Building an LN3 from spare parts plus a Supercharger

[2seater]

It looks like it is time for a higher power to decode what I need in a chip, at least to start with. I included a couple of screen shots of the timing table when stock LN3 is compared to the 92-93 and 94-95 S/C. The numbers shown are the deviation from stock and as can be seen, they are all over the place. It makes a difference what translator or definition file is used as well. No sense plowing a field that has been worked over many times before🤔

 

Edited March 31, 2022 by 2seater
Removed the space consuming and useless attachments

[2seater]

I deleted the funky tables in the above post. After a communication with Ryan at GM Tuners/Sinister Performance, the mystery is solved as in, the later raw files are for two different PCM's which are incompatible. It still didn't explain why I couldn't at least view the files correctly with the matching datastream, but no matter at this point. He sent me one of each file for the early and late Series I supercharged, which I can view, modify and save, plus it makes sense. I still may have him do a custom tune for me as well and pay for it. He has been extremely helpful over more than a decade and a half, most of it gratis. It just reinforces the old axiom that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing🙂

[2seater]

Small items going on but all the major stuff seems to be in order now. I have parts coming tomorrow to assemble a new set of spark plug cables. Not that it is a big deal but I need a new set as a spare, it allows for a custom fit and I am kind of idling until the time comes to actually work on the car. One small surprise was the discovery that the spark plug for the 1995 S/C is one range hotter than for the N/A? I prefer a plain old copper plug for boosted engines and I never put many miles on them. In this case I prefer Autolites and when checking between the LN3 and L67 I noticed the difference so I opted to stay with the standard plug for the LN3, one range cooler. It may only be peculiar to the Autolite copper core plugs but so be it.

[2seater]

One other dark of night operation is working on a chip for the ECM. I have most of the things done but I need to find the best way to delete EGR. One big revelation was how different the timing tables are relative to what I have been using for my turbocharged engines. Even though they aren’t directly comparable, there is no doubt the turbo program needs serious massaging.

[jon L]

Ask Ryan, he did mine.  Delete the EGR.

[2seater]

Talked with Ryan about the best way to delete EGR and he confirmed to simply turn all the activation percentages down to zero and remove the warning flags so no check engine light. I think my initial chip is ready to burn but haven’t done so yet. Fingers crossed 🤞that transferring the information to my old notebook will go smoothly. All the old cables and connections for the chip burning is made for serial style ports on my old notebook but I am using a newer version of TunerPro on a much newer laptop which is capable of running the engine directly by connecting to the chip slot. USB stick to transfer data.

 

Borrowed a homemade pressure rig from a friend to try pre lubing the engine. Applied about 35psi and pumped the oil in through the oil pressure sender port. Not visible is the oil filter on the back side of the pressure tank. Ironically the filter is the same one as used on our cars. Hand cranked the engine over while watching for oil flow to the rocker arms, which finally was visible after the first two quarts were loaded. Still kind of a messy operation but I am happy I opted to do it.

[Ronnie]

Good photos, especially since the forum software has stopped turning them sideways. Is that green car at the drag strip a 3800? Pretty impressive how it's carrying the front wheels.

[2seater]

I happened to see that one in the files when I was adding the attachment. The guy that built that car is Lawrence Conley and it is called "Tweaked". He was big in the Buick Turbo V6 world for many years. He eventually went to the dark side with Chebby's 🤨 The car ran in the 7's at 175+. Let's just say it is a Buick V6, a Stage 2, 274 cu in, the engine that ran in Nascar once upon a time. It ran one very large turbocharger on alcohol. 

[2seater]

Getting to big time gaps now but getting close to bringing the car home for a transplant. The pile of snow turned ice in front of the shed door has now melted so it can exit the building. In the meantime, I thought I would report I successfully burned a chip for the install, which I might give a whirl even with the turbo engine, but it is not to be, yet. I was going to go into the process of finding the pieces and parts for the chip burning, while admitting it is possible to hide stuff from yourself as you get older, but I won't do that. In any case, I was successful in loading the file on a flash drive and then transferring it to the old notebook with the proper ports for the chip burner, which is also old. That all worked fine up until the TunerPro program can't find the hardware, aka the chip burner. This is all ancient stuff, in dog/cat years, from the turn of the century. According to the computer, the port is working properly but it doesn't show any hardware connected??? Strange issue which needs to be resolved. I have used this combination several times in the past so maybe I hid the "how to do it" from myself as well?

[Ronnie]

I keep hanging onto an old laptop thinking that I might use it for chip burning sometime but from what I'm hearing it wouldn't work. It still has windows XP on it.

[2seater]

2 hours ago, Ronnie said:

I keep hanging onto an old laptop thinking that I might use it for chip burning sometime but from what I'm hearing it wouldn't work. It still has windows XP on it.

No, I don't think that would be an issue. The one I originally, and still do, use is running Win98. No matter how old, to a point, it is still newer than the ECM in our cars. It is so old it was a dial up internet machine, and when it became the garage computer, I stripped out lots of the useless stuff so it just needs its information loaded through a usb connection from some other source. It also has old Radio Shack software in it to connect to a multimeter that will record and display readings from the meter. I use the meter to read the frequency output of a MAF on the flowbench. 

 

It is possible I am missing or overlooking something. I have used this setup before, but it has been a few years. Nothing is changed that I know of. I am a borderline dunderhead when it comes to being computer savvy and as they have become more powerful and automated, it seems more difficult to make older systems work. The one thing that would seem to be out of the ordinary is the fact that when I look at the different ports via the file system, it doesn't display that something is connected to it? Like the connection is somehow missing?? There are usb to 25 pin female parallel adapters available but that would be if this fails.

[Ronnie]

1 hour ago, 2seater said:

out of the ordinary is the fact that when I look at the different ports via the file system, it doesn't display that something is connected to it?

I might be misunderstanding, are you talking about Windows file system or something else?  I didn't know you could look at ports via the Windows file system. Should the chip burner show up as a drive like a CDROM when it's connected to the parallel port? I would have thought you would look in device manager to see what's connected to a parallel port much in the same way you would look to see if a printer was connected to it.

[2seater]

7 hours ago, Ronnie said:

I might be misunderstanding, are you talking about Windows file system or something else?  I didn't know you could look at ports via the Windows file system. Should the chip burner show up as a drive like a CDROM when it's connected to the parallel port? I would have thought you would look in device manager to see what's connected to a parallel port much in the same way you would look to see if a printer was connected to it.

You understand my intention correctly although my description was out to lunch. Device manager doesn't appear to show anything connected to that port, which is a printer port. That may be correct as I don't know what the chip burner actually does when it is inactive. I suspect it may be a setting in TunerPro that needs to be corrected to direct the program to look at the printer port when it is opened. 

[DAVES89]

Sounds like you are getting down to the end. Too bad you can't finish today as it was 5 years ago that you and I were over at Kendall's starting the Red after the engine/tranny rebuild/swap. I remember because it is my wedding anniversary.

[2seater]

2 hours ago, DAVES89 said:

Sounds like you are getting down to the end. Too bad you can't finish today as it was 5 years ago that you and I were over at Kendall's starting the Red after the engine/tranny rebuild/swap. I remember because it is my wedding anniversary.

🎉🎂🎈

[2seater]

I guess this is a form of progress. I found there was a shortcut on the desktop of the burner computer located right next to the TunerPro icon. When I opened it, I found it was a shortcut to the screen for the chip burner. Once I clicked on verify it found the connection to the burner just fine so now I know the connection and hardware are okay. I don’t remember this being a two step process like it appears at this point, but a little at a time I guess🤞

[Ronnie]

Glad you got it working.

[2seater]

I need to leave a trail of breadcrumbs for myself, or maybe just write a procedure and file it with the hardware. I kept thinking this should interface directly with the chip burning from TunerPro program, but that’s not quite correct. It is a simple process done through the burner/reader with the TunerPro as the source or receiver of the info to be loaded on the chip. In my defense, loading programming to an emulator connected to the ECM for running the engine from a laptop is done directly from TunerPro and I guess I had that stuck in my head. New chip is burned and all is well👍

[2seater]

I retrieved the standard sized Reatta alternator (120a) from storage today to compare to the large frame (140a) and it is 1/2" smaller case diameter and interestingly, the pulley is 1/4" smaller. The large alternator came mounted on the donor engine I purchased for the S/C but it just looks so tall above the engine I wanted to check the smaller alternator in case clearance is an issue, but it turns out it isn't as much as it appears visually. The s/c mounting for the alternator is the reverse of the n/a engine so the smaller alternator would need to be re-clocked 180 deg to be compatible. A minor item, but as a spare, one configuration doesn't fit both. Just for reference, the supercharger (L67), the TPI (L27) and the LN3 intake manifold are all the same overall height. The photo below is of the front of the S/C engine with the stock LN3 alternator sitting on top of the supercharger. The way the alternator mounts with the supercharger puts almost half its diameter above the height of the intake.

Edited April 27, 2022 by 2seater

[DAVES89]

sorry, no picture...

 

I see it now. Looks great!

Edited April 27, 2022 by DAVES89