fairmont back on its feet

The night I uploaded that video I had the motor together and installed. It's been good so far with 18 psi, I lowered about 6 deg or more out of the timing since we think that was the issue. I'm gunna hook up the inter cooler again and also mark the balancer and check the timing and see if the crab pickup is off a bit

5.3 building again! update!

showing updates, since i broke the motor in less than a week, what it could be, what i plan to do, explaining the theory behind how it broke, and trying again!

i started on the car at like 7 and its installed and ready to run for tomorrow already

broke the fresh 5.3 already

ok, so i took it right to the dyno friday, black friday, and hit it with 20lbs and she made 40rwhp extra, 640rwhp...


so i proceeded to top out the boost controller again around 26psi and it came up, and stumbled and laid over. i let out and knew i broke a piston or two again.
rods are strait. 
piston 3 had the lower ringland broken in half...
im at a loss here haha what do you guys think.


3 and 7 are broken the others are fine. used headgasket is fine also. pistons dont even have any marks in them showing detonation or anything.

testing the trans brake on the sunbird

testing it out a little bit today, needs some fuel in it but everything else is ok, we are gunna throw this thing on the dyno friday and see what kinda power we can make

my unhealthy junk car obsession

i have had this car for a while, but never really posted about it, i bought it months ago, to use the engine and trans in the ventura, but cant help but want to keep the car. its a 69 caprice/impala.

its just so ugly i have to keep it for a while more.

installed the glide in the sunbird

operation success, swapped in the glide, had to modify the trans cooler lines, tq arm bracket, shifter linkage, etc but its all working! take a look at these custom brackets made today hahah

my gen4 gutted motor is alive!

installed ebay pullout used rods and pistons from a 2008 5.3, regapped my rings to 28 really loose to take some abuse, and i have it all together and running, fired it on the ms1 and now its on the microsquirt again for more testing, if all goes well ill be pulling out the MS1 and MSD6010 and running this permanently.

got my gen4 stuff and installed it all today!

got my gen4 shit today, wich you can see is so fuckin beast like its awesome...

they look like aftermarket rods and pistons.

full floating wrist pin instead of a pressed, and the rod is a H beam style instead of a I beam hopefully much stronger, as i know people with gen4 shit making more power than me and not bending anything.

gapped all my rings to 28-30 so its ready for some abuse.
i plan to hit it with 30lbs if the ignition system will let me.

motors built, reused the ls1 head gaskets, and slammed it all in and bolted up the trans and connected a few things, and thats where i am quitting for the day, think i might do a compression check tomorrow as soon as i get the converter tight and put the starter in, to see what kinda compression its at now, since it has flat top 5.3 pistons in it now, gunna have more squish

powerglide for the sunbird

my friend pulled the glide for the sunbird out today, so hopefully this weekend we will be installing it, and early sunday have it out and driving, then this week get it on the dyno to make sure the driveshaft doesnt come out at 155mph and then take her racing the next coming weekend... whew.

fairmont 5.3 tear down video

tear down and overview of the 5.3 i have been thrashing like it owes me money

fairmont 5.3 teardown

exciting to finally tear this motor down and check out what i believed the ring-lands to have butted and broken some ring-lands. to prove this we would have to see spotless pistons and broken lands only.

its nice to see we tore it apart and found exactly that, broken lower lands, from butting and perfect piston tops, people are also right about gen3 rods bending at 650+ because every single one of my rods is bent slightly lol. it seems like the rod is heaver material wise on the one side and thats the side they bend towards, hard to explain but they all bent around equally in the same direction bowing out in the center twoards the flexplate, rear or the motor.

should get my gen4 rods and pistons tomorrow and ill be opening up the gap on the rings and throwing them in.

it was neat to see, since pistons 1-3 broke, we checked the gap on them and they were like 18-19, then checking the gap on the other pistons that did not break, some were 24... just re confirming what people say about when you are pushing them you need to open the ring gap, but honestly it took bending the rods to break a ringland on this gen3. so i would say 600 is your limit probably might even be slightly bending rods at that power level.

pictures from cecil county 10-11-12