Joshua Rife's 402 '98 T/A w/ ATI ProCharger D-1SC
This update from: 11/13/2006

Joshua Rife has a great looking 1998 Trans-Am that he had gullwing doors installed on. It is hard to believe this Trans-Am has 170k+ miles on it, as it has been well cared for. Joshua and his dad, Jack, brought the T/A to us to have it set up to run the dragstrip.







Joshua has an SLP 402 iron block engine in his Trans-Am, along with an ATI ProCharger D-1SC. Joshua is going to have us install our front mount intercooler kit on his car, and then increase the boost level. The polished air intake plenum you see here will be deleted, and we will use a BMR RS001 polished cover in it's place. The battery is being relocated to the trunk and we are removing the air conditioning. We are also installing a complete BMR suspension package, including a BMR k member, and BMR upper and lower a arms. These items will greatly reduce the weight on the front end. 

  

Crate-Engine-Assembly, "ZL402" LS1 Iron Short Block (Low Compression)

The ZL402 LS1 based iron stroker short block is loaded with the kind of top quality hardware found in short blocks costing much more. It was the first choice for the experts at Car Craft magazine, who took an off-the-shelf ZL402 stroker motor and produced over 575 horsepower, naturally aspirated. Our ZL402 is built around a new GM LQ9 Gen III 6.0 liter block, a 4.00" forged steel crank, and 4.00" forged aluminum pistons. This package is sold only in short-block form, minus manifolds, camshaft, oil pump, and other equipment. The advantage of this approach is it allows you to pick a combination best for you. SLP also sells heads and cams, and we’d be happy to recommend the best combination for you. This engine has the SLP pn# 12411 500 hp head and cam package installed in it.

The SLP 402 engine comes with head bolts instead of head studs. We replaced the head bolts with ARP head studs as we will be adding more boost to this engine.


Remote Battery Location:



The BMR battery box is getting located back here, where the spare tire originally was located.



We installed a Moroso disconnect switch through the rear tailight, as most tracks require a battery disconnect at the rear when the battery is located in the rear.





We route the disconnect switch through the right tailight, in case the car is ever brought back to stock.


Front Mount Intercooler:



The pictures here show our modifying the front end for our front mount intercooler assembly. The box tube in the picture is for the top of the intercooler.







Here is our large 31 x 12 x 4 intercooler installed and ready to be plumbed.





We installed two brackets to secure the bottom of the intercooler, which can be seen in the picture below.



The picture above also shows the routing of the completed intercooler plumbing.



We use heavy duty 4 and 5 ply couplings for our front mount intercooler assemblies.



The front end is back on, and the intercooler will be seeing plenty of cool air to keep the inlet air temperatures down.



The relocated bypass valve can be seen in this picture. We decided to vent it to the atmosphere, and added a large K&N filter to it.





We added a brace across the bottom of the bumper to firm it up.


Inlet hat and Filter:





We deleted the ATI ProCharger plastic air inlet hat, and installed an aluminum 4.00" 90 degree elbow. We added a larger 9.00" long K&N filter to the 4.00 elbow, K&N part number RE-0870. Our testing has seen an increase of 2 pounds of boost just by swapping out the ATI supplied inlet hat and filter for the parts we installed here. We have also noticed that belt slippage problems we have had in the past in the 14 psi range with the stock 8 rib combination are eliminated with the new inlet combination.

Suspension and drivetrain:





We installed a Spec Stage 3+ clutch and pressure plate. The car already had a Spec Stage 3 clutch and pressure plate, but the recently released Stage 3+ clutch has a much higher torque rating. The 3+ is a full face design, instead of the 3's puck design. The 3+ does not shudder like the Stage 3 does during initial break in, which is an added plus.
Joshua had an aluminum flywheel in his car, which works great for autocrossing and road racing, but the aluminum flywheels do not carry enough inertial for drag racing launches. We replaced the aluminum flywheel with a Spec billet steel flywheel.

 


We lightened up the front end by replacing the stock K member with one from BMR, along with BMR Upper and Lower A Arms.  We also added adjustable Hal/QA1 shocks and springs to the front end.



The factory wiring on these cars has a tendency to become burnt when headers are added to the engine. This was the case on this car, and we rewired the harness and rerouted the wiring out of harms way.



In the rear we removed the springs that had dropped this car into the weeds, and installed a new set of stock springs. We used adjustable Hal/QA1 shocks on the rear as well.



We ordered up a Moser 9 inch rear-end with 3:73 gears and a spool, as this car will primarily be used at the track. We had Moser install an aluminum center section to drop a little more weight out of it. We prepped and painted the rear before installing the rear. We also installed an BMR adjustable panhard bar and adjustable lower control arms, along with BMR lower control arm relocation brackets. 



That Moser aluminum center looks cool! We also installed a BMR Extreme Torque Arm, which is one of the best ones on the market.



Joshua's Trans-Am also received the BMR Xtreme Rear Anti Roll Bar. 
The Xtreme Torque Arm can be seen here as well. 



The front link of one side of the Xtreme Anti Roll Bar can be seen here in these three photos.







We used a PST 3.5" aluminum driveshaft, which is rated at 1200 hp. We sell a lot of these driveshafts, and have never had a problem with them.  That is a new 2006 GTO in the background, already getting headers installed on it, pretty cool!





The BMR adjustable lower control arms can be seen in this picture, along with the BMR lower control arm relocation brackets. We have found the lower control arm relocation brackets, which were designed to work with lowered cars, also work very well with a stock height F Body in getting better traction.



We installed air bags in the rear springs, which help as a tuning aid at the drag strip. The right rear is normally pre-loaded to 5 to 10 psi.

EPP ATI ProCharger Crank Pulley:





To up the boost without having to swap to too small of a blower pulley, we installed a larger crank blower pulley that we have machined for us. This pulley will allow us to run a lot more boost without having to worry about belt slippage.

Fuel Plumbing:



We took out the fuel tank and welded in a -12 weld bung/fitting into the fuel tank.



We use Earl's -12 braided hose from the fuel tank over to an extra large Holley in line fuel filter.



The Holley fuel filter can be seen in the left side of the above picture. From the fuel filter, we ran more -12 braided line to an Aeromotive Eliminator  pn# 11104 fuel pump. This fuel pump is rated at 1100hp with forced induction, and is rated for street use.  If this car was going to be used on long trips, we would be adding a Aeromotive pn# 16302 Billet Pump Controller to the combination. The Pump Controller won't be necessary for this particular application. 



The -12 fuel line may be viwed as overkill, but both the filter and pump are ported for -12, and we decided to run -12 line so that this system will be able to handle a lot of possible future upgrades in the horsepower department.









The fuel line is routed up to an Earl's in line filter up by the firewall. When dealing with fuel injection and forced induction, you can't have too many filters before the fuel injectors. 



The Earl's fuel filter can be seen over by the brake booster.



We used FAST fuel rails and Siemens 60lb fuel injectors to finish out the fuel system.



We used an Aeromotive pn# 13101 regulator, and ran Earl's -6 line back to the tank for the return side. We used a Summit Racing overflow tank instead of the large factory tank. Joshua is planning on getting this car repainted, and this overflow tank can be easily removed to paint the rusty looking sheetmetal below it. The battery cable coming from the trunk mounted battery can also be seen in this picture, running to a junction block.

Exhaust System:



Joshua already had SLP long tubes, off road pipes and a Borla Cat Back on his car. We added an electronic cut-out to it to help expel the extra exhaust that this car will now be producing.



We welded a 3" collector to a piece of 3" exhaust tubing to add an exhaust tip to the cut-out, to direct the exhaust flow away from the bottom of the car.

Tuning:







Here is one of the runs we made, this car is consistantly putting out 750 to 757 rwhp, run after run, all on 93 octane unleaded! The torque is right up there close to the horsepower!



We ran Joshua's T/A last night at Muncie Dragway. We installed my 4 year old M/T ET's on the car, and we worked at dialing in the suspension. Muncie is not known for traction on Wednesday nights, but the car came out of the hole better than we thought it would. I missed fourth gear in the run above, and as the mph shows, I coasted the last 1/8 of a mile. Grabbing gears turned out to be a real problem. Something we overlooked was that the master cylinder had not had the drill mod done to it. It is amazing how much of a difference the drill mod makes as I missed 2nd gear twice and 4th gear once in the three passes we ran.  Once we get the tranny to where it will shift, this car will be deep into the 10's.  If this car had a turbo 400 with a 4000 stall converter, this car would be an easy nine second car.
The inlet air temps were higher than what we expected, which shows that the D-1SC blower is maxed out on this combination. By mid track, timing was being pulled out of the engine. This engine clearly needs an F1 head unit in place of the D1SC head unit.  


Bogart Wheels and Mickey Thompson Tires:




A car like this deserves nothing but the best, and the best in wheels are manufactured by a company called Bogart. You have to be patient when ordering a set of Bogart wheels, as there is a backlog of orders, but the wait is worthwhile. First of all, they are extremely light. Second, they bolt right on an F Body without having to grind the calipers down. Third, they just look awesome! The Bogarts on the rear are a 15 x 10, and fit perfectly.

That Mickey Thompson ET Street tire is a monster 28 x 13.50 x 15!
It has a true 11.0 tread width on the ground, and has a 28.0 tire diameter.
This wheel-tire combination is approx 20 pounds lighter per each wheel and tire, than the ones they are replacing.



The ground effects had to be removed and modified to fit with the monster rear tires. Brent is shown here fitting the ground effects back on the car.



The front Bogart wheels are a 15 x 4, and the Mickey Thompson tires are a 26 x 7.50 x 15. These wheels and tires are super lightweight, which is really going to help to launch this car!





While working on this car, my guy's discovered a problem that could of caused a disaster at the track. It is hard to see the cranks in the plastic tank in these two pictures, but they are there. This car has a lot of miles on it, so it isn't too surprising to find things like this. Luckily we found the cracks, as it could of made for one huge water burnout!



We installed a new aluminum radiator from a well known company called Be Cool. This radiator looks great, plus it will keep the engine much cooler than the stock radiator did.





We also installed a BMR RS001 polished radiator cover, which really adds to the great looks of the engine bay.

Inlet air filter update:
We found a good way to keep the air filter out of harms way, and the filter is really isolated from rain the way we positioned it, as shown in the pictures below.

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