Story time - Matt's latest (last?) Alero build

[homegrown]

Everyone:
I'm not sure that anyone even reads this stuff (or cares) anymore, but sometimes I find it therapeutic (if mildly depressing) to document the work I've put into keeping my Alero. I don't know why, but I think I had gotten to a certain point 4 years ago that I've put so much into it at this point, what's another 10 grand?

So, I figured I'd document my latest brain aneurism for you all to poke fun at. But we need to know where we've been to get a sense of my monumental stupidity.
This is (I think?) the 4th motor build I've done on this car.
A bit of history -

Some years ago, when I was young and dumb, I bought one of the used Magnuson supercharger kits, and bolted it on. This was before there were any tuning solutions available (so it was probably 2003 or 2004). Anyway, the car didn't run right, so I cut my losses after a week with boost. That should have been the first warning.

Then, I figured it's safer to just stay naturally-aspirated. So I installed a set of ported heads, along with ported intake manifolds (it was really early on). There were no cams out yet, and the car was still an automatic, but I had a set of TOG headers. Life was good; I should have stopped there. We'll call this build #1.

Fast forward maybe 2 years or so, and Ben (of WOT-Tech fame) starts selling cams. Now I'm salivating. But by that point I had 100K miles on the motor, and I figured since I'll be in that deep, I should just build a new motor. So I worked with a local-ish guy to build a new 3400 with 1mm oversize pistons (but still the stock compression ratio), Ben's "1280" cam grind (it seemed like a good middle-of-the-road compromise), a set of coated S&S headers, and all the supporting do-dads. After some tinkering with pushrod lengths and tuning (with DHP, I think), all was good. The car was still automatic at this point. We'll call this build #2.

Maybe a year or so later, people started looking at the F40 six-speed from the G6 and realizing it wasn't too awful to swap in. I love manuals, so I found that Milzy Motorsports could do the swap, and do all the tuning (now supported by HPTuners!) to make the car happy. Cool! But of course, Mike couldn't guarantee that my S&S headers would clear the shift linkage on the F40, so I should get a set of his new headers. Why not? So I put in my order with Mike - I think literally minutes before Nathan ordered his F40 swap. Of course, the MMS headers went to Swaintech first to get their White Lightning header coating. Anyway, that took some time to get done (maybe 6 months?) and again, there were some teething problems, but I was happy.

Now, it's time to dive head-first down the rabbit hole. I decided the car wasn't fast enough for me. So, Ben had recently come out with his newer cam grinds, and I was all hot-to-trot for his "Race" cam. The specs didn't seem too radical, but he advertised it as wanting 10.5:1 compression or higher. So, I went nuts and using my original block, I ordered 11:1 Diamond Racing forged pistons, forged Scat rods, ported 3500 heads, that sexy Race cam, etc. I threw in a Quaife limited-slip diff at the same time, since I'd be making so much power (or so I dreamt). We'll call this build #3.

The shop in Elk Grove Village that I commissioned to build the new motor, install it and tune it (along with installing the Quaife) took their sweet old time getting the job done - probably 8 months. The car ran, but died on me several times on both the test drive, and the drive home. They never secured the friggin' battery, so it was shorting out the electronics, causing the car to die on the highway (during Chicago rush hour). I wanted someone to crash into me and put me out of my misery at this point.

So, if anyone has read my post from August 2017, I had kinda reached the end of my rope. Somehow, I let myself be convinced to not throw in the towel. So, this time, I was going to have 100% of the work done by someone who has been working on these cars for years, so I called up MMS again. I had him put together a package with a low-mile 3500 LX9 motor, and then throw the complete MMS "Stage 2" package at it. I'm not going to get into the length of time that it took or any of the other baloney, but this is now build #4, and I just got the car back in my garage a bit over 2 weeks ago.

I really haven't driven the car that much yet (I went for a test drive in early February while the car was still at Mike's), but with the cold weather and sketchy road surfaces, I couldn't get a great feel for the new setup. I will say that it doesn't like the cold weather, and doesn't like to idle lower than 1000rpm. If you place any stock in dyno numbers, it made 244.6WHP at 6500rpm, and I'm guessing about 234ft-lbs at the wheels at 4600-ish rpm. So, yeah, I'll have to rev the piss out of this pushrod V6. I've attached the dyno chart for you all to laugh at.

Here's to many happy (and God-willing, trouble-free) miles. But please, for the love of God, don't ever think that this was a good idea.