• Hello Guest, welcome to the initial stages of our new platform!
    You can find some additional information about where we are in the process of migrating the board and setting up our new software here

    Thank you for being a part of our community!

Vertigosity's Verdigris V8 Wagon

There was a drought of LS1/6 takeoffs on LS1tech when I got it. Not a bad part for the price, although I did (won't say /have/ to, but wanted to) deburr the ports a bit with a pocketknife when I got it. The one thing that's a bit sketchy: fuel rails, MAP, and EGR blockoff mount with wood screws into the nylon. Seems mounted well enough, but that's probably enough to keep it in the territory of "good for a stock replacement, good for a Turbobricker's s***ty semi-budget build, etc."
 
After a few hours of final assembly and weekends of wiring, I went for a test-fire this past weekend. Aaaaand... the 8A tank pump fuse pops, and somehow pops my fuseblock's 20A fuse doing it... It's probably a stupid ground fault somewhere; more like likely I screwed something up when I swapped the tank pump, and will need to go back into the tank. (insert all the expletives here)

On the bright side, the computer communicates, the DBW throttle functions, and it fires on ether, so I've got that going for me :D

Time to start collecting stuff for restomodding the shell, and shaking Kaplhenke down for suspension parts!
 
Last edited:
Pulled the tank pump because my voltmeter read low resistance for it, but that was a red herring, a quick internet search said they're supposed to be. As it would be, a fuel pump I pulled from my '80 and put in a zip-lock bag while diagnosing something that turned out not to be a fuel pump a long time ago... was now actually bad. Fortunately, I had a Porsche 928S K-jet pump, with the right fittings, already on hand in the boxes of stuff I got with Spoon4364's 242! Also, I was trying to trigger the system relay off fuse #13, which is hot in crank and run on K-Jet, LH2.0, and LH2.2 cars, but not on LH2.4 cars; switched that to fuse #5, which is the only fuse hot in crank and run I could find on LH2.4 cars. It also has the advantage of already being listed as "fuel injection" on my fuseblock, and should maintain the 240-specific behavior of the engine dying on road trips after using a turn signal without having rotated the fuse for a while :lol:

So, multiple levels of fail, saying "go figure..." to myself, but ultimately, success! Achieved a self-sustaining reaction! These engines sound truly glorious with no exhaust on... and now that I've actually test-fired, my project planning Trello board is riddled with stuff to do next (that was either blocked by or being procrastinated on until I got to see it run).
 
Yeah, but that means I'm either shooting over the dashboard through a windshield that's been sitting in a dusty room for two years as I crank, or I've gotta find somebody else to shoot. And nobody wants to see the "fifth start where I've got all the bugs worked out but still haven't made up an exhaust," video, anyways ;)
 
Spent pretty much all of Saturday wrapping and looming wiring, and making it look ... pretty presentable, actually.

Sunday, I got the core support back on, and tried test-fitting the late 940 radiator/E-fan combo. Once again, I've deviated too far from "keep everything Truck" for everything to just work - the intake elbow and 5G-Camaro-style front-exit radiator hoses both want to be in the fan. I'll try to figure out how much extra clearance I need, see if I can swap to something like a Spal fan, or if I'm going to need to resection the core support to move the radiator forward, next time on <insert dramatic TV-series-ish sounding name for my project here>!

(and yeah, get a test-fire video at some point where I've got enough stuff stabilized again, but I'd love to have coolant and an exhaust for the sake of the engine, and other people in my shop who aren't wearing fancy earmuffs, like the guy who'll have to stand there with a phone)
 
Still no dramatically staged test-re-fire, but I did get to a checkpoint on engine bay stuff, with pretty much everything I wanted to do there, done:
UXB6Sv0h.jpg

  • Spal 16" medium profile fan mounted to a barely modified 940NA shroud
  • LS3 Corvette upper radiator hose
  • V6 01-07 Caravan upper radiator hose... trimmed, and used as a lower hose.
  • Heater hose run from the heater core, around the engine, to the water pump
  • Piecemealed Spectre intake: 90 degree coupler, 3" long tube segment, universal mount zig-zag-mounted to the back of the water pump, 30 degree coupler, air mass meter, to the (roughly 11") cone filter from a Silverado 9900 kit.
  • ECU mount moved to the inner fender
  • Relay bar from my wrecked '74 used to hold a 70's GM wiper bottle and the 240's original pumps

With everything in the engine bay in place, and the E-codes and grille in, it almost looks like a car (and not a piece of badly planned abstract art)!

Got suspension stuff ordered from Kaplhenke, and my fingers crossed that I'm near the top of his queue!
Next up: Piddling around with the dash and interior, and then probably not much of anything, it's gonna be 20 degrees outside this weekend :barf:
 
Although it isn't the season to ask, did you get the Air Conditioner sorted? I'm constantly surprised how simple the Volvo stuff is--you should be able to leave all the Volvo stock stuff and run a 12V wire off the Volvo compressor on circuit to the GM PCM's "A/C request in" to have the fan forced on and the idle bumped. At least that's what some of my research indicates.

Edit: Hmm, in retrospect perhaps this doesn't apply?
 
Last edited:
My research is - if you have an early 512KB/red-blue ECU, or a 1MB/green-blue ECU from an S10 or Express van, you have the necessary circuit to do that (most of the DBW green-blue ECUs would not), but would still need to ground out the pin for the low pressure sensor, and either disable the DTC for the AC relay not existing, or just go ahead and use the relay to fire the compressor. More unverified research suggests that none of the GMs that had 12V AC request used electric fans though, so the firmware doesn't have a code for that, and will need the pressure sensor to trigger fans. The amount of unverified/mis-information on the topic is pretty staggering, though, so I decided to table it until the car is running and driving and I can do my own verification - it's easy enough to pull the belt to put an AC belt on, later, and not having the condenser in place will let me do a cam swap if I feel the need, and I've got bigger fish until the car's on the road.

That being said, I did wire everything to the ECU like an Express van through the '91-'93 hi/low switches, got an AC hose crimper, and -8 crimp end with the appropriate port for the pressure sensor. Whether or not that was a good idea...
?\_(ツ)_/? - if the ECU and I don't get along, it won't be that hard to move the low and high switches to my relay, and use it directly without idle intervention. Or get crazy and use the AC idle booster from my '80 K-jet car :rofl: ... or just let the DBW compensate on its own.
 
Last edited:
Been quiet here the last few months, but I have made some pretty heavy progress.

My father and I had three straightforward Truetrac installations under our belts before we tackled this one - #4 is where it got interesting! I put too many shims on for the first test-fit, and ended up needing a case spreader to remove the carrier again (despite it popping in with a rubber mallet). Then, after restarting the shimming process, getting it in spec, and putting the lock plate and real bearings on, our measurements got unrepeatable - tracked the cause down to the bolt lock plate not centering on the neck of the carrier. All said, it ended up taking about 3 months to do a carrier swap (with a few weekends off for cold weather, working/driving track/autocross events, visiting friends out of town, maintenance on the real cars, etc) for something I hope I replace with an 8.8 before I break it, so I can use it on the stockish 4-cyl DD - :raincloud:

During all that, I've thrown a bit of time at getting the trailer light/brake wiring finished up so it'll have taillights, popping the rear quarterpanel out (actually went pretty smoothly, and it was the $400 question of whether the shell was worth that), cleaning the carpet so it shouldn't have to come out for a while, assembling front suspension (yay parts from Kaplhenke and IPD!) and ATS brakes, and finally the rear axle back in last weekend.

This Saturday, a TIG-welder-equipped friend and I are tackling the exhaust! I won't promise a "first drive" video, since that'll almost definitely jinx it, but there's not a lot I know about before it's ready for that...
 
Last edited:
Not pictured in the video from April: 0 oil pressure. At some point between its undocumented test-fire (2016/11) and the video (2017/04), the pump decided it didn't like slurping up oil anymore. To really throw salt in the wound, we needed a different 240V plug and some flanges we couldn't get in town, so the trip to the lift for exhaust work was a wash anyways.

Spent a week or two doing diagnostics to confirm that it didn't just need priming, tore it all down, pulled the engine out, put in a Melling mild upgrade pump with the pump and transfer tube packed full of assembly lube, rebuilt the car around it, and all is well mechanically now - 40psi on just the starter!

And two months later... my TIG-welder-equipped friend and I circled back up, and we built this!
W8JAYRNh.jpg


Such stainless. Very exhaust. Woooooow :D
 
Last edited:
Over the weekend... my TIG-welder-equipped-friend and I finished the exhaust and got it test-fit and leak tested. Success!
01uqwJPl.jpg


That was the last piece of the puzzle preventing me from taking a test drive, to realize my intake was inadequately designed (it'll pinch the 90 degree elbow before the throttle body shut, throwing a MAF and DBW code, and putting the car into limp), clutch master was inadequately sized (some combination of broken math and bad internet research had me use a 5/8" CMC where 3/4 is the largest available AFAICT), and my ECU was inadequately tuned (a torque management parameter I missed prevented the engine from revving over 1600rpm, but that was an easy fix).

No progress for the next two weekends, SCCA AX and NASA TT back to back. Aaagh! Time to find some seats...

But ****, does it sound awesome!
 
Look forward to hearing it....congrats on the progress. FWIW, I used 4" aluminum tubing and elbow on my intake. No problems with collapsing the elbow - however, be sure you get an air tight seal on all fittings/couplings between the maf sensor and the throttle body or that will throw a code/light the CEL as well. I had to chase that down on mine as part of the start up de-bugging.
 
*Whew* - the past week and weekends have been a bit of a whirlwind. Also, first post with a blue username :D

Before last weekend:
Was drooling over BRZ seats, got a friend who has one to let me do a test fit of his in my '80... then promptly succumbed to project car fatigue and too-much-money syndrome, said a hearty "YOLO," and bought a set of Corbeau GTSIIs.

Last weekend:
Swapped the clutch master out for a bigger (3/4") one, and it worked perfectly! Didn't need a pedal stop, engages perfectly, good feel. Success!

Acquired a cobra-style intake (taking inspiration from the B234F+T parts bin I got from JohnMC when I bought his head and intake so many years ago), reworked my intake, and now it looks cleaner and as a bonus, doesn't get slurped in on throttle movement:
YW3vA5Ol.jpg


Impulse bought one of Runslikeapenguin's nickle VSS blockoff plates, since I wasn't using the sensor in my diff cover:
KNWgq6Nl.jpg


Over the last week:
Test drove, success! Used it as my exclusive daily driver for a week to get some break-in miles in, got 20mpg on some old gas and seafoam in mixed highway / city / light city hooning. Did a bunch of interior/trim work, and put my GTS2s in, and a set of Wagonmeister/DavidSamuels snowcap repops, taking it another step away from a sub-$500 ****box, towards being... whatever a step below pro-touring is - amateur-touring?

This past weekend:
Saturday, I got my break-in miles finished, and changed many fluids per procedure for both new part break-in and junkyard part reuse. Sunday, the SCCA Targa Southland multi-mode-rally terminated at my home track, and I went, primarily as an event worker for the local SCCA region. Worked a flag station for their lapping sessions, took Randy Pobst on a parts run :-)cool:), did timing and scoring for their light-cone autocross ("track-cross")... and after the work was done, I got to play myself!
iEZ2z4kl.jpg

o6CMc8Wl.jpg


... 1.5 "track-cross" runs later, the car spit out the driveshaft. This is the part where everyone glares at me for not having a GoPro. But **** was it fun before that, and everything else worked as planned. Should have some action stills of the car later this week, as my mother is the track photog and pretty much guaranteed to have been paying attention :lol:

Yeah, what? The transmission yoke and axle flange are still on the car. Body contact at the back of the tunnel causing the U-joint's crossbar to punch out a circlip and encap? My father and I tried to play CSI: Turbobricks at the track, and couldn't come up with a definitive answer. I can say with certainty that the STS mount LSx+621 bellhousing+TKO combination puts the output shaft higher than the Redblock+Avalanche adapter+Mustang T5 - complicating driveshaft sizing issues, especially in a lowered car.

Drivetrain issues aside, it's:
1. Actually a pretty balanced power-to-weight-to-grip combination. Seriously, it's easy to quickly drive up to the limit of grip, but without going too far if I don't want to. On my first run, only driving in "feeling out a new and unfamiliar car" mode, I set a quicker time than a friend's reasonably well-prepped Miata, and more a few of the Targa participants. It also has the exact amount of extra oomph that I found lacking from my B234+15G combination in the '80.
2. Great to have a Kaplhenke-suspension-equipped 240 again. Properly adjusted Koni Race shock/struts are the bomb, and although I didn't shout about it much on the un-build-threaded '80, QSRCs are the missing link to lowered 240s feeling and handling awesome.
3. Also, the mopar318-kit ATS-V brake setup works magically with the ABS master cylinder, Wilwood proportioning valve, stock rear calipers, and Hawk HP+ pads all around.

Oh well, time to look for someone to make a 2pc driveshaft. To quote Randy Pobst - "Development!"
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top