Lean Green Street Machine Phase two

It's lean,

it's green and it's a street machine with a mission.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to horsepower. Last week on the show, we waged war on high fuel prices using this 92 Camaro. Now we're out to prove that you can still have a daily driven hot rod with a V8

and save money at the fuel pump.

We started on a budget of 600 bucks. And after reprogramming the computer with a thermal master from Hypertech,

we changed all the fluids to royal purple synthetics.

We replaced the distributor cap rotor and module along with plugs, wires and coil. Thanks to Excel parts.

Now for better breathing, we installed a throttle body spacer and a universal ram air intake system from Specter.

Now, we used a tailor kit to relocate our replacement battery

and even swapped out the stock fuel filter.

Now using the odometer and a calculator, we found a mileage improvement of 2.1 miles a gallon

and instead of giving up power, well, we made more.

In

fact, we picked up nine horsepower at the rear wheels and 16 ft 1000 torque.

Today, we're going to begin phase two of this project by improving our Camaros factory transmission. Now, over time, they can get sluggish, use up a lot of extra horsepower and even impair your fuel economy

to get started. We support the transmission and get it ready for removal.

Well, Mike and buddy work on getting that transmission out. Let me show you what's gonna improve its performance.

This is a trans pack from B and M. All these little parts allow you to recalibrate your transmission by rerouting the floods through the valve body. Now, it costs less than 70 bucks and the result is, well, you get less slippage and a lot quicker shifts.

We don't have to remove the transmission for this upgrade. But as you can see, we've also got a leaky rear seal.

So after removing the flex plate,

we pull out the old seal

and after applying some lube, install a new one,

now it's time to start on the transmission

first, remove the pans.

Then the filter,

you may want to take a picture of where everything goes,

remove the tubes,

then the wiring

and the valve body,

be careful not to bend the ship or linkage.

Next is both the accumulators

and don't forget the spring

and last to separate a plate.

Now we're ready to start the modifications. And the first thing we're gonna do is drill into the separator plate and the locations I have marked. Now the kit even comes with the proper size drill bits to get the correct size holes.

Next, we're going to remove the MTV Upshift valve

and discard the spring.

Now it's time to reinstall the assembly.

Next, remove the line bias valve and spring from the bore

in place of the spring. We're going to insert this blocker rod into the bore

and reinstall the valve retaining it with this roll pin.

Now, we need to remove the snapper ring at the end of the pressure regulator bore in the oil pump assembly.

Next, replace the stock spring with the blue one from the kit and reassemble the pressure regulator valve.

The diagram will help you locate and remove the correct check balls.

Then remove the accumulator cover and reinstall the pin along with the sleeve supplied in the kit,

apply some grease to help hold the gaskets and metal plate in place

and also use some to reinstall the check balls.

Now, we can replace the valve body

with some assistance, reinstall the kick down cable,

swap the springs for sleeves in the 3rd and 4th accumulator.

Here's where the picture comes in handy when you're putting things all back together

and finally time to install the new filter.

Now that the new gasket is held in place with lock tight silicone,

we can go ahead and install the transmission back in the car and move on to our next upgrade,

which is this converter lock up control kit. Also from B and

M.

It allows you to control, lock up at any speed from 30 to 90 miles an hour. You can eliminate unwanted cycling but ensure lock up at highway speeds. And that's a big plus for fuel economy.

First thing you do is make connections under the box,

then mount the box in a place where you can access it

pretty easily.

Then connect this red wire to a switch 12 volt source.

In our case,

coming out of the stereo,

the black wire goes to a chassis ground connection.

Now using the supplied scotch lock, connect the small red and black wires to the speed sensor on the tranny.

Finally, this yellow wire is connected to the TCC switch way up under the dash. So when you press the brake, you deactivate the lockup

and we'll show you how to use this converter lockup control system a little bit later on the road. Meanwhile, hang with us. When we come back, we're going to make this lean green street machine a better breather.

All right, it's time for more mods on our lean green street machine. Now, last week, we installed a cold air kit and a throttle body spacer to help make an inhale better. So it stands to reason that if we make it exhale better, it'll make more horsepower and improve the fuel economy.

Replacing cast iron stock exhaust manifolds for headers is considered to be one of the best bang for the buck upgrades that you can make.

Now these shorties from Headman offer you all the benefit fits without breaking the bank. We found these in a kit complete with a Y pipe for less than 380 bucks.

Now, we're also replacing the catalytic converter with this stock replacement from o'reilly Parts Store and to complete the job, a cat back exhaust system from heartthrob

before we drop in these headers though, we need to use a little anti CS

so we can install the stock air valve.

We're also going to reuse this stock 02 sensor.

Remember to loosely bolt up the ends of the headers first. So you can lay in the gaskets before inserting the rest of the bolts.

Next, we can bolt the headers up to the wi pipe.

Our stock catalytic converter is showing a lot of blueing discoloration underneath the heat shield. Now, this can be a sign that the cat is getting clogged up, plus they have a lot of loose material in it.

So what we're gonna do is replace it with this new piece that goes right on to our new Y pipe,

heat up the wine pipe to expand it.

So the cat will slide right in,

then hook up the air tube.

All right, with the new catalytic converter installed, we're ready for the rest of the exhaust system. Now heartthrob uses 16 gauge aluminized tubing in this kit. It's got a three inch front pipe with 2.5 inch tail pipes. So it's about 20% larger than the factory setup. So that'll give us more flow and better performance.

Well, out back, the muffler is the velocity series and it's double wrap

and what that's all about is isolating sound so that it's aggressive at the tailpipe and not inside the car about time to get busy.

We're installing the system using clamps from the kit

and hangars connected to the oe rubber mountains

after making sure we've got everything lined up with proper clearance. We can tighten up all the bolts.

We had a cooling issue with this old Camaro when we first bought it. Now, while the thermo master chip and the new thermostat took care of a lot of the problem. There's still room for improvement. So we're going to replace the old electric fan that flows 1350 CFM with this new 14 inch replacement we got from summit racing. Now it flows 1585 CFM. So it should help us out a little more with the cooling problem.

We're installing it right up against the radiator using four nylon fasteners and speed nuts from the kit

for power. We'll connect it to the stock fan wiring that's already controlled by a relay.

Now, we remove the old water pump.

Here you go, Joe, get pumped up. Hey, buddy, thanks and no extra charge for the grease, I guess. Huh?

We're gonna replace the stock mechanical water pump for this electric pump made especially for the Camaro by Mazure.

Now it pumps 55 gallons a minute runs on 12 volts and looks pretty cool too.

Now, in order to keep these gaskets from falling off during installation, I wanna dab on some of this lock tight gasket adhesive.

There we go

and

apply some of their thread sealant

to the supplied votes.

Of course, we had to go to a shorter belt since it's no longer spinning the water pump.

Plus the original is pretty well trashed anyway.

Well, we got a couple of more items in store for you all in the name of fuel economy and we'll take the car out. So hang with us.

How's it going?

All right. Well, phase two of our lean green street machine project is almost in the can. Here's what we've done so far today,

we upgraded our 92 Camaros automatic transmission with a trans pack kit from B and M

and installed one of their converter lock up control kits.

Then we made it XL better with a new set of headman headers, a new cat converter

and a complete heart throb exhaust system. Finally, we increased the cooling capacity with a more powerful electric fan from summit

and a high flow electric water pump from the

here.

With those cooling upgrades, we can't ignore what goes inside the radiator. A bottle of this purplish

additive can reduce the surface tension of radiator floods and that will improve the transfer of heat.

One more thing before we fire this up, most late model cars are aerodynamic but there's always room for improvement. Like these headlight buckets, they're basically air traps,

but we're going to fix that

with our plastic headlight covers from GTs

to mount them. I first laid out a couple of pieces of tape to make some reference marks using the cover,

then install a 90 degree bracket in the top corner

and the F brackets

and finish it up. Installing the cover.

Yeah, those look cool. Fired up, Joe

sounds better, doesn't it?

Well, let's see if it performs better on the second test run.

All right, let's go ahead and set our converter lock up speed with the control box. That green light lets us know we're on.

All we gotta do is turn this knob to increase or decrease the lock up speed.

I'll set it about a third of the way

we can change it anytime we want to.

Ok, after driving 100 and 55.7 miles,

filling her back up and doing the math. We got 22.5 miles a gallon. So we're still ahead of the game.

All right. This is not gonna be any good for fuel economy, but

this is gonna be fun.

Yeah.

Now we're laying down 100 64 horses a gain of 11

and 23 more foot pounds of torque.

And that's without sacrificing one bit of fuel economy according to our simple calculations.

Well, we'll bring the Camaro back in a couple of weeks for stage three of this project. Something

just as mean as it is lean. Stay tuned buddy and Mike have a engine building tip for you that'll only cost you the price of a piece of candy.

Here's a sweet procedure and tip all in one. Now, it's a cheap and easy way to check your piss of valve clearance in your new or rebuilt engine. All you're gonna need is a micrometer and a Tootsie roll. See I told you this was gonna be a sweet tip.

You want to start with the cylinder head and valve train components for one of the cylinders

and a Tootsie roll needs to stay in the wrapper for a very important reason. And we'll get to that in just a minute.

You wanna roll the wrap tutsi roll around in your hands to warm it up and soften it a bit, then place it on top of the piston where the valve reliefs are clay has been used for this procedure for many years.

There are a couple of problems you can run into by using it

when taking it off the piston. It can distort and give you an improper reading even if you coat the valve in the piston in oil.

That's why the tut roll needs to stay in a wrapper because it has a wax coating which will prevent it from sticking to any of the parts

with the head gasket in place. Now, we can put the cylinder head on the short block

and tighten it down

for the sooner we wanna test

we drop in the push rods

and install the rock arms,

adjust the rockers to zero valve lash using the rocker nut,

then rotate the engine 360 degrees

to crush the Tootsie roll.

Now, we can remove the valve train and cylinder head.

And what we'll find is a crushed Tootsie roll still in the wrapper.

All right. The next thing we need to do is chill or freeze the Tootsie roll to harden them up and it'll only take a few minutes.

Now, this will allow us to get a proper reading with our micrometer without crushing them and screwing it up.

All right, before we measure the Tootsie rolls, here's how you read a micrometer. Each full line on that scale represents 100 thousands. Each small line represents 25 thousands. Now, our reading right now on the micrometer is showing 300 thousands. Now, if you open the micrometer up with this dial and set it to there, we're at 320,000. So you add the number on the dial to the number on the main graft and that's how you get your reading

using the micrometer, check the crush part of the Tootsie roll.

We got 100 and 73 thousands. What we just finished checking was a piston valve relief to the valve itself,

anything less than a 70 thousands gap on an over rev or a miss shift will definitely cause engine damage. With the amount of clearance we have, we have a couple of different options with this engine. We

run a larger cam shaft or deck, the block and shave the head for more compression and a more powerful engine. Now, this is a sweet and simple way to check for clearance and it's something that can end up saving you a lot of money in the long run. It's definitely a step. You don't want to overlook no matter what procedure you use. Now, the best part about using the Tootsie Roll,

you have a little snack at the end.

Well, this week for a hot part, we're going to make a little noise about some products designed to keep noise and heat out of your favorite ride.

We've used lizard skin before on a couple of our special projects, both as a sound deader and heat insulator.

Now, it's a water based composition of acrylic binders with airfield reflective and sound absorbing particles.

Plus, when you're finished, it looks good to boost.

Now, they got two versions ceramic insulation that's mostly about keeping out extreme heat

and sound control. That dampens sounds from vibrations to rattles, both go on with their application kit and you can find out more right there at power block tv.com.

Speaking of that, people have asked me all day, why would a Ford guy wear a shirt like this.

Well, the reason is the guys that run the Power Block store kinda talked me into it. It is kinda cool though. The vintage logo on a T shirt, but better yet.

Uh huh.

They got one with the Ford logo too. Now we're talking and now we're out of here. We'll see you next week.

That's much better.