97 LT1 Turbo/MS project

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SiFlyBy
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97 LT1 Turbo/MS project

Post by SiFlyBy »

My cousin has a 97 LT1 firebird. He has wanted to do the LT4 conversion(heads, intake, cam, etc...) which I believe costs in the neighborhood of $2500 just for the parts. I have a better idea.

I recently acquired a good turbo from a 2000 F-550 truck for free. Along with this I reason that the rest of what I may need to do this properly will cost less than $1000. Im thinking MS2($270), oil scavenge pump($250) and most of the piping and couplers I already have laying around. What I need to know is: #1) what type of ignition system the LT1 has #2) if the factory crank sensor is adaptable to MS easily and #3) is there any reason to believe that the stock fuel system is capable of suppoting 6-8 psi. I would like to get a rough estimate together soon to see if I can push my cousin off the fence and solidly convince him to let me do this.

Please feel free to chime in with any insight, questions or opinions.

I already checked out seank's thread on his LT1 so I'm hoping to get some info there as well. This will more than likely end up as a remote mount setup due to the fact that neither of the housings on the turbocharger are clockable.
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Re: 97 LT1 Turbo/MS project

Post by thebigmacd »

SiFlyBy wrote:My cousin has a 97 LT1 firebird. He has wanted to do the LT4 conversion(heads, intake, cam, etc...) which I believe costs in the neighborhood of $2500 just for the parts. I have a better idea.

I recently acquired a good turbo from a 2000 F-550 truck for free. Along with this I reason that the rest of what I may need to do this properly will cost less than $1000. Im thinking MS2($270), oil scavenge pump($250) and most of the piping and couplers I already have laying around. What I need to know is: #1) what type of ignition system the LT1 has #2) if the factory crank sensor is adaptable to MS easily and #3) is there any reason to believe that the stock fuel system is capable of suppoting 6-8 psi. I would like to get a rough estimate together soon to see if I can push my cousin off the fence and solidly convince him to let me do this.

Please feel free to chime in with any insight, questions or opinions.

I already checked out seank's thread on his LT1 so I'm hoping to get some info there as well. This will more than likely end up as a remote mount setup due to the fact that neither of the housings on the turbocharger are clockable.
(1) Optispark Distributor on the camshaft
(2) Absolutely not
(3) Yes

The only simple way to do it is bolt a 36-1 or 60-2 wheel to the crank dampener and run 4-channel wasted spark with LS1-type coil-near-plug or Northstar wasted spark coilpacks.
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Re: 97 LT1 Turbo/MS project

Post by Fred »

I was going to say that I can't comment, but given that it has an optispark, I can now, Sean is running his from that just using a single edge per inner slot to do basic injection and distributor ignition I think. He can correct me if I'm wrong. So based on that, I disagree with Keith's comment on 2).

I have my own comment though : One project at a time :-p

Let's see the mx6 up and screaming and tuned first ey? :-)
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SiFlyBy
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Re: 97 LT1 Turbo/MS project

Post by SiFlyBy »

Fred wrote:I have my own comment though : One project at a time :-p
The reason I am asking now is because I'm out of town and bored in hotel room. If I had the car to look at I would probably be able to figure some of this out onmy own.
Fred wrote:Let's see the mx6 up and screaming and tuned first ey? :-)
Yeah, yeah, I know. Time and money my friend, time and money(not to mention my wife having an effect on both!).

As for Question #2, it looks like we have opposing opinions. Hopefully seank will chime in. :D
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Re: 97 LT1 Turbo/MS project

Post by thebigmacd »

Fred wrote:I was going to say that I can't comment, but given that it has an optispark, I can now, Sean is running his from that just using a single edge per inner slot to do basic injection and distributor ignition I think. He can correct me if I'm wrong. So based on that, I disagree with Keith's comment on 2).

I have my own comment though : One project at a time :-p

Let's see the mx6 up and screaming and tuned first ey? :-)
I stand corrected...time to megasquirt the Roadmaster!
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Re: 97 LT1 Turbo/MS project

Post by SiFlyBy »

Fred wrote:Sean is running his from that just using a single edge per inner slot to do basic injection and distributor ignition
:oops: I'm a little lost here. What exactly do you mean by "single edge per inner slot". Keep in mind I am not familiar with optispark. Where exactly are we getting the rpm signal? Be gentle and dumb it down please. :?
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Re: 97 LT1 Turbo/MS project

Post by thebigmacd »

SiFlyBy wrote:
Fred wrote:Sean is running his from that just using a single edge per inner slot to do basic injection and distributor ignition
:oops: I'm a little lost here. What exactly do you mean by "single edge per inner slot". Keep in mind I am not familiar with optispark. Where exactly are we getting the rpm signal? Be gentle and dumb it down please. :?
The optispark is a cam sensor that has two optical sensors, one which reads 360 slots on the outer edge of the wheel, and one which reads 8 slots on an inner ring on the same wheel. The 8 inner slots are all different widths that correspond to specific cylinders, but the trailing edges of all the slots are evenly spaced around the wheel. If you trigger on the trailing edge of the inner slots, you get 8 nice clean injection and ignition triggers at a fixed angle relative to TDC at each cylinder.

Optispark is also a distributor, so you just fire the single coil relative to the trailing edges of the slots and it routes the spark to the correct cylinder.
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Re: 97 LT1 Turbo/MS project

Post by SleepyKeys »

Yes you can use the low res(8x) signal from the opti or the 4x crank trigger(96-97 OBD2 only). How ever I experience ALOT of timing error in the neighbor hood of 12+%. What this means is that if the computer is trying to calc for say 30deg spark advance its really getting around 25 or so. Luckily timing error means less timing in reality and not more, so it hasn't been such a problem. Before I even fired my motor up I asked Lance on MS2 about only having 4x/crank and he said its pleanty fine don't worry about it, obviously that wasn't the truth.

I still suggest finding a turbo that you can mount close to the engine. If $ is an issue just be patient and the right deal will come around for a used one. BTW is the rising edges that are aligned, falling edges vary.

Hopefully by the time you get to the ECU portion of the project we'll have freeEMS happily decoding the opti's 360x signal.

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Re: 97 LT1 Turbo/MS project

Post by SiFlyBy »

Well, I just came across a 36-1 trigger wheel. i will probably try hard to use it. As for the rest, it's my cousins car and I'm not 100% sure if he is all about it yet. I may have some more coaxing to do.
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Re: 97 LT1 Turbo/MS project

Post by SiFlyBy »

seank: can you just flip the exhaust mainfolds around like a 5.0 and others or was there some fab involved here(for manifolds)? The pics of your setup that I have seen do not focus on this.
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