NJFBOA - Home of New Jersey's Camaros and Firebirds - View Single Post - Getting my new 406 SBC installed, running, and driving

IROCZman15 · 07-28-2021, 08:58 PM

Here is a recap. Get a drink and some snacks.

Had the car fully loaded and left my house for the 230 mile trip out to UMI Motorsports Park at 1pm on Thursday. Eight (yes, 8) minutes into the drive, a moment before I turned onto route 80, I felt a misfire and noticed lean AFR numbers in the Holley handheld display. I was confused but I got onto route 80 and soon pull over at the nearby "rest area". Check over some things and load a new tune file just in case something was weird with the one I had in the car. Still same misfire after driving another 10 minutes, and I pulled over again as I got nearby Blairstown. Checked spark plugs, wires, fuel lines, etc. Turned on my laptop, checked the learn table, and opened up the CL comp limits to let the computer compensate fueling and help smooth out the lean condition. This did work, but something was still not right. Limped the car for 200+ miles (4.5 hours) while watching the AFR like a hawk. That was nerve racking; 200+ miles is a long time to think about the problem and how to resolve it. During the drive it occurred to me that I probably had a bad fuel injector, and my thoughts were confirmed when I pulled off the air cleaner and saw that 3 injectors were pushing fuel, but the front passenger side injector was not flowing any fuel. WILD. I had hoped to get on at the track because Every year at UMI, the Summit Racing parts trailer is on the infield and sells parts. They can also OVERNIGHT parts to the event, since they are over in Ohio. However, sadly I later learned that this year.. no summit racing trailer at all! Anyways, when I got to the track, Scott and Billy were there and we discussed the problem. I was all jumbled up in my own head, but Scott is an ace with sourcing out parts online. He used the Holley part number (which is internal to Holley) to get the specs of the injector and find a suitable replacement injector in size, but not in fuel flow. Apparently a fuel injector for a 2014 SS camaro LS3 is of a similar shape/size. O'Riley auto Parts is about 7 minutes from the track so we went there since the website said they had some LS3 injectors in stock. They did not! The soonest they could get one would be 4pm on Friday, which would mean that I would have to sit out with a dead car for all of day 1. What a bummer. Didnt sleep much that night. Spent a few hours on the Holley forums and online reading about how quite a lot of people with Holley Sniper units have had locked up injectors and have explored possible remedies....yet nothing has been found to be a 100% complete replacement/fix.

click below for a 9 second video of the failed injector:

IMG_1670 by David Martin, on Flickr

The next morning I called a local Diesel injector cleaning service who told me they could not help me, but the gave me the cell phone number for a guy named AL who is a retired racing engine builder and former winning dirt track racer. I called Al and he agreed to meet with me in Clearfield mid-morning. I went to the track for the drivers meeting and event opening ceremonies. Racing started and my group was called, but instead I borrowed Scott's truck and met Al. I then followed him way out to his house/garage/barn and this was wayyy out of cell phone service and off the grid. He turned out to be a really really cool guy, his garage is filled with old trophies, hats, engines in various states of assembly, etc etc.. AND a fuel injector testing/cleaning machine. Sidenote - Al has TWO silver 2000 trans am's one is his wife's and it has 33,000 original miles, and the other one is his.. it has a 427 LS engine, TWO 150 shot stages of wet nitrous, a 12 bolt, t-56, long tubes, and so forth. He fired that thing up with the exhaust uncorked and it sounded awesome. He no longer races, but has fun on the streets.

Anyways, he back-flowed the injector and fluid came out. He put it in an ultrasonic cleaning bath for 10 minutes too. He ran a speed test on it and used a pick to make sure that the pintle would open. The injector would click, you could hear it and feel it, but it would not open when it clicked. The conclusion was that the internal mechanism inside the injector is broken or disconnected. Therefore it was stone dead for life. I drove back to the track, using my memory and geography to find civilization again, and I stopped at O'Rileys on the way. They said the injector was not in, but it should arrive on the 3:55 pm truck. Then, back to the track and arrived just in time for lunch break. As I was eating lunch, Scott and Bill joined me and I divulged my adventure. As I was talking to them, O'Rileys called me and said, Hey, the injector is in! What the heck guys, I was just there 15 minutes ago!

Anyways, I borrowed Scott's truck again, went to Oriley's, and picked up the STD FJ-988. (It only flows 42pounds of fuel where the Holley injectors will flow 100 pounds. I've looked at drag race datalogs and My fuel flow duty cycle is around 68%) BUT, It does match for size, but the bottom mounting surface of the FJ-988 is tapered, while the sniper injector is flat. I was willing to try to install it, knowing I could return it if needed. Got back to the track, installed it, checked for leaks, and fired the engine up. It ran, idled, and revved up. No leaks, and my tune files and spark plugs were allll sorts of screwed up, but I was so happy, I didnt care about fixing those at the moment. Scott and Bill asked the track bosses if I could make a lap, and then I did. We all had fire extinguishers at the ready! I was super timid about leaning on the throttle and my foot was ready to leap off the accelerator if I heard or felt a misfire. I didn't though!

Was able to make 4 runs in the afternoon, still nervous, but with boosted confidence that I could salvage the weekend. Despite being down on some top-end power (due to the less capable injector) I made some good runs. Nothing too fast, but I was also on brand new tires that I did not know how much I could realllly lean on them because I had no experience with them since last weekend's Met-Life event was canceled. After the track was cold, everyone got cleaned up and UMI put on a dinner at Ken's motorhome. Fire pits, cornhole, a country singer, and tons of food.

For day 2, they ran the course backwards. I still was uncertain about how frisky I could get on the new tires when they were cold, and I found out real quick in the hard right turn at the beginning of the course during Run 1 of Day 2. That run I got a DNF, since I blasted through a wall of cones. The rest of the day I made clean passes, but still a bit timid. I think the hot tires could have taken more and more, so it is my fault for not working them harder. A fellow autocrosser told me I have too much rear brake because he said he could see my rear wheel almost stop when braking in hard turns, but my front tire is rotating much faster. So I took some rear brake bias out of it. Can't actually tell if it did anything though? Anyways, I had a blast on Day 2, despite coming up justttt shy of making a 39.xxx second run. A bunch of us then went over to Denny's beer barrel pub for burgers and whatnot.

Stayed overnight and drove home in the mid-morning after a double breakfast. Car drove great on the ride home and engine/EFI was happy. Car was filthy, but that is easily remedied. Will be getting a replacement injector from a guy in Oregon next week. All weekend, even in the long staging grid lanes, I never saw a temperature above 194 deg. So the new replacement 3-row radiator is doing its job just fine! Another thing that I was happy about, was the whole brake/vaccum booster situation. I haven't made any autocross runs since the UMI event in 2020, basically a year ago to the day. I know the vacuum canister has been working on the street and also for drag racing, but I can now say that I had zero power-vacuum-brake issues on hte autocross course. So, I am pretty well set without an electric vac pump or going manual brakes. The $30 canister seems to have done just what I needed.

All in all, it was a roller-coaster weekend for me. Despite al my excessive preparations and planning, something totally bizarre can happen and throw everything into a frenzy. Glad that I was heading to a place full of hundreds and hundreds of racers and mechanically skilled people and I appreciate the help of Billy and Scott very much.

I don't think there is a need for me to post up any screen-shots of my tune files or datalogs like I usually do for drag racing. Unless someone wants me to.

I will post some photos I took of the other cars maybe tomorrow, and in a few days I will load some of the professional photos that UMI took.

I did have an issue with my dash-cam cutting out, and I think it is vibration related. I don't think it is from any type of harsh shocking vibration, but more like harmonics as it is windshield mounted. I am trying out a thicker padding now to see if it will insulate the camera better. So, basically I don't have very many videos to upload and share. Some dashcam files were corrupted or not available. I also was so wacked out on Day 1, that I never bothered to set up my GoPro camera either. It is what it is!

Day 1:

only run I have footage from is Run 7:
40.766 seconds
https://youtu.be/wa66a26XcJs

Day 2:

Run 1:
DNF !
https://youtu.be/mGFbT3VoStQ

Run 2:
42.731 seconds
https://youtu.be/g260dFochr8

Run 3:
40.917 seconds
https://youtu.be/MvGz4g_z0j0

Run 4:
41.408 seconds
https://youtu.be/Mj5LQDdPplI

Run 5:
40.978 seconds
https://youtu.be/skTRG2pLKpE

Run 6:
40.674 seconds
https://youtu.be/LxgicKcDruE

my best run from day 1 was 40.447 and from day 2 was 40.674. That number gets added together for your total time, and then thats how you stack up. UMI does classes by year of the car. So you could have a super highly modified car in the same class as a stock-ish street driver just because of the year of the car. Makes rankings weird, but that is how they do it. I finished 25th out of 43 in the Mid muscle class. I looked over the overall numbers and had to do a lot of adding positions of the classes together to find where I finished overall and I finished in 78th place out of 126 registered competitors. So about the 62nd percentile, which is not too shabby, especially due to the surprise circumstances I found myself in.

Scott:

BTK:

Me:

07-28-2021, 08:58 PM	#389
IROCZman15 10 Second Club / Meet Coordinator Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Roxbury, NJ Posts: 2,101 iTrader: (8)	Here is a recap. Get a drink and some snacks. Had the car fully loaded and left my house for the 230 mile trip out to UMI Motorsports Park at 1pm on Thursday. Eight (yes, 8) minutes into the drive, a moment before I turned onto route 80, I felt a misfire and noticed lean AFR numbers in the Holley handheld display. I was confused but I got onto route 80 and soon pull over at the nearby "rest area". Check over some things and load a new tune file just in case something was weird with the one I had in the car. Still same misfire after driving another 10 minutes, and I pulled over again as I got nearby Blairstown. Checked spark plugs, wires, fuel lines, etc. Turned on my laptop, checked the learn table, and opened up the CL comp limits to let the computer compensate fueling and help smooth out the lean condition. This did work, but something was still not right. Limped the car for 200+ miles (4.5 hours) while watching the AFR like a hawk. That was nerve racking; 200+ miles is a long time to think about the problem and how to resolve it. During the drive it occurred to me that I probably had a bad fuel injector, and my thoughts were confirmed when I pulled off the air cleaner and saw that 3 injectors were pushing fuel, but the front passenger side injector was not flowing any fuel. WILD. I had hoped to get on at the track because Every year at UMI, the Summit Racing parts trailer is on the infield and sells parts. They can also OVERNIGHT parts to the event, since they are over in Ohio. However, sadly I later learned that this year.. no summit racing trailer at all! Anyways, when I got to the track, Scott and Billy were there and we discussed the problem. I was all jumbled up in my own head, but Scott is an ace with sourcing out parts online. He used the Holley part number (which is internal to Holley) to get the specs of the injector and find a suitable replacement injector in size, but not in fuel flow. Apparently a fuel injector for a 2014 SS camaro LS3 is of a similar shape/size. O'Riley auto Parts is about 7 minutes from the track so we went there since the website said they had some LS3 injectors in stock. They did not! The soonest they could get one would be 4pm on Friday, which would mean that I would have to sit out with a dead car for all of day 1. What a bummer. Didnt sleep much that night. Spent a few hours on the Holley forums and online reading about how quite a lot of people with Holley Sniper units have had locked up injectors and have explored possible remedies....yet nothing has been found to be a 100% complete replacement/fix. click below for a 9 second video of the failed injector: IMG_1670 by David Martin, on Flickr The next morning I called a local Diesel injector cleaning service who told me they could not help me, but the gave me the cell phone number for a guy named AL who is a retired racing engine builder and former winning dirt track racer. I called Al and he agreed to meet with me in Clearfield mid-morning. I went to the track for the drivers meeting and event opening ceremonies. Racing started and my group was called, but instead I borrowed Scott's truck and met Al. I then followed him way out to his house/garage/barn and this was wayyy out of cell phone service and off the grid. He turned out to be a really really cool guy, his garage is filled with old trophies, hats, engines in various states of assembly, etc etc.. AND a fuel injector testing/cleaning machine. Sidenote - Al has TWO silver 2000 trans am's one is his wife's and it has 33,000 original miles, and the other one is his.. it has a 427 LS engine, TWO 150 shot stages of wet nitrous, a 12 bolt, t-56, long tubes, and so forth. He fired that thing up with the exhaust uncorked and it sounded awesome. He no longer races, but has fun on the streets. Anyways, he back-flowed the injector and fluid came out. He put it in an ultrasonic cleaning bath for 10 minutes too. He ran a speed test on it and used a pick to make sure that the pintle would open. The injector would click, you could hear it and feel it, but it would not open when it clicked. The conclusion was that the internal mechanism inside the injector is broken or disconnected. Therefore it was stone dead for life. I drove back to the track, using my memory and geography to find civilization again, and I stopped at O'Rileys on the way. They said the injector was not in, but it should arrive on the 3:55 pm truck. Then, back to the track and arrived just in time for lunch break. As I was eating lunch, Scott and Bill joined me and I divulged my adventure. As I was talking to them, O'Rileys called me and said, Hey, the injector is in! What the heck guys, I was just there 15 minutes ago! Anyways, I borrowed Scott's truck again, went to Oriley's, and picked up the STD FJ-988. (It only flows 42pounds of fuel where the Holley injectors will flow 100 pounds. I've looked at drag race datalogs and My fuel flow duty cycle is around 68%) BUT, It does match for size, but the bottom mounting surface of the FJ-988 is tapered, while the sniper injector is flat. I was willing to try to install it, knowing I could return it if needed. Got back to the track, installed it, checked for leaks, and fired the engine up. It ran, idled, and revved up. No leaks, and my tune files and spark plugs were allll sorts of screwed up, but I was so happy, I didnt care about fixing those at the moment. Scott and Bill asked the track bosses if I could make a lap, and then I did. We all had fire extinguishers at the ready! I was super timid about leaning on the throttle and my foot was ready to leap off the accelerator if I heard or felt a misfire. I didn't though! Was able to make 4 runs in the afternoon, still nervous, but with boosted confidence that I could salvage the weekend. Despite being down on some top-end power (due to the less capable injector) I made some good runs. Nothing too fast, but I was also on brand new tires that I did not know how much I could realllly lean on them because I had no experience with them since last weekend's Met-Life event was canceled. After the track was cold, everyone got cleaned up and UMI put on a dinner at Ken's motorhome. Fire pits, cornhole, a country singer, and tons of food. For day 2, they ran the course backwards. I still was uncertain about how frisky I could get on the new tires when they were cold, and I found out real quick in the hard right turn at the beginning of the course during Run 1 of Day 2. That run I got a DNF, since I blasted through a wall of cones. The rest of the day I made clean passes, but still a bit timid. I think the hot tires could have taken more and more, so it is my fault for not working them harder. A fellow autocrosser told me I have too much rear brake because he said he could see my rear wheel almost stop when braking in hard turns, but my front tire is rotating much faster. So I took some rear brake bias out of it. Can't actually tell if it did anything though? Anyways, I had a blast on Day 2, despite coming up justttt shy of making a 39.xxx second run. A bunch of us then went over to Denny's beer barrel pub for burgers and whatnot. Stayed overnight and drove home in the mid-morning after a double breakfast. Car drove great on the ride home and engine/EFI was happy. Car was filthy, but that is easily remedied. Will be getting a replacement injector from a guy in Oregon next week. All weekend, even in the long staging grid lanes, I never saw a temperature above 194 deg. So the new replacement 3-row radiator is doing its job just fine! Another thing that I was happy about, was the whole brake/vaccum booster situation. I haven't made any autocross runs since the UMI event in 2020, basically a year ago to the day. I know the vacuum canister has been working on the street and also for drag racing, but I can now say that I had zero power-vacuum-brake issues on hte autocross course. So, I am pretty well set without an electric vac pump or going manual brakes. The $30 canister seems to have done just what I needed. All in all, it was a roller-coaster weekend for me. Despite al my excessive preparations and planning, something totally bizarre can happen and throw everything into a frenzy. Glad that I was heading to a place full of hundreds and hundreds of racers and mechanically skilled people and I appreciate the help of Billy and Scott very much. I don't think there is a need for me to post up any screen-shots of my tune files or datalogs like I usually do for drag racing. Unless someone wants me to. I will post some photos I took of the other cars maybe tomorrow, and in a few days I will load some of the professional photos that UMI took. I did have an issue with my dash-cam cutting out, and I think it is vibration related. I don't think it is from any type of harsh shocking vibration, but more like harmonics as it is windshield mounted. I am trying out a thicker padding now to see if it will insulate the camera better. So, basically I don't have very many videos to upload and share. Some dashcam files were corrupted or not available. I also was so wacked out on Day 1, that I never bothered to set up my GoPro camera either. It is what it is! Day 1: only run I have footage from is Run 7: 40.766 seconds https://youtu.be/wa66a26XcJs Day 2: Run 1: DNF ! https://youtu.be/mGFbT3VoStQ Run 2: 42.731 seconds https://youtu.be/g260dFochr8 Run 3: 40.917 seconds https://youtu.be/MvGz4g_z0j0 Run 4: 41.408 seconds https://youtu.be/Mj5LQDdPplI Run 5: 40.978 seconds https://youtu.be/skTRG2pLKpE Run 6: 40.674 seconds https://youtu.be/LxgicKcDruE my best run from day 1 was 40.447 and from day 2 was 40.674. That number gets added together for your total time, and then thats how you stack up. UMI does classes by year of the car. So you could have a super highly modified car in the same class as a stock-ish street driver just because of the year of the car. Makes rankings weird, but that is how they do it. I finished 25th out of 43 in the Mid muscle class. I looked over the overall numbers and had to do a lot of adding positions of the classes together to find where I finished overall and I finished in 78th place out of 126 registered competitors. So about the 62nd percentile, which is not too shabby, especially due to the surprise circumstances I found myself in. Scott: BTK: Me: __________________ 1987 IROC-Z - modified Last edited by IROCZman15; 07-29-2021 at 08:02 PM.