Betty White The Restomod SGT

[vonrottes]

Finally installed a wideband in her.

Went with a AEM S-series.

Trying to figure out some weird idle fuel trims.

And also wanting to check the PE.

 

Just making sure it works in the driveway in park it bounces around 15.8 and 16.2 at idle, drops to around 14.3 (which is what I have set in the tune) at light throttle and when PE kicks in the lowest I saw was 10.6 I believe.

When I get motivated to do it I'm hooking it up to the EGR on the pcm so I can do logging in HPT without the pro feature set...and the being zip tied to the defrost vent is just temporary, a fellow sy/ty guy is sending me his old 2 pod pillar.. so that should be here early next week

 

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[vonrottes]

Found it was running lean because I had forgotten to plug in the pcv fresh air hose.

And the tune before was going pig rich in PE at 10.5.

 

Right now I'm getting 15.7 at idle

14.7 cold start open loop

14.4-15.2 highway cruising

And 12.5 for PE

Added some more timing and it's running great.

 

One thing I've not been able to figure out is a vibration at idle in gear when it's raining or kinda cool. This goes back to the 4.8 in the black truck no idea what it is.

 

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[vonrottes]

Well, as winter closes in I'm going to start working a lot of overtime to pay for more car parts to install in the spring. now that everything on the truck is good with just small things to fix. I'm finally looking at some decent upgrades for performance.

 

Mainly I think I'm going to do a Summit 8720 cam since it's WAY cheaper than the others I was looking at and looks like it should make some decent power.

along with that I want to do LS7 lifters, new pushrods and trunnion upgrade while I have the top end apart.

 

Thinking about doing 19" camaro SS wheels, to save a little on tires since I still have two new 19s from my black truck and I'm also looking at swapping out the rearend with one from a 2nd gen blazer because it's wider and will save me having to buy another set of spacers, has disk brakes already and I'd like to find one with 3.73 gears so I don't have to buy an aftermarket set. since it's just a daily and I don't expect to more more than 400hp at the crank stock parts should be just fine.

 

After I get wheels big enough, I will eventually do the CTSV brake swap on the front.

 

 

So expect to see that stuff happening early/mid 2020, who know maybe after 8½ years I'll finally get a fulltime bid at work and I can push this along much faster.

[2 Sweet]

Curious to see how cool it looks with different wheels. Also I just wanna say how much I love this truck. If you ever decide to sell it, I call first dibs

[vonrottes]

Curious to see how cool it looks with different wheels. Also I just wanna say how much I love this truck. If you ever decide to sell it, I call first dibs [emoji38]

Hopefully something like this [emoji28] it's just find the wheels I want that are less than a set of decent aftermarket wheels...

Everytime I find the weird 19" wheels they want over $1,000 for them

 

You and Jeff at Honest speed shop have both mentioned that now [emoji23]

Don't see it being for sale any time soon

 

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[zeitgeist57]

That Forza screenshot looks really good.

[vonrottes]

Found a decent set of the wheels I wanted, $320 and a tank of gas to go pick them up. Gonna reuse the two htr z iii from my black truck and just need to buy two new tires.

 

Already have a 2001 4wd blazer rearend lined up for free, that way I get disk brakes and it's wide enough I don't need another pair of spacers.

 

The fronts I just need to get the center bore fixed. I think I got a set for a 2nd gen s-series and not a first. I think there is a .2 or .3mm difference in size.

 

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[iwashmycar]

Nice!!

[zeitgeist57]

Great score! Offset looks perfect up front. Looking forward to seeing it sitting lower at some point!

[10phone2]

man I'm officially jelly of your build.

[vonrottes]

The front it wasn't on the ground because I needed to get .2mm taken out of the center bore on the spacers I have, but the wheel was pushed on the hub as far as it would go which is about 1½"[emoji28]

 

I was going to a use a newer 4wd blazer rearend but at 4½" wider than mine it might push the wheels out a little too far, this is with 1½" spacers on the stock rearend, so I might just have to buy another pair of spacers unfortunately.

 

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[iwashmycar]

Love em. Way better look

[cstmg8]

Liking this truck more and more. Great work keeping it classy.

 

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[vonrottes]

Thanks guy [emoji108] actually working really hard to make this truck look as good as some of the other modified sy/ty.

 

After some more test fitting, it looks like the front need 1.25 and the rears are good at 1.5, but I'll probably just order a full set of 1.25 since I'm running tires a little wider than these on the rear and I don't want any tire poking out from the bed.

 

As for the fronts definitely gotta go with a shorter tire. These are stock 5th gen Camaro 245/50r19 and the hit the back the wheel arch so I'm probably going to go with 245/40 on the front. But as is they fit fine clearing the front and inside of the arch on the ground at the current ride height.kinda hoping I can get these on and ready for a little bit before it starts snowing [emoji23]

 

 

 

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[Otis Nice]

Love what you're doing with this thing but I'm just a lowly old truck/car guy.

 

...keep it up.

[vonrottes]

Final test fit. Don't know what was going on before but the 1.5" spacers look correct for all 4 [emoji2369] need two new tires, two more spacers and new lug nuts and these can go on.

 

Going to do drop spindles in the front a d 3" in the rear. And hopefully I can get the brembos soon so it doesn't look stupid af with those tiny little brakes.

 

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[cstmg8]

Looking great. A tasteful drop will make it really look nice.

 

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[Cordell]

You want some drop blocks? I have a set a friend gave me but I never got around to putting them on my last S10. Not sure if the were 2 or 3”, free if you want them.

[vonrottes]

You want some drop blocks? I have a set a friend gave me but I never got around to putting them on my last S10. Not sure if the were 2 or 3”, free if you want them.

Never turn down free parts I need [emoji28]

 

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[vonrottes]

With Carlisle fast approaching, I haven't even bought the first part yet.. but after driving around the G8, I've kinda been tossing around the idea of leaving the 5.3 stock and using that cam money on a aluminum 6.0 or 6.2... I'd either switch to an E40/T42 or swap out my crank and keep using the 0411.

 

I dunno just a thought. The aluminum block would be nice but I could always just get an l33 block and swap over all my stuff.

 

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[vonrottes]

With the recent official loss of my G8, I've been back driving the sonoma and finally doing the upgrades and repairs I've wanted to do the last few years.
Unfortunately I just was not able to keep the G8 for the engine/transmission to put in the sonoma since they wanted over $7,000 for the car that is now undrivable and deemed a total loss.

But the money has been able to fast track these upgrades.

First and probably most importantly THE AC WORKS!
and when I say it's Ice cold, it's not like every used car listing "Ice cold AC" No the air coming out of the vents is physically painful if it's blowing at you. Rough estimate of 28oz of R134 and 8oz of PAG46, had an incident of finding out the compressor has a pressure relief valve that sprays oil all over the headers and HVAC box.... so I think I need to add a bit more refrigerant as it's fast cycling at 65mph

 

Run into an issue where the ride height I like the way it looks was only about 1" from hitting the bump stops, which made for an awful time on Wilson road... so I've gone and added some preload to bring it back up to a stockish ride height and it looks goofy as hell but rides so much better.

So to fix that problem I'm upgrading to Belltech blazer drop spindles, sealed hub and a normal rotor instead of the old school bearings in the rotor, along with that swap I'm also going to use the 4 piston brembos I had bought for the G8 but didn't get to install them, working on cleaning them up and preping to install them next weekend with cross drilled C6 Z06 rotors, which apparently are the same size as the Camaro/SS/CTSV rotors but has a 70mm center bore like the S-series trucks... Rears are coming soon but aren't a priority as the stock drums still function just fine, though they do look dumb inside the 19" camaro wheels that I'll FINALLY be installing in July after the front brakes are done.... Going with the same BFG G-force Comp 2 A/S plus tires that I had on the G8.

 

And Lastly I need to fab a permanent mount for the trans cooler since there's no longer room for it behind the grille after the AC condenser got installed.. Currently it's securely zip tied in the same-ish location as the heat exchanger for a Sy/Ty So I thinking I might try to get some kind of little scoop made up too. Also noticed I REALLY need some kind of baffling or air dam between the front bumper and condenser, once the fan comes on it just pulls hot air from under the truck back through the radiator, Had this issue on my original S10 but It had the factory air dam that mounted to the core support and bumper. from my searching I seems like the Sy/Ty/SoGT NEVER had any such air dam

 

 

Other than that It's just been repairing stuff I neglected in 2018 when I put it together or finding stuff that has happened during it's 3 year out door storage, like the headlights were shorting out and melted the passenger side plug, was actually the H4 bulbs in the Autopal housings.
Uh the last electrical issue was the hot wire for the fuel pump was getting excessively hot, because the ground on the chassis has completely corroded, cleaned it up and relocated it to a more accessible spot and the wire still gets warm but not HOT I mean the pump is rated at 15-16amps at 60psi (Walbro 450)

 

Today I spent a few hours trying to figure out why the brake pedal was so stiff with the hydroboost, turns out the pushrod was binding on the pedal so I got that addressed and it's feeling MUCH better now, hoping the new calipers are a better match with the C/K master cylinder I'm running so the pedal is a little softer and has a little more travel.

[Otis Nice]

Good to see some updates. Lookin' good. 

[vonrottes]

Officially part of big brake gang 😂

Toom way longer than expected to grind down the belltech drop spindles.

 

Then the lower ball joint REFUSED to let go, but was able to get it off after walking away for 24 hours.

 

test fit a old G8 wheel with 245/40 tires and did NOT like how it looked, not enough tire.

And the 245/50 on the Camaro wheels hit the inner fender at the rear but look SO GOOD. So I'm gonna try to run 245/45 tires and hope they don't hit and look good.

Just need fluid to bleed the brakes and it SHOULD be good to go!

Requested an appointment for new tires for this Wednesday. So maybe catch me doing burnouts at QSL on those nasty ass G8 wheels 😂

 

 

[vonrottes]

New tires are on, chalked the tires and running 30psi in the front and 28 in the rear.

ride is slightly stiffer, as expected with a lower profile tire, need to rebuild or replace the front shocks since winter destroyed them and the adjusters are locked up..
Also got a set of GMC center caps for a terrain so no mismatched logos.

 

Probably not going to do much more until next spring, after I get my final raise at work money will no longer be an issue and I can afford a new daily and investing money in the truck.

Future plans for upgrades are a Gen 4 6.0 or 6.2 and a 6l80, don't really care if I get an aluminum or iron block, just want something with rec port heads to keep parts interchangeability with my next car..
Switching to Corvette high mount alt accessory drive to clean up the front of the engine and also buy some clearance for a new radiator and bigger alternator. looking at ditching the ICT AC bracket and going cast Holley set up. Will also fix the crooked hood since the 105amp alternator is just barely touching the hood bracing with the truck bracket.
Brembo calipers for the rear, already have the calipers in my garage, just need the backets and rotors.
 

And once I get the engine and everything else sorted..... going full Restoration on the body, got some rust that needs to be fixed and paint needs to be redone, the epoxy primer my dad used is just too damn thick and its chipping like crazy.

Edited July 13, 2023 by vonrottes

[vonrottes]

Finishing up on my Carlisle prep... Changed the oil and spark plugs (#7 looked a little sus and #2 the retainer was broken in the boot) Scrubbed the body for a good hour, and spent a little time on the wheels cleaning them up with the special sauce and rubbed a little protectant on the tires.

Two applications of All wheel cleaner brought the wheels and calipers back to what I would call acceptable..
Still want to recoat the calipers, and the wheels I'd like to strip and recoat since they have a few scratches down to the aluminum. 

Just need to clean up the interior... Shampoo the floor mats, vacuum the carpet and seats, wipe down the plastics, and clean the glass . Then it will be ready for the road trip Thursday morning.