My Transformer and LED light obsessed build

[nicave13@gmail.com]

First I love my big orange halo's. Only ones I've seen were you can see the bottoms, or done right and evil ie shrouded eyes and amber is legal! Well I always knew I needed RGB in there, but didn't wanna give up driving with the orange. Perfect solution, 80mm RGB Halo's around the HID projector housing. Oh yeah 2 sets of Halo's

Being me I tied it all together So know I have matching glowing wheels, back up lights, footwells, fog lights, grills and now headlight halos!!! Check out my quick vid with music mode



Pic's below show how rings came, installed after painting black, daytime pics and some sweet night time ones

Oh, still working on some other projects while my girlfriend Rita is out of town

[MackMan]

Nice! I ordered some 80mm led rings for 5 bucks off eBay the other day. Going to see if they're any good and wanting tondo demon eyes and halo fogs. I've got the jdp color changing halos already, but I decided not to get run demon eyes or fogs whichever I put them in first. Just going with blue. Not sure if its a good idea or not.

[nicave13@gmail.com]

Depends on what u want to do. I showed a guy in North Carolina how to add wheel lights, grills and fogs all rrgb to his JDP kit, not real hard. Just blue goes with urtheme. These lil rings u will have to open headlights and fogs though. I had to anyway, clean up some spots. Let me know ur thoughts.


B][/B]QUOTE=MackMan;6288706]Nice! I ordered some 80mm led rings for 5 bucks off
eBay the other day. Going to see if they're any good and wanting tondo demon eyes and halo fogs. I've got the jdp color changing halos already, but I decided not to get run demon eyes or fogs whichever I put them in first. Just going with blue. Not sure if its a good idea or not.[/QUOTE]

[MackMan]

[QUOTE=nicave13@gmail.com;6289177]Depends on what u want to do. I showed a guy in North Carolina how to add wheel lights, grills and fogs all rrgb to his JDP kit, not real hard. Just blue goes with urtheme. These lil rings u will have to open headlights and fogs though. I had to anyway, clean up some spots. Let me know ur thoughts.

Originally Posted by MackMan

Nice! I ordered some 80mm led rings for 5 bucks off
eBay the other day. Going to see if they're any good and wanting tondo demon eyes and halo fogs. I've got the jdp color changing halos already, but I decided not to get run demon eyes or fogs whichever I put them in first. Just going with blue. Not sure if its a good idea or not.

Yeah the blue goes with my theme. I already had grill lights and stuff hooked into my JDP but my kit is now only showing red I have to reset the box every time.... I have already opened my headlights once cause I painted them haha. Should be easier this time.

[nicave13@gmail.com]

Nice, they r easier not dealing with factory adhesive. Ofer, 2SS/RS is gonna be selling a better RGBW headlight kit. Like JDP's, but brighter factory white and wifi!
I live by him and helped design the kit, won't be any issues with this one gonna look sweet whatever u do

[QUOTE=MackMan;6289187]

Originally Posted by nicave13@gmail.com

Depends on what u want to do. I showed a guy in North Carolina how to add wheel lights, grills and fogs all rrgb to his JDP kit, not real hard. Just blue goes with urthe. I live me. These lil rings u will have to open headlights and fogs though. I had to anyway, clean up some spots. Let me know ur thoughts.




Yeah the blue goes with my theme. I already had grill lights and stuff hooked into my JDP but my kit is now only showing red I have to reset the box every time.... I have already opened my headlights once cause I painted them haha. Should be easier this time.

[MackMan]

Yeah I looked at Ofers lights yesterday he has the wheel lights and they look great! Just more money than I want to spend right now though.....

[TCAT]

Soooo bitchin man!! I love all the new stuff!

[nicave13@gmail.com]

Thanks TCAT! I'm trying to get a better job to pay for all this, lol

Originally Posted by TCAT

Soooo bitchin man!! I love all the new stuff!

[nicave13@gmail.com]

Believe it or not, I do these projects to keep myself sane. Relatively

I swear this is my last LED project well I finished one I haven't posted about yet

When I started working on my engine bay almost a year ago I had something special planned for the under hood pad. Remember, I always gotta be different. Others had done murals, Transformer stuff and even el wire glowing bow ties. Great stuff, but I am a so called LED god

I planned this thing for months! I made demo's and tests in the house. I bought tools, materials, etc. I considered mild to wild and may still change this a little some day. I think I created something one of kind and 100% unique.

Briefly I cut a piece of acrylic to the exact shape of the hood pad. Frosted it then painted it's back white. Sanded the underhood structure smooth and cleaned liberally with alcohol I had some chrome vinyl left over so I painted it white to reflect light better and wrapped the underside of the hood. I attached 2 strips of moving Dream Color 5050 strips top and bottom. I drilled out the 8 mounting holes, epoxied in wall stud bases to run the bolts into. I used 1" tube spacers in the middle to create the area for the light. Wire runs through the middle hole in hinge to controller under air cleaner. Finally I stuck a giant 22" black Autobot logo in the middle and installed it in the car. Other than removing and putting hood back on I did it all myself I tried installing hood myself, and only got half way to hinges from front

Please be kind, as always I worked very hard on this and am very happy with the results Oh, what do the shadows look like to everybody??? I have my own idea, and it makes me happy!

Check out my video, sorry about poor quality:

Pic's show clear panel, bare underhood with lights, day shot, moving lights (half red/blue), and shots installed on car and with my other lights

[Breathtaker]

damn.. simply awesome what you can do.. so much effort and work you put into it.. keep it up man!

[nicave13@gmail.com]

So in my mind, I can do anything I decided that I'm better than GM and all their engineers and could improve the mileage of my car. The Automatic SS Camaro's in 2010 were rated at 17 City and 25 Highway. Well, I can do better than that Keep in mind I did all this work myself, except welding on the exhaust and doing the alignment.

This is going to be a two part thread. This part all the modifications and technical stuff, the next being the experiments and mileage numbers.

To start with the L99 Automatic SS Camaro's have a taller rear end, 3:27 than the Manuals 3:45. The manuals do however have a taller 6th gear, so lower RPM's when cruising hence no need for AFM. Speaking of AFM or Active Fuel Management or DOD (Displacement on Demand.) Much hated by all, but helpful when ultimate mileage is the goal...

So an automatic car starts with the taller rear end and AFM or the ability to operate with only 4 cylinders. Good starting point GM, but you guys might have left something on the table. I’m going to find out what.

I did start my baseline with a BBK cold air intake($100) already in place, so that was essentially the first step. Second I wanted to get rid of those 4 highly restrictive catalytic converters replaced by 2 high flows cats ($200.) This improved the sound 1000000% but did hurt low end torque Next I wanted some of that torque back and back pressure and scavenging was my solution. For scavenging I had an X-pipe ($125) installed to replace the giant factory resonator and h-pipe. Against logic I had it made 2.25 vs. 2.5 factory size to regain some back pressure, it worked! I also hand ported the throttle body opening up the lower portion where the factory had a hump blocking direct airflow in. I also cut off the EGR tube poking into the intake path, learned this of my 98 Z28.

Ok, time to start researching. Spark plugs and wires, heard GM was the best let’s just see about that. I did my research, 1 month, and lower ohm’s is the only real improvement to be had. Stuck with platinum, but found tested 0 Ohm plugs and wires approx 70-90 Ohm (total $135) from Weapons X out of Michigan. Next was an used underdrive pulley ($150 ARP bolt and new belts included), simple in theory turn everything slower equals better mileage. Pic of bell housing is showing how I used a socket to stop flywheel from spinning. Nobody but nobody had the tool to lock it in place…

Now it was time to get serious, how about some headers!!! Well bigger is generally better, whatever, 1 7/8” Doug Thorley shorties ($225) is what I got, 2” long tubes being the biggest. Reason being that shorties keep O2 sensors in factory place and don’t throw codes and have great scavenging without losing low rpm torque. You can see I got them used from Iowa and they looked rough I roughed em up and applied 4 coats off ceramic paint to an already ceramic coated header. Living in Vegas heat is important and keeping it in helps with flow. Finally I heard that lowering springs helped with aerodynamics as well as looks and handling, sacrificing ride. Well I researched who could drop it the most without sacrificing ride, I heard PFADT all day long. So I got a used set of them too ($150) a new jack and tools ($150) and finally an alignment ($100), whew!!! Better get some big gains for all that money. For the record it looks so much better, handles about the same and yes it is a little bumpier.

So I spent $1,335 shipped!!! That’s a pile of cash, better see some results. Of course the best part was doing all the work myself and the research side of it. Oh, all this stuff added performance too. I can smoke my Nitto Invo’s all the way to 40mph Any guesses what helped, what didn’t? What overall improvement I got? You will be surprised!!!

[nicave13@gmail.com]

I’m no scientist or engineer, but here goes my test. First you have to throw out uncontrollable variables like acceleration and driver impute. This means steady 60mph with cruise control on. Second I’m aware only true mileage can be gotten from dividing actual miles driven and fuel used. Well too many variables, ie topping off, driving to gas station, etc. I choose to use the Driver Information Center (DIC) trip average as it has been with 5% accurate over the last 45,000 miles, ok. Then we need a sample size large enough to matter, how about 34 miles round trip. Why round trip? Cause we got hills in Vegas and if you drive up the hill you get to come back down. All this not withstanding we are at 2000 feet altitude. I couldn’t control weather, but range was only 55 degrees from start to 85 at end. Most was around 70 and AC was never used and windows were up. I also kept tire pressure constant, 36 to start and 40 at end due to heat of driving.

To be honest I learned a lot about fuel injector slope and Long Term Fuel Trims through the course of this project. Negative LTFT #’s means the ECM is pulling fuel as it thinks its rich. Positive means to lean and its adding. Oddly through testing and testing a professionally tuned vehicle I found out low negative #’s -7 to -9 is best for performance and mileage. This meant lowering my injector slope on my Diablo handheld. Only way of tuning I had, no wideband or HP Tuners type program. Temperature here plays a big role. Hotter shows less fuel being pulled versus when it’s cold and large negative numbers were seen. In essence the LTFT didn’t really show anything other than temperatures role on fueling and what the computer thinks is going on.

Keep in mind I run 87 octane, got worse mpg with 91 as less fuel and more octane boosters, and I can see knock up to 4 degrees under part throttle only. Stock cars commonly get up to 5 and even 9 in some Vette’s I saw #’s on premium. My stock tune was getting 5 degrees Timing, oh yeah it can go down to 12 degrees advance when going up a hill as a 4cyl, this is where I got improvements with the X-pipe and smaller gap on plugs. Big gap couldn’t pull hills, small gap more power but less mileage. Factory .040 is perfect for NA. Mostly up hills I saw 20-30 degrees of timing. Down hill was 45-50.

Results time. High flows got me 2.2 mpg improvement. Lowering injector slope to -4 got me another 1.65. Then I ported the throttle body, might have lost some and did the X-pipe and overall lost .35. Well on to plugs wires and UD pulley which got me 1.4. Got another 1mpg by lowering injector slope to -10. Next was the shorty headers. They changed my LTFT big time. I was seeing -13’s with cooler temps, so I dropped to -7 fuel inj slope, result was 1.25mpg improvement. Finally I heard lowering springs could get 13% better according to Eibach’s research. Will see about that! Well $450 later I was riding low and slow. With hotter weather I lowered inj slope to -13, yes that low, and was still seeing LTFT’s of -5. Nowhere near the -10’s I had been running. Results, 4.75mpg improvement! Yup, 13% better than last test.

So I went from 30mpg to 41.9mpg Yeah, that’s a 40% increase, suck it big time General Motors Don’t say it was this or that, I did the research and temp don’t affect things this much, only real cold lowers it significantly and my engine temps were always 190 steady and oil at operating temp. First picture shows an early test downhill portion (44.3) and last pic shows same exact drive after all was said and done (52.5.) Saw similar changes on the up-hill portion going from 24.5 to 31.3.

There are bigger and badder things to come! How about 600 horsepower and 30 plus mpg!!! This one took 8 months though… I’m planning and scheming away =D Anyone got some donations

[nicave13@gmail.com]

Awesome pictures!!! Different underground parking garage, even better photos

Enjoy

[Wolfco13]