OFFICIAL: What did you do to your Alero today?

[dbral]

Nice head unit! Recently installed one like that in ours. Required a good deal of trimming behind the radio to get it to fit.

Happy to hear your car is back on the road and running well!

[zzyzzx]

I ended up installing a single DIN with the pocket below. I made a bracket to hold a voltmeter and mounted that in the pocket. Only reason I did it this way is because the single DIN was leftover from another car that I junked and I wanted an excuse (and a place) to mount a voltmeter.

[zzyzzx]

Originally Posted by homegrown

I installed a dash cap (about 1/2 of the original vinyl on the dash was wrinkly and peeling) - although I don't love the look, it's good enough since I have no desire to take the entire dash out to get re-upholstered.

Which one did you use? Can you post some pictures of it?

[homegrown]

Sure. Here you go.
I got it from Coverlay Manufacturing.
The fit is decent - although, it would be nice if they also offered a matching airbag cover. Now I just have to see if the upholstery shop can make something that looks halfway decent.
It's pretty clear where the dashcap ends, but it's not in your normal line-of-sight, so it doesn't bother me. New shifter boot coming soon.

[Oldsnut]

I bought one those covers but haven't installed it on my wife's car yet. Looks pretty nice

[dbral]

Installed powder coated caliper brackets. The red matches the hidden struts.

[OSVDreamer]

Originally Posted by dbral

Installed powder coated caliper brackets. The red matches the hidden struts.

Love it! Should have my drilled and slotted rotors on this week.

[homegrown]

Originally Posted by dbral

Installed powder coated caliper brackets. The red matches the hidden struts.

What - you didn't like the rusty cast iron caliper anchors?
Looks good.
I miss that car.

[dbral]

Love it! Should have my drilled and slotted rotors on this week

Thanks! Post some pictures of your progress when you get a chance

What - you didn't like the rusty cast iron caliper anchors?
Looks good.
I miss that car.

LOL, had these anchors laying around...was going to VHT them satin black until I took a wheel off and and noticed all of the suspension work you did. No wonder the car handles so well.

Matt, if you are ever in the area, feel free to stop by and take it for a spin.

[homegrown]

Originally Posted by dbral

Thanks! Post some pictures of your progress when you get a chance



LOL, had these anchors laying around...was going to VHT them satin black until I took a wheel off and and noticed all of the suspension work you did. No wonder the car handles so well.

Matt, if you are ever in the area, feel free to stop by and take it for a spin.

For what it is, it does handle pretty well (especially considering it's on all-seasons).
You should have experienced what it could do with a properly aggressive alignment and sticky rubber (I had it on Bridgestone Potenza RE-01Rs at one point, which were pretty sticky for full-depth street tires).

I'm glad to hear you're enjoying it.

[dbral]

For what it is, it does handle pretty well (especially considering it's on all-seasons).
You should have experienced what it could do with a properly aggressive alignment and sticky rubber (I had it on Bridgestone Potenza RE-01Rs at one point, which were pretty sticky for full-depth street tires).

I can only imagine how it would handle with that set-up, but maybe one day the car will at least have a dedicated set of wheels/tires for the track/autocross.
I don't have the guts or the skill to push the car to its limits, esp. on public roads but def. can say that I have not yet approached what it is capable of currently. The car acts like it is on rails compared to one with stock suspension settings.

We are certainly enjoying it and we are still noticing new surprises with it. From the gas charged hood lift struts (I should have picked up on that right away lol) to the giant (and grease-able!) outer tie rod ends, cool things keep popping up. You did one heck of a job building it

[dbral]

Did some tuning and learned some things. With the good advice/knowledge from a coworker that has 20+ years of tuning exp. and our stock GA 3.4 at home to compare things to, I was able to get the Alero running pretty well using HPtuners. Other than properly routing the PCV a few months ago, the change that made the biggest difference was bringing the main VE table back to stock-ish settings (Before and after in pic). This made a HUGE improvement in bottom end power and overall smoothness. The next best change was adding timing in the 400-1200 rpm range and adjusting the TPS voltage/throttle blade angle to match our GA's. This brought IAC counts way up and smoothed the idle with or without A/C on. I set the idle to 975 and that took away the harsh F40 6 speed idle clunking and clanking. It now sounds like a light rumble instead with the clutch out in neutral. The car feels and runs totally different from idle to mid range. It has good bottom end power now and the engine can be lugged at low rpm without issue and no more cold morning 2k idle flare....so far lol.

A weird issue popped up after all of the changes were made. With the A/C off and the clutch depressed the idle intermittently will hunt from 600-1100....but only if the car is moving. Once VSS hits 0 mph, the idle surge goes away. Have yet to figure that issue out. Does anyone know what might be going on there?

As others have mentioned here before, HPtuners does not have many tables unlocked for our cars and it seems that there is a lot of cause and effect going on behind the scenes in the PCM making it even more confusing to me. The Scanner only has a dozen or so parameters to view and log so that does not help. The LS people have all kinds of buttons to push and things to look at lol

Top table is before and bottom is after changing the VE table. Guessing MMS was trying to tune for the PCV they screwed up possibly? The tuner that was helping me just shook his head when he looked at that table.

[[ion] C2]

Originally Posted by dbral

the idle intermittently will hunt from 600-1100....but only if the car is moving. Once VSS hits 0 mph, the idle surge goes away. Have yet to figure that issue out. Does anyone know what might be going on there?

yes

not specifically, but it's IAC related

likely due to the IAC plunger opening or closing too far and losing its position. it's a one way street on control, so that's why when you turn the key on or off (not sure which) it will command it to be fully open, or closed, for a period of time where it can be certain that it's maxed out. then it moves to its programmed position from there.

if it collides within the throttle body either open or closed too far, it will throw off what it thinks its position is.

when you're coasting down to a stop, or just driving in any other time other than idle, the IAC isn't controlling anything until the vehicle speed gets below a certain amount.

when you disconnect the trans from the engine, it's no longer resisting any surging and the engine is free to do what it will. the iac is stuck in the wrong position and your spark tuning and such is trying to compensate and control it, poorly

once speed is at 0, the iac comes in to play and the car will typically move it whatever direction is necessary and stabilizes the idle. but the car thinks the iac position is something other than it really is. regardless, it will move it as much as it takes to make it work (unless the position it needs to be is beyond the limits of the tune)

[dbral]

Okay, that makes sense and gives me an idea of something to try out too. That issue was happening again tonight. Going to have to drop back and punt with a slightly different game plan this time. The lack of unlocked tables makes things challenging.

Had a pretty good day in the mountains with the car. Found out that the increased idle rpm does not eliminate the f40 clunk when hot. Going to try the Redline man. trans fluid and see what happens.

[homegrown]

Dammit, Don - you're making me miss that car more and more.....

But I'm glad it's being good to you.

[dbral]

Hey Matt! The car is doing very well bud. Over 200k on it currently and running strong. Olds should have built an Alero optioned like this...

[dbral]

Weird. Between 20 mph and 1 mph, the pcm commands the iac to ~20 iac counts below the target then the idle surge begins as this engine does not like idle speeds below 700rpm or so. Above 20 mph or at 0 mph, all is well. With VSS disconnected, the car drives/idles normally. With the iac disconnected, the car drives/idles normally. Dunno. Maybe a left-over auto trans routine still running in the background? Not sure why this just popped up after tuning either. Maybe it was being masked by the .81v tps setting and high tb blade angle that the was set originally? Very low to 0 iac counts at times. There was no surge before the tune, only a high idle when cold and p0507 every once and a while. Going to try some more things this weekend.

[dbral]

After 2 weekends of trying i'm back to square one lol. Ended up back to cheating the system once again during the 20-1mph GM rolling idle thing by increasing the throttle blade angle at idle to blend that seam and keep a solid idle. Unfortunately, 950 is as low as i can go and still keep a few iac counts with no a/c commanded at 0 mph. Got my fingers crossed that there will not be any cold idle flare like before.

Spent a number of hours trying silly things to override that part of the OS to no avail. Spent another number of hours trying to get this engine to idle consistently @ 675rpm to give the pcm what i assume it wants to no avail. Learned a lot. Got confused even more...

There is a tiny tuner/user defined parameter rabbit hole that might help with this. There are manual trans segment swaps that can be done supposedly. I could be overlooking something too.... Maybe reconnecting the evap system might be beneficial....Maybe i should just be happy the way it is, lol.