Hey Guys,
So, I have been a background member of these forums for quite a while now and have never really had a reason to post anything that wasn't easily found on the threads. Let me introduce myself, my name is Eric, I have a 1998 Topaz Metallic Gold Grand Prix Gtp- which is kinda obvious from my username. But anyways let's just start by saying that I have been through a lot with this car haha, it originally sat in my garage taken apart after ending up with a chip in the cylinder 3 piston (below) back in 2001 for over 10 years, so there is only about roughly 75,000 miles on the current block in the car.
Eventually, after about 10 years of sitting in that same spot of my garage, we bought a used L67 engine out of a Buick Regal in a junkyard and swapped that in for the original engine... It ran great or so I thought until about a year later I ended up with a knocking noise that sounded like a cracked flexplate to me since the noise only happened in drive/reverse and not in park or neutral- but as it turned out I was barking up the wrong tree and after replacing a good flexplate, I discovered I had spun a bearing instead.So it went back to sitting for a few months. Since I had that extra engine laying in my garage from the chipped piston, I decided to take that apart and rebuild it. Long story short, it was my first rebuild, I took the engine block to a machine shop to get honed and all that stuff and cleaned all the parts while I was waiting to pick up my engine. After putting everything back together and dropping the motor in, I started the engine up with success as the only problem was the ABS/TCS light coming on (which to this day still isn't fixed).
After the rebuild, I focused on the maintenance and making sure the car ran smooth normally before I started to change things up.
Pics from Rebuild -------->
About 2 months ago in July, I bought/installed a set of Speed daddy headers and of course putting them in through the top of the car was more than a challenge than I originally thought it would've been when I read all the header installation write ups, I personally regret not dropping the sub-frame like BillBoost suggested in his write up, I think I might have ended up tripling the install time in the end. During install, I had a definite problem with the crossover pipe not fitting correctly, so that had to be modified before it would connect nicely between the two manifolds, I did what another member on the forums did and cut about 1" off of the end in order for the crossover to mate up with the front header the right way. Lastly I used the stepped band clamps from Napa and new manifold gaskets after I realized the ones that were provided seemed to be almost useless, and I now have yet to find an exhaust leak, definitely impressive with how cheap the SD's were compared to the others.
Anyways, this is of course is only the beginning from me and I plan to add plenty more to this thread later but I would just like to say thanks for all the help I have received in these forums, especially with the last minute problems I seem to run into.
