2014 9C1 Daily Driver

[Mooseman]

That is a weird one to have an exhaust leak sound like that. Normally it's a tick especially when it's cold. Good catch.

[BluesBro]

Little update, the cold weather seems to have killed the #4 injector, seems that ~18k run hours is approaching the limit, ha.
Had a complete set of stock spares from when we upgraded the blue car injectors, swapped out the dead injector all is good.

[BluesBro]

The car let me know it was in need of some time an money. Front end clunk was getting worse, and the familiar dent on the underside of the hood, let me know it was time to address the front suspension.

Cost of new factory parts for the front was close enough to the cost of a pedders coil over set...so that's the route I went.

I only have the fronts on so far, decided to order new top hats for the rear before installing.

Ended up lowering the front ~1.5in which still allows the front bumper to clear parking blocks.

I immediately took it on a ~1200 mile road trip and it was great with the much improved ride.

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[BluesBro]

Well I guess my last post was a year ago, time flew.

It has been a great year putting miles on the car.

Unfortunately it developed a rotary squeak that was present at idle but is too quiet to hear off idle or goes away above 2000 rpm.

It had a pretty wobbly factory harmonic balancer but I had left it for years because it wasn't eating belts. Replaced it with a powerbond factory equivalent, the squeak remains.

Pulled a valve cover to inspect. Found the rockers bleeding metal, also found one very hammered valve tip and a few others that are galled.

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This is all pointing to a likely oiling issue.

I will be pulling the engine and inspecting further in the coming weeks.

[CrashTestDummy]

Yikes! And, looking at that next-to-last picture, the rocker stud looks bent. Could be the camera, but I'd look closer. LSA time!

[BluesBro]

Took me a bit to pull everything together but I finally have an update for the car.

Found the cause of the oil starvation, oil pickup to pump O-ring was squashed between the flanges, not in its boss. Pickup bolt was in the bottom of the pan. I did not install the cam but obviously this happened during that procedure. Damage: rockers, 4 valves, lifters, cam. Bottom end looks good, will probably redo the heads and send that motor in a old truck just so it can see 20k idle hours, but that's a future project.

Shows how hardy these engines are, was sucking air for sure, and still ran ~50,000 miles without apparent issue.

On to the real news, decided to go with a crate ls3 after getting quotes on machine work.

List of stuff:
GMPP Crate LS3
TSP Stage 1 Cam with all the accessories
GM 6L90 Converter(ZL1/CTSV)
Denso Radiator
GM Motor Mounts

Doing a trans filter and flushing all the lines, but I still think this 6L80 isn't going to hang in there much longer. Its quite rare but 4 times in the last few years it has completely failed to reach 3rd under WOT. So I am planning a GMPP 6L80 and a better converter in the nearish future but not yet.


I still suck at pictures during projects but I have one this time.

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[BluesBro]

Little update:

~800miles on the LS3 so far, feels great.
Power delivery feels a lot smoother than the 6.0 for whatever reason.
The TSP Stage 1 cam is noticeably milder on the LS3.
Probably need to figure out additional mufflers, the displacement and compression ratio increase has increased the exhaust level considerably.
The 6L90 converter is spot on for my taste, feels like a stock converter but certainly preforms better.

The only regret so far is using the crate LS3 oil pan, it fits the chassis fine but you lose the lower mounting point for the starter heatshield, a mounting point for the trans lines, and a mounting point for the A/C lines. I worked around these for now but will probably fabricate more permanent solutions in the future. The oil level sensor also interferes with the transmission lines, I was able to make it work for now but I am going to reroute the trans lines to the driver side.

[Mooseman]

Nice! I am thinking of doing the same with my L77 with that converter. Although I am at 400hp on the stock cam, I eventually want to dump it for a stage 1 or 2.