LC Torana (in progress)

[longracing]

Ok when this project started out it was to be my first car back in late 1996.

But after finishing high school I had to move away from home and the LC sat dormant for a while.
One of my trips home I decided to get it running and installed a 173ci holden six with twin stromberg carburetors and a 3-speed floorshift gearbox. With the 3.55 ratio diff it had no trouble spinning the tyres.

After a few more trips home and respraying it again , I thought about getting on the road to replace my daily run-about. A 3.3L holden six was rebuilt after considering Nissan & Buick sixes as well as a few V8's.

Ok, down to the goodies list.
Engine: Holden 3.3L six-cylinder
Gearbox: Supra 5-speed, Dellows bellhousing.
Diff: Narrowed Borg-Warner 3.08 ratio.
EFI: Holden with
Crane Fireball Ignition kit in Distributor,
LS1 coil and
Haltech ECU

Engine is now running. Just needs a bit more mapping, interior fitting, glass fitting....
that is when I can get some time off to get back there.

*Sorry about no images at the moment. Apparently the board quota is full.

[Fred]

Grab yourself an account on http://www.photobucket.com and upload them there :-)

[longracing]

A HUGE thank you to my dad who has done so much work on this project ( and had it taking up precious shed space for years ).

Here is the car as I first puchased it

It was a basic rolling shell. It had a new paint job but that was already starting to peal. You might be able to make out the footprints in the door and front fender from the previous frustrated owner.


It was soon stripped bare and all the paint was scraped off with a razor blade then sanded down to metal. Rust repair and panel beating was carried out and a quick coat of paint was applied before it went into storage for a few years.


The little 173ci. This engine was dragged off the pile and installed to get the car moving. It hadn't run in over 6 years but after the oil press. was primed it fired up straight away. The twin strombergs & mainfold were a freebie It sounded great running through the extractors & 2" hot-dog exhaust.


The first respray was finished a few years after it began. A few years after that I rubbed it back and sprayed it again with about seven litres of white & a litre or two of black.


This sump was modified to clear the crossmember and widened. Thought it was smarter to modify one of the other sumps we had than chop up the only one ( in our spare parts bin) that fit the early toranas.


MMMM freshly painted, rebuilt engine. In my efforts to confuse people I painted the 3.3Litre blue/black motor in "Holden Rocket Red" and the previously mention 173ci Red motor in "Ford Engine Blue."


Beginning of the wiring harness install. I think my dad counted over 40 wires being fed through the firewall.


Wiring harness roughly laid out.


Wiring harness installed

[dealwithit]

that bay looks pretty sharp man

[longracing]

Thanks.

It took a bit of time & patience to do but I was pretty happy with the results.
I also replaced the fuse panel with a newer Blade-type fuse box that had room for the EFI fuses. Much better than having to carry two types of spares.

[longracing]

Bit of a progress update.

A bit more work was done on the car during my recent holiday to the west coast.
The car now has a new 2.5" exhaust, big thanks to Mufflers-R-Us in Mandurah, WA for an excellent job.
Completed the EFI tuning on a dyno with the help of the crew at Mandurah Performance. The guys (and girl) there were a big help and I learnt more on tuning the ignition curve ( have started applying that knowledge to the tuning on my HQ).
The car had a bit of trouble with wheel spin on the dyno using skinny 185/70R13 tyres. New Yokahamas are to be fitted. The engines horsepower flattened out over 4800rpm but that was expected with the stock manifold. With that in mind the a mild cam was chosen, that in combination with the long intake runners made bulk torque from roughly 2700rpm onwards ( I think I built a truck motor ).
I will try to scan the dyno printout and upload it shortly.

Have started thinking about modifying a stock inlet manifold to create a bigger plenum and shorten the runners slightly to open up the top-end power.

[longracing]

Here's the dyno print out


Conditions were 25.9 degrees Celcius, 56.2% relative humidity, 1007.7 HPa, using third gear.

Here's a pic of the finished engine bay. Needs a bit of a wipe to get rid of the dust but it's what I imagine the general should have come up with if they had installed EFI in 1971.

[Fred]

With that in mind the a mild cam was chosen, that in combination with the long intake runners made bulk torque from roughly 2700rpm onwards ( I think I built a truck motor :lol: ).

You sure did! :-)

I have one comment to make :

That torque curve is a lie, either you made more power, or you made less torque. What is displayed there is "wheel torque" a meaningless figure that some dyno operators use to make v8 owners feel better about their low power output :-)

You can calculate it easily, but here is the first online one i came across :

http://mdmetric.com/tech/powercalc.htm

Congrats on getting it up and running, it's nice to get some return on invested effort.

Fred.

[longracing]

Yep new the torque figures weren't relative but thanks for the handy power calculator. The main thing I was interested in was how early the torque started off. It will mean a lot less gear changes when driving which is what I want in a street car.

It amazes me how everyone wants to here a dyno figure but doesn't think about what they actually mean. There can be huge variations from one to another and there isn't much point getting a number unless you can compare it to what the car produced before modifications or adjustments to the tuning.

[gimpy]

Silly ?,that looks a lot like our(us) Chevrolet 235 cu in engine,sweet little(?) things that responded well to 2 carbs and sounded really good with a split exh. manifold,and dual pipes.
I spent many happy hours listening to them moan along,in everything from farm trucks(2 ton) to a 55 half ton,short box pickup,have wondered about injecting one from time to time.
At any rate neat project,very nicely executed.
Gimpy