Steve, my 1995 K1500 Cowboy Cadillac.

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MIHELA

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My concern when I knew I needed to take it off was clearance to the back bolt, it's REALLY close to the firewall. I had to take it off from below with a wrench. Remember this is in no way a factory engineered combo. And at this point the engine has not been fired.
 

MIHELA

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So at this point the engine is full of coolant, primed, trans is full, all the hoses are hooked up, I have the fuel lines hooked up. Funny enough they required no modification whatsoever to fit. I made several attempts to start the engine with a basic tune based on the 454 with the most basic parameter changes. The engine would not start. I had fought with a starter problem and already replaced the battery and starter with a fresh AC Delco and a new mini starter. It would crank and puff and nothing. So I took the distributor back out and looked it over. Hmmm.

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MIHELA

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I got a new pick up coil ordered. The original one is the one I robbed from the 4.9, the new one was a 368 application. Once I replaced it the engine fired but 180 out, it sounded like a Civil War cannon in the driveway when it backfired. That was an easy fix. Then I had to chase a few wiring faults. A couple trans wires were wrong for the 454 application and I switched them by accident. This caused some errors in the datastream. Then I realized that the TCC solenoid was dead. I had damaged the connector and epoxied the plastic but apparently it had broken internally as well. Luckily I had the drain plug so I just caught the fluid and put it back in when I was done.
 

MIHELA

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I alluded to it before, but another big issue. I could not build vacuum and it was very hard to get going. Turns out I had two big issues. One I had the MAP sensor reading the wrong port, and 2 the manifold gasket was not sealing on either side. This one fit better.

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MIHELA

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My buddy came over to do the cam break in June 15th 2018. The engine ran very rough at idle but ran well at 2000 RPM. It didn't overheat. Looking at the datalog I was getting a strange spiky MAP signal. I hooked up a vacuum gauge and the needle bounced back and forth violently one the left bank. I took the valve cover off and found that the rocker arm was cocked and was hanging the valve on cylinder #2. Fixed that and it ran pretty well, so I started the process of tuning.
 

MIHELA

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Next I added an extra washer on each mounting bolt for the torque converter. I ending up using the same bolts as the ones that hold the front axles to the stubs. Then I fixed the exhaust leak (temporarily, unfortunately) with orange high temp RTV. Now I was able to drive it out of my drive for the first time in nearly 3 years.

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MIHELA

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I borrowed my friend's wideband to get some data. It is an AEM that I made a temporary mount for in the ashtray spot. It wires into the EGR position wires and is logged by TunerPRO.

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