2seater

I suspect it makes a difference your screen size and resolution? The mid size seems a decent compromise to me. JMO

There are no concerns with lower zinc % oils at all. This is a roller lifter engine and any decent 5w30 modern oil will work fine, synthetic or dino oil. 10% ethanol is pretty universal all over and 15% in some places. It doesn't make most people too happy as it does have a slight negative effect on mileage but generally doesn't do any harm. JMHO

I think the effect of painting everything to match is much like a painting or photograph that looks different with a matt to crop the appearance or not. Without a border the eye has a tendency to extend the object to a point where there is some perceived difference. The black trim does create a definite border on everything but the one example of course but is practical from a maintenance standpoint.

That looks excellent. I am familiar with Ryan's work and I really like what you had done. Thanks for sharing.

Dave, that would be too simple, and we didn't think of it

That sure is purty I think I'll close my hood now.

I suspect the painting the rocker panel covers and maybe the modesty panel under the rear may add to the lowered effect. Hmmm.

Mention of the air dam caused me to remember I tried an experiment a long time ago by lowering the dam some distance, maybe 1/2"-3/4". I made a simple U-tube water manometer and hung that in the cabin. I ran each leg of the manometer to the front of the car in the radiator area, one in front and one behind to see what the differential pressure was. After driving the car stock and with lowered dam, there was on average, a small increase in the differential pressure indicating to me that less air was getting under the car. A small thing maybe, but appeared to be genuine.

Thanks for posting details Jon, that's an impressive list. I would think that should perform admirably. If I may ask, did someone do a chip for you? I too like the look of the body colored air dam.

Yes, discretion is needed. I think the trans. will scatter long before the engine will as long as it is tuned well and doesn't knock itself to death. From much information I have found over the years, is our 3800 is capable of about 500 flywheel hp before you drive over the crank. If I could get somewhere close to half of that, I figure it would be just right.

Sure. The closer it is to the outside air temp. the better. I usually see several degrees warmer when in traffic or very low speed just from the general warming of the immediate area around the car but cools once moving. From the chart, there is little chance it is pulling timing until you get over 33*C or 91*F

That would be my intention as well. Remember F14Crazy? He had a long thread about doing exactly that. There are subtle differences internally on the s/c engines, which I think became more robust as different variations increased in power. The early 90's engines are little different with possible things like full floating piston pins which would show up as different part numbers but otherwise similar. Same heads, block, cam as the n/a version.

Sorry, that wasn't my intention, I was just adding detail to the previous post. I believe you relocated your temperature sensor to the new inlet pipe, so the ECM should be getting correct information. Easy to see what the incoming air temperature is in diagnostics so you can judge if it may be an issue. The other thing that many cone filters do for you is give a larger filter area than the stock panel filter.

Bummer on the pipes. I feel for you. I had a hard time finding the car in the first photo but I found it eventually I too have a weakness for white cars and I think it looks great.

Yes, there is a chart the ECM reads to adjust timing based on inlet air temperature. LV8 is an engine load calculation based on several inputs, with 256 being maximum load. It has pretty large cells so its not really linear but this is what it looks like:

Does anyone have thoughts to share on the supercharged conversion? Even better if you had the car with both engines. I am truly curious on the results and experience. 63Viking mentioned possibly adding a turbocharger as well, which would really be new ground, and got me to thinking about doing a s/c engine myself. I dropped off the rusty block I received from Daves89 at the machine shop to have it checked out for possible use. If it can be saved I am warming up to the idea of adding a supercharger to see what that experience is like.

I agree, it does let the engine operate more responsively probably at a small cost in mileage. I did something along those lines when I started trying my own chip burning. I raised the minimum lockup speed to something like 55mph. Not a perfect solution but for urban/suburban driving it does feel a bit peppier.

Interesting but I noticed they didn't really specify that the next generation, the immediate predecessor to the 3800, was not used in the GN? The GN has the traditional flat tappet lifters, rocker shafts and an oil pump driven from a camshaft drive. It didn't have a distributor but used an external cam position sensor in the same location as the distributor which drives the oil pump in the old traditional way. Not a big deal I guess, just unclear.

I haven't found much improvement with chips, fuel pumps or injectors. Those are usually supporting modifications for actual physical changes to the engine such as a camshaft changes, forced induction, running a different fuel etc... The engine just doesn't breath deeply enough, so forced induction works well. I agree if you want plug and play large power increases, the factory s/c option makes a lot of sense. One place where chips, injectors and fuel pumps would be a necessity would be to run E85. If you can't get enough air in, use a fuel that carries some of its own oxygen, for a net tq. gain. Of course you use 30ish% more, and would be even more effective it the compression was bumped up at least two whole numbers, or more. I don't know enough about the transaxle to comment much about the shift points. I know the TV cable has some effect on it but I think the governor in the trans. would need to be modified to change the shift point. This is for the mechanical trans. in 88-90. Probably wouldn't help a lot if the engine has fallen on its face 1500 rpm back

Yes, exactly. It could be in the space where the battery used to be also, attached to the engine of course

Late ignition timing will heat up the exhaust too. The comment about removing the O2 was as an exhaust backpressure check, that's where they put a gauge to actually measure it, but just pulling it would answer the plugged exhaust as the cause of not running. I agree that we have bits and pieces but not a coherent description of what's going on.

How about a belt driven centrifugal supercharger powered from a jackshaft across the top front of the engine? They have real potential and no exhaust work at all.

In a perfect world, the optimum place would be directly to the existing rear manifold outlet if you can find the real estate, get cool air to the compressor inlet and from the outlet back to the throttle. The darn sidewinder engine makes a lot of that difficult unless designed in from the start. The real rear mount systems have different but similar issues to work around. A good place for a rear mount; I would ditch the stock fuel tank so the turbo could be tucked up a bit to between the rear hatches which would shorten both the exhaust and pipe to the throttle. Of course it would need a tank under the rear, sort of trade the locations as normally done.

No, there is no reason it can't as long as the turbo can be located and oriented so everything else will work. Even a small assembly like this takes up more room than you would think and there are other things that get in the way, like the transaxle TV cable which sticks straight up. I have considered relocating the battery to the trunk, locating the turbo in its place and feed it from half or all of the engine. In that location, it looks like a nice cold air inlet could be made similar to what's on the driver's side and run the compressor outlet either across the front of the engine to the throttle or run out through the front to an intercooler and they back out through the existing hole where the stock inlet is now and on to the throttle. I'm sure I haven't exhausted all possibilities and while not necessary for the half turbo, I relocated the vacuum bomb and the cruise control servo to the crossbar for the strut towers.

There is no doubt there is some heat transfer, but not as much as you would think when a couple hundred cfm are flowing, but for cruising, yes it is a concern. I mount my intake air temperature sensor directly into the throttle body so the ECM sees actual air temp. to accurately control the timing. In this particular setup, I never completed the direct hot air feed. I already had a front mounted intercooler installed so I opted to use that for the air inlet. The compressor outlet is rotated to point straight down where it runs down and forward to the intercooler and then back up where the charcoal canister would be and then to the throttle. I discovered the boost was so tame, that the intercooler is not needed and a future iteration will be routed as shown above. Bear in mind, I generally have my hot parts ceramic coated so radiation is less but I do make tin heat shields where appropriate.