cruizin01

I wanted to update the progress on this turd bucket. Ive been driving the car a bit on and off and just wasn't happy with how the car drove. The throttle was super touchy and jerky. It just wasn't fun to drive. Along with the fact any cold start rev'd to nearly 3k rpm unless I loaded it with the clutch and or put it gear and used the brakes to slow it down. The tuner at ON3 thought the car not having a speed input into the ecu could be part of the problem. I talked to several other people that thought it should be a non issue, including the guy that built the harness and sold my my ECU. So eventually I just bit the bullet and bought another tune and HPTuners license through ZZP in Michigan. I sent him some logs and he confirmed he thought the car would do a lot better with a VSS signal. I started out by just buying a 2011 Regal manual speed sensor for a manual trans. But no matter what I did the ECU would not recognize the input from the sensor. HPTuners always registered the MPH at 158mph. I ran the vin from the ECU in the car and determined it was from and automatic car. The only thing I could think was the auto car was programmed to not see/sense the VSS input since it would normaly be wired up to a TCM module. I dug around on car-part.com and found a 2011 regal 2L manual in Toledo and bought a ECU for $30. I lucked out and it had the same OS system as my current OS. I had to buy 2 more HPTuners credit because the VIN was different...Whatever...I swapped it over, wired up the VSS sensor and it immediately showed 0 mph on the speedometer through HPTuners. DOPE! I had ZZP send me a base tune for it since I had already bought their "custom" tune service. The moment of truth came when I started the car.... It rev'd up to about 1800 and immediately fell back down to 1100 or so where the cold start RPM was set too. This was an exciting moment. So now came the trouble of trying to actually get an actual operating MPH reading into the ECU other than zero. The regal ECU expects a 3 wire input and the Solstice I have is a 2 wire sensor. I heard good things about the Dakota Digital SGi-100BT. So I bought it and emailed them for suggestions. They replied back right away and sent suggestions. I wired it as they said but couldn't get any input into the ECU. The DD box was seeing a signal but the ECU was not. I finally tried a different combination of wires and got it to work. What a relief! The Solstice trans now reads accurate speed into the regal ECU. Along with the VSS input I wanted to add a clutch position sensor so that the ECU could use the correct rolling idle, tables etc. I made up a crappy bracket and wired it up. The sensor rotates against the clutch spring but it works as designed. Finally yesterday I got a chance to drive the car with the new ecu, tune, working VSS and clutch sensor.... OMG it drives retardedly better. As soon as I pulled out of the driveway I could tell the difference. So much smoother. The new ZZP tune works night and day difference as well. And thats without any adjustments. I took the car out this morning and enjoy driving it so much more. Its the car I've been expecting since the start of the build. Just a couple of 2L turbo "german" coupes. They couldn't be more different. But both fun none the less.

If it would have just been me or me and my wife I probably would have done just that. But it helped being in a group of other people, pushing to move forward and find solutions.

I appreciate that. Im my own biggest critic and downplayer.

Very cool Tom, hope to see you this morning.

Yeah I know, its hard for me to get excited over too much. It is fun putting bus lengths on stock'ish cars and trucks in the other lane. I ran a 5th Camaro with slicks and it wasn't very close. I also ran a 306ci powered ranger with slicks and it fell behind pretty quickly. So thats fun. If you didn't know the times youd never know how much faster you should run. haha. We'll see. A 10.99 would be fun right? ;-)

Yeah for sure. I made up some tables in the holley to lean it out under boost and to add timing under boost as well. Im sure that'll put some more pep in it even before adding more boost. While Im sure the hydroboost would work better, I do have a late model mc and rear disk already. It stops great on the street and Im not looking to change things up just for the track. Ill see how the 2 step does and probably leave it alone with that. But thanks for the tip.

Thanks guys. I might be going back in a couple weeks with friends again. Im thinking Ill pull the air filter and make some adjustments to the tune to take advantage of the E85. I also had too much air in the tires so Ill see if I can leave a little harder on some softer tire pressure. Im sure there's probably another half second in there without leaning on it too much. Maybe take some ice with me to try and keep the intercooler that sits in the engine bay from reaching 9000 degrees.

My friends talked me into going to Trails last Wednesday night to make some passes in the C10. I had no idea what the truck would run since my last time out was on traction-less street tires and battling some hardware issues that have since been fixed. I have the truck setup for 2 step but I just wanted to baby step it to start, so I just foot braked it. My converter is a little tight so it doesn't come up too far before pushing through the brakes. My first couple passes I was easy on the throttle in 1st, just feeling out the traction. The ET Streets seemed to have plenty of grip. I was averaging low 12's. On my last pass I went WOT as soon as I came off the brake and didn't lose any traction which was pretty awesome. The truck ran a 11.98 @ 113mph. Still only managed a 1.8 60' but Im ok with that. I expect my 12 bolt axles are the weak link in the truck and I dunno how much more traction there is in a long bed truck anyway but we'll probably find out at some point. Now this time isn't really all that impressive for a turbo LS but Im pretty stoked with it. My intake and exhaust are really restrictive and Im sure that hurts the power. My A2W isn't really setup for sitting around the pits and making back to back pulls. I have it setup to pull some timing when the temps get as warm as they did. The truck is on E85 but I didn't make any changes to take advantage of it as far as lean it out or adding timing. So on 12psi on pump gas timing in a heavy truck I can't be mad. Anyway just thought Id share.

He wasn't overly surprised. Said they'd had a couple of them over the past few years catch fire. They dont actually own these machines. They are leased and insured through Polaris. So I dont think it affects them too much except they are down a unit until it gets replaced.

The guy at the rental office, was like "ya'll just havin' somma that West Virginian luck".. Yes, Yes we are.

Last years trip seemed to be a fun topic so I figure Id post about our trip this year. We stayed at the same place down in Crumpler WV. Its near Ashland Resorts if anyones been there. We rented a Polaris RZR 1000 for 2.5 days. We planned to ride from Thursday afternoon through Saturday evening. My brother and his step son picked us up early Thursday morning. Our tow vehicle was a 2007 2500 5.9 and a 20ft trailer carrying his 2 sxs's. About 3 hrs into our trip we noticed the truck started to overheat anytime you'd pull a grade or slow down. We diagnosed it enough to determine the fan clutch wasnt locking up. Its eletric so either the ecm wasnt sending the signal or the clutch was worn out. We limped it about an hour from our destination to a napa store. I read around online that if you ground the orange wire itll lockup 100%. I thought if we could do this and then limp it to the house we could find a fan clutch and replace it. We bought some wire and T taps and I set about riggy up a ground wire. We fire it up and nothing changes. Great! The clutch must be bad. We call around and figure out O'Reilly has the clutch and tools. We head down the street and realize now I have a check engine light and the truck wont shift out of first. . Long story long, we check codes, I dig around online in the parking while its pouring rain to realize the circuit the clutch fan is on is completely down which has a trans solonoid of some sort as part of the circuit. Later on that weekend I realize that the orange wire isnt in the same location on both sides of the connector so the wire I grounded was the 5v reference from the ECU which doesnt have a fuse!! So I burned the step down resistor's inside the ECU. Grand! We eventually figure out that the truck will shift from 1st to 4th at about 35mph. So we limp it the rest of the way to the house without burning it down on the way. We park the thing and decide to mess with it later on. We get all the machines unloaded and settled. The weather cooperated and we decided to head out for a ride. Angela and I pickup our rental. There was 7 of us, 4 sxs's and a ATV. 20 minutes into our first ride a friends 800 started to shread a belt. We drove it until it stopped. We tow it back. Start making calls and tearing it apart. Found one not far and got it replaced. We rode for a couple hours without any other issues. The next morning I come up with a half a game plan for the truck. I was gonna try and rob the 5v source from another circuit and power the downed sensors. Later on we'll go back to the parts store to get some more supplies. Friday we rode from about 8 a.m until about 2.30pm. Covering a lot of ground and having a good time. A couple fun videos. The first of my brothers step son and then me doing donuts in the mud. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QUZ3Rds3SFqJoey7RHa1tU_vI6Mxqafz/view?usp=drivesdk https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IqJhyEhjP7NF5brpI0XV7hTM7DpSlSvg/view?usp=drivesdk We decided to head back so we could get some parts to fix the truck, relax, and have some beverages. There is a quick uphill trail that every likes near our house so we decide to hit it one last time. About half way up the hill, I hear a weird "WOOF" noise from behind me. i turn around to to find the back of the RZR on FIRE. I immediately slam on the brakes, yell for Angela to get out. In my haste I forgot to put it in park so its still rolling and our bag with phones and wallets is between the seats. I run back up to it, out it in park and grab our gear and run clear of it. It got HOT quick. I call 911 and report the fire. The giy is giving me attitude because I cant tell him exactly where the trail is. I dont have any internet to even look. Long story short with the EMS, they Never showed up! Luckily it was wet enough that it didnt start the forest on fire. I called the rental company and reported what happen. He shows up and we stood their for 3hrs while he tried to figure out what to do. In hind site I would have just left and made the necessary calls. The wheel melted and started running down the hill. Fast forward to around 6pm. My brother and friend take the other tow vehicle (A jeep grand cherokee 4.7l) to the parts store to try and get stuff for our truck repair. On the way to the parts store the jeep started over heating. It puked some coolant while they were at the parts store. They thought it was a water pump so they picked one up. Drove back. Realized it was the upper hose. Took another 2 hr trip to swap parts. We eventually get it fixed. I messed around with the Dodge and finally determined we were screwed. The 5v reference source must be tied to the circuits because now all my circuits have 11v instead of 5 and when I jumped a wire from one circuit to another everything goes crazy. So now we get to try and figure out how to get a truck and a trailer with 2 rzrs 350 miles back to Ohio. Sweet! We come up with the idea that if we can find someone to rollback the truck and hitch up the trailer and all our gear that maybe the 7 of us can squeeze in the jeep and ride back to Ohio. This was after I tried to get a rental car but do to Covid they wont let you do a one way rental from state to state.. wtf! We start calling around and finally found a towing company that will do the job. He said he would be overloaded and wanted to do it Saturday night. So we set out to loading everything we could in his truck and had it loaded around 8pm on saturday. $1500 for this tow. Somewhere in there we managed to get another rental and ride for a few hours in Saturday. So not all was lost. We still drank and ate and had some laughs. Sunday morning we made the 7 hour trip home packed like sardines in a black on black jeep with no AC. The jeep struggled with its trailer and load but we made it. Sorry for the novel. Just thought id share what was a nightmare of a weekend. Almost comical because of everything that failed. Polaris has released both my deposits so I dont expect to be on the hook for anything in regards to the failure. Im sure im forgetting stuff.

Ill be out west that weekend. Shucks.

Sounds awesome. Im jealous.

Yeah Ill have to look over some logs and see if I can notice the difference in the data. The A/W system works relatively well so it might not be anything crazy.

Figure Id post a quick update since I havent in a while. Got bored a few weeks ago and filled up with some E85. The flex fuel sensor and the 2 tables I built in the Holley ECU were ready I just never used them. I basically just have it add fuel all across the board depending on what the content is as well as leaning out the AFR just a bit. The truck runs great. You wouldn't even know any different if it wasn't for the corn smell. Cold starts are great and fuel trims are within range. I figure Ill continue to run it during the summer since 93 is pretty pricey right now. And it'll be safer if I decide to lean on it some. I may add a little timing and see how it picks up. Also, I ran into some "free" cash so I made a rash decision and ordered some ET streets for the rear. 275/60r15. They looked way narrower than the 295 street tires. I couldn't even get the bead to seat at work so I had to take them to a tire shop to have the guy use the Cheatah on them. Once mounted they looked fine and Im glad I didnt go any wider because they are taller and sit about as close to the bed lip as the other tires. Anything wider wouldn't work. I took it out tonight for some quick hits and it $hits and gits now. I dont think I quite realized how much tire spin I was getting. Its pretty amazing how this big girl gets moving. Its so easy to drive and no drama whatsoever. Thinking about maybe buying some white Mickey Thompson tire stickers. Thoughts?

I have the OBDLINK LX and it seems to be more reliable (aka less connection issues) than some of the ebay ones Ive used.

haha. There was a moment or two I wished it would have just caught fire. The build went so smoothly up until these past few weeks. Im a stubborn SOB so Ill work through it. Maybe that will make it that much more rewarding? Doubt it.

Happy Monday Gents. Time for an ecojunk30 update After my last post in regards to the vibration I decided to investigate the balance shafts. Thats the only thing that made any sense. So I pulled the timing cover and valve cover, set everything at TDC. The drivers side balancer shaft gear should be at 12 oclock and the passenger side at 6oclock. Well, low and behold the shafts were about 180* off. No broken guides or anything else that seemed worn but it definitely jumped time, but just on the balance chain luckily. The tensioner seemed slightly sloppy but not it still seemed crazy that it just jumped that far. I decided to just go ahead and replace all the balance shafts parts and timing chain components. The engine looks to be in very good shape. Im hoping the small about of metal in the filter is just from it sitting for so long, who knows. I picked up all the components and went about replacing everything. Assembly was pretty straight forward. I stopped by chevy and got some new cam bolts. They torque to 62 lb ft and 30*. Well for whatever reason the one bolt bluetoothed before I even reached the initial torque. Luckily it stayed together for removal. The other bolt was fine. I reused the old bolt on the one side and matched the torque between the 2. Dumb Then in a lack of intelligence moment I didnt clock the crank pulley into the keyway during reassembly and mushroomed the key..UGH So I had to pull it back apart to fix that nonsense. What a pain. Anyway its all back together now and running. Ive also been collecting parts to add power steering to the car. Its misserable to drive as is I stole the method the ecomiata guys use for their cars and copied it for mine. I picked up a regal bracket and pump. It basically just spaces the alternator off the engine, and adds the bracket for the power steering pump. I ordered a hose kit from chase bays but it backordered so I ordered up a bunch of random parts from amazon and through work. Worked out I only spent about half the cost of the kit. i already had some ptfe line from the C10 that I was able to use for the pressure hose. The only bracket I had to fabricate was to hold the coolant hose from rubbing on the pulley. Everything else pretty much bolted together. Small cooler I zip tied to the radiator. Having power steering is like driving a whole new car. Makes it so much more enjoyable to drive. Im still not driving it much because it stalls so often, but Ill be back at the tuner this week. Can't wait to getting the tuning situated and be able to drive it a bit. Tired of just looking at it in the garage.

Very cool car and build. My dad has a 68 rs/ss thats been wasting away in his barn since before I was a kid. I wish it was in slightly better shape, I'd love to do a drivetrain, suspension, wheel and tire build on it. He has all original GM sheet metal for it and claims he's gonna restore it one day but everyone knows that will never happen. And I wouldn't be interested in another full resto.

I was going to guess Suburban. Yeah I would prefer the 85 front end if it was mine. That grille reminds me too much of an S10 or something. Converting your front end would be quite a bit of work. And almost impossible with nice original parts. I bought 3 73-78 hoods before I found one that I could even have reworked to use on my truck. All the replacements are all 79-80 hoods.

I sold a set of NOS 73-80 wheel arch trim for I think $800 or $1k dollars a year or 2 ago. The guy said his were in good shape but had 2 holes in each one from mudflaps. And thats why he replaced them.... Is that the factory grille for that truck? It looks odd to me. I know its a GMC but something seems different.

oh man thats sweet. way better than a 2 post.

Look into insurance through Cincinnati. Its not the cheapest player out there but they offer great services. I dont have to have separate classic car insurance or appraisals or any of that. I just tell them what I want to cover it for and they do it. Premiums are reasonable. The C10 is dirty cheap, Ill bet your S10 would be similar.

Did your insurance take care of you on it? I have declared values on my stuff just incase something happens like this. sucks

The pump and regulator are new. Filter is older and injectors came with the engine. I cant imagine this vibration being a fuel issue though. To start suddenly after a bump start. It doesnt misfire. Its a fast vibration. Like the balance shafts are messed up now. Ive read those chains can fail....