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My 2000 TransAm

The 243 heads are here, the plan is to port and mill them to get around 10.7:1 compression ratio, maybe more if there's enough valve and pushrod clearance. The bad news is that I went to the track last night and did a single run to test my latest tune which proved to be good since it broke my personal best E/T, but it killed the transmission in the process. Now it won't move when it shifts into 3rd or 4th which i believe is a common problem with these, the 3-4 clutch.

The good news is that all the good parts to build a stronger one are available here. I mean the high friction clutches, shift kit, 2000 rpm stall torque converter and a trans cooler. All the rebuild with those parts and labor included will cost me $1000 USD. I just purchased the heads, so I'll have to wait a few more days before I rebuild the tranny...
 


The new toy is here, 2800 rpm stall FTI torque converter. The trans with the shift kit, high friction clutches and transcooler should be ready this weekend. Next week I'll find out how much it improves at the track with all this.

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Street 245's with LCAs I was getting absolutely zero spin when taking off at the track. If it gets too bad, I'll have to get me a couple of drag radials. I'll post the results next week after I test it, they only do track prep on Wednesdays... sucks.
 
I picked up the car today, it all works as expected:

First the shift kit/high friction clutches, it's definitely worth it. It shifts very quick and not hard like when you raise the line pressure via tuner.

The 2800 stall, everybody at ls1tech will tell you that you won't feel any difference on an LS1 with a 3600 or smaller stall but I don't agree at all. The car does feel heavier to take off and when you put it in drive and let go off the brake, it won't move until you accelerate which is kind of a good thing. You had to press the brake pedal relatively hard to keep it stopped and with the new poly mounts it vibrated. It was better to put it in neutral in traffic lights, but now all that is gone.

It also revs faster and pulls harder as you would expect with a stalled trans. It also didn't loose that much traction on the street and it now stalls up to 2000 rpm when braking and accelerating, it only went up to 1200rpm before.

With the trans cooler, the trans temp reached a max of 160*F in stop and go traffic at noon when it normally reached 215*F under the same conditions.

As I mentioned before, I'll see the results next Wednesday. Hopefully this trans will hold for a while as I don't race it at the track very often and if it fails again, I'll have to see about swapping a 4L80E.

Next up is to have the 243 heads ported and milled down .030" to get arround 10.9 or 11.0 compression ratio. But that will be until December I guess, I spent too much on the trans.
 
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let us know how your mpg does with the new stall, i know your giving it way more gas to get it moving for daily driving. around town it may drop some.

at the track it should rip out of the hole pretty good for ya now.
 
That trans build should really help at the track. That is the single best thing to do to an auto car for track times.

As for mileage, I know a few guys who have had a variety of stalls. What they all told me was that mileage had to do with the quality of the converter more than the stall speed. A sloppy/loose converter will kill mileage and a quality one won't as much. Of course they all had the same experience. The quality tight ones cost $$$$.
 
Wow it's been a long time since I last updated this, anyway. I also installed an under drive pulley to help the engine rev faster and hopefully get some mpg's back, it's doing 17.6 mpg with a lot of stop and go rush hour traffic in there. The car drives great with the 2800 stall, it makes this very peculiar sound when it flashes to 2500 rpm when going from a stop but it sounds great. Then only time I can feel it heavier is when going up hill, with my current exhaust set up (long tube headers and dynomax muffler) it's fairly quiet when driving around, but once you go over 2000rpm it's a whole different deal and when I go up hill I normally have to go over 2000 rpm to get it moving.


It gained 3 tenths of a second in the quarter mile, not sure about the 60ft times, they don't give that reading normally (sucks). The thing is that I haven't been able to get it to hook up right at launch with the street tires until the last time I went to the track. That night I tried to launch it in in different ways until the very last pass I reved it up to 2300 rpm then let go and luckily it hooked up right with no wheel spin. I was truly surprised at how hard it launched, it was like being hit from behind by a truck and since I wasn't expecting that, I could swear I almost got whiplash injury if I hadn't hit the head rest haha. Anyway it was very unfortunate, because they had already turned off the time tracking stuff and I didn't know how fast I went but I'm pretty confident it should've picked up another 3 tenths of a second in the quarter.

I already have LCA's to help with the traction and I already ordered a set of LCA relocation brackets and I will keep adding traction stuff in the future so I can hopefully reproduce the other night's events more often =D

Today I took the car to the shop as the 243 heads are ported, milled down .030" and ready to be installed. Once I get the car back from the shop the relocation brackets will hopefully be here and I'll install them too, then I'll do the whole tune process again and I'll find out how much better it gets at the track. From here on it will be suspension/handling mods only since I've already changed everything in the drive train that's worth changing (throttle body, intake, heads, cam, torque converter, tranny, differential) with the exception of the short block of course. Now the total amount of cash spent in "mods" equals the price I payed for the car!!! yay me!!!

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I just went to the track, it only ran 1 tenth faster. I haven't updated the tune and it had 3 degrees of knock past 2nd gear.

It also has no traction even though I also just installed the lower control arm relocation brackets. I had to launch with half throttle or and it would still spin for a while before I could go wot which takes almost no advantage of the torque converter.

I have a couple more suspension mods planned maybe it will get better traction. I'm avoiding using drag radials for the moment.

It ran 13.6 today, it did 13.7 before the heads. I'm sure it can do 13 flat maybe high 12s with better traction and updated tune.

Sent from my T200 using Tapatalk
 
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Some footage of the spin fest:

First run, I took off at 2000+ rpm spun all the way through first almost lost the rear end.

 
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