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'01
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MICELLANEOUS REPAIRS/UPGRADES & THE BACKFIRE
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Brent continued to service my car and teach me about the care of the car. At one point I even had the coil die. He replaced it and soon after, the car developed a BACKFIRE. Brent and I went through the obvious things: Throttle Position Sensor, Idle Air Control, Timing�I replaced the EGR valve, PCV valve, plugs, wires, cap and rotor. He finally told me it was past just simple guess work and needed to go to the drivability guy, Greg. He felt honestly that would cost a small fortune, so he advised me to simply go through and start replacing and rebuilding things. It would cost too much at the dealer to have him or Greg go thru it.

This was around the time I met Joe, so he and I began digging. As it was necessary, we fixed, replaced, or cleaned up parts, if there was an upgradeable/performance part I opted for that!

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FLOWMASTER
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The first upgrade was to a Flowmaster exhaust & 2.5 in High-flow catalytic converter.

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EXHAUST MANIFOLDS & EGR
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Then on to the leaky exhaust manifolds & that pesky BACKFIRE�

The cheap manifold gaskets were not doing the trick. They kept blowing out. The 2nd time the exhaust leak came back, we decided to go to header gaskets. They are much thicker & actually sealed even better. That did the trick! Since the exhaust manifolds had to come off anyway...

I got a spare set of exhaust manifolds from Pull-A-Part & polished them & mildly ported them. Mostly I just removed the casting lines and obstructions & cleaned up the texture inside. At the time there was no headers avail for this car with the 2.8 that we could find.

We also worked on the egr tube and base...

I set them to Performance Coatings for a ceramic coating. They looked 100% better. And the coating should help reduce the heat.
EGR...Before

After

The EGR was a pain, kept coding, even after we replaced it, and was constantly leaking, so we made a block off plate and disabled it. I left its hulk there for emissions inspections.

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TB BYPASS
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Then Joe performed a throttle body bypass.

At first we tried to simply block off the 2 outlets you see above with a rubber cover and clamp, but they kept busting. The best way was to simply use the stock curved rubber hose that normally went up to the TB. You would disconnect both hoses from the TB. Then simply take one of them off @ the neck. Then take the remaining hose and loop it back to the other.
It never gets cold enough in GA anyway.... No noticeable gains, but it definately cleaned up the looks.

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MAS SCREEN
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Next we removed the Mass Air Flow Sensor Screen.

They say it helps, but again I did not notice a difference.

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VALVE COVER BREATHER FILTER
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We also bypassed the crankcase vent that went to the intake ducting.

We instead put a chrome breather filter on it! Its debatable if it did anything to the performance, but how could it not help when you quit dumping an oily mist into the intake track! Did not notice any measurable gains, but as with the other free mods... it cleaned up the looks!

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OIL LEAK, PORTING, & RAM AIR
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Then I developed and oil leak from the drivers side valve cover. To get to the valve covers to remove them, them the intake had to come off. So it was the perfect time for the intake to be ported and cleaned up. After all I had just had the Flowmaster installed, the car could benefit from more air coming in.
Plenum off...

While the plenum & runners were off, I gasket match ported the runners & plenum.
Follow the above link for more pics and detailed info on gasket match porting the intake.

As you can see they got a coat of Candy apple red paint...

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RAM AIR HOOD
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Most hoods can't say that they are fully functional, but my SunCoast Ram Air hood w/ the functional airbox & K&N Filter, is definitely not restricting RAIF's breathing anymore.

Though it does not actually Ram any air, it does work like a cold air induction system. The hood has functional snouts

that feed thru the hood

to the Airbox with K&N Filter mounted to the radiator support.

Then the duct goes thru the MAS air and directly to the Throttle body. I used smooth couplers to help keep the air steam moving as efficiently as possible.

Overall it seems to be a pretty efficient system. The rain is kept out by a baffle. And there are not a bunch of twists and turns in the routing to the intake.
Note: To actually RAM the air you would need to go in speeds beyond 100+.
Follow the above link for more details!

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FUEL PUMP
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The air intake and exhaust issues had been worked out, but we were still having a BACKFIRE.

Could it be fuel related? The injectors were around a year old. They had been replaced after the bottom end was replaced the first time. I had a cold start issue if the car sat and it was traced to 3 leaking injectors. So we then decided to take a look at the fuel pump. It was possible it was going; it was still the stock pump with over 100,000 miles on it. So we replaced the fuel pump & readied the car for a shaved gas filler door.

Then the fire happened. All due to that mechanic Glenn, the one who did the bad engine rebuild, using the wrong size O-ring in the fuel rail when he replaced my fuel injectors. Correct that, 2 incorrect sized o-rings instead of one correct one. Thank goodness I had just bought the fire extinguisher!

So we fixed all the effected parts. Car ran like nothing had ever happened, but the BACKFIRE was still there.

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COMPUTER
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Next problem� it was hard to start. It had a delay like there was a fuel problem. Well the injectors and pump we knew were ok. Then the check engine light came on again. It coded for the fuel system. We traced it the wiring and checked all the relays and found nothing wrong anywhere. So we looked in the book some more. The last thing to check if all else was working was the computer. So with the assumption that this had to be what was wrong, we got the number of computer I needed and took a trip to Pull-A-Part. With a bit of luck we happened to find a 2.8 Camaro with the same computer code #. We put it in. Swapped in my stock Prom & the car was fine again.

We hoped this had been the BACKFIRE problem too, but nope it was still there.

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MSD COIL, TAYLOR PLUG WIRES, & AC DELCO PLUGS
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So now we were thinking it could be electrical. I switched to AC Delco Rapid fire plugs, Taylor 8mm red Wires, and a MSD Coil.

Guess what�the BACKFIRE was still there

Then at the end of the year, we decide we would go ahead and rebuild the suspension...

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NITROUS
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Grated with the back fire I could not use it, we tackled a NOS Sneaky Pete set up. The bottle was placed in the back locking glove box area.

By now I had removed the physical "box" for the changer install. The solenoid was attached to the bottle. I have the arming and firing switch routed up front to the driver's side knee panel. I keep it tucked away for the time being. At least till the backfire is resolved.

The Nozzle was plumbed into the Ram Air box neck�

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HOME PAGE

Follow this link to additional information on the car not found on this site!
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DIRECTORY FOR RAIF'S ENGINE PERFORMANCE SITE
01 Site Overview
02 Most Current Dyno and Track run
03 Early Cold Air Induction System
04 2001 Modifications <<<
05 2001 Track Times
06 2002 Modifications
07 2002 Dyno & Track Times
08 2002 Fall Modifications
09 2002 Fall Dyno & Track Times
10 2003 Distributor rebuild
11 2003 Transgo Shift Kit & Stall Converter
12 2003 May Dyno
13 2003 3.4L Engine Swap
14 2003 3.73 Disc Rearend Swap
15 2003 December Dyno
16 2004 Cutout & PF&E Headers
17 2004 Dyno
18 2004 / 2005 Transmission
19 2005 3in Mandrel Bent Exhaust & Dyno Results
20 2005 Truleo Intake, 65mm Ford Throttle body, Stock, & Disassembly Pictures
21 2005 Truleo Intake, Ford TB, & Fuel Rail Installation
22 2005 Truleo Intake & Ford TB Vacuum Line Routing
23 2005 Truleo Intake & Ford TB Custom Linkage Installation
24 2006 MSD Box & New fuel Pump
25 2006 Old Heads: Gasket Match Ported, & General Porting Information
26 2006 New Heads: Extreme Porting
27 2006 New Heads: Multiangle Valve Job, 1.6 Roller Tip Rockers, Beefier Valve springs
28 2006 Lower Runner (Intake Base) Gasket Match Porting
29 2006 Extreme Lower Runner (Intake Base) Porting
30 2006 Dyno Results: Truleo & New Head Combo
31 Future Plans

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