I hated the Intercooler sat way down low at the front of the car, and was convinced that it was going to get a stone through it on the motorway. The tubing also caught on the new wheels at full lock. As I reversed it out one Sunday to work on the truck I decided that was that and took it all off. I connected the Procharger straight to the intake and set about searching for a relatively cheap 76mm intercooler that would fit in between the lower hood lock bracket and the wing. A few months later, and skint, I decided enough was enough and took the lock bracket and the unused as yet AC condenser off, and dropped the old intercooler in it’s place. It looked like it was made to go there, so after making some quick brackets I set about plumbing it in using the old pipework. The pipework needed to go through the two wind deflector panels, which had the horn and alarm sounder on one side, and a relay board on the other. After coming to the conclusion it all looked crap anyway, I cut all the wiring out to re-do it after I’d done the pipework.

With holes cut out of either side, and the hard pipework trimmed and the ends swaged it all went together nicely with a much better run than before. At this point it was time to move on to the wiring. The lamp wiring was extended so that it could pass through the wings behind the deflectors and out of site, and everything put on multi pin plugs so I can remove the core support and swing the wiring out of the way with it. The horn and alarm sounder were hidden, the main fuseboard feed re-run, the MSD box removed completely as I’m not convinced it’s not the cause of a lot of my distributor problems. Washer pump wiring moved, heater controls moved, and the lot run in braided covering to neaten it all up. There is so much on this car I’d do better if I did it again, but I still love it. The only thing left to do at this point was the hood latch. The old latch and bracket are huge, but after some major trimming the bracket cleared the intercooler nicely. The latch will be replaced by a smaller double bear claw one but that was that for the weekend.

I’ve been tuning the Camaro for a few weeks now, and wasnt happy with the results. After a lot of research I realised I’d have to start again as the MAF was screwing up the logging. I knew I’d have to do the same on the ’55 so decided to pull the MAF out and replace it with a tube instead. While I had it all disconnected I set about trying to sort out the bearing squeak from the serpentine. I’d ground the mounting tabs of the alternator down last weekend to bring it further forward, and decided it was down to tension in the end. I undid the top mount and backed off the belt till the tension was right., then made a strap to hold it in place while I tested it. A quick fire up and no sign of the squeak, so that’s that done till I make a decent bracket.

I’d also bought the seatbelts for the car this week, after deciding that driving it without them was just plain dumb. The pillar mounts had been put in by Zane when he did the exhaust and stuff so it was a pretty easy job. It took longer to swap the latches on the seats than it did to fit the rest of the belts. With it now a lot safer, I can take Poppy to school in it so I put the manky old door panel on temporarily for her and fitted a door handle. A bit of a test drive with the datalogger showed my new map which I’d based on a tune I’d downloaded was close enough to get me started so after it had settled a bit I gave it some stick. I hit the rev limiter, even with the pedal travel limited to 90 odd percent (Just in case). Reading through the logs afterwards revealed that the blow off valve is dumping boost when it shouldnt be, so that will need a better restriction in the hose. After a bit of googling I found the suggestion of using a welder tip, so it’s got a 0.6mm one in there now, and the new map based on the drive is in there ready to do some more driving.

I’ve been doing lots of little jobs on the car over the last month, and decided it was time to sit down and do an update. The trunk has it’s seal fitted now, a couple of the doors have the old dirty door cards fitted temporarily and the heater control solenoid is fitted and functioning ready for some winter driving. I’ve also started to tune the car for part throttle and idle. It was running way too rich at idle as I’ve forced the computer to not control thr fuelling when it’s below 1200rpm and that gave me about 10:1 AFR. I got it to sit at 13.5:1 on my second guess so that’ll do for now. I also did a couple of short runs with the datalogger on and started to set the volumetric efficiency tables up. It’s smoother already as it should be, and with a few 45 minute runs to work planned in the next week or so I should end up with it pretty much nailed.

It’s getting pretty cold here so I wanted to get the heating outlets fitted and functional. It was a relatively easy job so I decided to fit the stereo and the glovebox while I was at it. After about an hour of messing about, I realised the dash was bent out of shape which was why the screws wouldnt reach. With it bent back into shape, and some trimming done I screwed it all together and called it quits. The only other job I did was some tidying on the wiring to tape some odd wires, and zip tie it all to the core support out of the way. Looking forward to driving it this week as Poppy is on half term so I’m not doing the school run.

I spent a couple of nights in the week working on the car, and got some bits and pieces that I could do without making too much noise done. I got the sway bar brackets clearanced and painted then re-fitted it all, got the procharger pipework back in and tightened up and the intercooler bolted up tight. I also got a catch can fitted and re-routed all the rubber pipework and some of the engine wiring. I’d also noticed the ignition key getting hot, even though all the heavy circuits are on relays, so I pulled it and fitted some heavy duty relays to take all of the load from the switch. I did an oil and filter change on Saturday and decided to take it out for a proper drive on Sunday. My mate John was going to a classic car show that was about 25 miles from the house, and needed to borrow my scanner, so I emptied out all the junk, put some tools in a bag, temporarily wired in the sat nav and I was on my way. I set the speedo as I drove using the sat nav as a reference, and it’s pretty much spot on. I stopped off at my parents house on the way, and pumped up a low tyre and set off again. It drove really well, and apart from being unbelievably hot inside it was faultless. It definately needs some tuning but according to the datalogger its running OK. After getting a cold drink and a quick hello, I set off again and John took some video of the car. As I drove off the throttle cable decided to come loose, so after a quick repair and moving the Lokar pedal so it wasnt stopping on the cable I was off.

On the way home it developed a knock in the front end somewhere, but drove well so I carried on home. I cant see anything obvious, and it was way too hot to climb under so I put it in the garage and will have a look at it in the week. The only other issue I found was the headlights have stopped working, I cant hear the relays clicking so I’ll have a look at that as well. Pretty damn happy with it I must say. Really, really need a carpet in there as my trainers were sticking to the floor! Oh and heres a video of it on YouTube, courtesy of John.