Gran Damn

[ericjon262]

Something something I told you so... Yeah, I know.

I'm sure no one can tell I'm having my NYE champagne now after spending all of last week and the weekend ripping my house apart to replace rotted 1940's subfloor planks.

Lol! Yeah, that the project/problem I really need to be working on, I've been working almost every minute of overtime I could lately, but I'm taking this week to try and get at least one project finished, getting the fuel tank in the Fiero, or this out of the garage would be a massive step forward for me.

Honestly, I wish I had just junked this car when it blew the brake lines, it was a disposable car new...

[Aaron]

I mean no offense by this, but this entire thread reaffirms my decision to quit GM. Can't even get a decent daily driver, and even after all of this work you'll be left with an average car that does nothing particularly well. And while it's fun to upgrade the car and see/feel improvements, going from 200ho to 240hp isn't exactly earth shattering.

Sorry for the negativity, and I hope you're happy having fun with it. That's what matters most.

[ericjon262]

No offense taken, when I say I wish I had junked it, I was serious, there's nothing about it that's particularly amazing, and with all the work I'll have tied up in it, it will still be a $2500 disposable gm car.

Hopefully once it's back together it will at least be a little fun to drive.

[ericjon262]

the new y pipe was one of the biggest things I needed to accomplish.



after ages of sitting, and a silly amount of work, it lives again

https://youtube.com/shorts/_yZuIJQwcJQ?feature=share

I made a mad thrash to get it out of the garage, and, it's out.



I still have a bunch of little things to do, the inner fenders aren't quite right, the driver's side trans mount needs to be redone, and I should probably bleed the brakes again. oh, and it desperately needs an alignment...

FWIW, most of what I did to this car wasn't really in the name of going fast. I put the LX9 heads and intakes on because it was less work than extracting exhaust manifold bolts, the engine needed a timing chain, and the lower intake gaskets needed to be changed, so much of this work was actually repairs, and all of the parts were just junk I had on the shelf collecting dust. admittedly, the exhaust was totally unnecessary, as was the camshaft, but it sounds awesome... I'd like to take it, and the Fiero to a dyno and see what they actually put down.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Yeah, congrats on realizing it was a giant time suck!

[ericjon262]

Yeah, congrats on realizing it was a giant time suck!

Time was less of an issue, space was the big issue. if I hadn't got it running this past week, I probably would have dragged it out of the garage with the truck, in reality, I wasn't spending as much time on it as you might think I had been, I worked on it in bursts, which is part of the reason it took so long.

I think I might put rubber mounts in for the left and right transmission mounts, NVH is noticeably bad with the current mounts, something I expected, but not quite to this degree. I need to add the left side trans mount to the car again. when I added it to the subframe originally, I somehow did it with the powertrain crooked, I'll get the handheld plasma, burn the tray off, and weld a new one on in the correct position. since I have a poly mount for that, I'll use it, and maybe, having all the mounts in place will improve NVH, I doubt it though. thankfully, I should be able to put stock style rubber mounts back in.

cruise control no longer works. this isn't quite a surprise, but it's definitely not ideal, I think the cruise inhibit control is active in the PCM, not sure how to change that yet.

The current list to get the car a bit more driving friendly.

-trans mount
-tune
-Alignment
-AC
-inner fenders
-exhaust leak
-cruise control

[ericjon262]

got the transmission mount installed, and the exhaust leak fixed, both made a massive difference in the attitude of the car, it drives much better now. I also worked on the alignment a little bit, the car drove straight just fine before but the wheel was off about 45 degrees to go straight, it's still a bit off, but now only about 5-10 degrees, for a while, I've been thinking about making some alignment tools on the plasma cutter, maybe now is the time to get it done? I'll probably just drop it off at a shop and have it done.

[ericjon262]

I've been driving the car to/from work, today I made some fuel tweaks to the MAF table, it seemed to help a bit, although I don't really have anything to compare it to.

The car has a odd vibration coming from the front end, turn the steering wheel ever so slightly right, and it goes away, smooth as glass, considering it has new mounts, bushings, ball joints, tierods, struts, and CV joints, I'm not really sure what's going on yet. the wheel bearings also are relatively new as well. I'll get the car on jack stands and give the front end a solid once over monday and see what I can find.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Differential tire wear?

[ericjon262]

maybe, but I don't think so, the tires are also pretty much brand new, and the noise goes away with only the slightest input to the steering wheel, probably less than 5 degrees of rotation of the wheel stops the noise.

[ericjon262]

so, I had a random misfire code that was being thrown, I figured it wasn't a bad idea to change the plugs, so I swapped them for a new set and found this.



I'm 99% sure that plug was like that when I put it in, I had put a set of plugs in just to keep stuff out of the cylinder while I was working on it, with the intention of swapping them for a new set, and forgot... DOH.

In other news, I figured out the vibration. I was checking over everything in the front end, and over and over came up with nothing. I took it for another spin, and while I was out, I coasted in neutral to make sure it was chassis/drivetrain related, and not engine. up until this point, I had only noticed the noise in 4th and 5th gear while cruising, in lower gears, with higher engine speed, it wasn't noticed, well, while I was coasting, I moved the wheel back and forth and didn't notice any change in noise... WTF? I brought the engine up to about 2000-2500 rpm, while coasting, and it's back! so it is related to engine speed, and steering, and not drivetrain or chassis... I parked the car and checked the power steering fluid, when I took the cap off, it let off a little whoosh, which kinda surprised me... I had thought I had adequately bled the system, but apparently I was wrong, as the fluid was aerated. I started the car and slowly turned the wheel left and right, much more slowly than I typically would, and the got quite a bit of air out. The car still makes the noise, but to a much lesser degree. I plan to try and do a quick vacuum bleed and try and get it 100% bled.

[The Dark Side of Will]

At least a V6 manual transmission Grand Am is rare.

[ericjon262]

At least a V6 manual transmission Grand Am is rare.

It's rare because it never existed, and if it gives me to many more issues, it won't again, at least, not in my life. for now it's been ok, I'll poke at it here and there, do some more tuning, and try and work the bugs out.

in reality, it's not a terrible car, it's somewhat comfortable, the interior isn't absolutely destroyed, it's relatively quiet, and right now, I'm fairly confident it gets better fuel mileage than anything else in my stable.

[ericjon262]

so, I've been driving this quite regularly, the only complaints I have so far, is that the power steering pump is noisy, it's not terribly hard to replace, I just don't feel like doing it, and there's a heat shield somewhere making a terrible noise at about 4000 RPM...


I was having issued getting my archaic DHP powrtuner to capture logs, I tried all sorts of stuff, finally, I noticed that it only froze up after the vehicle began moving.... ? I took vehicle speed out of the logged parameter list, and wa-la, it works! thankfully the car is a 5 speed and not an automatic, otherwise, tuning shift points would be a bit more difficult... I was quite relieved that the DHP still worked, HPT has some perks, but I didn't feel like spending $500 to be able to tune this car, in fact, if it was going to cost me that much, I'd just drop it off at a dyno shop and let someone else do it. once this is a little more dialed in, I would like to dyno it, mainly because I'm curious, but the results could be entertaining if they aren't half bad...

[ericjon262]

I put a set of wheel spacers on this heap, it looked goofy with the Grand Prix wheels, because they have more offset and pull the wheels in further under the body, now it looks much better, not that it's terribly important, while I had the wheels off, I was surprised to learn the wheels were made by Enkei.



the exhaust sounds really meh... will I fix it? probably not, too many more important things to do, but I might take a quick look under the car to make sure it's not just a loose heat shield for something silly like that.

[zok15]

Wow, that is pretty sweet. When I was a kid I got a ride home from a friend's older brother who had a Grand Am that looked exactly like yours, and I remember thinking it was pretty cool. I asked him to floor it and thought it was pretty quick and sounded good. Idk I was probably 14 but I still remember that (17 years ago sheesh).

I gotta say I do like the idea of building a daily, putting some work into something but not spending a ton of money on it and just making it better but not loud and uncomfortable and loaded with expensive wear parts. I want to chuck a 3800sc in a rear wheel drive wagon with a stick that has a decent interior. This leaves me with like an E46 wagon or an E class wagon from the same era, have to find one with a blown motor. I would leave it supercharged and maybe do some light mods like a pulley and upgraded intercooler. I know there are 60* bellhousing RWD trans, not sure which one is best ratio of cheap:strong. Custom driveshaft and mounts. Then stock otherwise.

Would end up similar to yours in concept, very cheap to maintain, stick, quick enough to be fun, looks decent, comfortable; something you like driving everyday that isn't annoying.

I just also want mine to be a driftable shit hauler that I could sleep in.

Look forward to seeing more!

[ericjon262]

I have a few things I need to work out still with this car still, I need to keep working on the tune, and figure out why the power steering is so damn noisy. turning left only... it also has some odd clunks I need to look into. but it does run and drive just fine as is.

it's odd, I hate the car, but don't hate it at the same time, it's kinda fun, but it needs so many little things, like speakers, rear struts, the above mentioned noises handled... but on the other hand, almost everything works. the only thing that really doesn't work is the AC, and I replaced most of the components already, just need to pull a vacuum and charge it.

I did take a stab at starting in 2nd instead of 1st today, it definitely left softer, but didn't lose traction as badly, so it may be slightly quicker, I didn't time 0-60 or anything. I do still want to take it to a dyno and see what it puts down, it would be pretty funny if it put down relatively big numbers from an engine "built" out of a bunch of literal spare/stock replacement parts. the only performance money was the cam and clutch. everything else was either stock replacement, something I wanted to try and make work, like the LZ9 front manifold, or in the case of the head swap, to fix a problem (broken exhaust manifold studs).

[zok15]

Check the gasket or o-ring on the pump inlet. Make sure it is seated properly. Also to bleed, I put the front on a jack, car not running, and cycle lock to lock like 100 times. Always works for me. Don't go too fast though. It is almost definitely vibrating from air in the pump, often this is at the inlet, worst case it is at the rack and you need new seals or a new rack.

I have a love hate relationship with drilling out broken studs and re-tapping. I am good at it, but it sucks and is stressful. Seems worthwhile to go with better flowing heads and save the headache.

Definitely interested in what it dynos at, how quick is it? Also a driving sound clip or some stationary revs would be nice to hear

[ericjon262]

Check the gasket or o-ring on the pump inlet. Make sure it is seated properly. Also to bleed, I put the front on a jack, car not running, and cycle lock to lock like 100 times. Always works for me. Don't go too fast though. It is almost definitely vibrating from air in the pump, often this is at the inlet, worst case it is at the rack and you need new seals or a new rack.

so, I've actually done that multiple times now, upon install, I did it, and several times after hearing the noise. today, I went out and cycled the rack for over an hour, because I don't have a way to measure the noise, I can't say this for sure, but it might be a little worse now than it was before I started today.

I did a tightness check of the fittings, they were tight, I also bought a vacuum bleeder adapter to vacuum bleed the rack:

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/mva- ... eid=srese2

I pulled a vacuum on the system and let it sit, it held that vacuum for over 10 minutes unchanged. then I cycled the rack, and vacuum drop an inch. cycled again, dropped again... being that there was vacuum applied to the return side of the system, I'm fairly confident that the return line from the rack isn't leaking, because none of the pressure side fittings are leaking power steering fluid, I'm fairly confident that they aren't the problem either, which leaves the rack seals, which should be ok, because the rack only has about 1000 miles on it, when I had the front end apart, I threw a new one in because it would be easier to do with everything out of the way, BUT, if it were the seals in the rack, fluid would leak out somewhere right? at this point, I'm going to live with it until it(the noise, or the car) goes away, or I have to replace the clutch and have the powertrain out.

I have a love hate relationship with drilling out broken studs and re-tapping. I am good at it, but it sucks and is stressful. Seems worthwhile to go with better flowing heads and save the headache.

I have access to a machine shop I could have quick easily extracted the bolts in, but, when I had the parts on the shelf, it was a no brainer. in this case, I probably would have welded a nut to the remains of the stud, and it probably would have pulled out, but this seemed easier, especially when I already had gaskets on the shelf.

Definitely interested in what it dynos at, how quick is it? Also a driving sound clip or some stationary revs would be nice to hear

by modern standards? it's not quick at all... lol! using a GPS ap on my phone it's said low 7's 0-60, but that's also with wheelspin, and needing a tune still. I made some tune changes today that seemed to cause it to pep up a bit, honestly, at idle, it sounds ok, cruise, it sounds ok, mid range, it sounds pretty awful, or at least in the car it does, outside it may sound OK? I'm wondering if changing the tips out might help with the sound, right now it has tips similar to a Fiero GT's.

here's a short sound clip of some free revs, shot with my phone sitting on top of the decklid, so don't expect much. I might try and get a drive by clip later.

https://youtube.com/shorts/RwPO1oWaGVU?feature=share

[zok15]

Sounds good! Throttle response seems good too. Have you looked into make a quarter wave resonator for it? Looks like a great way to cut down on unwanted frequencies without adding any restriction and a fun project.

Sucks about the power steering, sounds like you have done everything. I will say if your inlet elbow has an o-ring and it does not have a groove it sits in, I have found these types of connections to be super finicky, and I have had to make sure I leave space for the o-ring to roll into its final resting point as it gets installed. Otherwise it finds a way to get pinched and leaks. Not sure if your leak tester was able to test that connection.

And that's not a bad 0-60 for a FWD, though I am shocked the car is as light as it is, looks like a 3400lbs car visually. Google says your stock 0-60 was about 8.3 seconds so shaving a second off ain't too shabby, and I am sure you could get into the 6's with a perfect launch. What do you think you are making for power? I feel like with the cam, heads, and exhaust you should be able to get into the 230hp+ range which should be able to get you into the high 5 second range for a car that weight (if not limited by traction). Probably feels similar to when my WRX was stock which was plenty quick for a daily.