This is the obligatory piston shot. That's one of my Cometic MLS gaskets:
Cylinder head bolted down with no valvetrain:
Valvetrain assembled. How many different applications are in this picture? I have a Crane moly-disulfide lube on the intake cam, Comp white lithium lube on the exhaust cam, Clevite bearing guard in the cam journals and lifter bores, ARP moly assembly lube on the upper head stud threads and under the nuts and blue Loctite (or rather the Permatex equivalent) on the bottom threads of the head studs
They're not "custom" because Cometic already had the dies to punch out gaskets for the Northstar. They're more like "made to order". For an engine like the 60 degree V6 for which they do not have dies, they'd need quite a large order to justify making the dies.
They were ~$125 each.
I chose the thickness of course, and was also able to request a .010 smaller than stock bore in the gasket, to help keep crevice volume down.
The Northstar clutch alignment tool should have a diameter of .822 for a length of .800, then a diameter of .865 for a length of 1.375.
The Northstar can use 25mm flywheel bolts. This includes .570 thickness of the crank flange, .300 thickness of the flywheel, .060 thickness of the spacer and the thickness of a washer. The max depth through the crank flange is .650 (which leaves .080 gap between the flange and the rear main bulkhead).
I got my 12.9 flywheel bolts from Lawson, but ARP also lists the following: 671-1002 180K psi 8x1.25x25 12pt 5pk 661-1002 180K psi 8x1.25x25 hex 5pk
The 12583148 fuel rail is what I used.
[This message has been edited by Will (edited 07-03-2009).]
Well, Will is gone now of course (thanks for your service and God speed, dude!), but let me tell you my vision for the no-too-distant future. It's something for all to look forward to.
Next summer he'll get back to a shiny (albeit dusty) new V8 waiting for him, and I'll have my water/air intercooled turbo TGP 3.1 5-speed '88 GT (MIDTRBO) here and running well by then (and it'll be faster than his 6 year uber-reliable Northstar build, hah! ).
What this means is none other than a video-taped blast through Thornton Gap with Will in front and me following with the in-car camcorder! What's Thornton Gap you ask? A very awesome roller coaster through the Blue Ridge Mountains crossing the famous Skyline Drive, that's what.
Will grew up around there and could drive this mountain with his eyes closed. I followed him in his N* Fiero with my modded AWD Talon a few years back, and have wished it was recorded ever since. I've been through there several more times in the Talon, in Will's Formula, in my twin-turbo Camaro, and on my GPZ1100, and I absolutely MUST do it in the soon-to-be MIDTRBO. What better way to break-in two awesome 'new' Fieros than to drive them how they were meant to be driven!
Stay tuned for summer '10! ------------------ '88 Fiero GT - getting there '96 Talon TSi AWD - 11.9 @ 116, sorta broke again still '90 Camaro IROC-Z twin-turbo - sorta broke again still '85 Kawi 750 Turbo - sorta broke still '95 Kawi GPZ1100 - 10 second daily driver, heh
[This message has been edited by ALLTRBO (edited 07-03-2009).]
I'm working on it, I really am! Everything just sort of fell apart all at once (except the Fiero, which I bought without a drivetrain... stupid!). With chronic severe time-wasting health problems, everything is slow-going. I've made more progress in the last few months than in the last few years, though. Someone else is nearly completing my Fiero for me. :/
I wondered how they ran the timing chains for a V-engine. Thanks for the pic
On an engine with different packaging choices, the need for the two step timing drive would be eliminated. Because the Northstar is so optimised for compactness, all of the angles in the cylinder head are "swept" toward the intake side. The exhaust valve angle is shallow, the plug well is angled toward the intake side and the intake valve angle is steep. This puts the exhaust cam almost directly over the outside wall of the block, while the intake cam, as you can see, is overhung significantly to the inside of the engine. All this necessitates the two step timing drive and was done to make the engine more compact, which is especially necessary for transverse mounting. If it were *really* optimized for performance, the heads would be closer to symmetrical and a single stage timing drive (like what BMW has for the M3's new 4 litre V8) might work, but then it wouldn't fit in a Fiero.
FIRE IN THE HOLE!!!...I drove it around for a few minutes until the temp got up. The temp came up and settled in, but then gradually crept up. As I was coming back, the temp gauge fluctuated distinctly as I crested a hill; this means air in the system. Since I'd been very careful filling it, this told me I most likely had a leak. When I got back to the hizzouse and popped the decklid, the joint between the thermostat housing and the waterpump housing was gently misting coolant all over the left side of my engine bay. Grrr... That SonofaB@#$% is getting some F#@%ing Permatex or RTV next time it's apart. I'm not putting up with that crap anymore. That joint had leaked when I was filling the cooling system, so I took it apart and carefully reseated the o-ring when I put it back together. It stayed sealed when filling the system, but the increase in pressure from the initial heat cycle made it leak. Annoying, but could be worse.
The engine didn't quite run right. It did have a miss. My amuptated Caddy instrument panel told me that the integrator was 143 for the front bank and 105 for the rear bank. My half-assed program for the Caddy computer locks the BLM's at 128, so all I had to work from were the integrator values. So the computer thinks that the front bank is lean and the rear bank is rich. I can believe the the front bank would be lean because I found a serious nick/gouge in the #8 plug wire... so that could be a misfire. The O2 sensor would register the extra oxygen as lean and the computer would add fuel.
The rear bank registers rich. Basically the only thing that could cause this is running rich. I suspect that I may have an injector problem, since the injectors had been sitting a while and I did not have them cleaned/flowed.
However, the most important aspect of the test drive was that the engine DID NOT SMOKE. On the most basic level, the build is a success. Even if nothing else about the engine is any better than stock, it is at least a viable engine to use in a car.
While it did have a miss, it still ran on 7 cylinders and definitely had power that I hadn't felt in a long time. Acceleration to any speed I tried was still effortless... just not quite as brutal as it should have been.
I am slightly concerned about fuel wash down in the missing cylinder, but total run time is probably 10-15 minutes at this point, so I don't think I could have done anything to it yet. Fixing the miss should just be a matter of tune-up issues, like plug wires and injector maintenance/replacement. Fixing the coolant spray should also be straightforward. Unfortunately, I have ZERO time to do any of that, so I'll have to leave instructions with my dad for him to do it.
I was looking at this thread and I can't see why it took 6 years to build this engine and still not running , there is alot of technical jargon and rambling and maths calculation but nothing to show I think it is a waste of time .
I was looking at this thread and I can't see why it took 6 years to build this engine and still not running , there is alot of technical jargon and rambling and maths calculation but nothing to show I think it is a waste of time .
What's the problem you're having with it? You've only been waiting since Sept. 2009 for it to be finished.
I have some pic of my N* build I would like to share, how do I upload pics?
There's an icon at the bottom of the page for "Pennock's Image Poster". Download it and follow directions to set it up. Alternatively, start an account at photobucket.
I was looking at this thread and I can't see why it took 6 years to build this engine and still not running , there is alot of technical jargon and rambling and maths calculation but nothing to show I think it is a waste of time .
You're a few months too late. I fired it in June. My dad had to move the car after a couple of months of sitting. It fired and ran first crank. No one's stopping you from doing better. You don't have a piano tied to your leg preventing you from going places.
You're a few months too late. I fired it in June. My dad had to move the car after a couple of months of sitting. It fired and ran first crank. No one's stopping you from doing better. You don't have a piano tied to your leg preventing you from going places.
I was looking at this thread and I can't see why it took 6 years to build this engine and still not running , there is alot of technical jargon and rambling and maths calculation but nothing to show I think it is a waste of time .
Totally un-call- for'd.
He is experimenting an working the theoritcal end of engine development. and YES that does involve math and calculations, boring, maybe, but fo the sharper people, there is much to be learned. He is out of country. if you read the thread you would know that. Will and I will disagree alot, but that does not merit any level of disrespect, and that is what I saw in that post by you. We will get over any disagreement, but we, and no one should disrespect anyone for their direction in engine work. learn, cause the day you stop learning you will be in that box 6 feet under. ( my ol man said that all the time, and he never stopped taking things apart and figuring out how they worked)
I wish I had the time to design and select an engine like this. it may not be the most powerful or the best engine to do this with, but he had a desire and he did it. I did that 20 years ago with a 231 buick, and got laughed at, and proved them wrong, so I can recongnize the time and effort put in here.
ok, done off topicing here. Will get home safe and finish this thing.
[This message has been edited by tjm4fun (edited 11-29-2009).]
its not really going right now. I mothballed everything about a year ago because I had bought a major fixer upper farm house and between work, kids, and the house there is no time left. I hope to start it back up in about 6 months.
The Pistons are CP, about two years ago I talked to you via this forum and followed your lead. They are 12:1. The block is a 04 with an 04 crank. In 04 some cranks were forged, this one looks forged based on the seem seen in the picture on the rod journal. The balancing guy who did the rods, pistons, rings, writs pins, and crank thought it was a forged crank too. He said the set up we have is the lowest rotational weight for any V8 he had ever seen. in addition this was the last year for the LS1 ECU style crank pick up. I write software for a living and once worked on a product that used the Delphi PCM32U (LS1 ECU), as a side project I re-flashed that ECU with my own boot loader and program code completely erasing the GM software. I plan to use this ECU on this project.
Anyway I am running 05 heads which requires some oil plumbing modes, the heads are almost done with the exception of grinding the height of the valve stems and fly cutting the heads about .020". +00 head had a better valve train with a roller rocker fulcrum, and the exhaust ports are better then any earlier N* year too. Especially since I ported the head. I think I bought the last set of springs from chfab for the 05 heads that they had.
I am also running a dry sump which allowed the nice folks at CP Pistons to sell me some low tension piston rings. The dry sump is about 70% finished. It is s three stage vacuum and 1 stage pressure. I made a dry sump tank out of N* oil tank, which now sites about 2.5 inches less in height.
its not really going right now. I mothballed everything about a year ago because I had bought a major fixer upper farm house and between work, kids, and the house there is no time left. I hope to start it back up in about 6 months.
The Pistons are CP, about two years ago I talked to you via this forum and followed your lead. They are 12:1. The block is a 04 with an 04 crank. In 04 some cranks were forged, this one looks forged based on the seem seen in the picture on the rod journal. The balancing guy who did the rods, pistons, rings, writs pins, and crank thought it was a forged crank too. He said the set up we have is the lowest rotational weight for any V8 he had ever seen. in addition this was the last year for the LS1 ECU style crank pick up. I write software for a living and once worked on a product that used the Delphi PCM32U (LS1 ECU), as a side project I re-flashed that ECU with my own boot loader and program code completely erasing the GM software. I plan to use this ECU on this project.
Anyway I am running 05 heads which requires some oil plumbing modes, the heads are almost done with the exception of grinding the height of the valve stems and fly cutting the heads about .020". +00 head had a better valve train with a roller rocker fulcrum, and the exhaust ports are better then any earlier N* year too. Especially since I ported the head. I think I bought the last set of springs from chfab for the 05 heads that they had.
I am also running a dry sump which allowed the nice folks at CP Pistons to sell me some low tension piston rings. The dry sump is about 70% finished. It is s three stage vacuum and 1 stage pressure. I made a dry sump tank out of N* oil tank, which now sites about 2.5 inches less in height.
Interesting. I'd heard they improved the exhaust ports in '05, but I didn't know how much. Do you have flow numbers for your heads? port volumes? What work have you done to them?
What oil system mods are necessary to use the '05 heads on the '04 block?
I hadn't had much interest in the '00+ engines because the '00-'04 had horrible exhaust ports. I had figured I'd skip this generation and go to the VVT engine for my next swap.
I knew that the '00+ had a different reluctor wheel than the '93-'99 engines. Are you saying that the '00+ wheel is the same (or makes the same pulse train from the sensor) as the LS1's use?
Very interesting info on the forged crank. I knew the RWD engines had forged cranks. It would make sense to use the same part in both engines. The Northstar does have a lightweight rotating assembly. The small bore means that the pistons can be lighter than anything for a Chevy. I took 300 grams per cylinder out of the stock bobweight between the Eagle rods and CP Pistons. Did you have your crank balanced conventionally (by drilling holes in the counterweights)?
[This message has been edited by Will (edited 12-01-2009).]
Originally posted by mrgrimes: I write software for a living and once worked on a product that used the Delphi PCM32U (LS1 ECU), as a side project I re-flashed that ECU with my own boot loader and program code completely erasing the GM software. I plan to use this ECU on this project.
I know what you mean regarding the house. I bought two this year and I haven't seen the renovated one finished yet.
This bit about the ECM is very interesting... I'm curious to hear you talk more about this.
I have seen you on the GM ECU forums before. The ECU is the 332 based derivative developed by Delphi using a Moto 68332 (before freescale) for GM and that started production in 1999 and ended its run in 2005, but you probably new that. I worked for a company that was a vendor to GM and we had an relationship with Delphi where we would buy from Delphi the ECU only flashed with seed code. Using P&E micro BDM connection we would run out of RAM and flash the boot loader or program. For me to do this today using a junk yard ECU I need to pull a pin high on the flash chip and run my PC app that downloads s-record lines to the program running out of flash which in turn sets the address on the flash to program mode and writes each s-record line. I can flash any address in the flash chip.
I have all the documents for the CPU and peripheral devices, and harness connection diagrams. Back in the day I wrote the spark control portion of the product and tested the slew rate of the coils that we were using. I found that by running the coil at > 16 volts I could get the CPU to dwell 8 coils at above 11,000 RPM. In remembering that, I decided to purchase an ECU, hack into it and start writing a basic sequential fuel and sequential spark control using map, rpm, throttle, air temp and coolant temp. I got it all working on my test bench but my electric motor would only run the crank reluctor ring that I made, up to 6000 rpm.
I can configure the ECU to run as a 4, 6, or 8 cylinder but I have to use that Northstar crank pattern.
Sounds like you're neck deep in it. I don't think I'll ever get that deep into the actual programming side of the house, but I have lots of ideas for different algorithms to try in an ECM.
I've been curious about using the product of MAP and IAT for the load axis of a spark map instead of MAP by itself. I think that would more accurately represent the likelihood of detonation and result in a better ability to control detonation.
What I'd like to try when I get back from Iraq is to use the 0411 (which I believe is the computer you're talking about) with the code from a G-Van with Vortec 350, tuned with either EFI Live of HP Tuners (probably EFI LIve to leverage some other nutty projects I want to try). I'd use the Northstar DIS brick. If that works that's probably as far as I'd go with engine management on the '99- engines.
So I understand from what you said that the '00+ reluctor wheel is the same as the LS1 reluctor wheel. Does the Northstar continue to use two crank sensors to synch faster? The positions of the crank sensors were tweaked slightly for '00. Do you know why that was done? For example, was it to make the "reference angle" variable the same between the two engines?
If I put the '00-'04 crank into my engine, would I be able to run it with the 0411 and LS1 program (and just tweak whatever amounts to a crank reference angle)? That would upgrade me from DIS to coil/cylinder, but I'm just curious as I'm not about to change crankshafts for that relatively small benefit.
It sounds like you're building a pretty sweet engine and you've really cherry picked the best parts of the roller cam FWD engines.
Do you have flow numbers for the '05 heads? What oil system mods were necessary?
Ideally you would want to use the air temp at the intake valves whenever the throttle is > 25%. Because at greater than 25% the intake valve is the last air valve before the cylinder and it has the most effect on air flow. As you know pressure up stream and down stream along with temperature just before any orifice determine flow across any orifice. Without air temp you would be lost on your transient control algorithm, even with feed back from an output sensor. If the throttle is < 25% than the air temp at the throttle body is preferred.
In years past I have spend many a day calibrating my speed density code in order to meet California EPA chassis dyno tests. The best calibrations I achieve were if I ran a thermocouple into the intake runner right above the valve. From there I would create/calibrate an separate air temperature map (1 dimensional table) for the permanent manifold temp sensor based on the output of the temporary thermocouple. From a software design stand point having a two separate tables one for map and one for air temp is a better software abstraction and software architecture design vs a two dimensional table with map and air temp, even if the look up is faster cpu cycles wise for a two dimensional table.
For the 05 heads I do not have flow numbers but I will try to send you a picture of the ports. The oil mods are necessary because the front cam bearing oil supply passages from the block do not match up. The head over hangs the block where the timing chain cavity and front two cylinders start. The two supply passages can be accessed easily from behind the timing chain and plumbed directly to the output of the oil pump below.
for the reluctor pickup, the ASIC chip in the ECU that front ends the signal coming from the two reluctors also uses the CAM signal to determine what firing cylinder the engine is on when it starts to crank. It only needs one sensor to figure it out because of the unique crank signal pattern combined with the CAM phase will tell the ASIC what cylinder it is with in 26deg of rotation. I think is about 3 discret pulses from the reluctor wheel which if memory serves me right are about 8.x deg apart but have varying duty cycles. So the second sensor is only for redundancy if the fist one fails or the CAM sensor fails.
The block changed quite a lot in 00 so that may be why the are situated differently then before, but I do not know on this one.
I've torn a couple of '00-'04 engines apart. I don't think the block really changed *that* much. The crank sensor bosses moved a little bit, but that's all that was obvious.
There was a mount boss of some sort added to the lower crank case just below the crank pulley... That required a change to the front cover. That boss may have been added in '98 or so, though. The windage tray and oil manifold changed a couple of times in minor ways. The big annoyance with that was that they moved the alignment dowels also, so your oil manifold has to match your lower crank case.
'00 pistons were flat tops, and '99 had valve reliefs. The '99- and '00+ used the same head gasket, so the deck changes were a product of the '05 redesign. I'll have to snag one of those engines to take a look at it.
Could use an '05 block with the '00-'04 crank and not have the deck interface issues you're having? (IOW, were the crank sensor bosses moved again in '05)? Sounds like there are some big changes at the front end of the engine for '05. Do you have pics of your '05 heads? Or of the problem areas?
Thank for the info Will. I know the casting material changed on the +00 blocks too, but I can't remember where I heard that.
As for the 05 block with the 04 crank, the back end of the block, oil manifold, and pan are very different than < 05, so much so that it would not fix in my corvette. Add that I already modified my 04 oil pan for a dry sump and 04 and 05 oil pans are different. The 05 engine was off an AWD caddy, the oil pan had a big hole in it where the drive shaft passed through.
I will attempt to take some pictures of the heads this week end.
Sounds like you're neck deep in it. I don't think I'll ever get that deep into the actual programming side of the house, but I have lots of ideas for different algorithms to try in an ECM.
I've been curious about using the product of MAP and IAT for the load axis of a spark map instead of MAP by itself. I think that would more accurately represent the likelihood of detonation and result in a better ability to control detonation.
What I'd like to try when I get back from Iraq is to use the 0411 (which I believe is the computer you're talking about) with the code from a G-Van with Vortec 350, tuned with either EFI Live of HP Tuners (probably EFI LIve to leverage some other nutty projects I want to try). I'd use the Northstar DIS brick. If that works that's probably as far as I'd go with engine management on the '99- engines.
So I understand from what you said that the '00+ reluctor wheel is the same as the LS1 reluctor wheel. Does the Northstar continue to use two crank sensors to synch faster? The positions of the crank sensors were tweaked slightly for '00. Do you know why that was done? For example, was it to make the "reference angle" variable the same between the two engines?
If I put the '00-'04 crank into my engine, would I be able to run it with the 0411 and LS1 program (and just tweak whatever amounts to a crank reference angle)? That would upgrade me from DIS to coil/cylinder, but I'm just curious as I'm not about to change crankshafts for that relatively small benefit.
It sounds like you're building a pretty sweet engine and you've really cherry picked the best parts of the roller cam FWD engines.
Do you have flow numbers for the '05 heads? What oil system mods were necessary?
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