Magnaflow Exhaust

I bought a different tip for it to give it a different look.

Just added some red neon to the inside of the car. (Not there anymore)

The new rims and tires

Tenzo Sport 18x7.5 GF7 Graphite with 35 18 Nitto Tires

Black bowtie process

Primer

Finished matching black bowtie

The tools we used for the debadging

First process of the debadging

Buffing the trunk out to finish it up

Came out pretty clean

I had my dad cut the mudflaps off..gets dirty easier but looks more smooth

 

Cobalt Calipers

Demolding and Destripping

Scrapping the molding off

Buffing it all out

Like a mirror!

10W 30 Royal Purple Oil Change with NAPA Gold Filter

 

Eibach Sportline Drop Springs

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

                   Stock height                                                     Dropped!

Its About Time

 

AEM Dry Flow Cold Air Intake

 

THE DEAL WITH THE VIBRANT HEADERS

Ok so the Vibrant headers were a little risk I took! According to Vibrant these headers will only fit the SS Cobalt. I did research to figure out why these headers wouldn't fit the 2.2 Cobalt like mine. So the deal is if your Cobalt had SAI (Secondary Air Injection) these will NOT fit. To find out if you do have SAI go to your dealer and give them your VIN number and they will bring it up for you. Now after hearing from every company in America that these headers will not fit I didnt want to believe it so I ordered them anyways. Of course when we were installing them they didnt fit as easy as we wanted. If you look at the installation pictures in the bottom I will describe more on what needs to be done to make these fit.

 

  

Above is the difference between the stock headers and down pipe to the Vibrants!

 

Ok now at this point everything is out of the car. The right pic with the gaskets are the stock ones that came out the car. If your planning on putting these Vibrant headers on your Cobalt get new gaskets. These headers run about 700 dollars it wont hurt to spend the extra 10 dollars to get a new gasket. You can get these at your dealer.

  

Ok now for the part that didnt fit! There are 2 heater hoses connected to the block! One is in the way! Now its not like you can just take these hoses out and shift them over a little bit because they are machined pushed in there. If you see the hose closer to the header on the right picture that is the one that needs to be moved. I didnt get a picture of it but what we did is pry it with a pry bar. Before the headers were on that hose was vertical and now you can see its a little to the left now. Be very careful when prying this tube because it will leak if cracked and will not be cheap to replace. Any more questions on this shoot me a comment and ill explain it more in detail.

 

 

Ok so I talked to a few guys with the SS Cobalts that installed these headers and they all said they had to extend the wires to their O2 Sensors! That got me nervous but I lucked out and didnt have to extend anything except for the after cat O2 sensor just had to get popped off its housing. Youll see what im talking about when your installing these. After all the trouble that these headers gave me it was well worth it! They look really nice and sound really nice and I can really feel the power! Like I said before let me know if you got any questions I wll be more than happy to answer them.

TWM Short Throw Shifter

 

Here is where we rip out the whole center council

  

TWM gives your horrible instructions to take apart your stock shifter and clutch cables! Gets a little tricky when you get to this point if getting a TWM and got any questions let me know.

 

On the left picture you see we finally got everything taken apart the clutch cables were hands down the worst part of this project. Now on the left picture you will need to cut some chunks off your stock shifter housing. We used a saw zaw but a dremel will work just as good. After you cut its all cupcake from there just install your new shifter and snap all your center counsel back in place.

 

Made the throws a little shorter not as I expected but the shifts are a lot smoother and more crisp! I have no complaints on this besides the instructions given to install it.

 

 

  

A little extra power for the 2.2! :)

Put the button in a nice little hideaway spot don't wanna make it too obvious.

  

 

Really really recommend the Sniper Kit from NOS its made for 4 and 6 cylinders so not too much to worry about when thinking of blowing your engine although it is possible if you misuse it. I am really happy with it and well worth the money. I currently have a 150 shot installed and it is doing really good! It's a Chevy of course its not gonna blow! :)

 

I added the Royal Purple Synchromax Oil to the car. Not really a difference but good to know its in there.

 

 NGK Iridium IX. Hopefully these will make a performance difference when I install them with the Coils I am putting in as soon as they come in. (Put stock AC Delco's back on runs a lot cooler and the car actually idles like it is suppose to after I use the nitrous. Didnt think the spark plugs had anything to do with the idleing but I noticed it right away.)

 

 Ok the Granatelli Coils.....um DO NOT WORK!!!! Granatelli totally messed up on these. They dont fit they dont match up with anything so basically what I am saying dont buy them. The only website I found them on took them off their shelves because they were getting too many complaints and I understand why. O well I guess I can buy something else....maybe another Nitrous Kit? LOL!

  

Now I realized I haven't really focused on the inside of the car. I was trying to think of something simple and cheap to do to it so why not match the dash trim with the rest of the car.

 

 

There you go the fineshed product of the dash trim. Let me know what you think or if you got any questions on how we did it just ask.

 Now..still focusing on the inside of the car and keeping it cheap I did a half black light half purple led combo under the dash and under the two bucket seats. Not a huge huge fan of neon or led lighting but I kept it simple which a lot of times does the trick. (Wish I would of took pics of the led bars before I put them in sorry)

 

 Ok on the left is the fuse box I used inside the center council. On the right is the fuse and the wire for the lights. I used a 10amp "Smart Fuse"...a smart fuse is a fuse that lights up if it blows out..I'd thought it will be a good idea just in case my lights went out I would go to the fuse box first to double check to see if the fuse is lit up before I go out buying a new led kit. With this wire connected obviously there is ground I connected which is located with the ground for the nitrous button. (Sorry didnt take pic)

 

I am upset my camera didnt take better night pics so you can see the lighting. Like I said not too big of a fan with the interior lighting but I choose the black light set up so its not really too obvious driving down the street but will really look good at night time car shows. The kit also goes with the music and works of the mic there is also 13 different types of modes too if you dont listen to music. Cool affordable upgrade and doesnt looked riced out (my opinion) Let me know if you got any questions.

4/17/2009

1 year and month old! Very sad I hit the big 20 :(

Saturday May 23, 2009 around Midnight I was on the free way messing around with some friends hitting the nitrous of course! The fuel solenoid failed to engage and instead of it being a wet shot it turned itself into a dry shot. I was currently running an 80 shot and BOOM!! Car went up in smoke on the freeway blew my filter right out the intake tube, blew holes through the plastic mud guards protecting the filter and intake, you can obviously see what it did to my spark plug, I also blew the head gasket and cracked the head. Im getting no pressure from 2 of the 4 cylinders and I burnt the piston rings and burnt a hole right through one of the pistons.

Now starting Monday June 1, 2009 I will keep everyone updated on the rebuild. Im getting a high pressure head gasket from crateenginedepot.com, also getting a new 2.2 head and getting it ported and polished, stainless valves, new forged pistons from Wiseco (the ones i blew a hole through were already upgraded), new rings and everything else that blew! Now for the guys that say Cobalts cant handle the juice just realize this cobalt was jetted for a 150 for the first 2 months and it didnt hurt the car one bit. The fuel solenoid failed and nobody could of prevented that! EVERYONE STAY TUNED THIS IS GOING TO BE ONE BAD ASS LITTLE 2.2!!

 

Above is the 4th cylinder that pretty much just got toasted. On the right picture you can see the huge chunck missing from the piston. Cylinder wall at this point does not look too bad so we are all hoping the best that it isn't.

As of June 4, 2009 this is where the car stands. Waiting for all the parts to come in to get this thing ready for Boost and Nitrous. Yes I said Boost and Nitrous! Wiseco Pistons and Stainless Valves are coming from allecotec.com, Performance gaskets by GM Performance are coming from crateenginedepot.com. Ill give you more details on the little things once they come in and I get pictures. Stay Posted!

 

Dirty and Silver Aluminum....

 

Clean and Polished. Hey the motor is out might as well make it look as good as its going to run right? Was thinking about chrome but realized my Intake was polished so I didnt want it to look off so I got it polished instead and I am very happy with it. Thanks to Concourse Finishing Phoenix, AZ (602)-997-7735

 

Here is the Performance Head Gasket and Bolt kit by GM Performance. Thanks to crateenginedepot.com for getting me this kit on time.

 

 

Here is what I have been waiting for. Wiseco Forged Pistons 10:1 Compression. Lets see if the nitrous can blow through these! :)

 

 Thanks to allecotec.com for the Stainless Valves.

This is where the car stands as of 6/19/2009

 

 

 

In case you guys dont know what a Ecotec looks like, here you go. One word of advise get a daily driver before you throw nitrous in your normal daily driver like I did. Carless for the past month isnt fun at all especially going to the car shows and street races in the passenger seat.

8/8/2009----Sorry I haven't kept you guys updated on the ride I've been getting a lot of emails on it. So here is whats going on the car is running but not with the all the internal parts installed. To build up the fully built motor was around 8 thousand dollars so I had to stop about half way because I couldn't afford it. So what I did was buy a used 2.2 and a used 2.4 motor from a wrecking yard in California. So right now the Cobalt has a stock 2.2 block with a Port and Polished forged Valves 2.4 Head. I had got the whole computer harness switched out to make this work. Now I dont want to hear you guys that say its not possible because the car is running and its running fine it didnt cost me as much as I thought! I dont really know how it all went down because I had a shop do it for me. I still got the block and head power coated black to match the car and the valve cover got polished as well. I will putting pics up within the next couple days. I've just been bummed out because the day I got the car out the shop I came out of Target and someone ran into my rear quarter panel and of course they left the scene.