What did you do to your G-Body today 2024

Got a little carried away today..
Started with prepping to put the firewall unit in..Then spiraled out of control..
Ended pulling the whole interior out. My back glass is leaking pretty bad, you see the puddle on the driver side rear. Carpet was soaked. Pulled and washed it. Figured I might as well just take all of it out since I need to swap in the Maroon interior anyway. I’m going to try and silicone the glass for now. I’m trying to schedule someone to have the back glass resealed and windshield replaced soon.
I did end up installing the firewall unit.. Only after I had disassembled to get it in. The instructions state to assemble it and install as a unit. Since I chose the super magnum unit it has a larger blower motor. I don’t see how it can be installed all together.
Also messed around with some vinyl I ordered. It like a “black brushed aluminum “ turned out decent with the maroon dash.

UC645 said:

Spent the day making and installing solder lugs on the trans temp and pressure sensors.
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Good news is, the temp gauge works now. Bad news, the pressure sensor barely moves. I don’t think there’s enough pressure in the cooler lines for it to read. I might move it to the side of the case to read line pressure but that won’t happen for a long time, if it does.

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The cooler lines are on the return side, no pressure, you need to find plug from the case that have line pressure

383_StealthRam said:

Been having lots of trouble with Holley EFI [HEFI] V6 software (HP/Dominator) and the graphics display when trying to use LIVE MODE tuning with my older laptop (LENOVO) which worked perfectly fine with the V4 version of the HEFI software.

I want to use some of the newer features and functions of V6 so I upgraded my ECU, and 3.5 LCD screens with V6 but then could no longer use the live gauges display, or live table/tuning views as something with the V6 just doesn't like my older laptop. Problem is I bought and returned 2 newer LENOVO laptops (T14s, and X1 Carbon); both high end laptops, as well as a DELL Inspiron borrowed from a friend to equal 4 different laptops that gave the same problem with the graphics.

If anyone wants to read the gory details, feel free over in the Holley Support Forums.

So, I decided to try something different and opt to install a permanent (aka tiny) PC and 10" LCD, with wireless keyboard/mouse in the car. I'm happy to report problems solved, and no more issues with graphics.

Here are a few quick videos and a couple of pics of getting it mocked up in car, and getting it working.

I plan to redo my dash pod layout, gauges, etc. over the winter (hopefully) and will be deciding where I'll mount the 10" (1366x768) more permanently. The Thinkstation P320 tiny PC is pretty powerful, i5, 16GB/ 512TB, QUADRO P600 GPU, WIN 11Pro + WI-FI/Bluetooth got off eBay for $160, LCD was $68 and mounting bracket was about $20. I had the wireless kb/mouse in stock, lol.

I'm gonna make a nice bracket to hold the PC up under the radio/hvac pod like where the ashtray used to be, and may actually drop a small UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) in the trunk, along with the AC inverter I'm using to power it all up. The LCD comes with a 110v adapter brick, or it can plug directly into cigarette lighter socket as it's 12v. I like the UPS idea so both the PC and LCD are getting clean, conditioned power rather than directly off the inverter.

I thought of maybe getting a touch screen, but for what I'm going to use it for the kb/mouse is prolly better option, plus given it's full blown Windows 11 PC, I can browse web, or use other apps, etc. with my mobile hotspot, or other wifi.

I'm pretty impressed with the whole "tiny" PC platform as an alternative to an actual laptop to be honest. Driving around with laptop on the passenger seat was always a PITA to manage. Having a full functioning GPU, over integrated graphics which most of the laptops in the $400-$1000 price ranges have, this little thing packs almost desktop like capabilities at a great bargain imho.

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Video of the actual issue with V6 on old laptop that worked fine with V4

Video of quick mock up test before mounting LCD to dash, engine off but HEFI online

Video of gauges display in online mode with engine running

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Sorry to hear about the problems, I was hoping for the best for you. Glad you got your own solution, debating on over the winter trying to come up with something myself for my Edlebrock since I get a bit annoyed waiting for the phone to boot up every time I drive

mclellan83 said:

Sorry to hear about the problems, I was hoping for the best for you. Glad you got your own solution, debating on over the winter trying to come up with something myself for my Edlebrock since I get a bit annoyed waiting for the phone to boot up every time I drive

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I think Edelbrock recently released a new app and firmware for their ProFlo4 systems if that's what you're running? Maybe an upgrade can help if you haven't already?


A friend of mine has it on a AMC and it works pretty good, the tablet that came with it never really worked too well tho.

It is Android app so you can prolly run it well on any decent Android tablet, like a Lenovo tablet with in car mount. They're typically under $200 for a nice one on sale, or with a student/school discount if it applies.

Hope you get yours squared away!

CopperNick said:

From personal experience with G-Body doors, your first problem is going to be the weight of the door itself. Absent the presence of that door cradle that I use (see previous posts on my adventures in door sill land) you will still want to have a floor jack with a heavily padded lift plate to place under the lower edge of the door to support it once you start to carefully loosen those bolts.

The sequence to lift the lower back of the door to re-align it with the quarter panel involves loosening All Three of the top hinge to A Pillar mounting bolts, Plus the two lower hinge bolts that sit one above the other. All these Five bolts get backed off only as much as you absolutely need to be able to use the jack to lift the door once it has picked up the weight of it. The third lower hinge bolt gets backed off less than all the others; barely enough that the door will move if you add a pump to the jack handle. That last sixth bolt is going to be your pivot or axis around which the door will rotate as you use the jack to gently apply vertical lift. For this the door has to be almost closed as the more it is open, the harder you will find it to get the door to rotate how you want it to.

Alternatively, you can reverse the bolt pattern by using the upper single bolt as the pivot and working with all the rest as I described. it will all depend on how much "float" or movement you have left in those threaded plates that reside in the pockets in the A- Pillar and into which the hinge bolts are threaded. Either way will work to get the lift you need, all other factors being equal.

Where this all gets problematic is that, by lifting the back of the door to regain the overall alignment, you can find that the front edge of the door now crashes into the matching edge on the fender. In an ideal world that fender would be off the car and set to one side so that you can easily get to those bolts; the factory sequence actually does run from back to front, meaning that the door gets hung and aligned first, then the fender is hung and aligned to the door.

Not trying to complicate this job any more than it is. You are the one who has to spin the wrenches here, so the final decisions are yours. By virtue of size and weight and sheer orneriness, doors are right up there in the MPITA list for frustration and misery.

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Thanks for that suggestion, it worked! But the door on needs to only come up slightly as both ends don't match the body lines. Took some fiddling, lifting the door by my self with the suggested bolt pattern loosened and jack up to hold the door in place. But again I do have to lift the entire door up just a fraction of an inch, I am figuring for that to happen I am going to call a local body shop with a door hanger that may help with that. I had to adjust the striker slightly up and pushed in a little, but the door closes perfectly! Thanks again.

So for the last couple of months I have been fiddling with changing the rear anti-sway bar on My M/C SS from the unit mounted to the lower control arms to one that is mounted to the axle tubes and hung by links from the frame, ala Blazer/S10.

While I did manage to score a Blazer bar, the vendor shipped it minus the frame mounts and then got lazy/busy/obstinate and refused to send someone out to grab the frame parts. As y'all might expect, finding another vendor who both had the brackets and who had a yardman willing to slither under the hulk in question became something of a snipe hunt.

So I had about put the whole business on hold when my neighbour from up the street happened to mention that his son, who lives on the same street only closer to the river, had given up on his S-10 and was about to dig it out of his garage and get rid of it. So, okay fine, I had sort of known about that particular truck but the back story was always that the son had wanted to hang on to it and do a project with it. Like so many of us, another dream bit the dust and it never happened. Now he needed the room in his one car for storage so time to clean house.

I found that he had already extracted the vehicle from the garage and had it sitting in front of the garage door in the lane. That concerned me simply because my lane is a high traffic zone for "individuals" who like to stay in the shadows and that would make the truck a high value target for molestation and vandalism.

Anyway, I elected to take a walk past the garage and sneak a peek under the truck to see what's to be seen.............and...............SCORE!!!!!. It has the rear anti sway bar!! So now I have to deal with the guy, who I don't know, but, I do know his dad fairly well. Long story short, I catch up with Dad, we head up to the son's house, I make the son an offer and he accepts. i then arrange for a pick up and the truck is now safely? stashed over at the yard that I do business with. They have a pick list of bits that I want, the A-sway bar assembly right at the top, and as a quid pro quo they get the rest of the vehicle for whatever they want, which isn't much for a 22 year old truck around here, and then it goes out with the next load to the shredder.
For anyone at this point who is thinking, "well why didn't you take on the truck?" in no particular order, no room,no budget, no parts, no budget, too much wrong with it, including a no-go engine and rad/coolant system issues, and said by the owner to have serious cancer resident in its body and bones, and a few other reasons.

In all fairness, the guy was ambivalent about letting go, and I don't blame him one bit. You hate to concede that you will never start or finish something like that. I just made him an offer that I knew would be as good or slightly better than what he might get for it by trying to send it himself and gave him space to consider the matter and then let me know. For his part he did admit that he had phoned around to see what he might be able to recoup on it and the few replies that he did get were so poor that I guess I looked good by comparison. He could have dealt with a scrapper but what the scrap yard offers at the door is not what the picker will offer and then there is the matter of the paperwork to take the vehicle officially off the road and advise the state/province that it has been brought in for disposal so that the VIN can be deleted from the registry. He didn't have to deal with the paperwork because I took that task on as part of the deal. A bit of sugar to sweeten the offer.

Anyway, for anyone looking for that piece of potential unobtanium, stay alert. my searches were all over the country only to discover, by pure chance and circumstance I freely admit, that what I was looking for had just shown up in my back lane a couple of doors north of me. Hey, ya take what ya can get and be like the cat at the mousehole for the rest; you just never know.



CopperNick

$46

Blower intake gasket failed, luckily I have a mechanic to fix it

and that's that..

It's time!!