Hope everyone is doing ok in the quarantine. I’m working from home and my girl is furloughed. Just dodged a 43 person layoff today. The company is slated to open again May 4th. Hoping that happens, and no more collateral damage. Bad time to be a supplier for passenger jets.
Been getting some work in on this thing off and on. Not as motivated as I’d hoped honestly, but have my bouts of productivity. Really close to firing it up now, although my LiFePO4 battery might be dead dead again. Not great to have a weak battery when needing to head out for tuning so I might have to bite the bullet and replace it. The thing was completely flat even though I unhooked the battery, and charging it I can’t get it to hold over 11V long term. I can surface charge the bitch to 14.8 though and I bet it’ll start from there 😂.
I got my new pushrods installed. Not sure if they were a weak link before or not but these things are stout. Summit sources a really nice pushrod for these. Much nicer than the TSP ones.
My buddy and I had that expansion tank planned and he finished printing a prototype for test fit and that was just when we went full lockdown in March so that’s on hold for now.
Took the old tank up to my dad’s and he was able to tig the neck back on. Won’t leak now I can guarantee that. Temporary fix until my buddy can finish the new tank design for me.
Got the intake finalized with the ls7 maf and a new tube. Epoxied in some honeycomb and going to give it a shot. With the angled TB spacer the hood closes just fine even with a round tube.
Swapped over to a Katech tensioner I’ve had on the shelf for years. I used to throw belts like crazy after I put the ATI balancer on, but went to a shorter belt and never had an issue so it sat on the shelf. The Katech tensioner was the only way I’d get a belt on and not risk the spring tensioner crashing into the bracket I made.
Didn’t think it was possible, but I made all this crap even tighter to get to in the engine bay lol. Everything is tight and the belt is on and adjusted up though so all good.
I also decided since I have time to kill I’d swap out the plugs (for the first time in 5 years) to some TR6-IX iridiums, and finally put on these beefy ass IGN1A coils I bought about a year and a half ago. These things are HUGE. I got them to use with the ls7. You can gap the plugs up to .060” for a big arc and run a super long dwell time even at high rpm. Supposed to have a stronger and cleaner idle with big cams. Better at igniting the dirty mixture with exhaust reversion. Probably won’t do a lot with my mild cam LS2 but figured it gives me something to do. I’ve heard claims that you can reduce timing and gain power even on a mild engine but I’ll believe that probably never.
I just need to wire these things in and flash the tune over to the ls7 maf calibration and it’ll be good to go (if it starts). These coils get 8ga wire direct from the battery and a 70A relay. Craziness.
