The most amazing thing about this "junker" was how nice it was. I mean the interior was perfect, the motor ran awesome, it came with all the stock parts as well as a 3.4 pulley, open cone, headlight covers, strobes, and Eibach springs. The paint was in decent condition and the tranny felt like new. The car also came with a Lotek 3 gauge pod and 3 Autometer gauges, which showed me that the car was pulling 11lbs of boost. Pretty good for 137k huh? Later I found out that the previous owner whom owned the car since 18k miles had used Mobile 1 in it ever since he bought it.
With 5 weeks to GPG the transformation began:
1 st I had my new transmission w/ 3.69 gears installed. It wouldn't shift under WOT so I had to pull it back out and have 3.29 gears put in to keep the computer happy. My new motor was from a '99 regal and since the computers are different I kept all the '97 wiring and just used the regal mechanical parts. The regal block with 25k on in got painted but remains stock other than that. The heads didn't get done until 2 weeks from D-day and Gary did not have time to finish the intakes so I ended up with Stage 3 headwork . This winter I plan on pulling the heads and taking them to Stage 4 . It took us a whole day to find some head gaskets that would work because the stock ones didn't have a large enough bore diameter.
We ended up using some Fel-Pro gaskets made for an early 90's NA 3800. They were .009 thinner than stock so we had to measure deck height and check for clearance but ended up being ok. They didn't cover the water jacket completely so we used some silicon to complete the seal. This alone was enough to merit trailoring the car to KS as we figured a cloud of white smoke was inevitable. We also had to modify some rockers for the car, as well as machine all the parts necessary for the LS1 intake setup . We had a spare ZZP TB just in case the LS1 deal didn't work out but it did so we got lucky I guess.
Doing an entire car in 5 weeks and having to build many custom parts was very hard. We were plagued by a slew a problems but with the help of my crew and lots of 18hr days we managed to get the car started on Sat, 4 days before GPG. Once started it took us about 45 minutes to get the car idling right but it didn't matter because by then it was spraying tranny fluid all over. So Sat about midnight we called it quits. On Sunday night we trailored the car to my friend's transmission shop and on Monday morning I bribed Steve into pushing aside everyone else and fixing mine first. He had the car done by 2pm and for the first time I started getting excited. From there I drove to Muffler Man to have an exhaust made because as of then it was open headers. I got the car back that evening and we went back to work.
The car was throwing codes for running lean even with the 42.5lb injectors because the custom MAF housing that Matt made was huge and causing the MAF to read too low. The car still had no interior and was missing many parts yet needed for basic operation. The computer did not like some of the '99 parts and was throwing fits about them so we had to rob some old stuff off of the original '97 motor. We worked that night until about 2am before calling it a night and started again the next day bright and early. Brett, Matt and I didn't do anything but work on the car that day but Ken had to work his normal job until midnight just to be able to have GPG time off. It was at some point during this day that we realized the prototype MAFT (made just a week prior because the RAT FMU didn't show after 4 weeks) didn't work on the '97 as the computer is different than the '99 we tested it on.
We broke the pulley puller the day before we were supposed to leave while trying to install the DUB and then messed up the snout on the charger. This is the reason that I'm going to start selling pulley pullers; I can't stand it when something breaks and leaves you totally screwed. Around 11pm working in the dark, 6hrs before we had to leave we had to rig up something to fix the charger, finish putting in the interior, fix the MAFT , pack, get race gas, and decide on what spare parts to take. By now the whole crew working at a feverish pace for the past 14hrs was getting discouraged. We were so close yet so far away. Somehow we managed, I remember looking at the clock in my shop 1:30AM having Ken hand me a revised MAFT and say 'here try this'. We did, it worked and I went home to pack.
At 2:15AM I finished packing, set the alarm for 4AM and went to bed. The next morning 5AM we loaded up and set off for KS. During road course time we tested the '97 and it was dog slow, maybe a high 14. Checking the autotap we had O2 readings of .01, 10 minutes later with some MAFT adjusting and we were at .92 but for some reason we only had 6 degrees of timing. We reset the PCM, put in some race gas and lined up the '97 w/ the 3.1" and the '99 w/ the 3.4". The cars were dead even with the '99 pulling on the top end. Progress but not fast enough to run the car yet. With some help from Scott Cook and some other minor tweaks we got the car a little faster but we decided not to run it, as we didn't want to be embarrassed.
Come Friday we arrived at KCIR ready to run the '99 into history. We ran into a PCM problem though and the first pass ran an embarrassing 13.7. It was because of this that we decided to go ahead and run the '97 as we had nothing to lose anymore. First pass of this cars life it went 13.28@105.5; we were shocked to say the least. Bad 60' and minimal race preps and the car still made a decent run. Quickly with excitement in the air we went to work on the car, tweaking here, wrenching there and set off for another autotap logging pass.
It was then we began to realize that once again we were plagued with transmission problems. The car would not shift under WOT but on a positive note we saw O2 readings of .94 so we adjusted down the MAFT a little. Towards the end of the day we devised a plan to get the car to shift early and I handed Brett the keys to give it a try. What we didn't know was that Scott in his inebriated state while showing us the pin outs on the transmission harness had forgotten to plug it back in so Brett ended up making an entire pass in 2 nd gear. While this was frustrating it was also exciting. Why? Because even without first gear we had a trap speed of 85 in the 1/8 th mile and that's faster than the '99 had ever gone. So while we were excited we were also running out of time to make a good pass.
We let the car cool for a while and put it back in line knowing that this might be our last chance to prove ourselves. With Brett behind the wheel and nervous as a schoolboy on his first date we awaited pole position. As luck would have it Mike Dye ended up being close enough to set up a race. Not knowing how well Brett could handle the increased pressure of competition I hoped for a good show.
Down comes the tree and they're off. Unbelievably Brett manages a 1.88 60' on that slippery track and he and Mike head down the line seemingly neck and neck. My heart begins to skip beats as the 1-2 shift approaches. Wham, Brett's gets the car to shift at 5500rpm and we await the 2-3. Once again I almost piss myself but in what seemed like an act from God the car shifted into third.
That pass took about an hour in my recollection but when the lights lit I knew that we had made history: 12.84@106.38 to MD's 12.97. Screaming until I was hoarse and with the whole crowd cheering the $11,000 in mods, 5 weeks of no sleep, having my girlfriend threaten to leave me, listening to all the doubters on the forum, and owing Brett and Matt 5 weeks of labor was all worth it. For that is a moment in time that I will never forget. For those that wonder what is next for the ZZP GP all I have to say is you ain't seen nothing yet.
