fun.....

Hopefully have the car moving late next week.

 

[MNcarbturbo]

Been picking away at the small stuff, got the fuel line adapers for m14 Saginaw to -6 to stop leaking finally and built an intake tube for the filter.

Soldered the 80 century wiring harness bulkhead connector to the GN harness and had to route a separate fuse panel under the hood for some stuff the fuse box under the dash didn't have provisions for.

Parted out my 2+2 since I needed a radiator and bought an LS swap style dual pass for that car.

I need to wire and mount the intrepid electric fan and finish up some other random small stuff like the crank case vent to the turbo inlet Bell, tie some wires down and connect the down pipe to the exhaust cat back portion.

Then its on to the dash!

Good news is it ran for like 20 seconds today and made 60psi of oil pressure so my home built engine at least makes pressure.

 

[MNcarbturbo]

Had an exhaust leak on the drivers manifold I didn't realize was caused by a crack so I welded that up. Had some MAF issues with the one marked good being bad and the one marked bad being good I had to deal with, and my vacuum brake booster vacuum block showed up so I swapped that. Wired the fans and got a start on the gage cluster.

Car runs good, my only issue is it's blowing a lot of white/grey smoke out the exhaust. It smells rich too which I account to the 36lb gtp injectors being used on the stock chip, but the white smoke is an issue. I remember it smoking even when I didn't have coolant in the block when I was running it for 5-10 seconds at a time diagnosing bad mafs. A little smoke might be present from running rich but this is enough that if you let it run for 15 seconds in the garage with the doors closed it will smoke you out.

The heads and block deck didn't look cracked either and unless I got a wrong gasket I don't now what I'm missing off hand.

I've gotta do some more research and see if one of my header tubes is running cold from coolant getting in. It's my third 3.8 build so I'm not saying I didn't forget something but I remember doing everything I've done before during the rebuild and nothing has jumped out in my memory as I screwed that up.

If it was easy everyone would do it.

 

[TurboSkunk15]

awesome project

 

[MNcarbturbo]

Fit the 78-83 style turbo regal dash in the car and retrofitted a bosch tach into the clock housing.

Found out the dipstick wasnt seating all the way into the block since the turbo manifolds spaced the stock carbbed dipstick I reused and it was 3/4" out of the block so full on the hash mark was actually overfull, so I think I have a quart of extra oil in the engine which might be attributing to the white smoke haze this thing has.

I just have to fit the DIN1.5 radio and rewire the aftermarket garbage speaker setup from 79 and wrap up the dash by installing the bezels.

Got a chip for 42lb injectors on the way, just need to get an adjustable FPR and it's ready to start driving I think, I guess that is when the frozen tundra gives way to spring, which might be a stretch.

 

[MNcarbturbo]

It lives!

Been dealing with plugged injectors which sucks, but since am using l67 injectors and I had 2 sets from my supercharged 3800 days and my buddy has like 2 or 3 sets from his l67 fiero they are kind of dispensable. I have plugged 2 so far, if I plug another one I am going to have to find a non rusty fuel rail. I thought my vinegar bath did a good job but im sure theres some leftover particulate in thats small enough to get through the injector filters but causing the injector needles to stick open.

In other news I took the car for a short drive up and down the block. The car idles and starts great but under load it coughs and sputters until it gets past a certain point and then it clears up and runs better. I just can't do much in the 5% to 60% throttle range.

I am sure I have a bad sensor somewhere and don't have a scanmaster so I have to pick one up and wire my check engine light up and see if I have any codes and calibrate my TPS and other tuning related things. Good news is the excessive smoke went away since it was raw fuel and the car gets up to temp, the fans work, and it starts and idles nice. If I can get the in gear shudder solved I will be in business.

Idle is good, put it in gear and its fine but give it any throttle and it starts shuddering, it stays running most of the time but often dies. If I put it back in park and tap the throttle it revs up to 2500 for maybe 3-5 seconds and then slowly idles back down to 850 rpm and idles great. Do the same procedure of putting it in gear and getting in the throttle and it starts running rough again. Put it in park and tap the throttle and it revs up, cleans up, and idles back down to a normal, smooth idle. I can rev it in park to 2 or 3k RPM and it runs awesome still, but put it in gear under load and it goes into rough running again.

 

[liquidh8]

Just caught up a little bit, keep plugging away, you'll get it.

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[turbo39151]

You've already done the hard part. You're almost there!!

Looks great so far. Can't wait to hear about the surprises you hand out when the car is running properly.