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Oldsmobile Aurora: Modifications
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Your TB size theory sounds good to me, I'm sold. Mine was very dirty and measured 74mm at the widest part, RSM TB did measured 80mm in the same spot. No doubt metal casting can vary. I know that my measurements are right, I though I was in-accurate in the measuring department when I heard that it should be 1mm bigger. Immpossible! I work in thousands of an inch all day long (Printing Pressman). Being off by 1mm is HUGE for me.
But an extra 1.5mm difference in the TB diameter MUST of made the difference, that could be why I got a couple of extra HP there was a difference of 2.5mm in the test's between you and me. I don't think the intake kit helps the TB #'s, It does take out the hard bend in the box, couldn't imagine that adding even one pony though. Definetly think it came from my 6mm jump, to your 3.5mm. 206.7 @wheels. You got 198.6, was that with the stock box?
I do think the intake kit set-up does work slighty better than the stock gutted box, with drop in K&N. Not by much though, only an extra 1or2hp. I'd say they are almost equivalent. I'f you look at the cost between the two, gutted out box wins, my wallet lost.
Heatshield- IT'S DONE! but haven't installed it yet, made it this week though, First card board than sheetmetal. Just needs to be painted and put rubber tubing over the edges. Turned out pretty nice, very happy with the design. The hard part was making it attach where the stock box would sit and then going out around the filter as far as possible, than make it go all the way forward next to the radiator. Then the second piece for the back side to fit around the intake tube. Also making it undectable when the stock box is put back in. Did drill two holes though. Making it sit against the hood liner was actually one of the easiest parts. Whole thing is darn close to air tight. The fender scoop wasn't happening, found some mositure on the bottom of the K&N cone this week, screened up the two fender holes while I was win there, no direct splashs will hit my filter now. Hopefully I'll get some pics up soon, no digital camera.
It's funny that you asked me for "additiona pieces" When my father and I made it, he jokingly said "We should see if RSM would want to buy our design, you could at least sell a couple to your internet buddies right?" I said we probably could. It's not "perfect" but it should do the job. Turned out much better than this guys. http://jadcock.oldsgmail.com/cadsls/images/intake3.jpg
We did save our card board templates, production versions could be available soon Garnes. There will definatly be a separtion of air between my intake area and hood compartment. Think I'll notice a difference? I hope so after all of our hard work, collectively 4-5 hours on it. Can't wait for the Test ride next week.
Throttle plate- That piece does bolt on to the intake manifold. Sounds like garnes was very close in size, mine had a noticable ridge, probably 2-3mm, I thought to myself, thats restrictive and probably will cause some turbulance. That where I angled/sanded the gasket's edge to lose the corner there. That piece could definetly be bored out. As I understand it, after that plate, there's the intake manifold, which is also not 80mm. The TB does taper down some from intake side to exit side. If you sanded down that plate, you could only taper it down to the intake manifold. Zsolt @ RSM was telling me that once the offer a ported intake mainfold (having trouble finding cores), that they could include them boring out the TBplate to match the bore of the TB and the match the whole thing to the manifold opening, making everything as big as possible, around 80mm I bet. They could lose some of the tampering effect this way, they don't have to make an 80mm part fit a 75mm hole down the line. They could bore them all together for the best possible gain. Wonder how much that cost? He didn't want to say yet. He said that If I wanted the best results, I'd have to send them my bored TB to match everything. Or the could just bore it and everything will match pretty close, probably would be a 1mm variance this way. Maybe I'll do it.
Garnes, I'm jelous of your free TB plate. If you don't want to go through the hassel of having to deal with those 2 colant hoses again, I'd be glad to tell you how well I port match it.
I need to call a junk yard.
CORSA-Lately I've been so busy at work and school just started, I haven't had time to call Corsa, it is the end of the month. Attempted a couple of times this week but Jim wasn't in the office or was on the other line and I couldn't wait. Tommarow I'm going on vaction, I'll have time to call and wait to speak to Jim if his there.
It will be a GREAT start to my vacation if I get good new from Corsa.
I'll be back on Tuesday to respond on everything else.
Job well done Garnes and thanks for sending me the pics.
Taylor-800wattAURORA
http://www.cardomain.com/id/800wattaurora
I wouldn't try to compare actual dyno total HP and torque numbers from two different cars on different dynos on different days - but the measured net gain of each car is of course very valuable to compare.
I'm very interested in your dyno graphs to see how fat the curves are. Also, I'd be really interested in measuring the intake temp with some remote sensor like BLK97Aurora once posted doing. I'd sure like to compare your intake temps to mine.
Yes, 1 mm is actually pretty big and easy to measure. Can't miss it. I measured everything from the outlet side.
You bring up a good point on the tapering thing. That mounting plate would be great to be matched to my 79.5 mm TB. BUT, it the manifold port is 75 mm +/- I'd much rather leave the mounting plate (exit side) the stock diameter and not create yet another "lip".
Now, Zsolt seems to be telling me that the mounting plate is plastic. I sure thought it was aluminum. Taylor, if it's plastic, you can just take it all apart in the driveway and get that plate off and sand it and maybe even taper it a little. All will be smooth then.
I'll call you.
Remember - I can't get out of the dyno without goofing up something.
The freed-up space can be used for a small fire extinguisher, audio amplifier, or whatever. Maybe a sub-woofer, although I'm not sure that is a good location for one.
blk97aurora - could you give us a brief refresher on that remote temp. sensor? How does it attach to something? Do you have to take the small hollow tank off the side of the intake duct? Any other options? What did you plug the side hole with (where that little tank attaches)?
BTW - that throttle body mounting plate is indeed aluminum. I just misunderstood an e-mail from RSM. Of course you can just look at it too - it's in plain view. Anyway, it's almost as long as the throttle body. I think the inlet side has to be ported out bigger to match the bigger TB, but the exit side left the same to match the manifold. That's probably the reason for it having to be done by hand. It will be tapered. Anybody have a suggestion on how to do this? I may just ship this to RSM as well.
I did remove the hollow tank to install my intake air thermometer. The tank is a Helmholtz resonator intended to reduce intake noise -- not desirable in my book. I used a 1-1/4" PVC pipe cap to fill the 2" hole; to ensure that the cap would not be "ingested," I cemented another PVC piece (about 2-3/8" diameter, cut from a threaded plug) to form a shoulder at the open end of the cap. The sensor itself is an inexpensive (~$10 on sale) indoor-outdoor thermometer from Radio Shack. I simply drilled a small hole through the center of the PVC cap and glued the thermistor so most of it is positioned outside the PVC cap; that puts it directly in the intake air stream. I then routed the thin wire along the engine compartment and around the driver's door jamb, placing the digital readout on the dash. I will eventually give it a more permanent mounting. I've been looking at gauge pods for the A-pillar. Of course, no one makes them for our Auroras, so I'll have to modify something.
Hey - you gotta do the throttle body.
Additional RSM info:
RSM indicated that on the 4.0 (4.6 may be the same as well here since the TB is supposedly the same) the mounting plate is about 78 mm and the intake manifold is about 80 mm. So you can see the benefit of porting that mounting plate to 80 mm so everything is about 80 mm and matches for the best flow possible. I think this may add another couple HP to what I've already got from just the TB. BTW - the mounting plate is almost as long as the TB.
Also - they said that the mounting plate port is on an angle to the face of the piece and therefore can't be done with their equipment and must be done by hand.
Also - I forgot to mention that I did check the Air/Fuel ratio at the dyno as well. The A/F ratio with the bigger TB was the same as with the stock TB. So nothing weird is happening. The additional air flow is apparently being mixed with the appropriate additional fuel.
So what you going to do with YOUR TB plate?
That's too bad about the coolant incident, always something. So now thats some times past, do you notice the difference? I betting YES.
Dyno graphs-I'll go and get my graphs this week and send them your way. I hope I can slavage a baseline graph. Right now my only TB tests are, intake Vs. intake+TB. The graphs are nice and fat all the way accross,2500rpms up, so there is good data there.
When you called, I hear you and my old man had some words. Feel free to call again anytime.
Now some BAD NEWS- I called Corsa on Friday, spoke with Jim. They are still too busy for us. They took some contract and we couldn't be worked in untill Nov-Dec. He really didn't sound like he wanted to do it at all. If we really want them to do it, we'll have to wait untill winter. He said next time Greg calls, I'll tell him the same. I say call him anyways! He recomended that we buy the mufflers and have someone build the rest. Mufflers and tips for $650. Thats probably the route I'll be going now. I'll stop by some places this week and get some estmates. The good thing about it is that it ends up cheaper this way. A shop should bend the rest for $200-300. Can't wait. I know of some good exhaust shops around here. I'm thinking of having the import shop were I dyno'ed at do it. They bend all kind of custom stuff all the time for the rice addicts. I could probably work out a dyno test if I wanted. Not sure If I want to dyno the exhaust though. Maybe.
Some GOOD NEWS is that my heat-shield went in today. Very happy with it. Didn't notice any difference at first on cold engine, but as It reached its normal 200, It seemed to be more responsive, just wanted to GOOOO. I'm convinced It's helping. Final fitting was perfect, it's made out of 3 pieces.The back piece has a cut-out for the intake tube to fit through and fits tight against the coolant tank. Have to get some pictures to you guys soon.
More GOOD NEWS, In looking for local dragstips other than Joliet, I found out that Union Grove Strip, just past the border of Wisconsin is open to the public 5-6 days a week(joliet 1-day) and it'sopen untill Nov-Dec, first snow! (joliet closes in 3-weeks) So now I can get some runs in nice cool temps, and test out my soon to be custom exhaust and heat-shield. Cant wait!
800wattAURORA
Yeah, I'll call Jim at Corsa anyway. Maybe today. I'd wait until winter. It's worth an extra month or two to get it done right.
I found a TB for you and RJS. I already e-mailed RJS. I'll call you with the number of the place I got mine. You could maybe send it to RSM and pocket the difference from $300 - plus you get a mounting plate. I'd send the plate to RSM. The bore through the plate is on an angle. Evenly taking 2 mm out of it would be hard I think.
Oh - performance with the new TB. It's good. The car is more responsive when I hit it, and it really pulls hard. I'm happy. It's better. I'm sure it's not as much of a change as yours though. Matching the plate should increase the TB gains pretty good. I think 2 HP is probably pretty conservative. Another 3 or 4 is possible. It seems to be almost as big a difference (in theory) as my TB change.
What is the trade-off, lower gas mileage?
What really gets me is that the TB post is supposed to be 75 mm. The mounting plate (almost as long as the TB itself) is supposedly 78 mm - I'll be picking mine up tomorrow and know for sure and the intake manifold is 80mm. Why not just match everything a little better??? Beats me.
I know this sounds too simple, but I really think it's possible that not a lot of engineering goes into the intake and exhaust. It's an afterthought, and whatever fits and mechanically works and can be ready for production within budget probably gets built. Look at the air box and the rest of the intake. It's a joke as far as promoting good air flow. They could have double walled the box from the outside, but they just put a liner on the inside to quiet it down.
You read about Ford's SVT division or team and they start opening things up on the basic intake and exhaust on the standard production cars. They use cone filters in special intake housings - all the stuff some of us are doing.
Trade-off. I don't think so. For regular driving, the TB just doesn't have to open quite as far to allow the proper amount of air for the desired acceleration or cruise. Mileage might even be better, but I'd expect it to be the same - except when you hammer it you are definitely pulling more air and more fuel.
So Henry, RSM said they had 3 TB's on the shelf for the 95. How about it? With the K&N filter, the TB and the mounting plate (I think they offer a "torque plate" for the 95's only - not really sure what that is) you could be around 270 HP too.
BTW Henry, does your 95 have the white plastic liner on the inside of the air box? Or was this added in 96? BLK97 said he got an air box from a 95 that apparently did not have the liner. Without the liner you certainly get a nice roar like you said you like.
BAD NEWS!!! Today after work, I went to get a quote for a custom bent dual exhaust with my supplied Corsa mufflers. On the way to the import/dyno shop, MY CAR DIED.
LEFT ME STRANDED!!! DIC read SHUT OFF ENGINE NOW!!! So I pulled over on the shoulder of the highway, open the hood, and the accesory belt was shreaded. There was also coolant all over the back of the engine bay/ground. I'm calling the water pump the guilty colperate.
I was PO'ed. Lock her up and start walking. Next exit had an Acura dealer where they called Enterprise for me. Now tonight I gotta get it towed to the dealer, 15mi. away.
ERRRRRRR
800wattAURORA
I talked to Jim B. He seemed to think maybe there will be a chance later this month but it was a big maybe. He is indeed busy. I offered to be able to go there on almost no notice to take advantage of any unexpected slow period that may pop up. I also offered to come on the weekend if anybody there would want to work on it on a weekend - I'd even pay a little more I guess.
Don't worry, something will work out. I'm sure something will open up, and if it doesn't Jim said he could sell me some of the bends as well so all an exhaust guy would need to do is supply the straight pipe and fit it all together. I'd get stainless if I could. The more I think about it, if he could supply the bends too - assuming they knew in advance what angle and all to send, that may be very nice.
I'd wait a little longer. This mounting plate should keep you busy for now.
Thanks.
800 - here is my e-mail from Jim B:
Greg,
I let the guys know what you want...when we know that we may have a day that
we can get you over here, we will bring you in. I do not have the
information on the bends from the other system that we built. This was a
one/off system.
I should be able to give you a few days notice to have you come over.
Jim
I still have to believe the difference is varying the length of the straight pieces. I was really hoping to hear him confirm that and basically just order a set with some extra straight pipe with the 45's cut out. Oh well. If we just wait a little more I think something will happen.
I got the mounting plate. It really angles down to the manifold harder than I thought. You really can't tell - or your eye doesn't pick it up when you are looking at it bolted to the car or looking at it through the TB. It appears to be 78 mm all right. Just like Zsolt said. It is REALLY caked with crap. I'm amazed at how much builds up on this part of the intake. Porting this to 80 mm should really help a lot, and the car realize the full potential of the 80 mm TB.
Does anybody have an idea if the intake manifold gets this nasty as well - down farther inside of it? I'd sure expect build up like that, if deposited evenly everywhere in the manifold to hurt performance.
It seems that after a major cleaning out, maybe an oil change the next day would be a good idea. What do you think?
Sorry - for the sake of continuity, I'm not jumping to the maintenance board.
I'll be calling that yard tommarrow for the TB & plate, thanks again. That new from Jim is interesting, Sounds like he'll try to get us in there sooner than later. If I got a weeks notice, I could probably meet you there, if that's what Jim wants, both cars, or you go, and ship me mine. Either way is fine. Personally I'd like to go there too..
Dyno-graphs-Tonight I have class, Advanced Desktop Publishing, there's a scanner with every Mac. I'll get it to you tonight hopefully. Intake vs. Intake+TB. Next week I'll go to the dyno place and see what else I can dig up.
I bet that the Intake manifold IS full of that build up too, like the TB and plate. Garnes why don't you take it off and clean it, while you got it out, bore it out past 80. I'll send you the manual steps for it.
800wattAURORA
In fact, I'm really excited to get the mounting plate done and installed. The way I see it (roughly) is that my car now sees an effective gain in intake from 76 mm (my stock TB was 76 and now is 79.5)to 78 mm (stock mounting plate)= 2 mm. It's effectively a bit more, maybe, because the entire TB is a bit less restrictive at 79.5 mm. Anyway, by going to 80 mm on the plate, I'll effectively be getting another 1.5 mm. Just having everything match is a help for better flow too. It's a crude way to look at it, but probably not far from how it all works together. It seems that by doing the plate, I should realize somewhere from 50 to 75% of the gains I saw from just the TB. So I think it should add at least another +2 peak HP and torque with +2 to maybe even +3 throughout both curves. Zsolt thought even more and is perhaps right, but I'd be really happy with just another 2.
GET US PICTURES OF YOUR HEAT SHIELD! This really sounds great. I'm very interested myself.
When I have it all apart again, I'll blast the intake manifold out to help clean it again. Perhaps this is not a bad idea to do once in awhile.
I think something will happen with Corsa. Jim sounds a lot more positive about it knowing that we are interested in making a short notice visit. It seems that he just can't plan and schedule something like this because there is so much going on, but he knows there is a good chance an opening will pop up between delivery of materials or some other temporary slow spot.
I guess I missed it -- what's the story on your front control arm replacement? Why was it necessary? List for the arms is $165 to $254 depending on side and year. There must have been a lot of labor or other parts to total $4400. Experiences like this worry me.
About your water pump -- up to now I have always thought water pumps failed "gracefully." That is, leaking coolant as a warning before a catastrophic failure like yours. Did you see any signs before your belt was shredded? Can you tell if the pump seized and caused the belt to shred? Or was it something else?
They also mention in another thing that the MAF is 87mm. I thought mine was a bit bigger, but maybe not.
The TB and mounting plate from the junk yard were just plastered with crap. I sprayed the plate down last night and barely made a dent in the crud. I gave up. That thing must have had huge miles on it or the car was not maintained or running properly.
I wouldn't do the TB clean with the engine running on the Aurora. The MAF has to be off and without that hooked up it would be "check engine" or maybe it would not run. I'd think it would be goofed for a little bit.
That new Northstar bit was great. That new TB sure looks simpler and smarter. The current design is just hokey and not as flow friendly. Hey, if they are increasing it to 80 mm and mention better flow - well then the RSM guys must be ahead of the curve.
I cleaned my original TB and looked it over. Taylor is right - the TB tapers up toward the middle where the throttle plate rests. The middle part appears to be machined as well. Basically, it looks like the piece is cast with a taper toward the middle from both ends. Then it is machined such that the middle of the TB is always an exact size. This makes sense really. If the castings vary, how could you get the throttle plate to always fit just right? You'd have one - maybe two moving targets.
So, my first guess is that all the TB's have the same sized throttle plate and are the same in the middle, BUT Taylor said his measured 74 mm (at the end) and he still noticed a taper to the middle. Hmmmm. I still think they machine the middle for an exact fit, but it stumps me why they would/could still vary if you have a machined middle. I'm assuming that Taylor's stock piece exhibited the machining in the middle. Sure seems weird.
Henri
I took some pictures of my TB setup and they are posted here. I'm not sure if the same TB mod can be made to mine. It looks like there isn't much room on the top or bottom to bore it out. I tried to measure mine, but it was pretty lame. The best I could do was try a small cloth tape-measure. It was totally inaccurate as sometimes it seemed like it was anything from 75mm to 80mm and everything in between. What did you guys use to measure it?
Cool pictures. You need to send that to Zsolt at RSM. Get his opinion. I wonder if the "crossover" isn't much different than the mounting plate on the classic. It has an EGR pipe running through/to it as well as another hose that hooks to it. If you get the stuff from a junk yard, you can study it and it all becomes much more clear.
Your TB seems basically the same except it seems to have those big flanges for attaching to the upstream ducting or whatever.
I measured the TB on the exit side. The back is flat with the port at right angles to it. It's easy to measure with a ruler. The front is tougher and at best you can eye-ball it with the ruler. It seems to be the same as the back. I'll bet yours is the same as the classic.
Thanks again for that link on the new Northstar TB. That is really cool.
SETH - Modify the air box as I have described on Caddyinfo.com (with dyno graphs) and drop a K&N filter in it. Or, get the intake from RSM racing - but I'd recommend building a heat shield for it like Taylor just did. He WILL be sharing pictures with us in the near future.
Next - Get the RSM racing larger throttle body and also get the mounting plate match ported to the TB and the manifold.
Finally the exhaust - you said you already got something. What do you have??? Taylor and I are waiting to have Corsa customize their STS system for our Auroras. It's a rather quiet system that is still straight through. I'm not aware of any cat-backs for the Aurora.
BTW - Taylor and I have dyno'd the RSM throttle body and the intake improvements. Both work very well. My dyno curves for the TB are on GMForums at the caddy site.
Also - stay away from any MAF crap. I got the Granatelli MAF, dyno'd it, did everything right. It LOST power. And I LOST my money on that one. Just stick with the air box/induction, throttle body, and exhaust. The intake and throttle body gets you to about 270 HP from what we have seen. The car will have a different personality. With exhaust too, it will be way up in the power department.
Also, Garnes, that plate that connects to the intake manifold is called the "plenum duct" on my car. It says to discard it once it's removed from the water crossover. However, your's is different since it goes right on the TB and you said it has some hook-ups on it. Just FYI.
Seth, I would strongly suggest going back and reading this group (Accessories & Mods) from the beginning. There is a ton of good info in it. But here is the airbox thing. And here is caddyinfo. The throttle body comes from RSM. The mounting plate connects to the throttle body. You have to read back some here for info on that. I dont think youll find it discussed anywhere else. There is another forum that deals with caddys but has some good crossover with the Aurora since the engines are basically the same. Before asking about things that have been discussed many times, please read back. It really is worth it. This group has less than 300 posts, so it isn't too much reading.
I'd say you took care of Seth with all the links. Thanks. If you call that place in Indy, I'll bet they can get the crossover with the TB they have access to. It could get expensive though.
Seth - at the caddyinfo.com site, you will see pictures of the air box mod too. The mounting plate is the piece between the TB and the manifold. If you ever get a TB from a bone yard, get the mounting plate too - they go together.
I think these things are the key to making a go/no-go decision on this for the new Aurora.
Shop manual shows it should be taken off and cleaned every 30K miles.
Francois
Oh, just an observation. I noticed on my MAF that it has holes on the sides for mounting it to something, except it isn't mounted. There seem to be three of them similar to the way it is on the classic. But, they are on the inlet side, not the outlet side of it (there is an arrow on the MAF to indicate which way the air is supposed to flow). Just thought it was interesting.
http://www.cardomain.com/id/javidogg
Henri
I tried to call Zsolt at RSM, but maybe I'm an idiot. I just dialed a "1" in front of their number and it didn't work. Is there some Canada code I have to dial? I emailed him instead since I tried twice to call. Maybe they will do mine cheap/free since it will give them the know-how to do this mod for the new Aurora as well as the 2000+ Northstar. The only bad thing would be if they couldn't do anything to it. I don't think I could return it all to the dealer's parts department. So I'd be out $500... I guess they'd make a cool paperweight, though.
Javi, when you looked in the trunk did you see the code "QQX"? If not, you don't have it. That autobahn must be by far the most common question here...