It seems there are constant rule changes in drag racing, and when it comes times to prep a car for a specific class, one must pay close attention to all of the specific requirements. The devil is in the details for evolution of Dragzine’s Project Grandma Malibu from a mere, but still badass “project car” to a class prepped competitive race car.

Sure, there are a few changes that had to be made for the car to compete in the Pacific Street Car Association’s Limited Street Class, but the changes provide an opportunity to build a better car, right? It may seem like taking steps backward by removing the current coil-over set-up and going back to a stock configuration; but who does not like a challenge? As is the case with any project, Project Grandma will be receiving new parts, like a Racepak Data System, adjustable spring perches from TRZ Motorsports, and a ProCharger blown LSX engine from Virginia Speed.

Returning the Rear Suspension Back to Stock

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves and focus only on the impure thoughts surrounding the forthcoming Virginia Speed LSX engine, Grandma has to make it to the track. In accordance with the Pacific Street Car Association’s (PSCA) Limited Street class, Grandma had to give up her rear coilover system because this class requires the shocks to retain the original angle from the factory. A stock style rear suspension is mandatory, but a little fabrication is permitted for the purpose of tire clearance. Since this is considered an “entry level” class and cars are limited to a 28×10.5 slick, and there was enough room to make the adequate adjustments, allowing the relocation of the shocks to a factory style mounting location.

In order to achieve stock location, Grandma required  a little welding, cutting and tweaking.  In order for the shocks to be in the legal position, tabs (mounting brackets) were welded into place. Once the brackets for the shocks were in place, it was time to reinforce the mounting location with additional tubing and bracing.

This shows you the original coilover conversion on the left and then the revised, stock suspension location on the right

After the shocks were relocated to their “new original” location, it was time to address the issue of the springs. This is where the TRZ Motorsports’ spring mounts came to the rescue. TRZ makes a wide array of suspension components for the ’78-’88 Malibus, which makes them an excellent resource for Project Grandma; TRZ manufactures their drag racing suspension components for many popular models as well.

The spring mounts were installed on the existing mounting locations on the rear differential housing. TRZ’s spring mounts allow the use of any standard 2.5” I.D. coilover spring; this allowed the existing springs to be reused. These spring mounts allow 2.5” of ride height adjustment, which is undeniably useful. Black anodized aluminum is used for constructing the spring mounts to ensure durability and prevent the destructive nature of corrosion.

TRZ Motorsports Adjustable Height Rear Spring Locators – PN 209-21

• Allows the use of any standard 2.5-inch I.D. coil-over spring
• Provides 2.5-inch of ride height adjustment
• Black anodized aluminum for corrosion resistance

Tabs were welded on to the chrome moly tubing in order to properly and safely relocated the shocks. The bottom mount utilizes the stock location on the Currie rear end housing

The TRZ lower mount was welded directly to the axle housing Another benefit of using this product is that it provides fully adjustable ride height to tailor-fit the application.

Sean welded the Wolfe Race Craft adjustable upper mount to a bent piece of chome moly that would be supported by two of the 25.5 cross bars located in the stock upper where the factory spring brackets were.

With a few hours of fabrication, everything was lined back up to near the stock suspension geometry angles

Beginning to Install the Racepak Data Acquisition System

The Racepak systems are very simple to wire. Each harness can piggy back to each other and the V300 data logger is the main sorce of power, supplying the rest of the components.

Since Grandma is going to be a much more serious race car, we decided to upgrade our traditional gauge layout to a Racepak data acquisition system.  But monitoring our solid 8-second passes isn’t good enough, so we equipped Grandma with a Racepak V300SD so we can review what the sensors logged during a run and use the data as a tuning tool.  The V300SD receives the main power source and then relays that power to our IQ3 via Racepak’s V-Net technology.  Furthermore, all of Racepak’s sensors that are optioned with the V-Net connector is simply plugged inline with other sensor connectors and do not require any additional wiring.

Racepak IQ3 Dash

· Display up to 28 inputs via 4 pages
· Blue backlight
· Gear Indicator
· 8 user defined alarms with warning text and lights
· User defined 5-character sensor input names
· User defined shift lights
· Shielded, low luster display for sunlight viewing
· Metric / Imperial Configurable

V300SD Data Recorder – PN 200-KT-V300SDL

• Able to handle a total of 67 channels
• Samples  V-Net sensors up to 100 per second and Analog up to 1000 per second
• RPM and switch contacts up to 100 per second
•  Timing intervals within 1/1000th of a second
• Records to SD memory card
• Internal sensors include battery voltage, longitudinal G-meter, and lateral G-meter

Absolutely no wiring is needed with Racepak's V-Net CAN-BUS connector harness technology. Simply piggybacking them together is all they need to work.

Thanks to the V300SD and a host of sensors, a race team will be able to monitor driveshaft speed, RPM, air/fuel ratio, temperatures, pressures, shock travel, and or more. For example, Project Grandma will be receiving information on driveshaft speed thanks to the driveshaft sensor. One of the advantages of monitoring driveshaft speed is that wheel spin can be detected. With the V300, we can replay a run a look for abnormal spikes in the curve.  Outside of the typical oil pressure and fluid temperature sensors, we are equipping the Malibu with a blower discharge thermocouple and an intake mounted temperature sensor.  This will allow us to monitor the intercooler’s efficiency during a run. Another added benefit is the XFI link cable that allows our FAST XFI standalone to use all the sensors from the Racepak so we don’t have to worry about doubling up sensors. The V300SD even has an internal G-meter that can measure acceleration, deceleration, and sid-to-side motion!

A Racepak driveshaft sensor will record the speed and log any wheel spin that Grandma may encounter. It comes with heavy duty billet yoke mounts that fit perfectly without modification.

Racepak offers two main digital dashes – the IQ3 and UDX. While both dashes have part numbers that allow for data logging, we chose the IQ3 for its unique shift light configuration and its ability to display a few more sensors in real time. The IQ3 can display up to 28 inputs through four pages, and provides defined alarms complete with warning lights and text if something were to go south.

During the day the shield on the IQ3 will allow the driver to see the LCD display without interference from the sun; however, when the sun goes down, we will benefit from the blue bac klight display. One the visual path, Racepak’s IQ3 replaces the need for an over sized tach. During the installation of the IQ3 into Project Grandma, the clusters of gauges were removed creating a simplified and therefore less distracting dash for the driver.

We mounted the IQ3 dash back in the stock location with a sheet of carbon fiber

The Racepak V300 SD is wired and ready to monitor Project Grandma. Thanks to the specially designed V-Net connectors, a direct link from the sensor to the logger is created.

Distraction should be kept to a minimum with the addition of the new engine from Virginia Speed. Project Grandma will now have a GM Performance Parts LSX block. This new block will serve as the base for the ambitious plan to create a supercharged 1,200 horsepower LSX engine.

In a previous update titled, “LS is More”, by Editor, Paul Huizenga, explained the basic outline for Grandma’s new direction. The LSX engine will use a Lunati Pro Series crank, JE Pistons, a COMP Cam, Trick Flow LSXR cylinder heads, a Holley Hi Ram intake, Jesel valvetrain and a FAST XFI 2.0 engine management system. These components were selected to make the most of the ProCharger F1C LSX combination, and hopefully leave the competition in the dust.

Our Virginia Speed-built LSX 388 is getting ready for the dyno!

The foundation for any performance engine build is the block, and our LSX-based race motor being built by Virginia Speed is no exception. Before any of the sexy hardware from Trick Flow, ProCharger, Holley, Lunati, JE, GRP, and a host of other partners in the build can be added, we first need a solid framework to bolt it to, and that’s where we find ourselves now.

In our project introduction, we outlined our goals – competitive, reliable power for the PSCA’s Limited Street class – and our game plan – building a 388 cubic inch LS fed by a ProCharger F1-C. In this first of many installments as the engine comes together, we’ll take a look at what Virginia Speed has done to get our GM Performance Parts LSX Bowtie block ready for combat. With race engine builds (and even for the street) details will make or break the project, and VA Speed’s Shawn Miller will take us through it step by step.

The raw material Virginia Speed is starting off with is a LSX Bowtie block, an iron casting that GM Performance Parts developed to offer race-worthy strength at an affordable price. The block features 6 head bolts per cylinder, LS7-style 6-bolt dowel located billet main caps, and a bunch of other performance-oriented features not necessarily found on production LS blocks:

• True priority main oiling
• Extra-thick siamesed cylinder bores with standard 4.400″ spacing
• Wet or dry sump oiling capability
• Production style deep skirt head bolt holes
• Front motor plate mounting holes
• Additional material cast around cam bearing holes
• Cam bores machined for supplied bearings
• Main web bay-to-bay breathing holes
• Threaded water plugs

The LSX block is available in both standard (9.260″ semi-finished, ready to be decked) and tall (9.720″ semi-finished) deck heights – ours is standard – and as an LSX376 or LSX454 finished block, as used in GMPP’s crate engines.

Block Prep Before The Block Prep…

Mmmm... delicious! To help support the cylinder walls, the first step in Virginia Speed's block prep process is mixing up a batch of block filler.

While the as-supplied block is totally appropriate for a high-horsepower street build as-is, when you’re going for 1200-plus supercharged horsepower in a race build, you can’t be too careful. To help keep everything in line when the pressure is on, Virginia Speed started off by using block filler to reinforce the cylinder bores.

“Filling the block is the prerequisite before we do any machine work,” Miller explains. “What we’re trying to achieve is stiffening the block as much as possible. The downside is that the more material you put in, the less cooling capacity you have. You have to balance out how much cooling you need versus how much strength. I would love to fill the block all the way up, but realistically in a gasoline drag race application, I need to have a certain amount of cooling capacity left in the block.”

"On LS engines, what I generally do on a drag race application is fill the block halfway up the square water pump hole," says Miller. "That gives you about 3/4 of an inch of coolant at the top of the cylinder. Most of your heat is at the top of the cylinder anyway. Through years of experience, we’ve learned that’s about the optimum amount."

For non-race applications, cooling capacity has to take precedence over absolute block strength – per Miller, “What we would do on a street engine is usually down below the water pump hole by about a quarter inch or so. The biggest thing you have to remember in a street application is that the coolant cools your oil as well, and the coolant at the bottom of the cylinder helps keep the oil temperature down. What generally happens is that your oil temperatures end up a lot higher, so if you’re running an oil cooler, you need to run a bigger one, and if you’re not running one, you need one.”

Per Miller, this level of block fill will only add approximately 4-5 pounds to the dry weight of the engine. Keep in mind that it will also be displacing water, which reduces the overall weight gain to some extent.

Miller also explains that the chassis the engine will live in also has an influence on the total heat-rejection capability the engine will need. “The LS engines with cast oil pans don’t dissipate heat as fast as the old small block Chevys running a tin oil pan, and new cars don’t get air under them like the old cars did,” he points out. “Generally LS motors run high oil temperatures to begin with – 200-plus degrees. Once you add block filler, you’ve raised the oil temperature another 30 degrees or so.”

The bottom line is that for a street-driven C5/C6 or 4th Gen F-body, a short fill like our LSX block received probably isn’t necessary. “The only time we fill a street car motor is if we really have to. Even up to 12-1,300 horsepower you don’t need it. If you’re doing some crazy 1,500 horsepower engine, that’s when you need to start strengthening the block up,” Miller advises.

Establishing a Baseline

With the block filled, it’s time to begin removing metal, and in order to do that accurately, you first have to establish a frame of reference. That benchmark will be the crankshaft centerline, the camshaft centerline, and the plane drawn between the two. Miller explains, “The next thing that needs to be done is to line bore the block to get the mains straight in the block and exactly where we want it. Everything in the engine is based off of the crankshaft and camshaft relationship. The crankshaft is your zero point, and drawing a straight line through it and the cam will give you your centerline to come off of at 45 degrees to either side to put the bores in the right location, and lets you put the decks at the right angle.”

To maximize the accuracy of every part of the machining process, Virginia Speed uses their CNC mill to first measure the dimensions of the block before any shavings are generated.

The main bearings are align-bored first to establish a reference point for every other machining operation. The LSX block is supplied with extra material in the mains to allow them to be bored exactly in line without going oversize.

With the mains machined, a steel rod becomes the pivot point for the remaining CNC measuring and machining operations.

Once the crank and cam bores are accurate, the rest of the work on the block can begin in earnest, but not before establishing where to start. “Now, we go in and put it in our CNC and measure the bore locations, deck heights, and other dimensions,” Miller continues. “That tells us where everything is relative to the crank centerline, everything about the block.” Because even the most carefully cast block is subject to some variation, this measurement step is critical in determining how close reality is to the blueprint, and what the machining limits are for each individual engine.

The CNC readout tells the tale - per Miller, "What that shows is bore diameter, and you’ll see where it says “Print X” - that’s where the blueprint says it should be in the X axis, which is front to rear of the block. The number in parenthesis is where it should be, and the number beside it represents the actual location of the bore. The Y location is the center of the crankshaft, and the bore should always be dead on that line. In this case you can see where it was 20 thousandths off. That printout also shows our deck height at the front, middle, and back of the block, and side to side across the deck. That’s our initial readings on where everything is."

Let The Chips Fall Where They May…

With the measurement complete, the game plan for the engine comes together. “You take that information and say, “I want to bore this thing – can I bore it where it belongs on the blueprint location, or do I have to bore it where the cylinders currently are?” I have 24 thousandths I am off, so that means I need to bore it at least 60 thousandths over to clean that up. Luckily for us, with this 388 we wanted to take it to a 4.125 bore, so we have over 200 thousandths we need to take out anyway.”

"Our first step is that we are going to bore the block, and because we’re going over 200 thousandths out, we will rough bore it first," Miller explains. "It has two cutters on it, and you can take a lot of material out with that head. You get it close to where you want it - I probably took it to 4.100 bore with the rough cutter. Then you put the finish bore head in, which is a single bit cutter that spins really fast and gives you a nice finish. With that, we machine it to within 5 thousandths of our final bore, so that would be 4.120. The final hone will take all the tears out."

The lifter bushings must be machined to accept Jesel's keyway lifters, which provide precise cam-to-roller alignment without the added weight of tie bars or tall bodies for dog-bone retainers.

Once the bores are cut, the CNC process moves on to the lifter valley. “The next step will be boring the lifters out. We take our lifter boring tool and we machine it out to 1.060, which is the diameter of our keyway lifter bushing,” says Miller. The Jesel mechanical roller lifters we will be using on this build are a keyway type that doesn’t require a dog bone or tie bar to keep in alignment with the cam lobe – instead, a key on the lifter body engages a slot in the pressed-in lifter bushing.

“We bore all those out, and put a thou-and-a-half press fit on those bushings,” Miller explains. “Then, we press the bushings in, and there is actually a tool on the CNC machine that pushes them in. With the keyway bushings, you have to make sure they go in straight, because if they’re not, the lifter will be crooked on the cam and wear the lifter and lobe out.”

The lifter bores are machined to accept the bronze keyway bushings.

Per Miller, 'The tool that goes on the CNC is perfectly in line with the Y-axis off the mains of the block, and it pushes them in to a predetermined height. After that we go in and bore out the bushing to within 0.0002 of the size we actually want, and we will hone it to the final size. If you try to hone more than that, you can actually get the bushing to have a banana shape to it - you can measure it with a dial bore gauge and it will say it’s OK, but we’re not measuring for straightness. What we have to do is get it as close as we can with boring, then just do a cleanup with the hone.'

Details like the lifter bushing boring and honing sequence, while seemingly minor, can have a big impact on the longevity of an engine. Miller says, “That’s something that if you’re not paying attention to detail, you can measure everything and it will all look perfect, but when you put the lifter in it can get tight because of that banana shape.” Builders who are careless or in a hurry may overlook items like this, to the racer’s detriment.

“They’ll put it together anyway, then go out and race it and just tear up the lifters and bushings, and not even understand what’s happening. You can’t measure it, so you have to make sure it’s right the first time.That’s where the level of precision and the machinery you use makes the difference. Bushings usually come five thousandths smaller than the lifters, and a lot of guys will say, “Well, I can take out five thousandths with my hone – that’s no big deal.” But you can’t, and get a straight hole, especially when you’re honing the bronze material they make the bushings out of, because it’s so soft and it hones so quickly – it usually doesn’t hone straight.”

"The height of the bushing is very important," Miller asserts. "You have to make sure that the oil hole in the side of the bushing that feeds oil to the lifter itself is in the oil gallery. With a keyway bushing, you have a key on the side of the lifter and a keyway in the bushing. Now, the key doesn’t go all the way up and down the bushing, so you have to know what base circle camshaft you’re going to use so that when you put those bushings in, they go in deep enough so that the lifter will be able to reach the base circle of the cam. If you don’t put the bushing deep enough, it won’t ride on the cam. If you put them in too deep, one, you might not be able to get the key in because the bearing journals won’t fit in there, or worse, the lifter will come up out of the bushing and the oil band will be exposed and bleed oil pressure."

Into The Home Stretch – Cylinder Deck Prep

With the lifter bushings installed, attention turns to the cylinder decks. The LSX block comes with provisions for 6-bolt-per-cylinder heads, but to upgrade our engine for the severe duty it will endure, Virginia Speed made a few tweaks. “Because we use half-inch head studs, the next thing we do is drill and tap for them. Just a basic program, nothing major. Because it’s a six-bolt block, the bottom row of four holes come standard as 8mm, and I take them up to 3/8-inch,” says Miller.

Now, we’re on to Virginia Speed’s work on the critical deck surface itself, which needs to be exactly right to keep combustion and cooling separated and contained when the engine comes together. “The second to last procedure is to deck the block to the correct height,” says Miller. “We have all the information on the piston height and the thickness of the head gasket we want to use, what quench height we want. We have a big milling head on our CNC, and the cool part about it is that it’s almost perfectly flat. You’ll find out that a lot of machines that deck blocks and heads, especially the older ones, because you have to tilt the wheel a certain amount so you don’t get a back cut, and the more angle that head has in it, it will actually cut a trough in the deck. Old school was way worse, and we learned with MLS head gaskets that the deck has to be perfectly flat because there’s nothing that’s going to compensate for it.”

"Our CNC milling head has about a thou and a half of tilt to it, and that gives us the flattest possible surface without having a back cut," Miller explains. "When we are milling, we also have to be mindful of the speed of the cutter and the tool head, so that we are putting the right surface on for the gasket as well. Too smooth and the gasket won’t bite into the surface; too coarse and you end up with imperfections the gasket won’t fill, so it doesn’t seal. The surface is really critical for that reason, although it’s not as critical as it could be with this because we are running a copper head gasket. Because we have an O-ring, we don’t have to worry about sealing combustion with the gasket - we just have to worry about sealing water."

With the deck milled to spec, one more operation has to be performed to allow it to accept the wire O-ring that will work in conjunction with the copper head gasket to provide a boost-proof seal. Once again, the devil is in the details – Per Miller, “If you put the O-ring too deep into the block or head, you’re not going to get enough crush on the head gasket. If you don’t go deep enough, the head gasket won’t deform enough and it won’t actually seat between the head and block. That depth is important.” The diameter of the O-ring also has an effect on how the whole setup works. “The O-rings aren’t the same diameter in the head and block,” says Miller. “They’re offset from each other. Experimentation with different thickness head gaskets and different degrees of overlap has let us determine what it takes to make it work.”

Miller says, "Our last operation on the CNC is cutting the O-ring grooves. We have a cutter that’s basically a mini boring bar with a square groove cutter, and it just goes around in a circle and creates that groove. It’s done off the bore centerline, just like if we were boring the block, but we’re touching the surface of the deck with that cutter. It’s a really simple deal - well, I call it simple, because we have this $200,000 machine that makes it simple! If you don’t have that piece of machinery, it’s not so simple."

The depth and position of the O-ring grooves are based on years of experience and many, many Virginia Speed engine builds.

Honed to Perfection

With the heavy machining operations complete, the block preparation enters its final stages. “At that point we’re done in the CNC and we take it out and do a final cleanup to make sure we get all the metal chips out,” says Miller “Especially when we’ve done a lot of boring on a block, like we did with this one, we’ll put it in the ultrasonic tank, which gets all the metal out of all the orifices and makes it easier when we do the final cleaning. Any time you have a casting, there is sand trapped in it – that’s why we do the ultrasonic, to help get all that out of there.”

The cleaned block is then ready for the final machining step – honing the bores. While it’s long been industry standard procedure to use a torque plate on the deck to put the block under the same tension it will be when it’s fully assembled, Virginia Speed goes the extra mile. Per Miller, “We put the main caps back on and torque them all to spec, because we want to simulate the engine being all together as much as we can before we hone it. We torque the main caps down, we put our torque plate on the block… and this is the critical thing, because we use as close as we can to the actual fasteners we’re going to use for the cylinder head, and put them as close as possible to the torque spec we are going to use for the actual head. A lot of guys will just throw the plate on and use whatever fasteners they have sitting around. That will get you 50% there, but we are trying to simulate having the head on as much as possible without having the head on.”

Deck plate in place, our LSX block awaits the gentle caress of the honing machine

Even the ambient air has a bearing on how the final product turns out. Per Miller, “When we hone, temperature is really critical. Our tolerances change as temperature changes, so what we do is try to hone everything at 70 degrees. We want the air temperature in the shop at 70 degrees, I take my piston out and let it sit for a couple of hours to let it settle at the shop temperature, then I measure it with the micrometer, then I will set my dial bore gauge to the size plus whatever bore clearance I want. I do a rough hone, and get it to within 2-3 tenths of a thou, and then I will let the block cool back down to room temperature, the same as where I started at, then go in and finish up each bore, and wait a little between each one to make sure that I don’t build up any heat in the block.”

Shawn Miller believes that a hone job up to Virginia Speed's standards can't be rushed. "It takes me three days to hone a block, just for the fact that I will work on it for a while, let it cool down, then come back to it. I try to always have a constant temperature on the block."

The abrasives used for the honing process are also critical – rather than the more common (and less expensive) vitrified stones used by many machine shops, Virginia Speed once again takes a different path. “We use a diamond stone on our hone,” says Miller. “We did some work with the Navy on big block Chevys. We were doing some testing for them, working with Perfect Circle on cylinder finishes, from a standard vitrified stone which is what everybody uses for the last 50 years, versus the diamond hone. We found out some pretty crazy stuff. Because the vitrified stones wear down really fast, you have to keep after them. What happens is that they lose their shape and get low spots and high spots – those give you low spots and high spots in the cylinder, and it creates a lot more tear-outs.”

Miller is totally sold on the advantages of a diamond hone. "If you look at a cylinder wall under magnification, it’s amazing. You’ll see these big tear outs in a cylinder honed with a vitrified stone, where the ones done with diamond stones have almost none."

While you might assume that the big advantage to a better finish would be in quicker break-in, per Miller, it actually makes significant power as well. “I had a 383 SBC package I was doing for years that was making around 475 horsepower – a pretty good street motor,” he recalls. “When we bought our new hone and diamond stones, I picked up 25 horsepower on that engine. I probably built 10-12 before I got the new hone, and about 20 afterwards, and there was a line drawn in the sand. With the first one, it was like, well, this was a good one. But then we did the second, and the third, and the fourth with the new stones, and they all gave the same exact numbers. When the only thing you change is the hone, you know exactly what it was that made the improvement.”

"After we’re done with the diamond hone, there’s a diamond brush that we run down through the cylinder," says Miller. "What that does is take all the high points off. When you’re done honing, you still have little bristles and hairs that are microscopic, but they’re still there. It’s like a fuzz, and when you run the diamond brush through, it takes all that stuff off. What that does is makes it so ring break in is almost non-existent. They will be seated within ten minutes of running, not like the old days where you had to run it 500 miles before they were seated."

The Foundation Is Complete

With the final hone done on our LSX block, the core of our race engine is ready to accept all the rest of the rotating assembly, which we will detail in our next installment on putting together the short block. There are no shortcuts when it comes to building a truly world-class race engine, and we think that Miller says it best: “I’m the worst critic of my own work – I am never happy.”

While he might not be, we can say that the work done so far has definitely made us happy, and we’re looking forward to bringing you Part 2 of our story, where we will watch Virginia Speed prep and install our Lunati Pro Series crankshaft, GRP rods, and JE pistons. If you’ve ever had questions about the pros and cons of aluminum rods, what kinds of things need to be done to prepare a crank for serious blower engine duty, or the intimate details of ordering custom pistons, all that will be covered and much more.

Our LSX block is complete, and ready for the next step in the build - getting the rotating assembly together.

In subsequent installments, it’s on to the cylinder heads, intake manifold, supercharger system, fueling and engine management, and of course dyno testing. We have a lot of hardcore race engine tech on deck with this Virginia Speed project, so keep your browser pointed in our direction for all the details!

Thanks to Virginia Speed, we're all set to make 150-plus horsepower per hole. Now, we just need to fill them... Stay tuned for Part 2!

If you’ve been following along with Project All Air, you know that it’s a dedicated drag car with a naturally-aspirated 800 horse World LSX454 for motivation. While it’s going to be one quick 4th Gen Camaro, it’s not really built to suit any particular set of rules, and that was done intentionally to let us show the widest possible range of different engine and chassis parts. Cool for educational purposes, but frankly not the way race cars are built in the real world.

Dragzine's Project Grandma, already outfitted with a 25.5-spec chassis, will play host to our new ProCharged real-world LS race engine.

To give ourselves a reality check, we’ve taken on a new project that will bring us closer to how ‘real’ racers live – we’re taking Dragzine’s Project Grandma Malibu and with the help of world-class LS engine builder Virginia Speed, we’re prepping the car to compete in the Pacific Street Car Association’s Limited Street class for the 2011 season. This class could be considered to be the PSCA’s “entry level” heads-up category, but despite limits on suspension, engines, power adders, and being restricted to a true 28 x 10.5 slick or 28 x 11.5 ET Street, the cars are still running pretty damn quick; last year’s ET record went to Mark Washington with an 8.344, and the trap speed title belonged to Levi Hanna with a 164.43 MPH pass.

The 2010 Limited Street ET record belongs to Mark Washington, who ran 8.344 at Fontana, California in May

From this unassuming facility in Virginia Beach, VA, world-class LS engines are born.

While the details of this engine build and our quest to put together a successful drag racing program will follow in subsequent articles, here are a few of the important highlights of what’s going into this race LS:

• GM Performance Parts LSX Block – Our foundation is a 4.125-inch bore LSX block from GMPP, with the water passages short-filled for stability. Virginia Speed is handling the machining duties with their CNC equipment, including the installation of Jesel lifter bushings for keyway-style lifters, and setting up the deck to accept O-rings for better sealing.
• Lunati Pro Series Crank – Forged from 4340 steel, our 3.622-inch stroke Lunati crank will differ from a conventional LS piece in that it will have a snout with dual keyways to better withstand the rigors of blower duty.
• GRP Rods – Since we will need to wind out our LS a bit to get the power we need out of the combination, we’re going with Pro Severe Duty aluminum rods from GRP for strength and light weight, with a length of 6.200 inches center to center.
• JE Pistons – Piston design is critical for success in a race engine like our LS, so we’re pulling out all the stops with a custom set of slugs from JE. The ring package, pin height, and even special coatings are being dictated by Virginia Speed.
• COMP Camshaft – Again, getting the cam right will make or break our project, so Virginia Speed is working closely with COMP cams to spec out our mechanical roller bumpstick specifically for this application.
• Trick Flow LSXR Heads – These heads start out as bare castings available with three different base intake port sizes and two different exhausts. We will be taking full advantage of Virginia Speed’s expertise in selecting the right base configuration, and then deciding on how they need to be ported to make the most flow and velocity possible.
• Holley Hi-Ram Intake – Literally just off the drawing board, Holley’s new Hi-Ram LS intake is designed to be a true “bolt-on” ram-style intake manifold for LS heads.
• Jesel Valvetrain – If you saw our PRI coverage of Jesel’s Custom Shop offerings, you already know that they’re doing some astonishing things with LS-style heads. Look for us to take full advantage of every trick in their book when it comes to getting our rockers rocking.
• FAST XFI 2.0 – Finally, to run the show we’ll be using FAST’s XFI 2.o engine management system, which has a bunch of new forced-induction-friendly features on top of what was already an extremely popular EFI system.
  

  Virginia Speed's Shawn Miller is one of the talented folks who will be doing the hard work on our LS race engine build.

We’ll be bringing you the first installments of the engine build shortly, and Virginia Speed is totally on board with what we think is the most important part of this project – Holding nothing back. There will be no secrets inside this LS; whether we succeed or fail, you’ll know every detail, from the custom port design to cam specs, and everything in between.

ProCharger's F1C got the call for our supercharged LSX 388ci mill. Rated at 1,225 horsepower, we'll need every single bit of boost the F1C can muster to keep up with the PSCA Limited Street racers running in the low 8's at 165+.

The Aeromotive fuel system

Switching from an EFI system to a carburetor is not as easy as just pulling off the throttle body and slapping on the 1050. There are many other components that need to be changed out as well, including the fuel system. The fuel system in an EFI application needs to supply gas at 75 psi or higher, a far cry from the single-digit pressures required by our carburetor. Keeping the EFI pump would mean regulating it so far down that the majority of the fuel would be bypassing the carb and returning to the tank, building heat and killing the pump in short order. To avoid all of that, we installed a new Aeromotive fuel system designed to supply fuel at an appropriate pressure and volume.

Having the correct components for your application is critical to how it performs, and this Aeromotive system was matched to Project Grandma’s needs. The Eliminator fuel pump (p/n 11104) is able to support a 2300 HP naturally aspirated engine, which will be more than enough for our 970 HP needs. A 100 micron stainless steel element pre-filter screws straight into the suction side of the pump, and a -12 fitting connects the pre-filter to the fuel cell.

The pressure side of the fuel pump drops down to a -10 fitting and from there goes through a 10 micron paper filter, then forward under the car to the fuel log. The Aeromotive fuel log (p/n 14201) has a cool feature added to it – where each side of the log attaches to the carburetor, there are swivel points that allows the user to position the log up or down up to 20 degrees for clearance of throttle stops, nitrous plates, spacers, or other components.

From the opposite side of the log a -10 line runs back to the regulator. The two-port bypass regulator (p/n 13212) is fully adjustable from 2-20 psi, which is perfect for our carbureted application. A -10 line was used as the return line from the bottom of the regulator back to the fuel cell.

Even though installing the fuel system was very straightforward, there is one important rule to remember that can mean the difference between life and death for the fuel pump. Using the wrong filter, or not putting them in the correct order can harm the system. Jesse Powell of Aeromotive explains, “One of the single greatest issues we take phone calls on are filters being in the wrong location, or the wrong size filters that will cause the same problems.” The free-flowing 100 micron stainless steel filter that goes before the pump is designed to catch the large contaminants that would harm the pump. The 10 micron paper filter is what will catch all of the remaining debris that would plug up the carburetor. Mixing the two up can have serious consequences. “The reason the system needs to be set up this way is because the Eliminator fuel pump, or just about any other fuel pump out there, can push fuel out a lot easier than it can suck in,” says Powell. Putting the fine, 10-micron filter on the inlet side will damage the pump by overstressing it as it fights to pull instead of push. The rule to remember is, “Stainless = Suction, Paper = Pressure”.

The V6 was really, really disgusting.

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

When he came to our house, his sack was filled with big inches. Cubic Inches. Not those metric liter things but honest to God American Cubic Inches.

Our Edelbrock/Pat Musi five-fifty-five crate engine arrived today from Musi’s New Jersey assembly plant. All I wanted for Christmas was a Chevy Big Block fire-breathing monster assembled by an 8 time World Champion drag racer. And we got it. An early or late Christmas present, I don’t know. But I do know that it was Christmas in April.

We were pretty jazzed about the arrival of our engine that we even videotaped the forklift driver unloading it from the truck.

This evil big block is going into our ill-tempered g-body Malibu that we call Grandma.

Already a feisty bitch, the addition of this big horsepower is going to make her day. All I have to say is: Our Grandma can kick your Grandma’s ass.

I’ll let the pics speak for itself for now, but there will be many article and videos coming about this project build.

For now, we have put our Big Inch Monster back in it’s cage, put the cage in a corner where no one can get hurt and posted a sign that says: do not feed the beast.

Since Edelbrock and Pat Musi have joined forces to build this 555ci crate, which makes 675+ hp on pump gas and is just itching for a dose of Edelbrock Nitrous, we decided to work together with these two industry legends on this multi-part project. Here’s our story on the Edelbrock/Musi 555 Engine, Part I.

In this article, the first in a series of three articles on the Edelbrock 555ci, we will be doing two things. First, giving you a quick overview of the Edelbrock/Musi 555. Second, we’ll be taking a closer look at the short block assembly and the components that make up the muscle of this pavement punisher. We are also producing a series of videos on the short-block, long-block, and dyno testing.

The 555ci Edelbrock/Musi Crate is described as “street friendly” by the engineers at Edelbrock. At the same time, no matter how drivable it may be, 675 hp is never friendly. It’s angry, rip-roaring power, just wrapped in a civilized package. Just like we like it.

In fact, Edelbrock took their Chevelle on the road on the entire Hot Rod Power Tour with this very engine in it. And it was described as being a “docile street car that hauled ass” by everyone that drove it.

The only thing missing from this robust power plant is red tights and a cape. When we wanted a powerful engine to go into our sleeper project car, a 1978 Chevy Malibu that we call Project Grandma, we sought out a superior crate engine with high horsepower capability. As we refined our search to GM big blocks, the roads kept pointing to Edelbrock and Pat Musi. We wanted a Crate Engine that could handle nitrous, but also run on pump gas with good manners.

One of the jewels in the Edelbrock line was the Big Block Five-Fifty-Five (555 cubic inch). The clincher for us was the collaboration of Edelbrock and Pat Musi in the development of this motor.

Why a Big Block?

The common wisdom is that pump gas small block Chevy’ crate engines make 500 reliable horsepower and up to 750 with the right components, but sacrificing some longevity. Large cubic inch Big block Chevrolet engines are more likely to make 650+ plus dependable horsepower for a longer period of time. Regardless of what you’ve been told, bigger is better.

The Edelbrock/Musi 555ci crate engine was developed for anyone that wants big cubes and tire-shredding horses on pump gas. The brainchild of the Edelbrock design team, this big block motor provides excelent power for the pump swill crowd by relying heavily on quality components. Early on in the development process, Edelbrock enlisted the experience of Pat Musi to collaborate in the engine design. Musi is a very accomplished big block engine builder bringing with him 38 years of performance engine building experience and 8 world championships in street legal drag racing.

Pat Musi knows big block Chevy engines at well as anyone in the industry, and his higher-end drag racing oriented motors have been winning championships around the world for many years now. Some things just go together, and putting Edelbrock and Musi together in the GM Big Block arena is akin to Hollywood Hulk Hogan and Macho Man Randy Savage joining together as a tag team. The “beast from the east” engine builder and the “best of the west” parts maker. Let’s get ready to rrruummmbbble……

Edelbrock/Musi 555ci Overview: The Choices

Edebrock and Pat Musi offers two different 555ci crates: a carb version (650 hp) and an EFI version (675 hp). They are similar in terms of their short-block and long-block, but they have slightly different camshafts, and naturally, the induction system is specific to your fueling preference. Both engines provide big time power that ingests 91 octane pump gas, include the Edelbrock Power Package include the Victor/Musi 24-degree cylinder heads, and Edelbrock Victor intake.

Here’s an page from the Edelbrock Catalog with all of the specs of the 675 hp EFI version:

Many times when an engine builder like Musi gets involved with a big time manufacturer like Edelbrock, it’s often a simple licensing arrangement where the engine builder just sells his name to Edelbrock. That could not be further from the truth here. Musi is a developmental partner for Edelbrock, and helps them develop and R&D products across the entire spectrum of products.

His shop, Pat Musi Performance, has also been tapped to hand-assemble each and every Edelbrock/Musi 555 crate engine. So you are starting to see, Musi has his fingerprints on more than just the parts list. His shop literally puts the touches on each engine with the same level of attention to detail they do a 2,000 hp racing engine. That, you cannot buy.

Both 555ci engines are great choices. We chose the EFI version for three reasons.

1. Greater horsepower – 675 hp vs 650 hp
2. Greater drivability
3. Better hood clearance for our sleeper Malibu

Here’s some of the highlights of the 675 hp 555ci Musi Engine:

• Dart Big-M Block
• SCAT Crankshaft
• SCAT Rods
• JE/SRP Pistons
• Moroso Oil Pan
• MSD Ignition
• Crane Gold Rocker Arms
• Pro-Flow EFI System w/1,000 CFM Throttle Body

Even though it doesn’t apply in our situation because we are going to be hosing our 555 down with copious amounts of Edelbrock nitrous, we’d be remiss without mentioning that these engines come with a 24-month/unlimited mileage warranty. Yes. 24-months for a 675 hp. Cool, isn’t it!

In this article, we’re going to give you an overview of the components that comprise the short-block that serves as the foundation of the Edelbrock 555ci, and cover the buildup of our Malibu’s short-block at Pat Musi Performance in New Jersey.

The Dart Big-M Block: 9.800-inch Deck

The foundation for this engine starts with the Dart Big-M block. Dart’s Big-M is based off of the Generation VI GM blocks with some upgrades that make it one of the strongest cast iron blocks around. It’s a great choice for the 555 because it is capable of supporting well over 1,000 hp and will allow an enthusiast to add nitrous to the Edelbrock crate engine without fear of hurting the block. Musi machines the bore to 4.560-inches which works with the SCAT 4.25-inch crank to make 555 ci.

Specs for the Dart Big-M block:

• Extra thick decks. Deck height 9.800 (stock height).
• Bore sizes available in 4.250”.
• Priority main oil system that oils all of the main bearings before the lifters for extra reliability.
• Stepped main oil gallery, 9/16” to 1/2” to 7/16”, increasing the flow of oil the crankshaft at high RPM and preventing oil pressure drop at the top end.
• Splayed 4 bolt main caps for the ultimate bottom end strength.
• All precision CNC machining to eliminate the need for expensive blueprinting.

Musi does all of the machining of the Edelbrock 555ci engine in house. In addition to the specs listed above, the Dart Big-M block also boasts of a stout 0.325 inch thick cylinder wall for better wear and less wall deflection.

The four bolt splayed main caps are absolutely the strongest arrangement available. Because the outside bolts on these caps are splayed at an angle, they are machined into the strongest part of the web area. 4 bolt main caps that are machined straight into the web tend to weaken the web area and eventually cracks begin to develop.

Even though Musi does the machining of the Dart Big M in house, the Musi engine builders check every single block before assembly. Double and triple checking is nothing new to this crew.

We’ve got a great relationship with Dart, and we think the Big-M was a great choice by Edelbrock to build a solid foundation. Musi Performance does the machine work on the Dart-M block right in-house, as you can see by all of the pictures below.

SCAT 4.25-inch Forged Steel Crankshaft

Buried in the depth of this sturdy Dart block is a forged steel 4.25-inch stroke SCAT crankshaft. SCAT has been manufacturing racing crankshafts for over forty years, and their forged crankshafts are well respected by many racers. The 4.25-inch stroke is what produces what Musi calls the “Triple Nickel” displacement of 555 cubic inches along with the 4.56-inch bore.

SCAT makes a nice crankshaft which features a number of high-end features in a very reasonable price for a fully forged steel crank. With the Edelbrock/Musi 555 you’ll get a precision machined crank which is heat treated and nitrided, has profiled and pendulum cut counterweights, a straight shot oiling system, lightening holes, and gun drilling. And yes, it’s made of top flight E4340 Steel.

While most crankshafts claim to be precision ground, SCAT crankshafts are desirable because the company exercises strict quality control measures. Every crankshaft produced must fall within very tightly controlled specifications. The crankshaft chosen for the 555 engine is heat treated and nitrided for strength. The nitriding process effectively hardens the surface of the metal without excessive heating. By using the Nitriding heat treatment process, there is less chance of distortion and can be accomplished with excellent dimensional control.

The primary reasons for Nitriding metal is:

• To increase surface hardness and wear resistance
• Improves fatigue life
• Corrosion resistance

The counterweights on the SCAT cranks are profiled, where many crankshafts have a blunt edges on the counterweights. By rounding the counterweight edges, the crankshaft slices through the air and oil in the sump rather than slap against the lubricant. Needless to say, this reduces the amount of energy it takes to turn the crankshaft, and by slicing through the air there is less windage in the sump. Lighting holes in the rod journals and gun drilling the main line decreases the amount of rotating mass. This all translates to more horsepower to the drive train. “We feel we make a great crankshaft, said Tom Lieb, President of SCAT, “what separates SCAT cranks is preparation of the metal and heat treating the metal. Prep and treatment are the key. The bitterness of poor quality remains after the sweetness of low price is forgotten.” We think that’s a very clever way of saying; you get what you pay for…

Here is a picture of our Edelbrock/555 Dart Big M block with the SCAT 4.25-inch crankshaft installed.

SCAT H-Beam Connecting Rods

Throwing a rod. No fun at all. Nothing we’re planning on doing with our 555 ci even with 200+ hp of nitrous spraying down it’s throat.

Connecting rod selection is extremely important in higher horsepower engines. The rods must be able to withstand high temperatures and the constant pounding of the pistons reacting to the explosions taking place in the combustion camber.

Transmitting the power from the piston movement to the crankshaft, the rod has to be strong enough to repeat this action thousands of time each minute, yet be light enough not to contribute too much weight to the rotating assembly. One high horsepower solution to the power vs. weight question in connecting rods is the SCAT H-beam connecting rods.

The SCAT rods in the 555ci engine are manufactured out of the same high tensile strength steel as the crankshaft. This aircraft grade 4340 steel combined with an “H beam” engineering design makes for a very dependable strong and lightweight connecting rod. The rods are enhanced by utilizing ARP capscrew style bolts with alignment sleeves to ensure a perfect fit. They are matched sets, all within one gram of each other for better balance of the rotating assembly. These rods are a very good choice for the higher horsepower engines. No more need to worry about throwing a rod because of metal fatigue.

Musi inspects and measures every SCAT rod that comes through the shop during 555ci assembly.

Specs on the Edelbrock 555ci SCAT-spec rods:

• 6.135 Length
• Weight: 775 grams
• Rated to 1,200 Horsepower (that should do us!)
• 4340 Aircraft grade material
• ARP extreme duty bolts

JE/SRP Pistons – part number 211760

Selecting pistons to drive the SCAT crank, the Edelbrock/Musi team selected a forged piston design from SRP Pistons. Located in Huntington Beach, SRP Pistons are a brand of JE Pistons, renowned for their high performance forged piston work. The same engineers that design NASCAR pistons in the same facility, also design and manufacturer SRP Pistons. For the five-fifty-five crate engine, the SRP piston is a slightly dome’d, 4032 high silicon-low expansion aluminum alloy.

It was designed by SRP and JE as an off-the shelf piston, but it can easily take the horsepower and nitrous we are going to hit the 555ci with. It’s designed to fit the Edelbrock 24-degree Musi Victor heads, has a strong wrist-pin, CNC ring groves, and a tight-clearance fit.

Musi’s team carefully assembles the pistons and rods before dropping them into the Dart Big M block that is the foundation of the Edelbrock 555.

Setting the torque on the rod bolts is one of the last steps of 555ci assembly.

Moroso Oil Pan – part number 20413

Quietly efficient, the contribution of the oil pan is often overlooked as just being a sump for lubricant. When put under the microscope however, huge efficiencies can be gained in selecting a quality oil pan. Not only must the oil pan have a design that fits with clearance for crossmembers and steering linkages, but also it has to be fabricated for a precise leak free fit. Situated only inches from the pavement, the oil pan also must be fabricated for strength.

The Moroso oil pans are designed with internal reinforced rails for additional strength. With a 6 quart capacity, horsepower gains and lubrication advantages can be gained with a sump design that minimizes oil sloshing, windage and less aeration (foaming) of the lubricant. Moroso adds a sump tray in this design to prevent oil sloshing and reduce windage. The sump tray is removable for inspection and cleaning. The pan also incorporates dual anti-slosh plates at the rear to direct oil into the sump during hard acceleration. Baffling by means of trap doors are constructed in the sump area to contain oil near the pickup during deceleration.

The design and features of the Moroso oil pan help keep excessive oil off of the rotating assembly thereby lessening the rotating mass, and keeps the oil near the pickup so that it can be pumped through the lubrication system. Strong, big capacity and quietly efficient best describe this part.

Edelbrock Hydraulic Roller Camshaft – part number 2264

One of the coolest features of the Edelbrock/Musi 555 crate is the use of the hydraulic roller camshaft. It’s streetable and capable of making big power.

If the other components of the rotating assembly can be described as the muscles of this beast, the camshaft can be called the brains. Utilizing a hydraulic roller camshaft in this application has distinct advantages. A more aggressive cam profile without excessive valve overlaps can be used because unlike conventional cam profiles, roller cams have steeper ramp up surfaces.

The use of roller lifters allow the steeper profile where the edges on non-roller lifters would grind the steeper ramp. Plus, using a hydraulic roller cams on an engine like the 555ci Musi motor eliminate all camshaft break-in problems.

Here is the specs on the Edelbrock/Musi Hydraulic roller:

Lift: .632 Intake / .648 Exhaust
Duration @ .050” lift: 248 degrees Intake / 256 degrees Exhaust.
Lobe separation: 112 degrees
Intake centerline: 109 degrees

We’re finished…

That wrapped up our 555ci Edelbrock/Musi Short-Block, but we’ve got LOTS more for you. Three videos and two more stories, all on your new favorite crate engine. The thing is, you can afford this one, and you’ll be buying quality parts that will last for years.

Mild mannered Clark Kent? Absolutely not! A big block chevy engine that is built with parts that are made with aircraft grade steel make this the superman of engines. Like bullets bouncing off the man of steel’s chest, this motor is bulletproof and has the tensile strength of superman’s forehead. The added bonus of having genius engine builder Pat Musi custom assemble this engine puts it in the horsepower League of Superheroes.

We’ll show you how much power we can make in Part III, when we get out the Edelbrock nitrous and start spraying down the house. Until then, enjoy the pictures of the complete Edelbrock crate 555 short-block below:

For more information, visit www.Edelbrock.com

We decided to have a little fun with granny before the build begins, so we pulled the fluids out of her, started her up and took bets on how long she would last.

Check it out…!!

Energy Suspension has been making top quality parts for the last twenty-seven years right here in the U.S.A. I had the opportunity to speak to Mike Papazian about their body bushings. He set me straight on why someone would want to replace their body bushings and what makes Energy Suspension’s Hyperflex better than what is in our car.

Papazian explained that their Hyperflex bushings are made from polyurethane formula that they have tweaked to perfection over the years. “Urethane is stronger and stiffer than rubber,” said Papazian, “plus it is resistive to petroleum products like smog, ozone, gas, and oil. So it won’t break down and crack.” While resistive qualities hadn’t crossed our minds when swapping out our bushings, we are glad we trusted Energy Suspension to take care of us.

Even with out getting a good look at the stock bushings out of the car we could tell it was time to replace them.

Installation:

Suspension can be a tough topic for some. So let me be the first to tell you, there should be no fear with dealing with suspension parts. Just like engine work following instructions and common sense will help you in the long run. The nice thing about replacing body bushings is while it is a big job, it is actually really simple.

We started out by loosing all the bolts on both sides of the car. This took a little bit of muscle but went very quick. Then, it was time to lift the body off the frame. Energy Suspension recommended to following factory GM instructions on lifting the body off the frame. So using a 2 x 4 piece of wood and our Cornwell floor jack we lifted one side on the car off the frame and removed the bolts. Keep in mind when choosing a piece of wood to lift the body up you want to have something that is close to the length of the body. That way the weight will evenly distributed. Never under any circumstances should you ever lift the body with the jack directly on the body. Doing so could damage the body.

The swapping of the bushings was as easy as pulling the old bushings (what was left of them) out and sliding the new Hyperflex Bushings in. We then reset the body shims and threaded the bolts back into the body but didn’t tighten them down. If you tried to torque them down now the body would be mis-aligned.

The other side works the same as the first. After lowering the car we crawled under and tightened all the bolts down to factory specs.

Only try to do one side at a time and make a note of any body shims as these will need to be put back in the same spot.

Now that we have much better support for Grandma we now can rest easy that we started beefing up the car to better accept the monster 555 ci Edelbrock/Musi big block. This is a great upgrade that could be done at your house with just a few hours of your time and a good set of tools. For your time you will be rewarded with a stiffer chassis and better handling vehicle.

Our friends at Edelbrock suggested that we sneak in a little muscle under the hood. Well — a lot of muscle under the hood, to be honest. Vic Edelbrock explained to us that a collaboration with Pat Musi Performance resulted in the Edelbrock/Musi Five-Fifty-Five crate engine which makes major power, is tame enough to drive in traffic and can still manage to get an economical 20 miles per gallon of gas.

“What the consumer is buying in this 555 crate engine is Edelbrock’s quality parts, and our thirty plus years of experience bringing out the best in the Chevy big block engines,” explain Pat Musi, owner of Musi Performance. “We were building big blocks as far back as 1967 – long before it was cool. Back then we were building 512 cubic inch big blocks, now we’re building a 555 big block with modern technology.”

We jumped at the chance to have one of the first production run Edelbrock/Musi 555 crate engines, and the added bonus of having the engine built at Pat Musi’s performance shop, by the man himself, was simply too big of a deal to pass up.

We already did the first part of the Edelbrock 555 build. In Part 1, we covered the Dart Big-M Block, Scat Crankshaft and Connecting Rods, JE/SRP Pistons, the Edelbrock Hydraulic Roller Camshaft and the Moroso Oil Pan. In this article, part two of three, we are going to be discussing the rest of the engine components to the level that is commonly referred to as the long block. That’s pretty much the long and short of it (block wise, that it)!

Let’s take a look at each of the key areas of the build, and follow along with the 555 as it is assembled at Musi’s.

Edelbrock Victor/Musi 24-degree Cylinder Heads

Choosing cylinder heads for Chevy performance engines can be like battling the ancient beast Hydra. In Greek mythology, the Hydra had a serpent body with many heads. The number of heads varied based on the story but ranged from 5 to 900. Picking a head to do battle with was the demise of many would be warriors. There are more Big Block Chevy heads on the market than even a Hydra killer could deal with. We chose the Edelbrock Victor/Musi 24-degree heads for our 555.

The Edelbrock/Musi heads are conventional-style Big Block Chevy heads which are rolled over 2-degrees on the valve angle. These are part #61409. They feature 2.30/1.90-inch valves, Manley springs, titanium retainers and locks, and flow over 417 cfm at .900-lift.

Below are the full specs:

• 2.30-inch intake valves
• 1.90-inch exhaust valves
• Made from A356 T-6 aluminum
• Manley springs, titanium retainers and locks
• 114cc combustion chambers
• 377cc intake ports that flow 417-CFM at .900-inch lift
• Conventional port location
• Ready-to-use right out of the box
• Capable of generating 950-plus horsepower
• Designed by 8-time Pro Street World Champion Pat Musi

With so many to choose from, making the right choice can make or break a high performance warrior. We asked Pat Musi, a master of airflow dynamics for performance engines, how he developed the Edelbrock Victor 24 degree heads to take into battle on the tracks.

Musi explained that the Edelbrock Victor 24 degree CNC heads destined for the 555 crate engine are built with “a five degree cant instead of a four and a half degree cant which places the valve pocket closer to the piston center”. According to Musi, many of the standard heads direct the intake air closer to the ring lands, which can be catastrophic in a nitrous fed engine. Moving the valve pocket closer to the piston center has a distinct power advantage as well.

Valvetrain & Induction

Once the heads were securely bolted on by Team Musi, it was time to worry about making sure the valves opened and closed. Musi and Edelbrock spec out their 555ci crate Engine with Crane Gold Rockers arms.

Crane Cams does claim their Gold Race Extruded Roller Rocker Arms are racing’s most popular aluminum rockers since they hit the market in 1964. Claiming over four million of these units sold, we are reminded of the Elvis Presley album “50 Million Elvis fans can’t be wrong”. If the world had more big blocks, we’d have more Gold Race Roller Rockers. As it is; four million Gold Race Roller fans can’t be wrong.

Crane Gold Rocker arms feature needle-bearing fulcrum, a roller tip and are extruded aluminum for strength and reliability. The standard big block Chevy ratio of 1.7:1 is utilized in this engine, and with proven quality of these rocker arms, we can be assured of the ratio accuracy. These rocker arms are distinguished by the classy gold anodized covering and look bitchin’ on the top of Edelbrock’s 24 degree Victor heads.

The Intake – Edelbrock Victor 454-R

To help Grandma breathe better, our crate engine is equipped with Edelbrock’s newest intake manifold in the Super Victor line – the Edelbrock Victor 454-R Aluminum Intake Manifold. Designed specifically to match the Edelbrock/Musi heads, with a 3/4” radius and extra large oval port openings, the performance ability of this intake exceeds the demands of our 8 air hungry pistons. The perfect match for our high airflow requirements.

Edelbrock’s Pro Flow 2 Fuel Injection System

The Edelbrock/Musi 555 is available in two configurations: Carb or EFI. For us, it was a no brainer. The EFI version made more horsepower with greater durability courtesy of the Edelbrock Pro Flow EFI system.

Edelbrock has hit the ball out of the park with another out of the box kit that offers high performance in a comprehensive, easy to install package. The Pro-Flo 2 adds sequential electronic fuel injection to our Big Block with the additional benefit of programmability. With the addition of this system our Grandma will be a cutting edge fly girl with a powerful electronics package that she never could have dreamed of. The beauty of the Pro Flo XT EFI system is that the tune in the Musi 555 is designed for use with 91 octane pump gas and has an idle that is completely livable in a daily driver.

Pro-Flo XT’s Programmable ECU’s is the brains of the Engine Management System. As such, controlling the Engine Management System is the Pro-Flo XT Electronic Fuel Injection ECU. It’s a very sturdy unit, self contained, but it is recommended that mounting the unit away from the typical enemies of electronic components like heat and vibration. Under the dash or behind the glovebox are typical locations for mounting. The Pro-Flo system uses the speed-density method of electronic engine management in which fuel and spark requirements are based on engine speed and engine load.

Engine speed is determined by inputs from the distributor and the load factor is determined by inputs from the coolant temperture, the MAP & MAT sensors. Once the ECU has determined the engine operating point, calibrated tables programmed into the unit instantaneously control the the correct spark advance and injector pulse width. The unit is completely adjustable in the calibration mode and will allow modifications of the spark and fuel tables at various engine speeds.

Handheld Calibration Module

One of the neatest gadgets in this kit is the hand held calibration module that allows for tuning without the need for a laptop. The Pro-Flo system comes with a software package that allows for endless tuning calibrations that anyone can perform. Installation of the Pro-Flo package is simplified by the quick disconnect wiring harness.

Edelbrock Pro-Flow EFI Parts List:

• Fuel rails (part # 3633)
• ECU power relay (part #3586)
• MAP Sensor (part #36019)
• MAT Sensor (part #3588)
• Coolant temperature sensor (part #36012)
• Throttle body (part #39783)
• IAC Motor (part #36017)
• TPS Sensor (36018)
• O2 Sensor (36013)
• High pressure fuel pump (part #1790)
• Fuel pressure regulator (part #1729)
• Fuel Injector (part #3687)
• Mallory Distributor (part #54-3564)
• Calibration Module (part #37-9804)

How does it work?

The Pro Flo system interpets engine operating conditions and requirements by means of five sensors that are also included in the kit:

The Manifold Absolute Pressure (MAP) sensor is mounted on the air valve and converts air pressure in the intake manifold into an analog signal that is sent to the ECU.

The Manifold Air Temperature (MAT) sensor measures air temperature and is installed in the base of the air cleaner.

A Coolant Temperature sensor is a device like the MAT sensor but measures the temperature of the coolant at the manifold on the driver’s side.

An integral part of the Pro-Flo throttle body, the Throttle Position sensor (TPS) measures the throttle angle.

Lastly, an O2 sensor measuring the oxygen content in the exhaust stream and relays that information to the ECU. The Pro-Flo system is capable of using either a narrow band or wide band O2 sensor. The included wide band sensor calibration is for use with the Dynojet wideband Commander Air/Fuel Ratio monitor.

Plus an extra advantage

Our crate engine comes with an additional, one of a kind component that makes it unique among the Edelbrock/Musi 555 crate engines. Grandma’s engine sports the Victor Series valve covers that all of these crate engines come with standard. Our’s however, has been signed by Pat Musi and Vic Edelbrock after a monumental dyno run at Musi Performace. But we will get to the dyno testing in our next segment.

The die-cast aluminum, black powder coated valve covers are annotated with the date of the event and the words: 1st 1,050 hp crate engine. When we lift the hood on Grandma, and these signatures see the light of day, Grandma will have no peers. These unique valve covers will strike fear in the hearts of all that line up against Grandma.

Finally, Fuel is supplied to the system by Edelbrock’s high pressure electric fuel pump (part number 1790). Self priming on key-up, the fuel pump will shut down if it does not receive an engine run signal from the ECU as a safety precaution. Also included in the Pro Flo system is Edelbrock’s fuel pressure regulator (part number 1729). The pressure regulator is factory preset at 50 psi and needs no adjustment normally. Excess supplied fuel that is not injected is returned back to the tank via a fuel return system built into the regulator.

Our long block is finished.

We still have one more video coming up on this build, and a final article in this three part series. Grandma will make it to the track once we get a roll cage in her that is adequate for this monster horsepower beast. Vic Edelbrock and Pat Musi both claim that the 555 crate engine is docile enough to drive on the street and get almost 20 mpg.

Uh, yeah. That may be true, but only if my old maid aunt is behind the wheel. Our plans are to take Grandma out and let her shred some rubber and tattoo her name on the asphalt.

Next time we’ll give you the full story about the dyno thrash we did, and the final power numbers.

Now the stars have aligned granting us permission move forward. This will be the first of many Project Updates that we will be doing to bring all of you daily work as the build progresses. Now, before we dive right into the first day, a quick recap on where we are so far.

We are the stage where we are fully ready for our Chassis Engineering chrome moly roll cage, mini-tubs and chassis goodies. All of the Malibu’s work is being done by Mike Ryan of Ryan Fabrication right here at powerTV’s shop.

The front end on Grandma has been completely reworked thanks to the TRZ Suspension, QA1 Shocks, and Aerospace Brakes. The car has been stripped of almost everything not essential to the structural integrity of the body and frame and in between that body and frame we sandwiched Energy Suspension body bushings.

The 555ci Edelbrock Crate engine has been built by Pat Musi and put down 1050 hp on the engine dyno. All we have to do now is fit the roll cage, do a a 25.5 SFI conversion, as well as a mini tub kit, so we can move on to the rear suspension and rear end install.

Today all we did was yank out the rear end. You can see the photos below.

Mike says that he doesn’t like to have his picture taken and will do almost anything to make to sure his face isn’t photoed by our cameras.

At first the wound appeared to only be a minor one….

..but the redness and swelling soon followed.

With the Malibu being a full frame car, with a perimeter outer frame, we’re going to be adding inner frame rails for the 25.5 spec, and tying up the control arms structure into the roll cage for more rigidity. The Malibu actually has a nice suspension design from the aspect that it’s easy to add support to both the upper and lower control arm locations.

We’re going to walk you through all of the steps we go through so you can do this to your own G-body. Of course we’re using TRZ Suspension and QA1 front and rear shocks in the build, as mentioned, so when we get to that stage we’ll give them props there! The Mini tubs will allow us to use our Mickey Thompson 295/65 drag radials and tuck the body nicely without it looking like a stink bug.

Check out the photo sequence and captions below.

Sadly, the stock bench seat had to go. We’ve got a fresh new Kirkey seat to go in here instead. I really wanted to keep the bench seat, but nightmare’s of crashing at 160 mph erased that quickly as I imagined myself tearing through the stock 30+ year old fabric and springs.

We already had used some aircraft stripping agent to remove the coating from the trunk area, plus 30 years of grime. Looks nice huh.

The Cornwell Plasma cutter is our friend today. We’ll use a combination of the plasma cutter, cut-off wheel, and a sawzall to remove the wheel wells.

Before we starting cutting out the stock tubs, Mike Ryan started by cutting out the connected sheetmetal between the rear trunk hangers and the wheel tubs. They are tack-welded here. We’ll be getting rid of the trunk hangers and go with a pin-on trunk since the hangers are huge and gangly, and they are where our Chassis Engineeing Mini Tubs are going.

Here you can see the rough cuts that Mike is making with the Plasma cutter from the inside of the well.

The wheel tub is really made of two pieces in most cars, and the G-body is no different. You can see the seam line here, as we used the plasma to cut out the inner well.

The way the wheel well looks after the rough plasma cut.

Mike wants a nice crisp line for doing the mini tubs. Here you can see he used masking tape (not finished yet) to start a line that he is going to use a cut off wheel to follow to make a nice crisp cut on the inner sheetmetal for the wheel tub.

Finished after trimming nicely.

A cut off wheel is used to remove the outer wheel well. A plasma cutter will burn through your sheetmetal so it’s a no go.

Nobody said chassis fabricators had it easy.

All finished and ready for final trimming!

Mike started by cutting the sheet metal kick up behind the rear passenger seats. We found an easy to mark surface about 8 inches up from the floor board and a perfect cut-ready marked seam just below the rear speaker deck. Cutting this section of sheet metal out of the way opened up the top of the frame rails so that we could cut the rails unabated and without interference.

We cut the sheet metal behind the rear passenger seat at the bottom along our marked line to allow access to the top of the frame rails. There is a seam in the sheet metal, just a little higher up, but cutting along that seam would not give us the full working area that we needed to cut the frame rails and add some support bars later. This will allow us to work the frame rails, cut out the stock upper spring buckets, and then run roll cage bars to the back of the upper control arms mounting locations.

The top cut was made just below the speaker deck and the entire section of sheet metal was removed. Cutting it at the seams makes for a straight line cut and is easier to weld back in.

Now we had a clear path for cutting the parameter frame rails without too much interference from other panels. While Mike continued to cut away sheet metal so that we would have unlimited access to the frame rails, I took the tires and rims to one of the local tire stores for mounting and balancing. We needed to have the real deal ready to go so that we could mock up the tire placement in the wheel wells. Ultimately, this would tell us how much frame we needed to cut.

Billet Specialties Street Lite Rims. These were a little wider than the tire shop was used to seeing.

Getting the Mickey Thompson ET Street Radials ready for mounting. They almost needed two guys to lift these tires up and over the rims for mounting.

Once the wheels were mounted and back at the shop, the real work began in earnest. By this time, we had the frame rails completely exposed and Mike had already found the center line of the wheel well. You’ll notice in the picture below that there are four “sharpee” lines marked on the frame rail. A forward line, which is where the leading edge of the tire would rest. The axle tube location in the wheel well is marked by the two middle lines, and the aft line indicates the rear edge of where the tire needed clearance.

Our precision marked cut lines that indicates where we needed to make the initial notch cuts. The two black lines in the center are indicative of where the axle tube would be located.

We knew that we would be using a coil over spring/shock set up, so our next step was to remove the upper spring perch that attaches to the top of the frame rail. Now that the we had the working room, these came out without a problem using nothing more than our trusty sawzall.

Now you see it and……

Now you don’t.

With the removal of the spring perches on both sides, nothing was preventing us from starting our frame cuts. In the picture below, our master fabricator Mike, starts to make the initial cuts into the frame rail using the fabricator’s best friend; a sawzall.

With the initial cuts being made to the depth that we wanted, we could start cutting the frame rail from front to rear lengthwise. Knowing that we would have to weld plate metal over the section that was cut out, we decided to cut the frame rail outer section off with a 1/8 inch lip so that we could weld that part onto the frame rail once the center section was removed. Removing the center section of the frame rail (roughly an inch and half) would provide the clearance for the wheel that we needed. Using the outer section as a cap would make the notching job look “stock-like”.

Follow along this sequence of photos to get the idea of how we cut the frame rails:

We started by using a cut off wheel and die grinder to open the frame rail for our sawzall. Using the sawzall, we were able to follow a marked line down the length of the frame rail.

Once the lengthwise cuts intersected with the cuts that we made earlier, the frame rail cap came off in a nice single piece for later reuse.

We then cut the frame rail center section out, making them a little “skinnier” for the actual clearance part of the proceedure.

With a little test fitting and some grinding, the cap that we had made previously was made ready for use.

Once our fabricator had the cap where it fit tightly inside the frame rail, it was tack welded into place.

In the photo below, you can see how much of the frame rail was removed even with the cap in place.

Now was the time for the true test. We fit the tire into the wheel well to see if it would clear and sit in the wheel well fully. Sadly, we didn’t cut the rail quite narrow enough, and we couldn’t tuck the tire completely inside the well, even with removing the lip. We’ll need to come back after the holidays and finish this job 100%!

After our test fit, it was evident that we needed to take a bit more off of the frame rail.

A look at the inside of the wheel well where the tire is rubbing on the frame rail.

By this point we had hit the wall on a full day’s work. We decided to close the shop for the day and tackle the clearance issue on a fresh new day.

Starting the day by playing catch up, that is; taking the previously welded cap back off of the frame rail and cutting it down a little more. None of us were looking forward to undoing work that we just did last week, but to get these big Mickey Thompson’s to fit in the wheel well, we had to do the unpleasant task of cutting through Mike’s nice weld to remove the cap.

The problem was that by notching and rewelding the frame rails narrower – we didn’t leave enough room for the 295/65 M/T ET Drag Radials to fit up into the wheel well. Thankfully our friends at Yellow Bullet were there to help us figure it out.

Back to the future. We cut the cap off to remove some more material from the frame rail. This is the where we were last time. Then check out the photo from below.

Once we got back to square one, maybe not square one but at least two backwards steps from progress, Mike pressed on by removing more material from the frame rails. The goal was to remove all the metal from the channel to make the frame rail look somewhat like a piece of flat stock. This will help make enough room for the big M/T’s.

We used the omnipotent Cornwell Plasma cutter to simplify the cutting job. You can see that our frame well was going to end up being less of a channel and more of a flat piece of metal.

Once the cutting was done, we ended up gaining an inch to an inch and a half more clearance. The goal was to support the frame rail from the inside on each side of the vehicle. That would allow the maximum amount of tire and wheel clearance and still be able to support the frame rail for strength. Without the backside support, our Grandma would be turned into a Chevy Low Rider unintentionally.

And yet again it was time for the true test. We put our big meaty Mickey Thompson tire on the tranny jack and raised it into the wheel well. While we all held our breaths and crossed the fingers and toes, the tire was raised to ride height.

Test fitting our tire…again. Check out that bitchin ride height.

The tire fit perfectly into the wheel well as we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. The next step was to run the tire through the full length of travel. We needed to be certain that there would be no chance for the tire to rub anywhere within the range of tire travel. We raised the tire to it’s upper limit, and again there were fingers and toes crossed awaiting the outcome.

Our tire fit with room to spare.

Next it was time to strengthen what was left of the frame rail. Taking a few tips from those that have been through this process before on Yellow Bullet, we opted to bend 1 3/4 inch tube to the exact curves of the frame rail, then halve the tubing right down the middle leaving us with two identical pieces of tubing. Mike tack welded the halves of tubing to the frame rails, one on the right and one on the left.

Tubing was bent and welded to the inside of the frame rails for support.

Finally, we got around to cutting out the spare tire retainer in the trunk area. The gargantuan round tub that holds a full sized spare tire located on the right side of the trunk………GONE. I think we were all pleased with that modification.

Using our new favorite tool, the sawzall, to remove the spare tire tub in the trunk. Now you see it…

Now you don’t.

So it would seem that our start to the new year is off and running with great success. We packed up our tools, shut down the garage and prepared ourselves for another day in the long running saga of PROJECT GRANDMA.

Check out below for some photos and more captions of our work.

The complete tacked in inner support for our frame rail. We’ll be adding plenty of tubing back here that will support this area.

We had to make our inner support tube in two pieces because of the compound bends and because the frame rail changes angles. We found it easier to do it this way.

Welded in completely. Notice how the bar goes through the upper control arm cradle and is welded their for strength.

We started to seam weld the upper control arms areas for strength. We will also be tig-welding MIL-spec washers in this area as well to positively locate the rear end suspension.

Until next time…

When we last left off we had added some support to the inner frame rails and were ready to finish up the notching of the frame rail. Only one thing stood in the way — the powerTV video guys were shooting a video on coatings with Techline Coatings in the shop. So for a good part of the day Mike was banished into the office, left to ponder the pending work that awaited him in the garage. But the day moved on and before long Mike was out in the garage doing what he does best…

On the agenda today was finishing off the frame rails by closing up the holes in the front and rear frame, and then by welding washers (TIG) in the rear control areas to replace the damaged 20+ year old OEM suspension holes that have been enlarged due to typical Grandma abuse.

Early in the day Mike traced and cut out the plates to box the frame in the rear where it had been notched. Then after spending some time at the bench grinder he was rewarded with the finished pieces.

The finished look complete with a melted body bushing. Smelled great too.

Here is where we added washers to the inner and outer lower control arms suspension holes to support the 1,000+ hp our 555 is going to apply.

Now it was time to box the front of the frame. We spent a little bit of time making the boxed frame more study that a simple end cap. This was simply traced out on a template and then bent using a beefy sheetmetal brake.

Here’s what we ended up with once welding was finished. The angled flat steel provided a nice triangulated gusset to the frame and would be dramatically stronger than a flat cap. And we had plenty of tire room.

Here’s another angle so you can really see the triangulated steel.

The last thing we did before shutting down the shop for the weekend was set the tires under the car and lower old Grandma down so we could check clearance and get our measurement for the Currie rear end going in the car. We are using a brand new, trick Currie Fabricated 9-inch that Currie is just releasing, and it’s going to be no joke. We needed to get a wheel to wheel measurement from the ‘Bu first.

Plenty of room back here with the 295/65 Mickey’s.

Before we slid the tape measure under the car we couldn’t help but stop and just take in the look of the car sitting at about ride height with the tires shoe-horned under the backside. This is at ride height.

After checking the clearance all around the huge 295/65 M/T ET Drag Radials, we were really happy with the amount of room we had around the tires. We then measured from inside of each wheel so we can send the numbers off to Currie so they can build the fabricated 9-in going into the car.

It measured out to 56 3/4 inches from wheel-to-wheel. With 15 x 10 wheels with a 5.5 backspace, 56.75 (hat to hat) is our magic number.

That’s all for this update, check back next week where we will be moving on to boxing the rest of the frame and finishing up the mini tubs.

Check out the rest of the photos below:

Driver side rear notch plate welded in.

The GM G-Body is a very easy chassis to work with as a outer perimeter full frame car. The challenge with a 25.5 car is the work that is needed with the frame: the boxing of the stock frame and the addition of the inner frame rails. No matter the SFI spec, we’d need plenty of stiffening for the chassis to take the brunt of the 1,050+ horsepower 555 cubic inch Pat Musi/Edelbrock engine.

We also got a bunch of goodies in the shop today, courtesy of our friendly UPS man. FAST sent us a dual wide-band Air Fuel meter so we can make sure to get the correct mixture of combustion in the Edelbrock 555. Moroso sent us a nice switch panel, and Edelbrock hooked up Granny with a Edelbrock Progressive Nitrous Controller, Purge Kit, and a 2nd fancy Edelbrock silver bottle. Nice.

The first thing we did was raise the body up off the chassis. This was 10 bolts. We have Energy Suspension body bushings – some recommend aluminum bushings for a hardcore pure drag racing applications, but they are about $200, and the easier fix is to just weld the chassis to to the body in 5-6 spots to eliminate flex. We’ll be cheap. Plus, the Energy Suspension bushings are very strong and we’re confident they’ll hold up to many seasons of drag racing.

Here’s the Malibu up in the air and separated by about 10 inches between in the body and the frame.

Mike started off by cutting some raw steel to the right shape needed to box the frame rails. Once again ourCornwell Plasma cutter made quick work of another job and before long a rough-cut piece was pinned temporally to the frame to be welded in. After spending a little more time making some finishing pieces Mike welded in the newly added metal.

This was our contraption for getting the body off the frame, while keeping the frame high for ease of welding. Take one Bendpak lift, about 5 tall jacks, and a small whisper to god to pray this entire thing doesn’t come down on your head. We hope our insurance company never reads this.

Here’s our virgin frame. It’s a C-Channel, stock G-Body outer frame that is not boxed. We need to box it for SFI regulations and for chassis stiffness, as well as to provision something for the the frame rails, control arm supports, driveshaft loop, etc., to weld to.

The first thing Mike started with was “capping” off the editing “L” shape of the front and rear frames. This was simply a plasma cut piece of steel sheet we used, templated and cut to fit. Then we began cutting the long strips of steel to box the frame.

Here’s Ryan uses his favorite tool – the Cornwell Plasma Cutter, to cut away the strip of steel necessary to box the frame. We think it’s a cool shot because of all the radical sparks. We also think it’s cool that the old IKEA desk Mike has stolen as a work bench isn’t on fire. Yet.

C-Clamps holding in the boxed frame rail prior to welding during the fitting process. It’s important to get them close and right before firing up the welder.

We used a combination of TIG and MIG welding for the boxing process. We TIG welded the caps, and MIG welded the longer boxed sections of frame rails. Do whatever you feel you are better at if you are doing this at home.

Here is the completed and boxed left side frame rail. You can see the “half dollar size” steel hole Mike had to close up while building the end cap. These little details aren’t necessarily safety or SFI requirements, but they make a big difference in stiffness. It’s it better to do the job right even if it takes a little longer?

Coming next – and finally – how to build Mini Tubs with Chassis Engineering steel tubs.

To see all of the Grandma Mini-tub photos, visit the photo gallery here.

Chassis Engineering offers four different kinds of wheel tubs that work with virtually any tire size. They offer standard tubs that are 23-inch wide and 40-inches long, Pro tubs which are 28-inches wide and 45-inches long, and an intermediate tub which is 28-inches wide and 40-inches long. The smallest Sportsman wheel tubs are available either in .040-inch aluminum or .024-inch steel.

Since we were doing a mini-tub and not a full back-half, we chose the smallest steel tub from Chassis. We also knew that even that tub would need to be trimmed down width size as we didn’t need to take up our entire trunk since we would be limited by the stock narrowed frame rails. Our wheel wells are shipped unassembled, and like all C/E wheel tubs, incorporate a “Pittsburgh” seam that allows for easy assembly.

Before we could install the kit, we had to clean up the wheel well area before we could measure to fit the mini-tubs in. Mike started by cleaning up the cuts he had made before when removing the original wheel wells and removing a little more metal to give him a nice clean surface to weld the new tubs into. This was more about finishing off the “rough” grinding and cuts from the plasma cutter we showed you earlier.

From there, Ryan made a cardboard mock-up of the tubs to test fit the kit in. After a few quick slashes with a marker, he trimmed the mock-up down to the correct size needed to fit the finished tub in. This is a step that you want to spend a little bit of time on. Cardboard is a cheaper to throw away than metal so Mike made sure that the fitment was right before transferring the dimensions to Chassis Engineering supplied steel tubs. Not all chassis shops do this, and some trial fit using the actual tubs.

Here is an inner shot of the cardboard tub in the wheel well with a “rough cut. You can see there are some challenging areas inside the tub where the factory upper control arm mounting area is located. Logically here we are probably going to have to supplement the Chassis Engineering tub with some additional sheet metal here for a good seal and a clean look.

A shot from inside the car so you can see the approximate location and fitment of the cardboard tub. Because the C/E tubs are so nicely sized in terms of length, we will never have a problem getting our Malibu slammed down to the ground like we are planning.

To make building the tubs a little easier, Mike brought a tub-jig he had built out of wood from his shop. To make it work for this job, he had to modify it a little bit because of the tire size we chose for our project. This made it easy when crimping the ‘Pittsburgh’ seam of the tub to hold the two pieces of metal together.

While Chassis Engineering doesn’t require it, Mike went ahead and riveted the end of the kit together before crimping down the edge. That way, there is no way for the two parts to slip or slide apart changing how it would fit up into the car while he was test fitting it in the car. After that he used a hammer and pounded down the Pittsburgh seam to secure the tub together.

The C/E wheel-tubs are capable of really fitting up to a 32-inch tall tire and one at least 14-15-inches wide. Obviously we won’t need that much room due to our tire size, so from there he simply cut down the blank tub to the size needed to fit into the car. Not wanting to have to go back and add metal in later, he cut them out a little big and trimmed them to a perfect fit. The same process was repeated for the passenger side tub.

Once the mini-tub was properly cut and then fine-trimmed, it was time to install it into the car. Since we cut out the inner wheel tub, we would have some work to do here that could be called trickery. We tack welded the tub to the front and rear inner sheetmetal that was cut away, as well as to the rear trunk hinges.

Mike also took the chance to cut out the trunk and weld in a new panel that covers the hole where the spare tire well was located in the trunk of the car. Then all that was needed to do was weld the now trimmed tubs in. He started off tack welding everything in place. Later Mike will go back and lay down a real nice bead to cap off this part of the build. While normally you would weld the tub into the inner fender as well, our car will be retaining her 70′s appliance-white paint job so we didn’t want to risk bubbling its unique surface. We’ll just fill in the gap with some seam sealer later when we weld the rest of the floor back in. For now check out some finished shots below.

The rain might be coming down finally in Southern California, but that doesn’t mean this car is down off the lift for good. We still got lots more to do before we can mock up the engine and transmission as well as a few other surprises. Check back next week as Mike Ryan will be getting to what some say he does best – putting in a Chassis Engineering roll cage, along with a full upgrade to the SFI 25.5 spec.

Turning this:

Into this:

Our 1978 Malibu “sleeper” project car is finally ready for its build-up. An extensive teardown has disrobed “Granny” to bare frame and body. While we shuddered to think of our “Granny” naked, we actually found a decent foundation to work from. There were a lot of areas where our project car needed some serious help, and we decided to go from the ground up. Our first step was to upgrade her suspension to handle an Edelbrock/Musi 555ci big-block crate engine. The stock suspension, although heavy enough, simply would not be up the challenge of the beefier drivetrain and performance that the monster motor is capable of putting out. We chose the TRZ Motorsports front suspension components because they were designed to replace the stock control arms without modification, and are strong enough to withstand the tortures of racing.

TRZ Upper and Lower Control Arms.

The TRZ Motorsports Package
TRZ Motorsports out of Kissimmee, Florida, builds high performance suspension components for serious street and drag race vehicles. They have been making parts for popular vehicles like late-model Mustangs (’79-04), Camaros (‘67-02), and Novas (’63-79) for years. What brought them to our attention was their support for less-often-seen vehicles like the G-body Malibu (’78-’88), Impala (’77-96), and S-10 pickups and Blazers (’83-02). Because our project car was a late 70’s Malibu, TRZ had ready-to-ship suspension components on hand. Manufactured out of chrome-moly tubing for weight and strength, and TIG welded for durability, the upper and lower control arms feature billet aluminum cross-shafts for corrosion resistance. We asked Todd Braasch at TRZ what we could expect in weight savings by replacing the stock front suspension with the TRZ Kit while strengthening up a suspension system that was designed for a weak-in-the-knees 3.8 liter six cylinder. Todd told us, “roughly 30 pounds.” We wanted to see for ourselves.

Each stock lower control arm weighed almost 14.5 pounds for a total of 29 pounds for both sides.

The TRZ lower control arms weighed 4 pounds, 12 ounces for a total of 9.5 pounds for both sides. All together, we saw just shy of 20 pounds lost in total for the lower control arm replacement.

The stock upper control arms weighed 6.5 pounds each, for a total of 13 pounds for both sides.

TRZ’s high performance upper control arms (pictured on the right) weigh in at 2 pounds, 6 ounces each for a total of 4 pounds and 12 ounces. The total weight savings added up to 8.25 pounds.

Weight reduction and strength is crucial
Total weight reduction by replacing the weaker stock control arms with TRZ’s performance control arms was almost 28 pounds. Keeping in mind that we are replacing the smallish 6-cylinder small block powerplant with a larger 8-cylinder big-block beast, being able to control where the weight is on the car is critical. Our project car will be going to the chassis shop soon for a roll cage addition. As soon as the cage ties the chassis together, we will be mocking up the drivetrain so that we can upgrade the steering with the TRZ/Flaming River Steering package. We expect to see tremendous performance enhancement with another 40+ pounds of weight reduction from the stock steering system. Here’s the rub on putting your chassis on a diet: reducing weight is good only if you don’t sacrifice dependability and strength. Todd clued us in on the priority, saying, “safety is the biggest consideration when we build components. We only use chrome-moly; there is no mild steel in our entire shop.”

Good for more than just weight reduction…
In addition to allowing us some flexibility in weight placement, the TRZ suspension system is designed to handle better in a performance application. The upper control arms have 7 degrees of positive caster built into the design of the control arm for straight-line tracking and high-speed stability. Our sources at TRZ Motorsports indicated that 5-7 degrees of positive caster really affect the steering stability at 105 mph and above. TRZ’s upper control arms come with travel limiters to keep front-end rise under control, where many systems make the front shock absorber the suspension limiter. Relying on the shocks to limit the suspension travel makes it harder for the shocks to do the job they were designed to do. Todd Braasch at TRZ Motorsports emphasizes the safety factor built into the TRZ upgrades. Unlike the stock pressed steel components that deflect, bend and twist under loads, Todd explains that TRZ’s TIG welded 4130 chrome-moly tubular construction provides a greater level of stability and safety.

QA1 Pro-Coil Coilover Double Adjustable Shocks for Big-Block Vehicles.
To round out the TRZ Suspension package, we added QA1 Pro Coil coilover conversion double adjustable shocks designed for our big-block engine upgrade. The double adjustable shocks are completely rebuildable and revalvable, and according to Corey Flynn at QA1 Precision Products Inc., “These are the last shocks you’ll ever need to buy.”

Per QA1, their Pro Coil double-adjustable coilover conversions are “the last shocks you’ll ever need to buy.” Adjustment knobs on the shock body handle compression and rebound adjustments, and the shocks can be rebuild or have their valving changed if the need arises.

QA1 enjoys a great reputation for having a very consistent feel from the driver’s seat that gives the car a comfort level, which explains their popularity in every form of motorsports. Corey claims that a major advantage in QA1 shocks is that, “all components are built in-house, which guarantees consistency in construction, and every shock is checked on a shock dyno before packaging.” The threaded aluminum bodies allow easy adjustment between runs, while reducing weight compared to coilovers using a separate threaded sleeve. QA1 also takes pride in the consistency and repeatability of their external adjustments, taking the guesswork out of dialing in your suspension.

Spring-time Fresh
The coil springs supplied in the coilover kit vary depending on the application. For our big-block G-body conversion, we chose the DGMP1450-3 kit which includes powder-coated coil springs with a deflection rate of 450 lbs/in, that are 10 inches in length with 4.10 inch upper spring I.D. and 2.50 inch lower spring I.D. For small-block applications, the DGMP1350-3 with a 350 lbs/in spring is recommended. In addition to the improved performance value in the spring upgrade, we realized an additional weight reduction of almost 6 pounds.

The well-worn stock springs weighed over 8 pounds.

QA1′s 450-3 springs weighed in at 5 pounds and 4 ounces each.

Aerospace Brakes
Braking technology has changed tremendously since 1978, so it was a forgone conclusion that a brake upgrade was needed on our project car. We picked the Aerospace brake kit part #AC245, the heavy-duty race/street 4 piston caliper disc brake kit that is designed for cars weighing up to 3,000 pounds.

Aerospace heavy duty brake kit for G-body, S-10 and Grand National.

The Aerospace heavy-duty front brake kit included:
• Billet Aluminum 4 Piston Calipers
• Billet Aluminum Mounting Brackets
• Grade 8 Hardware
• Billet Aluminum Hubs with screw on dust caps
• Bearings and Seals
• Brake Pads
• 10-1/4” Diameter Drilled Rotors
• 1/2” Studs, 3” long

We also ordered the Rear Pro Street brake kit to complete our brake upgrade. Included in the rear kit:

• Billet Aluminum 4 Piston Calipers
• Billet Aluminum Mounting Brackets
• Grade 8 Hardware
• Billet Aluminum Hats with multiple bolt patterns
• Screw-on Dust Caps
• Brake Pads
• 11-3/4” Diameter .81” Thick Cast Vaned Rotors

Yet again we realized serious weight reduction by replacing the factory stock single piston cast calipers and brackets. The weight of the stock brake system measured 47 pounds where the Aerospace front brake upgrade weighed in at only 30 pounds. The billet aluminum Aerospace calipers added modern multi-piston stopping power and a high performance look to our suspension upgrade. In order to install the front brake kit onto the stock spindles, some modification of the spindles must be performed. This modification can easily be done by the home project builder using a cut-off wheel and grinder. We opted to make our lives a little easier by using our Cornwell plasma cutter and pneumatic die grinder.

Installation of the Front Suspension Components
Removal of the stock components and installing the new system is straightforward and easy. The vehicle will need to have a front end alignment after the components have been changed, but you can help yourself by recording baseline stock measurements before you disassemble the suspension components to have a place to start.

Taking baseline measurements will help get your front suspension alignment in the ballpark when installing the new components.

Support the car on jackstands and remove the front wheels.

Once the wheels are off, the front brake calipers and rotors can be easily removed, followed by disassembly of the shocks, lower control arm, coil springs, tie rod, spindle and upper control arm.

We found it easiest to install the lower control arms first. This allowed us a base to mount the shocks and coil springs to earlier in the installation process.

With the shocks and springs mounted to the lower control arms, we could then attach the upper end of the shock to the frame to hold the lower arm in place.

Attaching the top end of the shock to the frame.

Attach and torque the upper control arms.

Install the spindle, hub and rotor, brake caliper and tie rod. The original rotor and caliper is shown installed here because we treated the brake installation as it’s own upgrade.

Finishing the Installation
The wheels can be re-installed and the vehicle lowered to the ground. Using your baseline measurement, adjust the coil over springs so that the ride height is close to the baseline measurement.

Front Brake Installation
As with the TRZ control arm installation, the car needs to be supported on jackstands and the front wheels removed to allow access to the brake system. The calipers can then be removed with a hex head socket or Allen wrench. The dust cover on the hub is then removed, revealing the hub retaining nut and outside wheel bearing. Once these are removed, the rotor hub is removed from the spindle with the inside wheel bearing.

Remove the three bolts that attach the dust shield to the spindle.

In order to mount the Aerospace calipers, some modification of the stock spindle is required. The modification can easily be done by a home mechanic using a cut-off wheel and grinder. We opted to use our Cornwell Plasma Cutter and pneumatic die grinder.

Once the spindle has been modified, the rotor hub can be installed. The wheel bearings need to be packed with grease and installed into the rotor hub.

The rotor hubs can then be installed on the spindle and secured with the retaining washer and retaining nut.

With the hub and rotor assembled and on the spindle, installing the caliper mount can begin.

Once the caliper mount is installed on the spindle, the calipers can be bolted onto the caliper mounts and the front tire can be re-installed on the vehicle.

Taking a lesson from the experts.
Once again we went to Todd Braasch for baseline adjustments for the track. Todd explained that the rule of thumb for these G-body cars is to, “start out tight and adjust your way into the track using the shocks and limiters.” He recommended starting with a good alignment job, making sure that you set the caster to the, “optimal 5-7 degrees positive”. As for the front end limiters, Todd again recommends to, “start tight, between 3/4 to 1 inch of travel, and adjust it to the track in 1/4 inch increments.” Todd tells us that they have a G-body with this exact setup running on 275/60 radials pulling 1.27 sixty-foot times and running 5.30 in the eighth-mile.

Wrapping it up
In an afternoon of work with common hand tools, you can improve the handling and front end durability of your G-body chassis with the added bonus of losing 51 pounds of unnecessary weight from the front suspension. For our purposes, taking out the underpowered V-6 and putting in a 555 cubic inch big-block on nitrous, beefing up the front end was a necessity. Dropping the fifty-plus pounds was just icing on the cake. Although we were shooting for the practical, the billet aluminum and chrome-moly performance components gave our chassis a real pro look. With quality looking components like these, we may not be able to pull off the “sleeper” look we were going for on this project build. Our front end is no longer an ugly duckling.

The finished front suspension. Our ugly duckling has been transformed into a beautiful swan, sort of.

Granted, we expect the car to run in the 8.80′s with the 555 ci Pat Musi / Edelbrock pump gas big block going in between the frame rails, so 25.5 might be considered overkill. However, eventually we will go nuts and slide in our 427ci twin turbo LSX engine built by Billy Briggs, and we want this car to be able to handle it without having to add more cage later.

Before work on the Chassis Engineering cage could be started, we had to build the inner frame rails, and then tie-in the support for the stock suspension to take the brunt of the 1,100 to 1,300 hp engines.

Excuse our crappy lighting. First, Mike started with the cross-member. This is the cross bar runs between the frame rails, that dips down in the middle for the driveshaft. The cross bar was welded to two plates that Mike welded to the stock OEM outer perimeter frame rails.

Once the cross member was finished and tacked in, Mike added the two inner frame rails as required by SFI 25.5. We used 1-5/8 inch chrome moly supplied by Chassis.

Here is another shot of the inner frame rail. You can see that it is straight and then it curves forward to meet the frame rail at the front of the chassis. This will later by gusseted by the front cross bar and transmission x-member.

This is where the front frame rail intersects the frame. You can see the plates that Mike welded to the frame, and then the actual 1-5/8 chrome moly tubing to those plates.

This is where you need to be careful, and smart – with stock suspension. You can see the rear cross member here, and to the left the front frame rails moving forward. To the right is a bar welded from the lower control arm forward to the cross member which intersects the inner frame rail. Remember, lower control push while upper control arms pull. Mike is designing this chassis so that the lower arms force is directed squarely into the frame of the vehicle and not into the flex in the stock attachment points.

Here is the finished product so far with where the frame sites. Keep in mind, there are going to be additional bracing and gussets forward of the rear cross member. This is just the “bones” of the system so to speak. What will be added is the front cross member, front trans mount, a lower seat bar, and possibly an x-brace underneath the inner rails.

Since we started to get into the roll cage, you can check out the rear cross bar that was welded between the frame rails as the down points for the rear bars to come down from the main hoop. Of course, we’ll also use this to mount our fuel cells, battery mounts, parachute, etc.

Later this week we will be starting work on the roll cage. It should go in really smoothly given the fact that we are going to be using a Chassis Engineering 10 point moly cage and add a few bars to it to complete the 25.5 spec. It’s already pre-bent so that is saving us a lot of hassle!

One cool trick. We have a painted car (if you can call the original OEM 30 year old stuff on the body paint), and if we welded the tubs to to the body – even tack welds – we would melt the paint. So we are going to use seam sealer, but Mike added a few little gussets in the middle of the tub to keep it from deflecting. Pretty sweet. This will give them some support.

On a side note, our Publisher Lloyd Hunt showed Mike an easier, more stress relieving way to bend the tubing for the underside of the car – by using Editor Mark Gearhart’s face.

As mentioned, we decided to start off with a 10 point moly cage kit for our Malibu, and then add the necessary bars to complete the 25.5 spec cage as per the SFI rules. This is a common upgrade, and we’ll be very clear where the standard 10-pt cage ends and where the 25.5 SFI spec starts.

That means we have a lot of bars to run in the G-body, but we are starting with a good foundation. The Chassis Engineering kit comes with most of the bars pre-bent in the kit, including the main hoop, top hoop, and a-pillar bars – which are very difficult to bend yourself. All that was required there was to fit, hold and weld.

Chassis Engineering was good to us. Not only did they supply the cage, but they supplied the mini-tubs, parachute mount, parachute cable, misc. accessories, but even – get this – a driveshaft loop. I know, they hooked a brother up!

Coming out of the box, here is the Chassis Engineering pre-bent main hoop and top halo bar. This would be the starting point for the kit. Mike started by cutting out two small holes in the floorpan so that we can run the main hoop down to the frame rails as per NHRA and SFI spec.

After taking a few measurements, he cut the legs of the pre-bent main hoop to fit inside our Malibu with enough room for a head liner. When he was happy with the fitment and clearance at the top for the headliner and all around the main hoop, he tack welded it in.

Mike says that for him, it is easier to do most of the main hoop section in the car, tack welding it in at first; then bring it out of the car for final welding. That way he has plenty of room to lay down a nice tig welded bead on the cage without interference from anything else. This is where our 25.5 upgrade came in. We would need to add the rear bars for the funny car cage upgrade that sit behind the driver’s seat.

Here Mike tig welds the rear part of the funny car cage upgrade – required as per SFI 25.5 – to the Chassis Engineering main hoop. The 25.5 upgrade required two modifications to the standard main hoop. First, the cross bar was mounted lower than the standard area on a 10-pt, and second, the two funny car rear bars are welded behind the driver’s seat.

Here is a sweat trick we didn’t know. Before Mike welded the main hoop in, he made these trick plates with a clearanced hole with a hole saw, so that you have a completely sealed and clean floor with the cage going through it.

With the main hoop installed, next on the list was the two rear down bars from the top of the main hoop that run down to the rear trunk cross bar Mike welded under the trunk last week. He started by cutting two slots in the rear deck to give the bars plenty of clearance to run down into the trunk area. Mike plans to use some sheet metal later to fill these in after all of the necessary bars have been run through that area.

Again grabbing from the Chassis Engineering kit, Mike cut the bars down to size and bent them in the rear of the car. After fitting the bars in mike made two similar floor plates as he did for the main hoop and welded everything in. Chassis supplies the rear bars straight here giving you flexibility in your installation. Some install straight bars but we preferred to bend ours.

The complete rear down bars. See how clean they look with Mike’s trick plates. Once this area gets cleaned and painted you’ll see what nice work this is. It’s just obscured by 6 different kinds of metal surfaces.

Here is a shot showing where the bars are welded into from under the car. This is our rear cross bar that will eventually partially support our fuel cell and battery trays.

Here is another angle of the rear of the car, the C/E mini-tubs, main hoop, and rear down bars. As mentioned, you can see the main hoop with the start of the funny car cage installed in the car on the right. Notice how the cross bar is mounted lower than you would normally see in a 10-pt cage.

From there Mike was on to the halo bar. Again another easy install as the only thing Mike had to do to fit the Chassis Engineering piece in was cut it down to size and notch the bar so it fit flush against the main hoop and weld it in.

The last thing Mike got to was cutting two holes in the floor just like he did for mounting the main hoop, only this time, it is in the front of the car just in front of where the driver seat will mount. This is where the bar running from the halo bar will come down and attach to the frame. We refer to these are front down bars.

Check back in later this week, Mike will be fitting more and more of the cage in the car as we continue to bring you updates all the way till this car is running on the track. Our goal is provide you with a step by step guide to building your own 8-second Malibu with common every day components and off-the-shelf parts.

Until next time, we’re out.

In the first two parts of our Edelbrock/Musi 555 crate motor build we showed you what it took to put together a pretty simple, yet powerful crate engine program using the mind of Pat Musi and the manufacturing might of Edelbrock. With the theory and assembly now out of the way, it is time to put the engine on the dyno and see how it lives up to the expectations that were laid out on paper before the project began.

In Part One we got our hands on this big-block and we provided details on the components in the short-block build. We highlighted the Dart Big M block with a priority main oiling system, the stalwartly JE forged pistons, Scat’s single twist forged steel crank and the Scat high performance H beam rods.

In Part One, we showed you how the short block went together.

In Part Two we took a closer look at the long-block components of this monster crate motor, including the Edelbrock Pro-Flo XT electronic fuel-injection system. With the Pro-Flo’s new technology, our big-block is tame enough to be a daily-driver or bad enough to be a terror on the track. Vic Edelbrock assured us that we could get 20 mpg with this engine – if we drove the speed limit.

Part Two topped the block with Edelbrock heads and the Pro Flo XT fuel injection system.

In the final segment of the series we’re putting the Edelbrock/Musi 555 crate motor on the engine dyno and spray it down with nitrous to see if the power we expected is actually there. Naturally, with guys like Pat Musi and Vic Edelbrock behind the project there was no reason to doubt the engine wouldn’t produce as advertised, but in the world of making big power, if it can’t be backed up on the dyno and on the track, it is of little value. Lets face it; racers race with power, not numbers on paper.

Our monster crate engine on nitrous, ready for the dyno.

The brains behind the brawn.

For those of you who have been living on Mars for the past fifty years, Edelbrock and Musi are both legends in the aftermarket performance world. Vic Edelbrock, Jr. led the way for hot rodders in the 60’s and 70’s while growing the company his father founded into one of the best-known names in street performance and racing.

Vic Edelbrock, Jr. still guides the company his father founded and he brought to prominence.

Pat Musi is pure magic. An 8-time World Champion drag racer and engine builder/designer that started racing as an 18 year old street racer on the eastern expressways, Musi has become a master at massaging engines and cylinder heads to get “just a little more” out of them. Musi-built engines are sought after world-wide, and there aren’t too many guys who have more experience with big motors on spray than him.

Pat Musi, World Champion Racer and Engine Builder.

The Dynamic Test Systems (DTS) engine dynamometer at Musi performance is a specially modified by DTS for multi-stage nitrous systems. The DTS engine dyno has extremely good control characteristics, and is capable of controlling the engine speed within five rpm at steady state testing. The dyno is also capable of running in either direction. Most domestic engines run in a clockwise direction where some foreign and marine engines run counter-clockwise. The DTS engine dynamometer is well suited for high horsepower testing by utilizing two control valves at the same time for quick response to engine demands. This is extremely important when making dyno runs on nitrous engines.

Our crate engine on Musi’s DTS engine dynamometer.

Truth in Testing.

Every time an engine is being hooked up the dyno, the first question is, “So, how much do you think she’ll pull?” Part of the enjoyment of running an engine on the dynamometer is seeing what the expectations are, and then what the truth is. Sometimes feelings can get hurt when expectations exceed reality. For the baseline run on our engine, there were no secrets. Edelbrock and Musi had been working on this crate engine package for three years doing all the research and development that makes a high-performance package a durable trouble-free product. These years of development and testing gave everyone a pretty good idea of how much power the engine would make straight out of the crate. The research and testing phase, although necessary, stymied Musi’s eagerness to get the engine to the track. “That Edelbrock crew doesn’t cut any corners. I’m just a racer and I wanted to get this engine put together and go racing, but those folks put this engine through years of testing,” Musi explained.

Advertised Horsepower & Torque numbers.

Baseline Run on Pump Gas.

The published power numbers are great for a pump gas crate engine and everyone at the dyno facility wanted to see verification. The published power numbers show 675 horsepower at 6,000 RPM and a peak torque rating of 650 ft/lbs at 4,500 RPM.

Our initial pull was actually a few horses above the published power numbers.

Our first run at the Pat Musi Performance shop verified the published numbers showing 677 HP at 5,800 RPM and peak torque of 662 ft/lbs at 5,100. A very impressive run for our engine right out of the box, assembled on the stand with no massaging or modifications of any kind.

Pat Musi at the controls of the dyno for our baseline run.

Following the baseline run, Musi wanted to put his own tune-up on the engine. Musi, however, wasn’t allowed to add or remove any parts from the engine, just an experienced hand tweaking the flow and timing a bit. Those of us watching the run were making bets as to how much more could be gained simply by changing the fuel curve and timing. The average guess was around a five horsepower gain. Musi was claiming that he could add 13 HP easily.

Musi took some time to work his magic on the motor in NA form before the next pull.

After putting the “Musi magic” into the tune up, the crate engine was run again to check exactly how much voodoo “Popeye” had. End result: Seventeen additional horses gained with really only minor tweaks – 694 HP at 5,800 RPM. Musi claimed that he could get over 700 HP by manipulating the fuel curve a little more.

Time to get serious and add the bottle to the mix.

The next step was to install the Edelbrock Performer RPM Nitrous system and spray it. The plate was loaded with enough nitrous to equal about a 275 hp shot, and Musi adjusted the Pro Flow XT software to pull back some timing from the 666. Armed with the baseline dyno pull numbers, our guys were estimating a cool 950 HP on the nitrous pull. Musi was claiming that he was going to get 975 off of the first try on the bottle. Trusting Musi’s experience, Edelbrock was backing Musi’s claim. Our guys were more conservative.

Even with Musi at the helm, you still hold your breath for the first nitrous pull on a new motor.

What happened next surprised everyone, including the “Magic Man”. The nitrous dyno run with our crate engine, on pump gas and with a single stage of nitrous produced a peak horsepower of 1,050 at 5,000 RPM. Equally impressive was a peak torque reading of 1,140 ft/lbs at 4,600 RPM.

Why are these men smiling? They just built the first Edelbrock Crate engine to reach 1,050 horsepower on pump gas and a single shot of nitrous.

After the dyno run was made, and the data was retrieved, a round of congratulations and cheer made it’s way around the shop. Realizing the importance of the occasion, Musi and Edelbrock autographed the valve covers of the 555, and that’s the way it will go, straight into Grandma’s engine bay.

Taking advantage of the situation, we wanted to pick Musi’s brains on running engines on the dyno with Nitrous. After all, we don’t get the chance to study under a master very often, and learning things by trial and error can lead to destroyed engines and a mess to clean up. Being lazy guys (or smart guys depending on your perspective), we wanted to avoid cleaning the mess if we could. Pat was helpful enough to provide some tips based on his years of experience.

Pat Musi’s Top 5 Nitrous Dyno Tips

1. Find the right specialist.

See if the dyno is suited for nitrous. The valving is critical for the surge in power. If the dyno operator specializes in four cylinder import motors, taking a big block Chevy there might not be the smartest idea. There are major differences in running high horse power engines and endurance race engines on a dyno. Make sure that the dyno can log the data that you are looking for.

2. Experience Counts.

Start at a small horsepower level to get a feel for the power increase. There is no substitute for personal experience, so find a dyno operator that knows what to expect with a nitrous-injected motor.

3. Don’t run the engine pig rich.

Avoid running the engine too fat. The extra fuel will damage rings and ring lands. A little rich is ok, and even preferable. Too rich or a mixture on the lean side will destroy an engine or degrade the long-term performance.

4. One system at a time. Run multi-stage systems one at a time to get a feel for your tuneup. Give yourself plenty of time and don’t rush. Plan for running one system at a time in your schedule.

5. Stay in your comfort zone.

Running more than one stage is not recommended unless you have serious nitrous time on a dyno. Dodging flying engine components and cleaning up the dyno room is no fun.

Click here for the Edelbrock/Musi 555 Part 3 Photo Gallery

Now the thought of seeing poor dear old Grandma at Runoff Beach was something that we just couldn’t live with. It was bad enough for the old gal that she’ll have to live with the noise from the 555ci Edelbrock/Pat Musi Big Block that will be shoehorned under her hood. We thought the least we could do is send her down the track with a good set of brakes. To do so we chose Aerospace Components lightweight drag racing brakes. Not only will replacing the well-worn stock brakes help improve stopping power, but they just might help us free up a little horsepower to as well.

Grandma has already been through a lot, from having been driving to near destruction by our now Editor-in-Chief to being striped of everything she has. So we redeemed ourselves a little bit when we did some joint replacement by upgrading her underpinnings with some really nice Energy Suspension body bushings. Now I really think we are going to be in old Grandma’s good graces. With a brand-spanking-new set of brakes behind her wheels Granny should have no problem stopping that big inch mill, no matter how much it fights her.

Aerospace Components is best known for their vacuum pump system and lightweight brakes. What most people don’t know is that Aerospace Components actually has a wide variety of products, including water pumps, fuel pumps, 9-inch Ford “Bullet-Proof” third members, shifters, billet nitrous bottle brackets and “pro dial” boards. From its humble beginnings in Dearborn, Michigan twenty-two years ago, Aerospace has grown to become one of the most advanced companies in the industry.

Brakes and Drag Racing

Brakes capable of bringing your car to a safe stop at the end of the track are a prerequisite if, like most racers, you’d like to make more than one pass without extensive repair work and hospitalization. But beyond the obvious advantages of being able to slow down, a good set of brakes can also help you increase wheel horsepower. “Fiction!” you say? Consider the amount of rotating mass your engine has to turn in on the vehicle, talking everything from accessories driven off to the belts to the wheels and tires into account. By reducing the amount of rotating mass, the engine won’t have to work as hard and this frees up horsepower. The brakes are another example of rotating mass, so therefore by installing lighter brakes with less inertia, you can reduce the amount of horsepower lost before it does the important work of getting you down the track.

Aerospace’s lightweight billet aluminum hubs feature screw-on dust caps and are drilled with a dual bolt pattern.

Brakes for drag racing are designed a little differently than ones use in a street or even a roadrace application. Instead of having to withstand repeated uses, drag racing brake kits must be able to slow cars going extremely fast in one very quick use. With that in mind, even picking things like brake pads is important.

Brakes aren’t a one-size-fits-all proposition. Rotors, calipers, and even pads must be matched to the car’s weight, speed, and use. Drag race brakes designed to bring a 3,200 pound car down from 175 miles per hour, then cool down in the pits between rounds won’t work very well for repeated stops on the street, and vice versa.

Aerospace Brakes

Aerospace Components offers brake components “a la carte” or as complete Front and Rear Brake Kits, as shown here

Aerospace sent us their Heavy Duty Kit for use on Grandma. The kit, designed for cars weighing between 2,600 and 3,000 pounds, came with everything we needed from the 10.25” diameter drilled rotors to a set of Hawk pads, with all the bearings and seals we needed to make Grandma a super stopper. Constructed from billet aluminum, the four-piston calipers felt light when we picked them up but we wanted to see just how light. After stealing the scale from the shipping department, and defacing it with the oily, grimy stock brakes the results were surprising, but more on this later. For now, on to the installation…

Kit Components:
• Billet Aluminum 4 Piston Calipers
• Billet Aluminum Mounting Brackets
• Grade 8 Hardware
• Billet Aluminum Hubs with Screw-on Dust Caps
• Bearings and Seals Included
• Hawk Brake Pads
• 10 1/4” Diameter Drilled Rotors
• 1/2” Studs, 3” long

Installation

This first thing we tackled was removing the stock system. After breaking the old bolts loose we pulled the well-worn set of brakes, and while BJ was taking off the passenger side I took the driver’s side pieces to weigh and compare with the Aerospace Brakes. Throwing all the Aerospace kit components on the scale, the weight came out to 30 pounds for the entire front kit, including brake pads. With BJ still slacking on the other side, I put my half of the stock brakes on the scale to see how they stacked up.

The only things that these old stock brakes are going to be stopping is the back door of the shop from closing.

It was very surprising to see the scale read just a hair over 23 pounds for the driver’s side alone. That was without brake pads too, as there were none left to weigh! We cut nearly half the total weight off the front brakes by installing Aerospace’s kit. Remember that a good proportion of that is rotating mass as well. That means more of our big inch horsepower moving Grandma forward, and less lost spinning up the brake rotors.

I got back to Granny and BJ just in time to start putting on the Aerospace Kit. Our kit, as with many big brake conversions for cars of this generation, required that we trim the spindles. Aerospace provided us with a template for doing so. Our Cornwell Plasma Cutter made quick work of the thick steel and after a little bit more clean-up grinding we had enough clearance to mount the caliper bracket. When doing this yourself, a cutoff wheel and a grinder would do just fine – it just won’t be a quick as a plasma cutter or a torch. With our caliper bracket mounted we then placed the rotors on the spindle and put the greased bearings in place. Next was the cotter pin, followed by the dust cap.

The “got to have” tool – the plasma cutter. Patience and a cutoff wheel will give you the same end result, though.

With the spindle trimmed and the Aerospace bracket mounted, the hubs go on. Be sure to use lots of grease, both in the bearings and the spindle shaft.

Proper spindle nut torque is important for bearing life and safety. Speaking of which, don’t forget that cotter pin, and don’t reuse an old one – crashing a car because you cheaped out on a ten-cent part is inexcusable.

The Aerospace kit includes half-inch diameter studs that are a tech-inspector-pleasing three inches long, giving plenty of thread engagement on the lug nuts no matter how thick the wheel hub is.

Capping off our Aerospace system are the Billet Aluminum Four-Piston calipers. With no brake lines run yet this was as simple as placing the new Hawk pads in the caliper and bolting it to the mount we installed earlier. After a little bit of shimming to align the rotor and caliper properly, the complete Aerospace Components kit was on. All that remains is the plumbing, and Grandma will be able to stop on a dime and give nine cents in change.

When installing the calipers, a little shimming is necessary to properly center the caliper body relative to the rotor to ensure even pressure and wear.

The finished product is a huge improvement in both appearance and performance, and cuts the total weight of the front brake system almost in half.

Top 5 Tips For Upgrading Brakes
Brought to you by Matt Moody at Aerospace Components

1) Specify Not Only Your Vehicle But Application

This might sound like a no-brainer, but Matt explained that trying to save money by buying a less expensive kit might save you money up front, but in the end the brakes could fail due to being operated outside of what they are designed for. Brake kits are engineered for specific weight ranges, speeds, and usage profiles (street, strip, or roadracing). If you are unclear about what you need, call the experts at Aerospace. They are more than happy to assist you in choosing your kit.

2) Change Your Brake Lines

Cracked or leaking lines are one of the most common failures when it comes to brakes. By swapping them out to stainless steel you not only get a better performing product but a better looking one as well

3) Make Sure Your Master Cylinder Is The Correct Size

This is where people start to get lost. “Make sure if you are upgrading from drum brakes to disc brakes that you have the correctly-sized master cylinder,” Moody said. Drums and discs require different brake fluid pressure and volume. “Trying to use your old one will only result in poor performance of your brakes.”

4) Thread locker Is Your Best Friend In Your Race car
Moody told me to lock tight everything with “permanent” threadlocker, such as Loctite Red 271. If you don’t, the bolts could back out, and when you are hauling down the track that is the last thing you want to happen.

5) Know What You Are Doing
This one is common sense, more than anything. If you don’t know what you are doing when it comes to installing brakes, have someone who knows disc brakes help you. If you don’t know anyone, you should take it to a shop to have them installed. Brakes are a safety issue, and not only for you in the car but other people around you. Don’t just hack a set of brake on your car; do it right.

What’s Next with Granny

Grandma is coming along pretty quick now. Soon the car will be off to the chassis shop to get a full Chassis Engineering cage and mini-tubs. After that, we will be putting on the rest of the Aerospace Components brake parts, including the rear brakes and master cylinder. Before long, old Grandma will be screaming down the track, and now, thanks to Aerospace Components, we won’t be screaming too when the run is over.

Mike cut a hole in the floorboards large enough to allow welding the front down tubes all the way around the tube.

Cutting the floorboard for the down tubes required a pretty good size opening so that the tube to chassis weld could be done from inside the car for the outside half, and from the bottom of the car on the inside half of the tubing.

Mike welds the down tube to the chassis from below for the part of the tube that faces towards the inside of the car.

After the front down tubes from the halo to the chassis had been welded into place, Mike tack welded the sheet metal cover over the hole that had been cut for the tube to run through the floorboard. Being ever mindful of aesthetics, Mike formed the sheet metal to mate with the existing bends in the floorboard.

Sheet metal cover completes the job. Mike fabricated the metal plate to mate with the existing floorboard bends.

Once the down tubes had been welded into the chassis and to the Halo, Mike added a couple of short tubes from the main hoop cross bar to the rear end upper control arm mount cradle. This brace will support the upper control arm mounting points from flexing under the torsional load during launching. Also, it is another place where the cage is tied into the chassis providing even further support from chassis flex.

The short tube from the main hoop to the upper mount cradle. This is the exact area that intersects where the upper control arms connect.

Welders are often under-appreciated so we wanted to take a moment to applaud their ability to get into areas where a regular Joe couldn’t or wouldn’t go. Welders also have this unique ability to weld with either the right or left hand depending on how tight the area is that they need to get to. So here’s to you Mr. Under-appreciated ambidextrous metal melter.

Cheers to the Fabricator that will get in any spot, in any position, right or left handed to ensure that a good weld is made.

After he had finished the bracing bars, Mike took on the task of adding the cromoly tubing that make up the funny car cage. These bars are custom fitted to the driver and the seat that will be mounted into the car. Each bar in this section is hand bent and fish-mouthed to fit precisely to the cage. Mike approached this task with patience. Trying to take too much metal off of a bar, or over bending a bar would mean starting all over.

The purpose of the funny car cage is to protect the driver in the event of a severe accident and structural failure of the outer layer of roll-cage protection – the doors bars (which in our case are X-bars). They also support the door bars with 2 additional triangulated bars on the driver side.

An outer hoop is installed first.

Once the framework for the funny car cage is made and tack welded, the painfully slow and precise work of fabricating individual support bars begins. Even moving forward cautiously, we managed to make a couple of mistakes and had to fabricate a couple of new bars for that perfect fit.

The funny car cage was hand fabricated to a custom fit.

Before we close out today’s blog, we felt it was necessary to pass along another one of Mike’s tricks of the trade. When welding tubing, the air inside the tube gets hot and expands. As the welder completes the weld at a seam, the structure starts getting air tight and there is no where for the expanding hot air to escape. This can cause what welders call “a blow out”. To prevent that situation from happening, our fabricator drills a small vent hole in the tubing so that the air can escape. This hole can be filled in later.

Vent hole in the tubing prevents “a blow out”.

With our day in the garage over, our fabricator made it through the day with out experiencing any “blow outs”, but he did contort himself in ways that would have made a circus clown proud. All in the name of getting the perfect weld. I bet he’s going to be sore tomorrow.

Here is the “X” in the doors. These are just tack-welded at this point and can be removed for access to the interior.

Next it was on to the front of the car where Mike was working on the front cage extensions that would run to the front of the G-Body’s front frame rails. This would strengthen the front of the car substantially. You can see the finished work below. These tie into the cage at the front intersection bar that goes between the two front down bars.

We expect Grandma to run in the 8-second zone, which means we are going to need a little stopping help. While we did upgrade the brakes to Aerospace Components lightweight drag racing brakes, a parachute was still needed given the speed of the car.

Mike installed a Chassis Engineering Parachute Mount Kit on our Malibu. He started by drilling a circle the size of the 1-5/8-inch tubing into the bumper of the car. From there he notched and cut the bar down to the correct size before tacking it to the rear cross bar we had installed a few weeks ago.

Mike added some bracing to the bar as well to make sure the parachute system is structurally strong before adding the actual parachute mount to the rear of the bar behind the bumper.

Welding the parachute holder bar (is there a better word for this) to the Chassis Engineering mount kit. Check outthe parachute mount kit here.

That wraps up this update. Check back later this week and we should have our 555 ci Pat Musi/Edelbrock Chevy Big Block mocked up in the car. From there we can them move on to reassembly as we continue to keep you up to speed on Project Grandma.

Mocking up the Drive Train

The first step in this mock up process was to take the Monster crate engine and bolt a brand spankin’ new TCI Pro-X Powerglide Transmission to it. A long time ago, the Powerglide transmission had a reputation as being a little weak in the knees for real power applications, but that was – a long time ago. TCI has perfected taking a stock power glide and making it durable enough to handle just about anything that you can throw at it, but this isn’t a stock glide. This is a TCI Pro-X, and it uses an upgraded case to handle up to 2,000 HP.

Once the big block and the glide were together, we lifted the assembly into Grandma’s engine bay with the Cornwell engine hoist and load leveler. We have to give the Cornwell Tools big props on the load leveler. Attempting to put the engine/transmission combo into the engine bay while the car is on a two post lift is no easy challange, even with the fenders and grill removed. The load leveler simplified what would have been a difficult, and somewhat dangerous task. Finally, we added the Lemons 2-1/4 inch header tubes so that Mike could fab up the steering system ensuring that there was plenty of clearance.

Lemon’s Headers – A Work of Art

The Lemons headers we ordered are a pretty special set up for g-body chassis like Grandma. Lemon’s is one of the only exhaust header companies that specializes in race-type (read: seriously BIG tube) headers for Muscle Car big block applications in early cars.

With our Lemon’s headers, each bank has four 2-1/8-inch headers that step into 2-1/4 inch stainless tubes, which merge into a 4 inch collector. On each side, two of the header tubes route outside the frame and the other two run along the inside of the frame. These headers are designed for the engine mounted in the stock location, but will not fit with with clutch linkage or column shifter linkage.

We are using the TRZ/Flaming river steering rack, so we had already planned on moving the steering column for clearance. We also planned on rerouting the master brake cylinder lines for clearance too. While we were mocking the drivetrain out, we made note that the transmission cross member would have to be fabricated to allow for the massive 4 inch collector.

Transmission Cross Member – Making a 25.5 Legal X-Member

For the 25.5 SFI spec, we needed to build our Transmission cross member within certain parameters. Mike’s next step was fabricating the transmission cross member. Starting by bolting on the Energy Suspension Transmission mount to the tail shaft extension of the transmission, we were able to locate the mounting position of the cross member.

Mike set about fabricating the cross member and transmission mount by measuring and custom fitting pieces of plate steel together, joined by tack welding the metal. This would form the trans mount that would attach to the mild steel cross-member.

Once the cross member pieces were custom fit, tack welded and double checked for fitment, Mike TIG-welded the entire assembly. While we were already under the car, we needed to add a couple more tubes for support and safety. The tranny mount and bar ran perpendicular to the “stringer” tubes, or the floor bars, which go from the rear end mount cradle forward to the frame near the front wheel well area.

These bars are required for 25.5, and provide extra crash protection and frame support. It is cheap insurance and makes the chassis strong as a tank without weighing like one.

With the engine mounted and the transmission mounted in place, test fitting the steering assembly could begin. Steering is extremely important, even in a straight line car, so making sure that the rack placement and steering shafts had good clearance and proper geometry was essential at this stage. The steering shafts would have to be rerouted because of the larger engine and the manual rack and pinion upgrade. Yet again, Mike would have to custom fabricate the entire steering column and rack mounting. We are going to do a more detailed article on this in the future with some more photos, but for now – you can follow along.

TRZ/Flaming River – Manual Steering Rack Conversion

Mounting the steering rack started with removing a mounting pad from the engine cross member. This little mounting boss serves no purpose in this particular chassis, so cutting it off was of no consequence. With the mounting boss removed, the manual steering rack was bolted to the spindle steering arms so that proper rack placement could be determined. The TRZ steering assembly came with two mounting brackets that need to be welded in to place in order to mount the steering rack.

It took a little patience to grind and massage the steering brackets so that they would form a close “air tight” fit to the crossmember. Getting this tight fit is key to a good TIG weld. Keeping in mind that it is easier to take off metal than to add it, Mike made several trips to the grinder, taking off a little bit at a time then test fitting the mount to the frame until it was perfect.

Massaging the mounting brackets until they made an “air tight” fit

There are two brackets that need to be welded to the frame that support the steering rack, and each bracket needs to be custom fit for the best results. Mike made several trips to the grinder and back to the chassis to test fit his work. The quality of the welds and the mounting of the steering rack depended on this level of attention to detail. We recommend strongly that you do not take a short cut here.

Taking no short cuts, these mounting brackets were fitted perfectly to the crossmember.

Now that the rack was firmly mounted to the crossmember, we could focus on routing the steering shafts. With the big engine in place with the Lemons headers attached, there was little room for the steering shaft to run. A new route from the steering rack to the steering column had to be made. Armed with a bi-metal hole saw, we created a new path for the steering shaft by cutting through the cross member.

Making a hole in the crossmember to run the steering shaft

Working from the steering rack back to the steering wheel, we managed to find a decent path through the engine cross member, outside the first two header pipes near the upper A-Arm and through the firewall. Our goal was to route the steering column through the original location in the firewall. This required manufacturing a new mounting plate for the steering column to run through. Again, patience was key to fabricating a plate that covered the existing firewall hole and allowed the steering shaft to run through it.

Our new firewall steering column plate

All the pieces were in place for us to run the steering shaft from the wheel to the rack, so we started putting the puzzle pieces together. The angle of the shaft coming through the firewall to the rack was steep enough that we needed to use three universal joints. Using this setup requires keeping the angles of the universal joints within a few degrees of each other. Too much of an angle on one of the joints will cause binding or give the driver a stiff feel in the steering.

Steering shaft running through the firewall and utilizing 3 U-joints to route to the rack

Our fabricator, Mike “scrooge” Ryan, takes a moment to chase the photographer away

By this point, our fabricator was tired of grinding and decided that we had made enough progress for the day. Our plan is to pickup the next day with the final steering column assembly and start working on the interior components like the parachute release handle and the transmission shifter. Looks like our Grandma project is starting to enter the home stretch run.

Sometimes you are in the right place at the right time. This time, we were. We’ve been working with Currie Enterprises on a few different projects, and it just so happened that Project Grandma’s need for a new rear end intersected perfectly with a top-secret project at Currie.

Currie’s New Fabricated 9-inch Housing and Rear End. Now, you probably have never seen this before, and that’s because it has never been available before, and we have the very first one.

You can search all you want at Currie’s web site. With no luck. This is our scoop, and very shortly you’ll be able to check out everything.

We’ve been sworn to not tell you anything else, other than that we’re going to bring you the exclusive scoop on this very shortly. Until then, you’ll need to enjoy some of our quick snapshots. The only thing we are allowed to tell you about this rear end is that it will be available in both “race” versions and full bolt-in versions.

And, you can see in the background, the backside of our new Billet Specialties Street Lite wheels that we’re using along with the M/T Drag Radials. We’ll make sure to show you more beauty shots soon, but for now you can check out the photo’s below of our 7-second ready G-Body rear end custom built by Currie for stock suspension.

We are on the home stretch with Project Grandma. In fact, we can almost smell the Mickey Thompson tires going up in smoke coming out of the burnout box… This last week Mike Ryan has been working on some of the smaller details of the build, before taking on the major tasks like mounting the Currie F9 rear end and putting the fenders back on. Check out how far we’ve come this week below!

Things started off in the interior of our Malibu. Many series require that cars have a passenger seat mounted in them, so Mike installed a second Kirkey seat on the other side in the similar fashion as the driver’s seat. Since it won’t be load bearing other than “eventually” holding our intercooler, a minimum of tubing was needed.

Mike welded in a simple cross-brace for the seat to bolt to, and then installed the seat so he could begin building a mounting tube for the rear.

This was the easiest and quickest way to mount the passenger seat and make it quickly removable. A back brace here, along with a single cross mount below, would allow removal (if necessary).

What’s this box welded to the floor? That’s our shifter mount. Many people simply mount their shifters to the floor, regardless of whether that is the most comfortable and natural area for driving comfort. Mike made this shifter mount elevated about 2.5 inches, and it was slightly tricky since the floorpan is curved downward at that point. We simply trimmed the mount to make sure it was level and square, and then MIG’d it to the floorpan. First, we welded nuts on the underside so the shifter would quickly bolt-in and out.

While there are many choices for shifter, for this project we choose to use a TCI Outlaw shifter. We picked the TCI Outlaw for Powerglide w/Cover, part number #611323. This will be used with our TCI Pro-X Powerglide.

The TCI Outlaw got the call because it looks good, is billet aluminum (face it-we are Billet lovers) and has a wicked operational shifter button available on the handle. You’ll see that shortly in the next blog!

Of course, it has a NHRA-legal reverse lock out as outlined in both NHRA/IHRA regulations. TCI offers this shifter with or without a transbrake button for 2 speed transmissions like our Powerglide based Pro-X, or a variety of 3 speed transmission.

Next up was the job of mounting the Chassis Engineering parachute handle and C/E running the cable to the rear of the car. We used their Parachute Release Cable Kit to make this job a snap. You can check out their website for more info on the kit.

The first thing Mike did was mount the supplied bracket to one of the bars in the interior of the car. James got in the car, and they picked a place that positioned the handle within comfortable reach. From there, the rest of the kit just bolted together and Mike made some nice cable holders that direct the cable to the rear of the car.

It’s brake time. Sure, 700 naturally aspirated horsepower like to accelerate, but we need to find a way to slow this old Grandma down just the same.

You may recall we used Aerospace Components brakes on the front and plan to also for the rear on the Currie 9-inch. We liked their master cylinder as well and adapter plate, and that is what we went with. Mike installed the Aeropspace adapter plate to the firewall. It’s a simple bolt-in affair.

Made from durable lightweight aluminum with a large capacity plastic reservoir and dual outlet boxes, the Aerospace master cylinder utilizes O.E.M. internal components. It uses the standard factory mounting bolt holes, which can be adapted to racing pedal assemblies with an optional mounting adapter bracket.

Next up was routing some brake lines, starting with those on the front. We also decided to mount a TCI Line Lock for the front tires so doing those monster he-man burnouts would be nice and easy.

Mike custom bent some fresh new tubing to the correct shape and contour required to snake it below the engine and up to the line lock and master cylinder. We used some Russell stainless steel braided brake lines running to the calipers to ensure there would be no brakes or tears by using rubber hoses causing the system to fail. No brakes = no good. He has the front lines run and we should have the other lines run later next week.

Install of the Rollstop was easy. Essentually all a Line Lock does is hold the front brake pressure, however the TCI Roll Stop has a cool feature – a one way valve that puts additional pressure through even once it’s been activated.

Next week is going to be a good week for Granny, here is a sneak peak of what’s to come: a Currie Fabricated “F9″ Rear end, along with Billet Specialties 15 x 10 Street Lite rear wheels and Mickey Thompson 295/65 Tires! We’re just a little excited, it’s bad ass.

This thing is built to handle power. The guys at Currie really did a nice job designing this rearend. The best news is, they are ready to ship, check out Currie’s website for more info and order yours.

Things have been going great over here with good old Grandma – our 1978 Malibu getting an Edelbrock/Musi 555 crate engine. We’ve been waiting for a few more parts to come in and the UPS man is slowing delivering everything we need to finish the project. When we last left off Mike Ryan was installing a second Kirkey seat as well as a Chassis Engineering Parachute handle kit and TCI Roll Stop.

Now it was time to start taking some larger brush strokes.

On to the rear of the car: it was finally time to mount our brand new Currie F9 rear end. It didn’t take too long to mock the 9-inch into the back of our G-Body. Currie provided all the suspension mounting and installed on the rear end before we brought it back to the shop. All we had to do was fabricate a way to mount the QA1 rear coil over shocks, and the TRZ Anti-Roll Bar.

We had a bit of a problem on our hands. The TRZ Anti-Roll Bar and the QA1 Rear Shocks both needed to mount to a “cross bar” above the rear end. However, no matter how many times we player “Rubik’s Cube” we couldn’t figure out a way to get both bars in there without interference.

That’s when Ryan came up with the idea – a single bar that would mount the sway bar and the upper shocks. It was sweet, and we figured out a way to do it.

These three tabs accomplished that objective. The two tabs in front will mount the QA1 Rear Coil Overs. The tab on the top at an angle is the mounting tab for the TRZ Anti-Roll Bar mounting caps. By using a single bar like this it makes the installation much cleaner.

We will be further providing additional structure and rigidity to the shock bar by running outer connecting bars to the frame rail (visible on the left) as well as a bar straight up to the roll cage through the floor.

You’ll remember on the front of Granny we used QA1 Double Adjustable shocks along with our TRZ Front Suspension. You’ll notice we carried the same theme over the rear. We debated long and hard about whether to use the QA1 “bolt-in” rear shocks that go in the stock location, or use coil overs. At the end of the day, we felt that the coil-over would give us more suspension flexibility, coil-spring choices, ride height adjustments, and most importantly – it was still legal in most of the classes we could run – say NMCA Extreme Street or most drag radial classes.

With the help of QA1′s Corey Flynn we selected QA1′s Double-Adj Coil Over Shocks, #DDR-5855B. These come from the Proma Star line, and are specially designed for drag racing, are 576-way adjustable for both rebound and compression (12 clicks vs 12 clicks), and feature a CNC-machined Aluminum body and Teflon-lined bearings!

The 5855B’s feature the following measurements:

• 17-inch Extended Height
• 11-5/8-inch Compressed Height
• Ride Height: 13.25″ to 14.5
• Utilize a 12-inch Spring

We were somewhat guessing on the spring package. We picked a 170-lb linear rate 12-inch spring, 2.5-inch in diameter. It was QA1 PN #120-170. We thought about 150-lb rear springs, but aren’t sure of the total weight of the car, we think she’s going to be on the heavy side.

In this shot, you can see our final install of the QA1 Double-adjustable rear shock, as well as the shock mount/anti-roll bar mount. The reason we had this flexibility is two-fold.

#1 – The TRZ Anti-Roll bar mount can be rotated 360-degrees to mount to any piece of 1-5/8 tubing. That gave us the ability to rotate it and essentially “move” the location of the end link mounting points fore and aft.

#2 – You really do have a lot of flexibility on where the anti-roll bar links mount to your rear end. They can be in front, in back, or on top. As long as the anti-roll bar is level at ride height and the links are straight up and down. So this gives you some room to adjust. In our case, the links will be mounted almost on the top of the rear end, however, we will need to make some longer arms for the sway-bar.

We mounted the Billet Specialties Street Lite Wheels and M/T 295/65 Tires, and we’re going to shoot some more photos for you of the car once it gets lowered down “for good”. Until then, check out the “mock up” shots of what the wheel and tire combo will look like under the Malibu.

We selected 15 x 10 rear wheels with a 5.5-inch backspacing. We really like the Street Lite’s – not only are they SFI approved, but they have a very slick look that is light weight and modern. It’s a rotary forged aluminum center that goes along with a 360-degree welded 2-piece construction that gives the wheel it’s strength.

Totat weight on our 15 x 3.5 skinnies was less than 9-lbs each! We’ll shoot a bunch of beauty shots of the Billet wheels and post them up next week once we get the car rolling!

Here’s another shot of how we originally mocked up our Street Lite’s and M/T 295/65 Drag Radials. We were looking for a nice “tucked” look but also to maintain the correct rear stock suspension geometry that comes along from an optimized right height.

Now that the rear of the car has been moved along, Ryan has been finishing up the front end of our 1979 Malibu starting off with the core support. We bolted everything up, including the fenders, so that we could mock up the radiator and plan our mounting system.

We were going to use a Fluidyne Radiator, and we knew from Day 1 that we wanted to fabricate a new front core support. The stock core support was gangley, huge, and hard to work around. Plus, it was heavy. Ryan fab’d up this lightweight core support to hold the radiator, and also the front fenders would mount off of it.

The radiator we picked is probably a bit larger than we needed for a drag racing application, but with the hot conditions up at Bakersfield Raceway and Vegas where we would be competing, it wasn’t a bad idea. It’s Fluidyne’s 26-inch Universal Chevy radiator – single pass design that measured out at 26 wide x 19-inches tall, and is 2.5-inch deep. It’s comprised of 2-row, 1-inch tubes, and has a 100% brazed aluminum core. The coolest thing is the polished/TIG-welded tanks that feature the Fluidyne logo. Nice touch.

Although Fluidyne isn’t a custom-radiator shop, they have a number of universal radiators, as well as hundreds of bolt-in fitments, that are sure to fit your Ford, Chevy, NASCAR, Dirt Track or sport-compact application.

Here is the mounting tab system that Ryan designed – the stock GM one! Ryan simple cut off the stock mounting areas from the core support and welded the new core support tubing to the old mounting tab he cut out.

He also used the same style tabs to mount the core support to the frame of the car. Here is a couple shots of the car with the fenders installed, she look good huh?

The cardboard on the front and rear of the radiator is just taped there to protect the fins from being damaged while we are building the car.

All for now, check back next time for more Grandma updates!

Grandma is rolling.

Last week we finished welding in the necessary mounts for our QA1 shocks, what we missed telling you about, was the TRZ Suspension we are using in the rear of the car.

TRZ sent us their Stage 1 G-Body Rear Suspension package for use on Project Grandma. It includes:

• TRZ double adjustable upper control arms
• TRZ single adjustable lower control arms
• TRZ anti-roll bar
• TRZ spherical bearings for use on the uppers.

Check out some of the features of this kit:

Starting off with the housing bearings, Currie was nice enough to install the TRZ units when they built the rearend. These replace the stock sloppy rubber bushings and help provide a solid pinion movement with no bind.

According to TRZ, these are not recommended for normal street driving. This won’t be a problem for us, as the only time Grandma is going to see the street, is from the trailer on the way to the track.

The TRZ control arms included in the kit are 100% TIG welded for strength. The uppers are double gusseted for additional strength against deflection, and the rod-ends have a Teflon Liner.

The lowers also include Teflon Liners on the rod-ends and come with Delrin Bushings with steel sleeves on the other end.

Because we ordered our F9 rear end from Currie with the standard G-Body lower suspension, and had them install two tabs for the upper control arms, all of our stock-style G-Body TRZ suspension bolted right in with no problem at all.

Mike Ryan, our master fabricator assisting us in our build, decided it was time to put little junk in Grandma’s truck. We mocked up our Chiseled Performance fuel cell, that also has a partition for the water tank as well which also houses an “in-tank” water pump. Why a water tank? Because we will eventually end up putting forced induction on the Malibu and we’ll need it for the intercooler.

The question was – how to see how we would go about mounting it in the trunk. After much debate, we decided to mount it to a row of 2×2 tubing welded to the floor using the tabs on the fuel cell and bolting it in.

Here are the tabs on the fuel cell – this was really simple to design and install.

This is the row of square tubing that will serve as the mounting place for the fuel cell. We went with the square tubing because it moves the tank up off the floor enough for the water inlet and outlets to clear without having to cut the floor out and give the tank a flat surface to sit on.

Next up Mike decided to take care of that huge hole that was our stock floor. And we had a problem. Because of how we mounted the TRZ Anti-roll bar, the end links were hitting the floor.

So we had to move the floor up about 2 inches.

The easiest way we found to do this was by welding in two strips of metal on each side of the floor so it would clear the roll bar with no problem.

Here is the view from the passenger compartment looking back. You can see the bars that are gusseting the upper control arm cradle.

Now to the part that excited us, we finally got the Billet Specialties Street Lite 15 x 10 and 15 x 3 wheels, and the Mickey Thompson Drag Radial and ET Front tires on the car – which means it was time for some floor shots of Grandma. Check out a couple photos of the car on the ground!

We haven’t set the ride height just yet, we are waiting till we are farther along before we commit to a finial height, but you get the idea.

We were really happy with the finial out come of how the Aerospace Brakes looked behind our Billet Specialties Wheels – or maybe it’s the Mickey Thompson Tires?

That’s all from Project Grandma for now. Next week, we will be installing a rear firewall and package tray build by Mike Ryan, get the Flowmaster Exhaust welded on, and then our Chassis Engineering wheelie bars.

We’re close, and Granny has a wicked smile on her face.

The Aeromotive fuel system

Switching from an EFI system to a carburetor is not as easy as just pulling off the throttle body and slapping on the 1050. There are many other components that need to be changed out as well, including the fuel system. The fuel system in an EFI application needs to supply gas at 75 psi or higher, a far cry from the single-digit pressures required by our carburetor. Keeping the EFI pump would mean regulating it so far down that the majority of the fuel would be bypassing the carb and returning to the tank, building heat and killing the pump in short order. To avoid all of that, we installed a new Aeromotive fuel system designed to supply fuel at an appropriate pressure and volume.

Having the correct components for your application is critical to how it performs, and this Aeromotive system was matched to Project Grandma’s needs. The Eliminator fuel pump (p/n 11104) is able to support a 2300 HP naturally aspirated engine, which will be more than enough for our 970 HP needs. A 100 micron stainless steel element pre-filter screws straight into the suction side of the pump, and a -12 fitting connects the pre-filter to the fuel cell.

The pressure side of the fuel pump drops down to a -10 fitting and from there goes through a 10 micron paper filter, then forward under the car to the fuel log. The Aeromotive fuel log (p/n 14201) has a cool feature added to it – where each side of the log attaches to the carburetor, there are swivel points that allows the user to position the log up or down up to 20 degrees for clearance of throttle stops, nitrous plates, spacers, or other components.

From the opposite side of the log a -10 line runs back to the regulator. The two-port bypass regulator (p/n 13212) is fully adjustable from 2-20 psi, which is perfect for our carbureted application. A -10 line was used as the return line from the bottom of the regulator back to the fuel cell.

Even though installing the fuel system was very straightforward, there is one important rule to remember that can mean the difference between life and death for the fuel pump. Using the wrong filter, or not putting them in the correct order can harm the system. Jesse Powell of Aeromotive explains, “One of the single greatest issues we take phone calls on are filters being in the wrong location, or the wrong size filters that will cause the same problems.” The free-flowing 100 micron stainless steel filter that goes before the pump is designed to catch the large contaminants that would harm the pump. The 10 micron paper filter is what will catch all of the remaining debris that would plug up the carburetor. Mixing the two up can have serious consequences. “The reason the system needs to be set up this way is because the Eliminator fuel pump, or just about any other fuel pump out there, can push fuel out a lot easier than it can suck in,” says Powell. Putting the fine, 10-micron filter on the inlet side will damage the pump by overstressing it as it fights to pull instead of push. The rule to remember is, “Stainless = Suction, Paper = Pressure”.

Auto Meter Gauges

We decided to use Auto Meter’s Ultra-Lite Ultimate Series Gauges along with an Auto Meter Dual Channel playback tach. We chose these trick full-sweep electric gauges because they make plumbing a snap, and are super accurate. In fact, they are controlled by a digital microprocessor that uses stepper motor drives alongside what Auto Meter calls laboratory grade sending units.

We selected two (2) fuel pressure gauges, one that was 0-15 psi for the nitrous fuel pump, and another that was 0-100 psi for the EFI pump. We also picked oil pressure, and water temperature– all in 2 5/8-inch sizes.

Gone are the days where electric gauges can’t be used in race cars. Here’s what Auto Meter says about the Full Sweep technology:

• Powered by digital microprocessor-controlled, rugged stepper motor drives & laboratory grade sending units

• They combine Extreme Durability & Readability of 270 degree sweep mechanical gauges w/ the Easy Installation & Safe Operation of short sweep electrics.

• Track Tested & Race Proven, these units use precision senders to keep hazardous fluids out of the driver compartment, and perform gauge calibration and sensor diagnostics at power up for Extreme Accuracy, every time.

One thing we thought was SUPER trick was the warning and peak indicators for the fuel pressure gauges. Now you’ll get notified if you lose fuel pressure! Try that with your mechanical gauges!

Check out our Ultimate II Playback tach. This is what Auto Meter refers to as a “Dual Channel” Playback tach because it can record both engine and driveshaft RPM for playback, either on the face of the gauge or on your laptop. Also, it features a 4-stage shift light (mini) so you can have different shift points for each gear.

One change we made (see below) is adding the Auto Meter LED 12-light Shift Light. I guess we wanted to be like the Pro Stock guys, or something.

Here’s some of the info on our Auto Meter #6884 Dual Channel:

• Recording engine and driveshaft RPM enables us to analyze torque converter performance, shift points, and converter slip. Pause playback on the LED to directly compare engine, driveshaft, and engine-to-drive ratio.

• A clear 100 samples per second provide .01 second accuracy on the LED during playback

• The recording settings are Pre-Race/Burnout with Intelligence, Unlimited Pre-Race, and 20-Second Burnout and Run. Triggered by an adjustable RPM threshold, burnout recordings stop when RPM go below the threshold.

• We can Download data to a laptop or PC, or view each pass in real time on the tachometer.

• Tach Facts software allows for an in-depth engine, driveshaft, or engine-to-drive ratio analysis, if we decide to fire up the old Laptop and download our runs.

Initially we didn’t have time to setup the driveshaft RPM monitoring for the first passes at the track, but it’s on our short list to take advantage of this very powerful tach!

Mounting the tach was easy. We used the optional Auto Meter 1-5/8-inch roll cage mounting bracket, and mounted our Auto Meter LED shift light right in the driver’s vision. You can also use the supplied mount to bolt it to the dash board, but we liked to put the tach up in the corner of the roll cage where it doesn’t block our vision.

We’ll leave the wiring of the gauges to our next story, but rest assured, it’s pretty simple stuff. Now, let’s move on to our FAST Wide Band Dual Air/Fuel Ratio gauge.

FAST Dual Wide Band Air/Fuel Gauge

With plenty of gauges watching what’s going in and going on in our engine, we needed a way to see what was coming out. These days, wide band O2 sensors are a tuning necessary. In Grandma, we would use a FAST Dual Wide Band Air/Fuel Ratio meter from the guys at FUEL AIR SPARK.

You’ll likely remember we did a complete video and tech article on the Dual Wide Band meter. We even did a video, embedded below:

As mentioned, we decided to start off with a 10 point moly cage kit for our Malibu, and then add the necessary bars to complete the 25.5 spec cage as per the SFI rules. This is a common upgrade, and we’ll be very clear where the standard 10-pt cage ends and where the 25.5 SFI spec starts.

That means we have a lot of bars to run in the G-body, but we are starting with a good foundation. The Chassis Engineering kit comes with most of the bars pre-bent in the kit, including the main hoop, top hoop, and a-pillar bars – which are very difficult to bend yourself. All that was required there was to fit, hold and weld.

Chassis Engineering was good to us. Not only did they supply the cage, but they supplied the mini-tubs, parachute mount, parachute cable, misc. accessories, but even – get this – a driveshaft loop. I know, they hooked a brother up!

Coming out of the box, here is the Chassis Engineering pre-bent main hoop and top halo bar. This would be the starting point for the kit. Mike started by cutting out two small holes in the floorpan so that we can run the main hoop down to the frame rails as per NHRA and SFI spec.

After taking a few measurements, he cut the legs of the pre-bent main hoop to fit inside our Malibu with enough room for a head liner. When he was happy with the fitment and clearance at the top for the headliner and all around the main hoop, he tack welded it in.

Mike says that for him, it is easier to do most of the main hoop section in the car, tack welding it in at first; then bring it out of the car for final welding. That way he has plenty of room to lay down a nice tig welded bead on the cage without interference from anything else. This is where our 25.5 upgrade came in. We would need to add the rear bars for the funny car cage upgrade that sit behind the driver’s seat.

Here Mike tig welds the rear part of the funny car cage upgrade – required as per SFI 25.5 – to the Chassis Engineering main hoop. The 25.5 upgrade required two modifications to the standard main hoop. First, the cross bar was mounted lower than the standard area on a 10-pt, and second, the two funny car rear bars are welded behind the driver’s seat.

Here is a sweat trick we didn’t know. Before Mike welded the main hoop in, he made these trick plates with a clearanced hole with a hole saw, so that you have a completely sealed and clean floor with the cage going through it.

With the main hoop installed, next on the list was the two rear down bars from the top of the main hoop that run down to the rear trunk cross bar Mike welded under the trunk last week. He started by cutting two slots in the rear deck to give the bars plenty of clearance to run down into the trunk area. Mike plans to use some sheet metal later to fill these in after all of the necessary bars have been run through that area.

Again grabbing from the Chassis Engineering kit, Mike cut the bars down to size and bent them in the rear of the car. After fitting the bars in mike made two similar floor plates as he did for the main hoop and welded everything in. Chassis supplies the rear bars straight here giving you flexibility in your installation. Some install straight bars but we preferred to bend ours.

The complete rear down bars. See how clean they look with Mike’s trick plates. Once this area gets cleaned and painted you’ll see what nice work this is. It’s just obscured by 6 different kinds of metal surfaces.

Here is a shot showing where the bars are welded into from under the car. This is our rear cross bar that will eventually partially support our fuel cell and battery trays.

Here is another angle of the rear of the car, the C/E mini-tubs, main hoop, and rear down bars. As mentioned, you can see the main hoop with the start of the funny car cage installed in the car on the right. Notice how the cross bar is mounted lower than you would normally see in a 10-pt cage.

From there Mike was on to the halo bar. Again another easy install as the only thing Mike had to do to fit the Chassis Engineering piece in was cut it down to size and notch the bar so it fit flush against the main hoop and weld it in.

The last thing Mike got to was cutting two holes in the floor just like he did for mounting the main hoop, only this time, it is in the front of the car just in front of where the driver seat will mount. This is where the bar running from the halo bar will come down and attach to the frame. We refer to these are front down bars.

Check back in later this week, Mike will be fitting more and more of the cage in the car as we continue to bring you updates all the way till this car is running on the track. Our goal is provide you with a step by step guide to building your own 8-second Malibu with common every day components and off-the-shelf parts.

Until next time, we’re out.

For the mufflers, we tapped Flowmaster for a set of their Flowmaster Outlaw Race Mufflers, and some 4-inch exhaust pipe. Flowmaster Outlaw Race Mufflers are a reasonably-priced mufflers that flows monster air, and is in a very small form-factor that makes packaging the exhaust in your race car very easy.

Check out some of the feature below:

• Incorporates sound attenuation rings along the inside of the case
• Does not have a need for packing materials
• Designed for race applications

Flowmaster calls them “Outlaw Race Mufflers”. We call them mufflers? I’m sure they do muffle sound, but the way they are designed, they are going to be loud and they are not going to restrict much, if any, horsepower.

These mufflers feature a straight through design that satisfies the guys at the tech pad, but don’t go trying to passing a police officer with them. They are designed to provide minimal sound reduction, and are more intended primarily for racing situations where a muffler rule is in effect with no specific decibel requirements. Flowmaster sent our mufflers with two straight pipes with a flange on one end for use of our Malibu along with some straight 4 inch pipe.

They won’t do much to limit the noise coming from our 555 Edelbrock/Musi engine, but that is exactly what we like about them! We picked ours up in a 4 inch in and out, but Flowmaster offers them in a 5 inch and 3 inch version to fit most race car exhaust tubing sizes.

First, we bolted the straight pipes up to the flanges off the back of our Lemons Headers’ Collector. It was then that we knew things were going to be tight. Because we had added a few extra bars under the car for more support and safety, getting even the small Outlaw Mufflers to fit was going to be a small challenge.

Mike Ryan wanted to run the car with no mufflers and just some turn out. Thankfully we talked him out of it. This ain’t NASCAR.

We added about 3 inches of pipping to each side of the exhaust after the collector, but before the muffler so that the Flowmaster Outlaws would clear the transmission cross bar.

Mike removed a little of the metal from the cross bar mount as well to give room for the massive 4 inch tubing.

We took a few measurements and shorted each muffler about an inch to fit in front of the large X-bar we had welded in.

Even then we still had an issue on the driver side of the car. So we decided to notch the top on the outlet side of the muffler so that it would clear with no problem.

Fast forward a little bit. We started Grandma up and you wouldn’t believe it. Car sounded fantastic. However, we also realized that we should probably do something to protect our headers and exhaust system for the long haul. Our Lemon’s headers and Flowmaster exhaust were mild steel.

To protect our exhaust system we made a call to Techline Coatings just down the street from us for a coating that would not only protect the metal, but help reduce the amount of heat put off of these components.

They recommended a Thermal Barrier Coating called CermaKrome for our G-Body’s exhaust. Thermal barrier coatings are designed, as the name suggests, to reduce the movement of heat by not allowing it to be absorbed in the metal. The coating can be applied to a variety of surfaces and metals, such as exhaust system components, valve covers, headers, or any other metal that can withstand the 500 degree Fahrenheit cure temperatures. It provides a smooth clean appearance that will not rust, and is effective as a hard protective coating for aluminum parts.

This unique coating is based on a water/solvent system, which requires careful attention to application procedures. To handle the coating, we sent the exhaust over to Olympic Coatings in Escondido, CA to make sure it was done right. We had used Olympic before, and we knew the quality of their work.

Once the exhaust was there, the team of Olympic sandblasted all of the components in order to prep them for the coating process. After a few quick shots with the spray gun, our system was set up to cure.

After the curing process was over, the headers and exhaust were polished to a chrome like finish. Makes sense – now we know where this coating gets it name from.

Now our exhaust is ready to handle temperatures up to 1600 degrees with no problem at all. Not that our system will ever reach that temperature given the coatings qualities. And because the coating was applied to both the inside and outside of the tubing, there are even more benefits. With the surface smoother inside, exhaust gas velocity is increased. Which means that scavenging effect that happens inside the exhaust is increased – moving more hot air out quicker.

That’s all for Project Grandma today, look for more next week!

Being that the car had only been completed just days before, we obviously felt that it would be better to shake the car down for a few passes before really putting the nitrous to her. We didn’t change to much on the car even though we weren’t running the giggle gas. We left the 3.89 nitrous gear in the Currie rear end and the nitrous plate under the throttle body. We did pull out the nitrous spark plugs and replace them with a good set of NA plugs though.

The Edelbrock/Musi 555 was put on the Dynojet before we left and made 521 hp at the rear wheels with the TCI nitrous converter and Glide. It was somewhat rich at 12.3:1 but we didn’t really feel the need to optimize the tune yet. We were more concerned with getting a good baseline and making sure the chassis was sorted out.

The Plan: Not as Planned

We pulled into the pit, set up our pit area, and unloaded the car. Before starting anything – with a brand new car – it’s critical that you do a “once over” one more time to make sure you didn’t miss anything.

We noticed right away a major problem. We had just had the car aligned the day before, but the right front wheel was cocked at an angle that looked to our eyes to be at least 3-4 degrees of camber with the car loaded at ride height. The wrong direction! We were like – ‘What the Hell’. Somehow the alignment shop we took the car too had totally messed it up.

We had no alignment tools, and no shims. So the decision was made – ‘trust thy eyeball’ and go get some alignment shims. We made a quick run to the local parts shack but came up empty handed with nothing but body shims. Oh well, that would have to do. We jacked some of them in there, did our best eyeball test, and finished the rest of the checklist. We just hoped the alignment would be GOOD enough.

Nothing a screwdriver and some body shims can’t fix. TAKE THAT ALIGNMENT SHOP.

The wanna-be dream team (Mike, James & Tom) scratching their heads: would our eyeball alignment result in glory or tragedy?

Prep Time is Go Time

The plan we came up with was we would make three passes on the car. The first pass would be just pass the 60 foot mark to see how the car launched, the second would be an eighth mile run to see how it came up to speed and the third would be a full pass.

We checked everything twice and were ready to strap ourselves into the car and make the first hit. James Lawrence is the owner of Grandma and he got the driving duties. “It was my first time in a 9-second or 8-second capable car in over 5 years,” explained James, “and I had the nervous butterflies going. Not only did we have a fresh car, but the only race car that I had been driving was our dirt track car that makes all of 350 horsepower.”

Grandma in the lanes for her first hit.

James getting ready for the first 60-foot shake down pass. Grandma has a 25.5 chassis and we had all of the safety gear you need to make sure your brain is safe in the case of a roll over.

The First Run

We had been having a problem with the brakes not holding up when the line lock was engaged, so that was rolling around in our minds as we entered the water box. Got the Mickey Thompson drag radials nice and sloshy, engaged the line lock after pumping the brakes, and we let that 555 fly as we did a nasty burnout.

Burnout: CHECK

Now it was time to let her fly. The Musi/Edelbrock crate engine was sounding really strong through the Flowmaster exhaust and Lemon’s headers, and we knew we had about 525 rear wheel horsepower. The plan was to go full throttle for about 60 feet and see how straight she went.

We set the two-step at 4,000 RPM, pulled into the tree, and put her on the chip. What a sweet sound. As adrenaline pumped through James veins he clicked the trans-brake and Grandma sailed skyward, tripping a 1.49 60-foot just as he let off. The car drifted to the right slightly but James said the pass felt great.

Full Throttle, All Out

With some minor sway-bar adjustments, it was time to do the half track run. However, the funny thing was, once the car left the starting line, James never lifted. He said the car felt great at half track so he just decided to keep his foot into it. We were rewarded with a 1.50 60-foot, and a 10.63 at 127 mph. The next pass things improved slightly with a 10.59 at 127.5 mph.

Not bad for a little old Grandma on a shakedown weekend with no tuning, nitrous gears and converter, and a Glide setup for nitrous. That little Edelbrock Pump gas, street engine runs mid 10′s in a 3,400 lb G-Body. Throw 4.30 or 4.56 gears in it with a loose converter and a 3-speed transmission, and that Edelbrock/Musi 555 is probably a 10.20 or faster combo. WITH A WARRANTY. ON 91 OCTANE!

Bad ass.

In all it was great to get this car out on the track, and we wish we could take all the credit for this car, but really it couldn’t have been done without the help of our sponsors, and our builder.

Thanks to everyone involved in the project!

• Edelbrock — 555ci Crate Engine, Nitrous, and Fuel Pumps
• Russell — Hoses & Fittings
• Pat Musi — Engine Assembly & Dyno Testing
• Mike Ryan of Ryan Fabrication — Chassis & Fabrication
• Chassis Engineering — Roll Cage, Wheel Tubs & Wheelie Bars
• TCI — Transmission, Transmission Cooler Converter, Shifter, Roll Stop and Flexplate
• Bob & Teresa Lapp — Spaghetti Menders Wiring
• Auto Meter — Gauges
• FAST — Air/Fuel Ratio Meter
• MSD — Ignition System & Starter
• Currie — F9 Rear End
• Billet Specialties — Wheels
• Mickey Thompson — Drag Radials
• Aerospace — Front and Rear Brakes
• Aeromotive — Fuel Filters
• XS Power — Batteries
• Powermaster — Charging System
• TRZ — Suspension
• QA1 — Shocks & Struts
• Simpson — Parachute & Belts
• Grant — Removable Steering Wheel
• Fluidyne — Radiator
• Flowmaster — Mufflers & Exhaust
• Lemon’s Headers — Headers
• SCE — Gaskets
• Strange — 3-inch chromoly driveshaft
• ARP — Bolts & Fasteners
• Royal Purple — Oil and lubricants

We still have LOTS more planned for this car, check back for more from Project Grandma!

For now, check out some more photos from the track day with Grandma in the Photo Gallery Here.

Granted, we expect the car to run in the 8.80′s with the 555 ci Pat Musi / Edelbrock pump gas big block going in between the frame rails, so 25.5 might be considered overkill. However, eventually we will go nuts and slide in an bigger BBC built by World Products, and we want this car to be able to handle it without having to add more cage later.

Before work on the Chassis Engineering cage could be started, we had to build the inner frame rails, and then tie-in the support for the stock suspension to take the brunt of the 1,100 to 1,300 hp engines.

Excuse our crappy lighting. First, Mike started with the cross-member. This is the cross bar runs between the frame rails, that dips down in the middle for the driveshaft. The cross bar was welded to two plates that Mike welded to the stock OEM outer perimeter frame rails.

Once the cross member was finished and tacked in, Mike added the two inner frame rails as required by SFI 25.5. We used 1-5/8 inch chrome moly supplied by Chassis.

Here is another shot of the inner frame rail. You can see that it is straight and then it curves forward to meet the frame rail at the front of the chassis. This will later by gusseted by the front cross bar and transmission x-member.

This is where the front frame rail intersects the frame. You can see the plates that Mike welded to the frame, and then the actual 1-5/8 chrome moly tubing to those plates.

This is where you need to be careful, and smart – with stock suspension. You can see the rear cross member here, and to the left the front frame rails moving forward. To the right is a bar welded from the lower control arm forward to the cross member which intersects the inner frame rail. Remember, lower control push while upper control arms pull. Mike is designing this chassis so that the lower arms force is directed squarely into the frame of the vehicle and not into the flex in the stock attachment points.

Here is the finished product so far with where the frame sites. Keep in mind, there are going to be additional bracing and gussets forward of the rear cross member. This is just the “bones” of the system so to speak. What will be added is the front cross member, front trans mount, a lower seat bar, and possibly an x-brace underneath the inner rails.

Since we started to get into the roll cage, you can check out the rear cross bar that was welded between the frame rails as the down points for the rear bars to come down from the main hoop. Of course, we’ll also use this to mount our fuel cells, battery mounts, parachute, etc.

Later this week we will be starting work on the roll cage. It should go in really smoothly given the fact that we are going to be using a Chassis Engineering 10 point moly cage and add a few bars to it to complete the 25.5 spec. It’s already pre-bent so that is saving us a lot of hassle!

One cool trick. We have a painted car (if you can call the original OEM 30 year old stuff on the body paint), and if we welded the tubs to to the body – even tack welds – we would melt the paint. So we are going to use seam sealer, but Mike added a few little gussets in the middle of the tub to keep it from deflecting. Pretty sweet. This will give them some support.

On a side note, our Publisher Lloyd Hunt showed Mike an easier, more stress relieving way to bend the tubing for the underside of the car – by using Editor Mark Gearhart’s face.

Energy Suspension has been making top quality parts for the last twenty-seven years right here in the U.S.A. I had the opportunity to speak to Mike Papazian about their body bushings. He set me straight on why someone would want to replace their body bushings and what makes Energy Suspension’s Hyperflex better than what is in our car.

Papazian explained that their Hyperflex bushings are made from polyurethane formula that they have tweaked to perfection over the years. “Urethane is stronger and stiffer than rubber,” said Papazian, “plus it is resistive to petroleum products like smog, ozone, gas, and oil. So it won’t break down and crack.” While resistive qualities hadn’t crossed our minds when swapping out our bushings, we are glad we trusted Energy Suspension to take care of us.

Even with out getting a good look at the stock bushings out of the car we could tell it was time to replace them.

Installation:

Suspension can be a tough topic for some. So let me be the first to tell you, there should be no fear with dealing with suspension parts. Just like engine work following instructions and common sense will help you in the long run. The nice thing about replacing body bushings is while it is a big job, it is actually really simple.

We started out by loosing all the bolts on both sides of the car. This took a little bit of muscle but went very quick. Then, it was time to lift the body off the frame. Energy Suspension recommended to following factory GM instructions on lifting the body off the frame. So using a 2 x 4 piece of wood and our Cornwell floor jack we lifted one side on the car off the frame and removed the bolts. Keep in mind when choosing a piece of wood to lift the body up you want to have something that is close to the length of the body. That way the weight will evenly distributed. Never under any circumstances should you ever lift the body with the jack directly on the body. Doing so could damage the body.

The swapping of the bushings was as easy as pulling the old bushings (what was left of them) out and sliding the new Hyperflex Bushings in. We then reset the body shims and threaded the bolts back into the body but didn’t tighten them down. If you tried to torque them down now the body would be mis-aligned.

The other side works the same as the first. After lowering the car we crawled under and tightened all the bolts down to factory specs.

Only try to do one side at a time and make a note of any body shims as these will need to be put back in the same spot.

Now that we have much better support for Grandma we now can rest easy that we started beefing up the car to better accept the monster 555 ci Edelbrock/Musi big block. This is a great upgrade that could be done at your house with just a few hours of your time and a good set of tools. For your time you will be rewarded with a stiffer chassis and better handling vehicle.

You sit in the stands, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the next pair of performance monsters to line up at the tree. Burnt rubber and high octane racing fuel permeate the air at the drag strip, as the two cars produce billowing clouds of white smoke that only seconds before were expensive slicks. They line up and rev the engines, and even from 100 yards away you can feel the bone rattling, ground shaking, and eardrum bursting roar of the 1,000 horsepower engines.

This symphony of mechanical synchronization is the result of headers built to perform in the upper echelons of the racing world. But the use of large racing headers can produce problems all their own, especially on stock chassis and engine vehicles. Potential problems range from fitment to ground clearance issues, and they may even make the simplest tasks such as changing spark plugs a major problem.

This is the issue facing Project Grandma. The need for good fitting race headers.