Project Franken-Riviera -1964 Buick Riviera-

[CTX-SLPR]

Taking advantage of having half of Friday off in comp time to get the cars swapped around so the Riviera is the garage with power, the Mercedes is in the shed, and the two daily(ish) drivers are out in the rain we are finally getting. Pulled the downpipe and then honestly kept right on going to pull the turbo, valve covers, and all the plug wires.
Inspected the downpipe and found a few spot where it was leaking with pin holes so patched those up to seal it up. I also added a bung for the Wideband O2 as the stock location for the sensor basically requires you to pull the header off to change it and I had moved the Narrowband to my Wideband bung when I went turbo. Painted the downpipe while I was in there too. I also sanded down all of the flanges with some 400 then 800 grit on a 1-2-3 block to flatten them out. I'm now fiercely resisting the urge to put it all back together while I wait for gaskets to arrive for the turbo to uppipe and downpipe. I also pulled both the oil inlet and outlet off of of the turbo in pursuit of various minor leaks.
I also redid all of the preload on the lifters per Comp's instructions and now that I have proper length bolts I torqued the valve covers down with just some spot RTV to hold the gaskets to the covers. Hopefully this quiets down the valvetrain as it was a wee bit clattery.

Big bad news is despite all of this work, when I did a prime test on the fuel system it goes right to 43psi with the pump on and then falls right off after the pump stops. I'm pretty sure at least one of the injectors is stuck open. I might now have to upgrade the injectors. If I do, the intercooler will be the massive weak link in the power production department. 9psig wastegate spring should keep my intake temps down.

[CTX-SLPR]

Minor good news. It's not the injector, it's the driver or wiring. I'm pretty sure I have a spare PCM I can flash this tune onto if I can't find a wiring fault. Most likely it's just a pinched wire grounding it out. Hopefully I'll have the engine side mostly sorted out after that. Still need to replace the internal harness and external pigtail on the 4L80E unless the trans sensor issue is also PCM related. That's a possibility as maybe coincidentally it went out when there was a metal fragment in the PCM connector right next to the pin for that sensor.

EDIT:
Pinched a wire under the ignition bracket when I reinstalled it. Cut and spliced it back together and will test tomorrow. Considering the ICM replacement was what was done immediately before all of this smoking mess started and I was getting a code for trouble with that specific injector I'll put my hopes in this being the end of this trouble and it's been a good excuse to dig into related tasks such as adding that WBO2 sensor and starting to tape the harness with 3M Super 33.

[CTX-SLPR]

Car is fighting me it seems... I found a few things wrong with the Trans Range A sensor but eventually it all boiled down to when you pushed the connector in the internal spring in the contact would open up just as it pushed home. That was maddening trying to find! Still not sure I fixed that I scanned it and got the same error but the next time I tried to hook up to the car the interface started to smell like saltpeter and you guessed it, it's dead! This is after the alternator stud loosened up so I had to pull the alternator apart to tighten that up, during which time I lost a brush spring. Good news on that one was a local shop had one for a buck. He didn't have change so I just gave him a $5.

So I sent my busted interface back to HP Tuners with a $200 upgrade fee to get a new MVPI2 Pro. Waiting on that to come back and am going to go pull the ECM again and run the shifter through the gears on each trans range sensor to make sure they are working properly. Oh and maybe if I feel up to it start gutting the old cracked vacuum tubing out of the console and underhood to start redoing the HVAC system.

[CTX-SLPR]

Finally think I got that trans position sensor licked. I pulled the harness off of the ECM and went sensor wire by sensor wire checking continuity, and function when it was supposed to. Ended up have to redo all of the springs inside of the connector to get good contact. Also turned out that I had the sensor indexed one "notch" out of sync with the shifter so had to modify the bracket that holds it in place. The trans is so tight in the tunnel and X-frame that I have to mount the PRNDL sensor upside down off of the pan rail vs. to the side of the trans like its supposed to be.

I used a logic pattern check sheet and also a printout of the trans wiring diagram at the ECM to check I had everything plugged in correctly

[CTX-SLPR]

Figured I'd also let you see what the underhood is looking like these days

[SuperBuickGuy]

very nice

[CTX-SLPR]

Even nicer that it drove today much smoother and without the weird timing things of before. Just waiting for my tuning interface to show up and then wire it in to actually get to smoothing this thing out. Idles at like 1800rpm out of gear, in gear is more reasonable but that might just be by comparison.

Swapped it for the Mercedes in the garage after I did the brakes on my wife's Genesis.

[CTX-SLPR]

I'm about to start throwing parts at the gear sensor problem as when I started the car again after my new HP Tuners interface came in the code is back! Also a persistent code for RPM output error which I think I killed my ICM trying to troubleshoot. I've got a spare I'm going to swap in tomorrow and see if I can get the car to run again and then I'll tackle the high idle (think the idle screw is too far out and the IAC can't control the air flow).

[CTX-SLPR]

Been working on the Riviera. Since I had to replace a sensor in the trans pan I decided to correct the kludge of transmission cooler lines I had running from the passengers side cooler fittings to the drivers side inner fender mounted cool. Went ahead and just moved the cooler over to the passengers side inner fender where I had originally had an oil cooler but decided to drop that cooler a while ago.


That's a B&M 11x8.5x1.5in core (which after all of this work might be cracked... sigh) behind an expanded metal screen that protects it from debris coming off of the tire since this is located right in front of the passengers front tire in the the inner fender. The rest of the sheet metal is mounts and air dams that keep the air confined to going through the core instead of around it.

Also as mentioned in my CL600 post I'm pretty much giving up on the idea of selling it despite how well it works as in the current market and with it's $1000 of back fees it's not worth just sitting on whole so I'm going to put the interior into the Riviera and see what other very late analog gadgets I can transfer over and sell the rest.
Just plonked the seats into the Riviera and what do you know, it's almost a dead match for fitment. Need to trim the outside corners of the bottom cushions so they'll clear the wheel wells but width wise and height wise they just slip right no in, even the center console will work with some underside mount work.

Now comes the real question, how much do I want to cut on the car. I've largely been confining my cutting to smaller bolt on panels such as the front spray shields or modifying bolt on brackets. Now I'm looking at some offending brackets welded to the rear firewall and 95% sure I'm just going to cut them off and make new ones but this is a slippery slope I'm afraid. I'm also staring at the center console and wondering if I should move the speakers to the parcel shelf, which would involve cutting the shelf to make openings, and using the CL600 center? Same with looking at the inner fender seeing that I could make a cold air inlet so easily by taking a 4in hole saw to the inner fender and building an air box around the existing filter in the engine bay... see where this is going?

If it was even a Skylark/Special I'd not bat an eye at doing most of this stuff but because Rivieras have basically zero parts reproduced and were made in such fewer numbers I'm kinda loathed to just start cutting it up.

[CTX-SLPR]

Got the new trans cooler fitted and am now playing with a mount to reduce the stress on the core as the frame rail isn't perpendicular to the core at the point the mount comes in and that might have magnified the stress I put on the first cooler when I was tightening the lines. Theoretically it's firmly mounted on opposing corners and the hardlines are locked down in insulated adel clamps but I want to get that third mounting point locked in so I'm not stabilizing it through the lines.

On the cutting front I think I've poked around and found ways to avoid all but the idea of cutting a whole in the inner fender for the cold air intake. I've seen inner fenders pop up on craigslist of all places so they are out there so my resistance is dropping to that idea as well.

[CTX-SLPR]

Well I've officially run into the first issue I don't think I can solve with the hacked OEM computer. HP Tuners does not have the table to change the gear ratio constants unlocked for my application so the computer is stuck thinking the gear ratios are different and throwing error codes about unexpected gear ratios/speeds. I'm going to put in a request to the HP Tuners folks to get those constants added but I don't have my hopes very high. The 4L80E ratios are not a fixed offset from either the 4T65E or 4L60E ratios so I can't just put a modifier in there as the chain ratio and hope that works.

I see my options going three ways:

1. Change over to an LS based OEM computer and make the engine think its a 4.3L Vortec
   1. Pros: Gain all the flexibility of doing such such as vastly greater table support, speed density mode OSes, LSx coils, etc. and still be able to capitalize on my sunk costs into the HP Tuners ecosystem
   2. Cons: While the wiring pins are the same so I could just swap over the harness pins to the 4.3L ECM connector, there isn't a guarantee that the sensor are all compatible, specifically the cam and crank sensors
2. Keep the OEM computer for the EFI side of things (that part is working well enough that I'm starting to tune it) but add a Microsquirt on as a transmission controller to handle the 4L80E
   1. Pros: Keeps the HP Tuner investment doing something on the engine and adds something I can better control for the 4L80E including potentially adding paddle shifters
   2. Cons: More things to buy and I'm not finding the Microsquirt setup without the harness which I already have from running it on my stock computer. Also will require figuring out how to share the engine sensors with the Microsquirt
3. Go full Megasquirt with a MS3X and Microsquirt (likely as an outgrowth of #2)
   1. Pros: Full control of everything since it's a completely programmable control system and uses the CAN bus to share the parameters so no extra sensors floating around. Also would let me keep my stock sensor set (I think) but I also think that limits me to the stock DIS system which is not really that big of a deal
   2. Cons: My HP Tuners stuff is a lost cost as I have no idea what the market is for selling them second hand. Also a complete tune to develop and ecosystem to learn.
   3. More Research Required: Need to figure out how much work it would be to get full sequential LSx coils in terms of swapping sensors around. I don't think the MS3X is weatherized so I'd have to completely redo the wiring so it went into the cabin vs. where it currently lives in the old battery location.

I think I'm mainly leaning towards #2 as it's the lowest frustration option since I can keep my sunk cost into the engine tuning since both #1 and #3 require me to rewire things and potentially change sensors out which is a huge time sink.

[SuperBuickGuy]

I like the 2 stand-alone computer solution because it allows motor swaps... e.g. my 64 wagon that currently has an LS but will get a V6 eventually.

[CTX-SLPR]

I'm looking to see if there's a more economical option than the DIYAutotune Microsquirt with 30in harnesses while I wait for HP Tuners to get back to me. Looks like I could sell the HP Tuners for around $500 as it's the full pro version which retails around $650. Found someone locally who's parting out their project and has an MS3X for sale as well. I'll admit I'm not looking forward to rewiring things but that's the least of the problems as I already have a harness connected to the correct sensors and such.

[BBR]

I would lean toward 2. Get your feet wet with Microsqiuirt before jumping in with a full MS/Micro setup.

[CTX-SLPR]

Going to do that as the stock ECM still works and most of my extreme frustration has been with the transmission control. Going to order the basic Microsquirt with a 30in harness stub. I'll piggyback the VSS and TPS into the Microsquirt and see if I can't get the Tach output out of the ECM to run the Microsquirt but with the 4L80E I do have the option of the input shaft sensor for RPM.