Engine
Soon after purchasing the engine it was
stripped down so it could be cleaned a painted. Basically
what was left was the bare engine block. Some Gunk was
used to clean it down and black high-temp paint was sprayed on.
Eventually the engine looked as new.
The valve covers were removed to see how
things looked inside. Much to my surprise, it looked
really clean. There were no carbon deposits or any crud
floating around. Since the valve covers were off, the
tired valve springs were replaced with a set from GM Performance
Parts. The rockers were replaced with a set from COMP
Cams. The new rockers are roller tipped with a 1.6:1
ratio. In addition, the pushrods were also replaced.
Finally, both the oil and water pumps were replaced just to be
on the safe side.
The L32 V6 engine has no distributor.
Instead a coilpack fires two cylinders at the time controlled by
the PCM. In the F-Bodies (Camaro/Firebird) the coilpack is
mounted directly to the engine with a small bracket. To
make the engine bay as clean as possible, the coilpack was
removed from the engine and mounted on a special bracket in the
area where the battery normally sits in the TR6. The
battery in turn was relocated to a custom enclosure in the
trunk.
In order to lower the centre of gravity the
engine was installed as low as possible. The L32 cleared
the front crossmember perfectly, but the oil pan ended up being
lower than the crossmember. So, the pan was removed, cut
and TIG welded to solve the clearence issue.
Next, a special adaptor was machined to
replace the oil filter. This adaptor has two braded
stainless lines routing oil to and from a remote oil filter.
This modification allows for:
-
Increased oil capacity - The
remote adaptor allows for a bigger oil filter. This
enabled the system to hold more oil to compensate for the
modifications to the oil pan.
-
A cooling effect - the remote
filter housing is mounted to one side of the radiator and
exposes the filter to fresh cool air.
Since the engine had been sitting for some
time, the injectors were in bad shape. They were not
spraying in a consistent pattern and this caused some problems
when the engine was started for the first time. Several of
the cylinders ran lean and this was not good. So, rather
than having them reworked, new ones were purchased.
Instead of using the stock 19lb/hr injectors, a set of Accel
21lb/hr ones were installed.
The weak spot of the L32 is its intake
manifold. From the factory, the intake is a single 50mm
butterfly design. On the LT1 V8, the throttle body
consists of two 48mm butterflies. So, the original intake
was cut and modified to accept the LT1's throttle body.
The improvement is quite dramatic and throttle response, pickup
and top end revs were improved.
Please click on the links at the right for
more specific info on each topic and pictures...
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