I'm thrilled to see your progress! I am also glad that you have the time to work with the setup to investigate the all the little nuances that I never could have. How much are you looking at removing on the lower? To be honest, I didn't pay it much mind as I was just looking to get it installed and drive it.

What are your thoughts on the fuel rail/intake manifold bolts? Those were a complete bitch to work with during installation and removal. I'm curious how you handled that.

 

I know removing the fuel rail was a huge pain in the *** because of that long bolt, not sure how I am going to deal with that when it comes time for installation, but Ill be sure and let you know. I am thinking with the right combination of swivel joints I should be able to get it!

I am not taking off much, just opening up the port a little bit and trying to smooth the transistion as much as I can. There is a little casting area that projects into the port which I didnt like so I am taking care of that really. Every little bit should help!

I am going to run that 3.25 or 3.45 pulley on 6 rib first before I install my 8 rib stuff.

 

How much boost are you seeing now?

 

I was thinking that they should have made those bolts similar to the coil pack bolts in that they are both a bolt and a stud so that you can bolt the rails on after the fact. I ended up using an allen socket (or a bit in some cases), but I slid it through a ratchet-wrench first.

Let me know what boost levels you see with those pulleys. I know that my boost levels would have been higher in that I didn't do headers or a catback (which I really should have).

 

None, its sitting on my work bench

My math right now says with a stock crank pulley and 3.25" blower pulley I will see 5-7psi. A 3.45" pulley will be 4-6psi. A 3" pulley with an OD crank pulley should be 11-13ish.

Yea that wouldve been nice, but like we talked about with the holley intake like why they didnt make the top of the stud slotted so you could use a simple screwdriver, is beyond me.

With blowers, the lower the boost the better, means less pumping losses for the blower and the same amount of air going through the engine. Blower driver power become quite extreme with high boost- high airflow.

 

Quite the departure from the original projected 17. It'd still going to run well. I hope you don't find this combo to be boring as well...

 

Yea, well, I made some refinements to my method of calculating the boost. I have seen the spreadsheets the companies use to guess for their customers and it is mind numbingly simple. Basically a simple ratio of volumes then a half psi fudge factor.

I am sure it wont run down any turbo setups, but it should be fun to put around town in. I need to go to home depot and pickup some mulch anyway

I did see a nice 2003ish gmc regular cab at a used car dealer that looked appealing. I think I have decided I would rather get a new truck than try to fix this one how I want it. It would be much less work in the long run and be a better product. The long part is the learning curve. Now that I know what I am doing it should be a quicker process, in theory.

I have also noticed whipple sells different size drive extensions. So a dedicated blower 10-12rib setup in front of the main serp belt for a 3.3 or 4.0 blower would be fun while using the factory 6 rib for all the accesories. Kind of like the CTSV setup but on steriods. ive already trimmed down the gates catalog for belts that will work so I have an idea how long it needs to be with the blower pulley, crank pulley, and some sort of tensioner. But thats a ways off...

 

Whats wrong with the current truck besides the owner???

I would love see a 4.0 blower on a truck set up!!!

 

Haha, well I keep going back and forth of what I want to do with it. Right now its stuck somewhere between a street truck and a race truck and isnt good at either. The frame is a bit tweaked, the passenger tire sits about 2 inches further forward than the driver side, the frame on the front is a bit skewed, the rear bumper sits crooked. All of which I think resulted from a wreck the original owner neglected to tell me about. The ABS is broke, I think I can fix it, but maybe not worth the effort. Doesnt have AC installed, the HVAC assembly acuctuators probably need to be replaced, I dont even have the AC stuff anymore. I figure to add it back would be $1000ish, and if I could get a newer truck thats straight for 4-5k then why bother. The interior is hacked up from a shitty speaker installation job. The window motors arent happy. Basically a combination of 250k+ miles, a stupid and rough previous owner, and generally being 16 or so years old now.

On the other hand, if I wanted to make it strictly a race truck then I dont really care about that stuff, but then that means I would most likely need a truck and trailer to transport it. I dont have the space for that where I live, and also dont have the money to do that at this point, much less dump another $30k into it to make it competively fast.

 

Gut it, Throw a lawn mower shell in the back, and make it a sleeper Race truck...