1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

[Quickstop [UK]]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

Nope - I had some black screws holding the grille on but they rusted so I changed them for some new stainless black ones

You would barely have noticed them before but they had been bugging me for ages!

 

[Quickstop [UK]]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

Truck's been in here for a month off the stands. The battery is dead but it runs and drives well.

A new battery should negate these cables.

I ordered a new fitting from pneumadyne systems - stainless steel for the vacuum lines. Ken (warmpancakes) - you'd love it!

Randy Merritt found these - for those of you that have the PhilnTex hood rod elimination kit, these struts were $25 for both shipped and they are a direct bolt in with no hassle at all. They lift the hood 2" higher than the stock rod and close real easily. It's a great find.

The final treat for the truck is the Assassin traction bar kit I bought at long last. It's a bit of a fiddle as it needs some 1/2" shock mount bolts and some cutting of the leaf springs to mount it properly as well as some drilling but they look good and I'll leave them off unless at the track I think.

MDH cutting off the 3" of the lower spring to make room for the front hinge of the brackets..

13Pelle came through and sent us some t-shirts here in the UK.

My Dad, Brett(Backzilla), Marcus (MDH) and I all got a new t-shirt. Thanks Tony! :tup:

 

[TNPhoon]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

Movin' right along! Looks good Mark!

Why do you have so many pet carriers in your garage though?

 

[Quickstop [UK]]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

So it's been a while since I updated this thread. Buying the Syclone was not the smartest move as it distracted me from the Ty but progress has been made.

The Ty went for inspection a few weeks ago and failed on 5 items:

Lower ball joint wear
The guy that reassembled the truck after paint had brand new ball joints but he assembled them wrong. They came with a rubber boot and a clamp over the boot. One had the clamp above the ball joint and the other was not even on the car. I had it for 4 years and didn't know what it was. I guess I needed it to keep the grease in properly.

So I ordered new ball joints (Raybestos Pros) from RockAuto and installed them.

Parking brake ineffective
I just adjusted the parking brake cable as per the manual.

Washer motor not working
It's an intermittent connection so I just jiggled it. I need to take apart the connector to permanently fix it I think.

Sidelights wrong colour
In the UK, they can't be orange so I replaced them with LEDs and then grounded them to the rad support so they remain on and don't indicate with the turn signals.

LEDs and halogen bulbs look unsightly together - or is that just me?

Iindicators not working according to UK law.
See above.

Rear fog light not illuminating and the fogs staying on
The fog lamp relay wasn't connected properly but the other weird thing was that the fogs remained on even when high beam was selected. It turned out that this was due to the harness from LMC truck. I disconnected it with no harm to the brightness of the lights and the fogs worked properly. Now I need to get the correct mounting hardware to put the fogs back to stock. I wish I never threw the old ones out. I learned a lot since I took on this project 6 years ago!

The net result is that the truck passed the MOT (Ministry of Transport) inspection! :woot:
First time in 7 years!

Last minute prep:

At the gas station:

I had a lean tune and it sailed through emissions.

I saw some other cool cars that day. The sun was out which is a big deal in the UK!

Net result:

I got my tax sticker!

The obvious thing to do was then to go and thrash it but as it hadn't really been driven for a while and was a bit lean, I wanted to iron out a few other things first.

I changed F28 in the tune to get the idle more aligned. It was 18.0 ish for the test so I richened it to about 14.6 now when the truck is warm. The driveability improvement was huge as well. No more bogging etc. Not really surprising but still interesting to see.

I also started to look into the meth injection kit. I have two nozzles and thought I had a problem as the green test light wouldn't come on so I tore into it. I was lucky and found an old thread that Julio answered on the Buick forums - turns out that twin nozzles won't pressurize using the test voltage but the dual colour LED does go green when in boost. I tested using the AFR method and topped up the tank!

The result?







So, the truck is DAMN fast and a little scary.

I have noticed a couple of things. Because of the high torque converter, 1st gear ends before it gets a chance to be any use. Gear changes are at around 4k RPM and I think they need to be a bit higher because of the stall. (2800).

The boost starts building in 1st then drops significantly when it goes into second. I should be able to do that with the PCS unit on the 4l80e. No biggie.

The other thing is boost control. I can hold the brakes until 20psi ish on the line but the truck is obviously straining. Boost from 15 psi goes RAPIDLY up to 25 ish and there it fluctuates wildly. I need to get that dialled in. 25psi is probably a bit too much for the truck, certainly for now. Anyone else running 25 psi regularly?
I have a couple of DM runs and although the truck runs lean (16) at cruise, it is fine. There are a few patches where there is some knock retard so I am staying out of it.

The roads here are rammed this weekend with tourists and people visiting over the holiday weekend so tuning on the road isn't an option sadly. I think a dyno run is in the future. I go back to London tomorrow.

The ticking noise from the lifters is still present though. Having swapped in 3 different sets of lifters, I think that the problem lies within but I'm not ready to pull the engine just yet. I wonder if a cam bearing or a main bearing is in the wrong way and is blocking a passage to the lifters. For now, the truck is awesome.

Things to do:

- Dial in the boost control to 20psi
- Sort out a dodgy window motor switch connection
- Find the leak into the driver's footwell.
- there's an annoying squeak that I think might be the hood but I dunno.
- I may swap out the parking lights with the dual LEDs so they are white but flash orange. Not a priority though.

The truck is road legal so I plan to take it to a couple of shows this summer including BIlling. I'll have it in London for a couple of months so hope to get some good photos!

It hasn't been road legal since 2007. I am very happy :cheers: It's been a long project.

Now for some track runs!

 

[Logan]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

This is a great thread and those shirts are great. Keep us posted.

 

[TYTILIDIE]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

You're the man Mark. Are you still running the gt35r?

 

[Quickstop [UK]]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

This is a great thread and those shirts are great. Keep us posted.

Thanks mate! The shirts are from 13Pelle - he made them up and shipped them. Really impressed. I owe him!

You're the man Mark. Are you still running the gt35r?

Hey Mike, thanks! I appreciate the compliment, especially from you! Yeah, I'm still running the 35R. It goes crazy above 15psi - it's amazing! I have a little bit of knock here and there and need to get my boost under control. The roads around here are rubbish though :tdown:.

 

[TYTILIDIE]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

With my 67gtq I couldn't make more than 15psi. Put 300hp to the wheels. The dyno shop was less than imperessed and even they said there had to be something wrong. Next day I figured out I had wastegate issues. Fixed it and ran 25 psi and holy shit what a difference. I ran the 25 psi regularly but it didn't last long. Something went through the turbo and destroyed the exhaust wheel resulting ultimately in it falling off.

I don't believe it was the 24 psi that did it, I think it was definitely a foreign object. Saw a puff of smoke, took the housing off and found the blades trashed but am not sure what went through it. I wouldn't be afraid to run the 24psi on a semi regular basis. But then you can see where my lack of fear gets me.

 

[Quickstop [UK]]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

Recent activity

Just to add - I drove it down the hill outside my parents house and at the roundabout, (traffic island!) and gunned it and all of a sudden I heard this grinding sound which got louder when I turned or applied the brakes. I turned around and went home and topped up the PS fluid and also a bit of oil and it ran flawlessly since then.

It's fun to drive, that's for sure!

I now need to get it to a dyno and take it from there. (How many times have I said that?) :rotf:

 

[Bullydawg]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

Just went through your whole thread and WOW... I didn't know you had this thing completely torn apart and down for so long!

Should be nice for me being that I am a SyTy noob, and you should be an expert by now! Nice work Mark!

Try to get it ready for the track, my Ty should be out in England by the beginning of May... Just have to get MOT figured out and hope I don't break it too quickly!

Any recent updates on this beast?

 

[Quickstop [UK]]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

Well Holy Crap it's been nearly 4 years.

Graduated from med school and life went downhill pretty fast. I ended up moving to an isolated place in the UK and buying a house on my own.

My parents also had to move so it was time to ship the Typhoon to where I lived. This hasn't been the case since 2006. 10 years. Wow.

I still don't have a proper garage but have a decent sized garden so am going to build one eventually. In the meantime, I built a pretty durable tent to work on the truck and protect it from the elements.

After some talk in another thread, I figured it was time to put the rear wing on. I've had it for - 9 years.

So much has happened since I bought this truck and I am starting to wonder if perhaps it is to blame.

Anyway, thankfully, this was an easy job.

I supported it from the tent frame...

And got it installed!

Next up is to get it to start and run smoothly and look into some of the electrical issues I have been having and see if I can figure out the transmission problems. Hopefully now the truck is where I live, I can make some progress on it.

Watching Sloppy Mechanics has inspired me.

 

[Adam#0213]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

Wow awesome thread nice to see all the work done on the truck!

 

[randy merritt]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

Well Holy Crap it's been nearly 4 years.

Graduated from med school and life went downhill pretty fast.

What does this mean if you don't mind me asking?

 

[dgoodhue]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

Definitely having the vehicle where you live makes a big difference. When I first moved out, I had an apartment that was 15 minute from my parent house where I garaged my Corvette, I accomplished very little on working on it and I didn't even drive it that often either, that 30 minutes to and from just was a barrier.

 

[TYTILIDIE]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

Come on Mark, no heat, no fridge....no microwave? What kind of working conditions are these?:lol:

 

[Sean Krupa]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

Glad to see you workin on it again Mark! :tup:

 

[Bullydawg]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

Better get that thing ready for our grudge match! Can't believe the last post before your update yesterday was from me before I got to England on my 2 year tour, and I've been gone nearly a year!

 

[Quickstop [UK]]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

I know. It's pretty bad. I poured al my effort into the Sy, my medical degree and my US licences. The Ty has been neglected. Part of it has been the demoralising experience of pulling the trans 2 or three times and trying to rebuild it and getting nowhere. I'm hoping that some fresh eyes and lack of pressure to complete it in a weekend will see a bit of headway.

I probably should stop watching Sloppy Mechanics and just get out there and do my own stuff! ��

 

[Bullydawg]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

Quit complaining. We had your typhoon trans out in a few hours! Right around the same time your broke my typhoon door handle. We should probably keep you away from it. Lol

 

[Slyclone]

Re: 1992 Typhoon 0546 rebuild

Mark, what went wrong with the transmission? What happened?