Porting The Stock Air Filter Housing
Cost: Free
 |
| The ported air box after 6k miles of desert travel - the Spectre filter keeps the intake air very clean. Other cheap filters of the type, even K&Ns, tend to let fine particulates through. On the bottom and far left you can see where I've opened it up. |
The stock air filter housing offers up opportunities to up flow rates without spending a lot of cash nor even any obvious visual cues. The front and driver's side walls of the lower portion of the box can be opened up for more flow, but avoid 'swiss cheesing' the box as you don't want to pull air directly off of the top of the PCU's heat sink, which, as you might have guessed, is there to slough off heat.
Also something to look at while the Dremel is out is porting the frame of the driver's side headlight. Anything to ensure air can move unimpeded to the factory airbox location.
Obviously, you don't want to compromise the integrity of the mount itself, but there was room for improvement here. Honestly, I'm sure most folks will skip this step; I don't for sure know if any actual effect is being produced here, but again, while the Dremel was out...though, take a look at the photo below and you can see the path to the stock airbox location behind the headlight.
The following 'porting' (whatever you might want to call it) might fall in the same category, might not. I cut two vents into the factory aero work under the driver's headlight, behind the lower part of the bumper cover. The idea is to 'scoop' air at speed and direct it to the same cavity that the above 'ports' feed.
 |
| Looking down from behind the DS headlight. |
 |
| The factory skirt and airflow at speed should direct more cool air to the cavity that the factory airbox feeds from. |
"Home Plate" and "First Base" Removal
Cost: 10 bucks, if you haven't got a hockey puck lying around.
 |
| This is a REAL redneck's car - who else but white people would have a hockey puck just hanging around? ;-) |
Home plate is easy. I've used two items in the past - a peanut butter jar lid (glass jar, metal lid) and the classic hockey puck. I happened to have a hockey puck laying around when I got the car so that's what I went with. Ideally you'll position it inside the opening in the elbow with it off of the car, and try to make it as flush inside as possible (reducing interior turbulence/resistance) and then clamp it in place with the factory clamp.
First base, counterintuitively enough, is harder to fix. I went to Home Despot, bought two 3" 45˚ bends like the forum said, and it came to 8 bucks and tax. Just for the two bends, not the cement or the straight pipe needed to connect them, and there were no scrap pieces around at the time. If I'd have bought these, the "8 dollar intake" would have been closer to 20. I figured that the better investment of the two might be to just drop the Spectre in and call it a day, after all those panels are usually good for 5hp or so and it was only 20 bucks from Amazon.
Initially I taped the two bends together as seen in the first photo, left the MAF in the stock location, and drove it like that to New Orleans and back. It wasn't bad but it was a little shorter than ideal, I got it to fit by not fixing the air box to the stock mounts and just left it loose. It worked and since it was covered at the time by a sealed 'box' of windshield blocker (foil covered heat insulator) no one was the wiser.
Then I realized I could use the factory grommets and clamps to clamp the 'big' ends of the 45˚ bends to the MAF in the middle, which the factory wiring accommodates. The big ends will squeeze into the grommets, you put them over the MAF flange and clamp it all down. The bitch is that there's no flex in the ABS elbows so there's no clamping force on these. A good stomp of the gas and the engine rolls over, pulling them off. Not good.
So I have it covered up in this:
 |
| Duct Tape Of The GODS. |
The adhesive is heat/friction activated, so when the engine compartment gets hot, the tape's adhesive wants to work stronger. Because we're dealing with a naturally aspirated engine, small leaks are pulled shut by the intake vacuum. If put together right, it's just as safe as clamps and hoses. Keep a roll in the trunk in case you get an SES light and have to repair on the roadside, but I haven't had this happen to me even though I've reconfigured the intake a few times and thus increased my chances of screwing something up.
In order to make this work, I also had to tape small end of the intake side elbow into the airbox. It'll squeeze into the factory hole with a little filing on the outside and a half round file can open up the ID of the air box a little. From the inside it'd look like this:
As you can see, while it's going to provide a sturdy connection to the air box, it could flow a bit better. This is one of the reasons I went to the "MAF in the Middle" configuration, as these sudden step downs in ID cause turbulence in the intake path. With the 'big ends' of the elbows in the grommets around the MAF flanges, those are more or less taken care of. The exit step opens out into a larger pipe, so no flow loss there really. I had the half round file out, so I took a few minutes and ended up with an intake pipe that a smooth transition:
While the ABS elbows aren't exactly 'car show' material there are advantages to it's use - workability of the material being one. Most forum members claim this mod is good for 5 hp, and while it might not prove to produce more power, I believe I have improved the standard design slightly here.
After getting everything just right, I sealed it all up with Gaff Tape and made sure there was enough tension created to keep the elbows on the MAF sensor. The SES light will come on if the seal between the MAF and Throttle Body is compromised, and if it's compromised downstream you'll have dirty air - but both connections are easy to seal up.
Spectre Drop In Panel Filter
Cost: 20 bucks
I topped off all of this with a Spectre drop in panel filter. These are usually regarded as 'cheap K&N knock offs', but K&N's specs haven't changed much since the 80s when they debuted. Spectre's filter has so far outperformed both the 'other cheap brands' and K&N in one regard; zero fine particulate in the intake so far. I used a new K&N cone filter on my SE-R's SR20DE and later found fine particulate in it, and that was on the comparatively less dusty east coast. So far, so good, and if nothing else, the Spectre and K&N are at least equivalent - which means I saved about 50% even if the Spectre is 'only as good' as the K&N setup.
The results are thus:
Adding It Up: The Sum Of It's Parts
So let's go down the list; throttle body bypass; home plate delete; first base delete; ported airbox and surrounds; better flowing air filter than stock. Let's just say, that when combined with each other, each is good for 5hp. I'd say my exhaust is good for better than that, but just for the sake of speculation:
Stock engine: 260hp
+ TB bypass
+ Muff Delete
+ HP Delete
+ FB Delete
+ Air Filter 25hp
------------------------------------------
= 285hp
That's the factory rating for the F Body LT1s. While many try to swap in a Camaro cam or this or that - much more work and expense even using used parts - in the pursuit of 'higher spec' horsepower could work, the F Body cam was designed to work with the F Body and Vette. The B-Body's cam was designed to work well with the extra half ton of weight that a Roadmaster Estate would be saddled with vs. the lighter sports cars. Even if the cam magically gave you the 25hp without changing anything else, you might not actually make the car 25hp faster. The torque curve is very important in any vehicle, but the more that vehicle needs that torque - i.e., the heavier it is or the more the application requires - the more important it becomes. Trading the luxury car type torque delivery for high end pull and power is a good idea in a 3500lb Vette or Camaro; in a 4200lb Roadmaster it's not a good idea.
For instance...
My former boss, Carl, had worked on a Hummer for Arnold Schwarzenegger at one point. He'd been driving a client's Lamborghini LM002 and happened to see Arnie's then über-rare Hummer in the parking lot and parked next to him. Arnie came out, he and Carl got to talking and then his experience at Callaway Turbo came up. Having wrenched on the famed Sledgehammer, Arnie thought he'd be ideal for modifying a Hummer for 400hp. Arnie loved the 6.2l (6.5l?) Detroit Diesel's off road performance, but on the highway the Hummer was a slug.
Carl built up the then-new LT1, 'the Vette motor' at the time, and over 50 grand later (keep in mind, the LT4 hadn't bowed yet and when you're pioneering mods on the 'new Vette motor', you pay out the nose for the privilege), he had the envy of the Hummer meet...up until he actually got out of the parking lot and went to the first part of the trail you had to crawl up.
Because getting an extra 100hp out of the LT1 caused the torque peak to move up, and even stock doubtless it was fairly stratospheric compared to the NA diesel V8, the Hummer was stuck on the first rock of the trail, and one hopes Arnie passed enough people on the way home to feel better about the experience.
The above mods should be good for the F-Body LT1's 285hp without changing the cam characteristics. Thus, not only is it the 'poor man's solution', it's also the smart man's. 50 bucks and a lazy weekend later the Roadmaster is something of a genuine, if mild, hot rod.
Chassis Horsepower! FREE!
Sure, straight line power is fine and all, but much like when I trained to fight, when you're already powerful, adding more power without some agility to be able to put it to good use is futile. The Roadmaster already has great acceleration from the factory for what it is, but the handling isn't quite as laudable.
Part of the reason for this is the tires; there's little to be done with those big balonies. However, fixing that's going to take some cash, and this is Cheapville we're living in for the time being.
The 9C1 Caprices have long been rumored to have a 'special frame' compared to the rest of the B-Body line; even the Impala SS didn't feel as buttoned down as the 9C1s did according to many owners of both models.
Googling around, I found out that that's because the factory, in their infinite wisdom - er, cheapness - decided that no B-Body cars besides the 9C1 would be delivered with all 14 body to frame mounts installed. The first 3 mounts on each side - from the radiator support to under the A pillar - are simply bolts that don't allow the flex to exceed 1". Jack the car up at the wrong spot and you can see the gap form between the frame and body.
So, you go and buy mounts and install them, right? Well, the pioneer of this mod/observation recommends replacing all of the mounts with better spec ones, driving the cost to about 75 bucks to do the whole car.
Mostly I'm concerned with the first mounts, which connect the frame to the radiator support and thus the rest of the front of the car. These are the front corners of the box; if they're not connected, the whole front is going to be sloppy. However, when I was getting a wild hair (hare? Neither one sounds pleasant) up my ass to do something about this, I was rather, um, broke. Seriously, unless I was going to be able to buy new mounts with food stamps, this just wasn't happening. Then something dawned upon me.
What's better than nothing to provide a mount to the body?
Anything. Anything at all.
So I remembered that friend had been using a hole saw on his drill to attempt to lighten a board my street performer friend uses for his show. I remembered the cast off 'discs' created by that. Hmm...
2" around, 3/4" thick. How thick were those recommended mounts again? 7/8"? Close enough. Given that the wood won't give as much as even hard durometer rubber, the 1/8" margin for error seems fine by me. I installed the pucks (after enlarging the center hole to fit over the bolts) and viola - instantly noticeable improvement in the front end's feel.
Yeah, yeah, Captain Hack, but how long is this shade-tree mod going to last in the real world?
The photo below was taken today, and those pucks have been down there for going on six months, and I've had some spirited runs on my chosen driving roads to put them to the test. A) They work, and B), they haven't failed yet. The real beauty of it? Even if they did, the car's configuring defaults to 'stock' by definition. Even a broken mount is probably better than air.
So there you go - new gauze air filter, low restriction intake system, hot rod exhaust, even a legit chassis mod - all for under 50 bucks. Car Craft, Grassroots Motorsport, and 24 Hours of Lemons, take note.
Total Cost Involved
Speaking of Car Craft, I like something they do - they pride themselves on actually publishing the cost of the mods they do. It keeps you objective, especially if you have other things going on in your life than impressing other insecure car guys with your ride's awesomeness. Besides, it's the name of the game here. So in that spirit...
Used LT1 Roadmaster $1000
2 Mobil One oil changes 70
Spectre Air Filter 20
Rear diff fluid, gasket, LSD additive 25
2 3" ABS elbows, 45˚ 8
Exhaust clamps and adapters 10
2 window rollers from HELP 14
__________________________________
Total $1147
Minus 1450 paid for accident -1450
Total invested: -$303
That, my friend, is modern hot rodding done right. While we can't all have a nearly 1500 dollar windfall land in our lap, it's a good reason to buy a car that's actually worth something, if only on the books. I am seriously curious as to how the $2012 Challenge rules would view this list. Even at 1147 bucks, I'd have over 800 dollars worth of mods to be done. I'd have to spend $303 to break even on the car at this point...how am I going to do that? Come back for Part 7, Where do we go from here? Or, Impala SS-ify Me!
No comments:
Post a Comment