Larry Tallent's 1977 Corvette with ATI ProCharger
This update from: 02/07/2006

  Larry has a very sharp looking 1977 Corvette that Exotic Performance Plus has installed a Lunati camshaft, Lunati Roller Rocker Arms, Holley/Lingenfelter Series cylinder heads, Holley Performance Mechanical Fuel pump, Edelbrock Performer intake mainfold, and a Holley Street Avenger 670 CFM carb. We also installed Hooker ceramic coated side pipe headers and Hooker side pipes. Larry's engine has a Speed Pro Race Kit, K valve Hypereutectic pistons, Speed Pro Bearings, Hi Volume oil pump, and ARP bolts. Look down past the first set of pictures to see what we are going to do to Larry's car next.

An  ATI ProCharger is going on Larry's car next!!! A D-1SC 12 rib blower pulley with a polished hat, polished blower, and polished brackets. This is going to be one cool Vette, and we are aiming for 500 h.p. ATI does not have any records of this being done on a seventies style Vette, so we are going into unchartered territory. We are going to document the steps along the way to help future Corvette owners out.

     The front crossmember has to be modified for the 12 rib blower pulley to fit on the end of the crankshaft. ATI had told us that the crossmember would probably need to be modified, and they were right. It is not that hard to modify.















  This is what the crossmember looks like before welding metal back in.


  The crossmember is now welded back together with enough room for the supercharger pulley. We painted the crossmember with black paint, although it looks brown in the pictures.



  The two pictures above show the power steering being relocated. ATI supplied us with polished brackets that look really sharp. ATI supplied us with the part number from NAPA for a new power steering pump. A remote power steering reservoir is required.

We next installed the ATI ProCharger, where we ran into a problem. Keep in mind that this is unchartered territory. The blower is sitting too high for the hood to close, plus the air inlet to the supercharger is blocked by the power brake master cylinder. Below are pictures showing our dilemma.















Once we get the brackets for the supercharger figured out, this is going to be one great looking set-up.

Update:
We are going to have a new bracket adaptor machined for us to go between the cylinder head and the supercharger. With the adaptor we will be able to rotate the blower housing down to hopefully clear the hood of Larry's Corvette. Stay tuned...


    

While we are waiting for the adaptor, we installed an aluminum timing cover and an aluminum timing pointer.




 Meanwhile we are adding some of the parts that are necessary to the installation of the blower.





The crank pulley has been bolted on, as well as the aluminum Weiand water pump.



A new radiator overflow tank has been added, as well as the new fuel pressure regulator.

    

A new Barry Grant Mighty Demon 750 double pump has been added to Larry's engine.
Double pump carbs are necessary on blower engines that are set-up as ATI's ProCharger is.

Update!!!
We just got the part machined that we needed to install between the ProCharger and the driver side cylinder head. This vette should be coming together here shortly.
  
  
  A few modifications had to be done to the machined piece for clearance, but it was pretty much a bolt on item!

Below are pictures of the intercooling piping as it is being created.

  
  
The supercharger now fits very nicely. We tried the hood today and it almost clears without having to do any modifications to the bottom side of it.

  
  
  
  

The NOS fuel pump was located back by the fuel tank to supply this soon to be potent engine the added gas that it is going to need.

  
  
As you can see from the pictures above and below, the intercooling plumbing is taking shape!

  
  

And now trial fitting the hood, and it clears!!!
  


     We figured we might as well get a picture of Larry with his car, seeing as his Corvette seems to have become a permanent fixture here at EPP...

  
  
The plumbing nightmare is coming to an end. It all fits under the hood, now we just have to route the air filter assembly past the master brake cylinder. Stay tuned for next week!


  
We added a Turbo XS BOV to this project to reduce the pressure when backing off the throttle.

     
Finding room to mount and locate an air filter was a little difficult, as the master brake cylinder was right in the way. Home Depot came to the rescue with a plumbing piece made out of rubber that reduced off the 4.0" blower outler to 3.0", as shown in the picture below here.

  
We bought an idler pulley through ATI ProCharger to keep the blower belt up off of the Vette's suspension. Mike McGee, one of our employee's, machined the insert to use this pulley with the blower.
  
We then took the blower assembly back off to drill out the blower housing bracket for the idler pulley.

  
  

Here are two good pictures of the new idler pulley that we created. Notice how the belt is now away from the suspension.

  

Here are some better pictures of the air filter intake. There is not a lot of room to work with!

  

 We made our own power steering reservoir.

  
The car is now getting onto our Mustang Chassis Dyno. You can see on these pictures how we modified the front brace across the radiator.


We are currently having trouble getting the air/fuel ratio dialed in. ATI ProCharger told us today they have not had any luck with any carb other than the tried and proven Holley double pumper. We are going to pull one out of our new stock and see what happens tomorrow morning.



           

It's Friday night at 10:00 p.m. We've been working on tuning this Corvette since 9:00 a.m. this morning!!!  We got the car running pretty good today. Yesterday we had a Holley 800 double pumper on it. Today we tried a Holley 700 double pumper to see if the bottom end would come around. We think we have the timing figured out, plus we are on our third set of spark plugs... Now we are going to go back to the Holley 800 double pumper to see if we can get the bottom end to come around now with the larger carb, and bring back the top end power. We've changed the oil, and we're going to try the Holley 800 double pumper again tonight before we have to open the shop in the morning at 8:00 a.m. 

           
                                                                                                    
 
 Guess what working all day and all night gets you? The deer in the headlight look...
Here John and Chad are shown starting all over again with the Holley 800 D.P.

  Saturday morning at 8:00 a.m. and two more dyno runs got us a blown head gasket!!! I should have waited and let the engine cool down after the first run, but I was overly anxious to get this Vette off of the dyno and take it out on it's maiden voyage.
  Off comes the intake and the cylinder head. We were going to install a camshaft that didn't have as much overlap, since we had to pull one cylinder head back off, but we decided to keep the Lunati grind that we had already installed, as Larry had initially wanted a lumpity lump sounding camshaft. We had noticed a difference in cylinder mixtures from the four inner cylinders compared to the outer four cylinders, so we were thinking that a single plane intake manifold was in order. We carry Weiand's excellent Team G lineup of intake manifolds, and we had three different versions to pick from for Larry's car. I went for the one that had the lowest rpm power band, as Larry hopefully won't be cranking this car up to seven grand. You won't will you Larry???

           

The Weiand Team G intake manifold has the air gap design under the runners as well as under the front water passages. This intake is one smooth looking design.

            



 We installed an alternator relocation kit that mounted the alternator to the passenger side as shown. This is one slick looking engine compartment!!!

 We are sticking to the Holley 800 double pump carb, as we saw an extra 30 rwhp with it compared to it's smaller brother, the 700 double pump. Hopefully it will be back on the dyno shortly.

Tragedy struck:

  We had pulled the car off of our chassis dyno, and was driving it around our building when white smoke started to pour out of the right sidepipe!!! We pulled the head off of the passenger side and replaced the head gasket, as it had blown. Fired the engine up and all was well, for a short time... We had more white smoke coming out of the right sidepipe!!! After removing the head and after some tedious checking, we found the block had cracked in one of the cylinder walls. Well Larry wisely decided to go with a stroker, a 383 was ordered up from Jasper with forged pistons with 10.5 / 1 compression.

   


   
   
   
   
   
   

We now have the engine installed, and should have it up and running Monday.

   


  Tuesday morning, the Sun is shining and Larry's Vette is out roaming the streets!!!
We fired the Corvette up yesterday and broke in the camshaft. Today we are putting some miles on the car to break in the engine.
  While we were waiting for the engine to be delivered from Jasper, Larry took the supercharger plumbing and had it painted to match the color of the car. The pipes came out looking really great, as can be seen in the following pictures.

       

       

        

Larry picked up his car to drive it, and break in the new engine. Below are some pictures that I took as Larry was getting ready to take off in his Corvette. You will notice that we still have to make a prop rod for the hood.

         
        
        
                And yes, the hood still fits...

02/20/04
Larry stopped in and reported that he just about has 500 miles on his new stroker engine. We will be flogging his vette on our dyno within the next couple of weeks, as the weather here is starting to warm up ever so slightly.

  As luck would have it, the block on Larry's Jasper engine cracked while we were just starting to dyno Larry's car! Once we got the engine apart, the general concensus was that the block had to be cracked or prone to failure from Jasper. Jasper replaced the shortblock for us without any problems, and they were very easy to deal with. 
  At this point we decided to have our ace engine builder put a shortblock together for Larry's car, using premium parts. Larry has reported that this new engine is much smoother and feels much stronger than anything that has previously been residing in his Corvette. Below are some pictures of Larry's new engine.









As you can see, the engine was even painted the same color as the car this time around!

Here is a link to Brent, who built Larry's engine.
http://www.exoticperformanceplus.com/services.php?service=28








                            






















  

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