Roadmonster.org

…on the RoadMonster.

The RAISS Ram Air Intake is one of my favorite modifications.

The RAISS intake consists of the ram air box, a deflector called the AirForce 2, a boot, filter, MAF extension harness, and hardware.

The RAISS, made by Andrew Simmons at Impalaperformance.com, is a high quality ram air system for the 1994-1996 GM B-Bodies that DO NOT HAVE the tow package.  If you have the tow package you will need to make a few modifications for this intake to fit your car.  It is not hard to do, but I thought I should mention this.

There are nine pics of the RoadMonster’s engine bay on the Impala Performance website, showing both my single and dual filter setups.

My RAISS is finished in black wrinkle powdercoat.  I like the black wrinkle powdercoating because it does not show dirt or fingerprints.  It always looks good, even when it’s not clean.

I used the single air filter that came with the kit for awhile, but I really wanted something that fit the ram air box a little better.

This dual filter “T” intake pipe fits the RAISS like it was made for it.

This “T” intake pipe is an aftermarket part for the 1997-2000 Corvettes.

It’s called a ’97-00 Corvette Short Ram Intake.

I bought my “T” intake kit from this ebay vendor, who sells them for about $200.00 shipped, as shown in the picture below.

This kit comes with decent filters, all the hardware you will need, and a K&N filter cleaning / oiling kit.

The best part of this kit is the “T” intake pipe itself.

It is really well made with clean welds, and has a little tube welded on the backside of the “T” for the IAT (intake air temperature) Sensor.

I am telling you this because there is another kit out there.

It looks like this:

(Yes, I tried the cheaper kit too.)

This kit is made of thinner metal.

These kits can be purchased for about $40.00 shipped.

It is not as wide and the filters are junk.

The easiest way to tell the cheap kit is that is has the hole for the IAT Sensor on the front of the intake pipe.

I was going to use a plug of some kind to cover that hole in the front, but I am too picky…

…I ended up buying the more expensive kit too.

Back to what I did on the RoadMonster…

I did a lot more to my intake system than use the RAISS Intake System and a 1997-2000 Corvette Short Ram Intake.

Most of these upgrades were not really necessary.

I did what I did because I wanted my intake system to look and function as good as it possibly could.

I am showing you everything that I did, so you can pick and choose what you want to do to your own intake.

For starters, I had the “T” pipe ceramic coated at Performance Coatings.

These “T” pipes are aluminum, and need frequent polishing to look good.

Ceramic coating fixed that problem.  Now the pipe always looks good.

Next, I replaced the connector hoses with high quality silicone connectors.

The Throttle Body to MAF Sensor silicone connector is a step down 4″ to 3.5″ connector.

The MAF Sensor to “T” Pipe silicone connector is 3.5″ in diameter.

The screw type hose clamps were replaced with T-Bolt clamps, as they are much stronger, and look better IMO.

The Throttle Body clamp will need to be 4″, and the other three are 3.5″.

I re-routed the IAT Sensor to the tube in the “T” pipe.

I had to drill a hole in the RAISS Box for the IAT Sensor Wiring Harness.

I used a rubber grommet that is just large enough for the black plastic convoluted tubing / wire loom to pass through.

The body of the stock B-Body IAT needs to be ground down until it just fits inside the little tube on the back side of the “T” pipe.  Install the “T” pipe so the little tube is on the passenger side.  Once the IAT will fit into the tube, I removed it, and slipped on about six “O” rings on the IAT.  Now insert the IAT back into the tube.  The IAT should fit into the tube snugly.  The “O” rings hold the IAT Sensor in the tube and keep it sealed as well.

You must lengthen the IAT Sensor Harness for this modification.  I bought a new IAT Sensor Harness, cut off my old IAT Sensor plug right at the plug, and then used two screw type aka Posi Lock connectors, as you will have to unplug this to remove the RAISS box for servicing.  Using a new IAT Sensor Plug Harness will add enough wire for the IAT plug to reach it’s new location.  Remember to cut off the old plug right at the plug, saving as much of the wiring as possible.  You are going to need all the length you can get for the new IAT Sensor location.

In the picture above, you can see the two red Posi Lock connectors between the red alternator bracket and the throttle body.  These connectors work great.  They just unscrew to remove the wire.  Posi Locks can be used over and over, and are water proof.  I’ve never had one fail.

The final touch to my intake was the addition of Outerwears Pre-Filters.

These pre-filters are great!

The off road & circle track guys use these pre-filters on their machines.

They keep the filters VERY clean, which is important, as the RAISS intake is a good bug, leaf, and dirt catcher.

They offer water repellent material, which I chose.

Many color choices are available, and they will make them custom fit for any filter.

Finally, they do not cause a loss of air flow.

Take a look at the user pics on the Outerwears site.

There are several pics of the RoadMonster’s engine bay, with single and dual filters.

Outerwears user pics page one (two RoadMonster pics)

Outerwears user pics page two (one RoadMonster pic)

The only part that I still want to upgrade are the filters themselves.

I don’t want to use an oiled filter because the filter oil can get onto the MAF sensor, causing erroneous readings for the PCM.

So…

I am going to buy a pair of these dry synthetic filters from Summit Racing.

AEM Filter #21-2049DK

Here is what AEM has to say about their filters:

I believe I have covered all the bases with this particular modification.

If I have left anything out, or you need any additional info, please leave me a message.

Thanks for looking!

-Stewart

p.s. Tim, I hope you find this info helpful.

None of the above parts has a CARB number, so if you live in California, I don’t know if you would pass a visual inspection on a smog test.

That said, if I happened to still live in California, I think I would contact K&N and see if they offer replacement CARB stickers for their FIPK filter.

I’d get one of K&N’s stickers, and put it right inside the RAISS box in plain sight.

With a CARB sticker, it just might pass the visual inspection.

If it doesn’t, you could always reinstall your stock intake for smog checks…

The upgrades to the RoadMonster continue…

The RM is once again being upgraded before the show season…

These modifications will also get me to the track this year.

As I am focusing on the chassis, transmission, and rear end…
…I want to upgrade the drive-line.

The upgrades I am currently working on will handle ANY modifications that I do to the car down the road…

…and I’ve got 1 or 2 big mods planned before I consider the RM “done”.

Here is a pic of the what the new Denny’s Drive Shaft will look like:

Since the car is going to be having major surgery…

…might as well do some more upgrades.

Here is Denny’s description:

“Complete 1330 series 3.5 inch 6061-T6 Aluminum Driveshaft with 27 spline automatic transmission slip yoke and u-joints to connect to the stock 8.5 inch 10 bolt 3R S44 pinion yoke.

Built with 3.5 inch 6061-T6 aluminum tubing this driveshaft is stronger than stock and is high speed balanced and tested to be sure it will perform smoothly in your Impala SS.

Great item to cure the typical stock driveshaft vibrations that occur after a gear change.”

I made some calls today, and after speaking to different vendors, I am back at Denny’s where I started.

Might as well as just get the best and be done with it.

A Denny’s Chrome Moly Pinion Yoke is also going in:

Denny’s description:

“This is one of the very best ways to upgrade your stock Chevy or GM Corporate 8.5 inch 10 bolt pinion yoke.  With this 8.5 inch 10 bolt GM 3R series CHROME MOLY pinion yoke with u-bolt set, pinion nut and washer you can still use your existing driveshaft, u-joint and pinion seal.  The GM 3R series original equipment pinion yoke utilizes a strap and bolt design to hold the u-joint in place and the yoke is of a cast material.   Our 3R CHROME MOLY pinion yoke for the 8.5 inch 10 bolt is a u-bolt design and eliminates the possibility of yoke and/or strap failure.  Inexpensive upgrade for any high performance application.”

Again, this pinion yoke is overkill right now, but will be necessary down the road…

Denny’s Driveshafts

The chassis & drive-line should be complete by this May.

I’ll have the undercarriage completely coated and detailed.

The entire chassis, frame, and under-body will be a nice-looking, durable, textured satin black finish.

ALL the bolt-ons are RED powdercoat:

-Tubular Transmission Cross Member

-Upper and Lower UMI Performance Rear Control Arms.

-Metco Drive Shaft Safety Loop.

-Front & Rear Sway Bars.

The rest of the undercarriage will be silver:

-Exhaust System.

-Denny’s Drive Shaft.

-Hughes Finned Aluminum Trans Pan.

That’s it.

The entire undercarriage will be Black, Red, and Silver.

Then the chassis will be “show worthy” in my opinion.

That said, I am making it so the car is still “road worthy”…

I like the fact that the car was one of the few to actually DRIVE to the Salem Roadster Show.

She’ll NEVER be a trailer queen, and my wife and I still plan on a coast to coast road trip in the RoadMonster…

Everything I do needs to look good AND be durable.

Stay tuned, as I plan to have LOTS AND LOTS of photos documenting the chassis & drive-line revisions.

Thanks for looking!

-Stewart

Another part that will be installed soon…

This red powdercoated Metco Driveshaft Safety Loop.

This is a really nice part custom made for the 1994-1996 GM B-Bodies.

Stay tuned for pics of the installation…

I’ve got quite a few things to get done before the show season officially starts.

-Stewart

I’ve got a bunch of parts stored away to install.

This Hughes Performance Finned Aluminum Transmission Pan is one of them…

This Hughes Performance Transmission Pan is a thing of beauty.

The cooling fins dissipate heat, and the construction of this trans pan will actually add strength to the transmission case.

This pan comes with the filter, pan gasket, and magnetic drain plug.

The Hughes Pans come in three depths for the 4L60E:  Deep, Standard, and a Shallow model for Corvettes and Camaros.

I’ve got the shallow model, as the RoadMonster rides pretty low…

I bought the trans pan at Oregon Performance Transmission.

See their eBay store here:

Oregon Performance Transmission

I’ve purchased several items from OPT, and I highly recommend their products and customer service.

Hopefully, I’ll have this trans pan, and a few other parts installed over the next month.

Stay tuned for more info…

-Stewart

Here is an in depth look at the 200 MPH Speedometer…

…that I built for the RoadMonster Gran Sport Project.

I wanted more of a “performance oriented” gauge cluster for this project.

Something that would match the overall theme of the car…

The trouble is…

…no one makes an aftermarket gauge cluster, gauge cluster overlay, or anything for these cars.

Here is the stock 1994 Buick Roadmaster 120 MPH speedometer that was removed.

The stock cluster is pretty sparse, and not much to look at…

A gauge cluster from a Canadian Buick Roadmaster was purchased:

The Canadian cluster looks the same, except that it reads to 200 KPH.

Now we need a new gauge panel face.

An original cluster face was scanned and sent to Sean at LEDmod.com.

Sean took the scan, and made some changes, such as changing it to read to 200 MPH, instead of KPH.

Sean then made a new white gauge face incorporating some logos that I wanted on the cluster.

I made the Buick Motorsports logo myself.

The Gran Sport logo started as photo of one of my exterior Gran Sport emblems, which was then digitized.

The Buick Tri-Shield was the final logo added.

Sean & I moved the logos around until I was happy with the placement.

I wanted this new gauge cluster to match the Auto Meter Arctic White Gauges in my Triple A Pillar Pod:

For the new cluster to match, I needed Orange Needles.

The stock needles are white…

I bought a couple of kinds of orange paint that matched the orange Auto Meter needles…

It turns out that the Krylon Short Cuts Paint Pen was the only paint I needed for this project.

This Krylon Paint Pen worked great!

Here is the needle that I am trying to match.

Yeah, that’s a boost gauge.  I have future plans for it…

What I had to do was sand off all of the white paint from the back side of each needle.

It sounds easy, but you have to be careful.

The white line you see is actually on the front and the back of each needle.

The first third of the white line is on the front, on the black round base of each needle.

This white line can be painted over.

The remaining white paint on the back side of each needle has to be sanded off.

As the needles are clear, all the white paint on the back side has to be sanded off, or you won’t see the orange paint through the clear needle.

All the white paint must be sanded off, but you don’t want to damage any of the clear needle, or scratch the black base.

To make matters more challenging, the backside of each needle is not flat, it’s got a half-round indentation running the length of each needle.  The sandpaper must be folded to fit into the indentation of the needle…

The pic above shows the first coat of orange paint.  Several coats were required to get the needles just right…

The two pics below illustrate the back sides of the needles that must be painted.

It’s tedious work, but well worth it in the end…

Here we have the new face and repainted needles installed on the Canadian cluster.

The Shift Indicator was also repainted Orange, as it had become faded.

Since I had done a floor shift conversion, I could have easily just eliminated the shift indicator in the gauge cluster.

However, since the indicator in the dash is set up to function with the floor shifter, I kept it.  I like that both gear indicators work in tandem.

A brand new (NOS) gauge cluster lens was purchased from GM and installed on the modified cluster:

Now the cluster is almost ready to be installed.

Almost, but not quite.

I still had to set the Canadian Odometer to match my Current Car’s Odometer / Actual Mileage.

I won’t bore you with the details here, but it was really a pain in the butt to reset the odometer.

It felt like the automotive equivalent of Rubik’s Cube…

Send me a message if you want the instructions on how to do this.

Suffice it to say that I got the “new” odometer to exactly match the “old” one…

Also, I had to install a Dakota Digital SGI-5 Speedometer Calibrator so the new cluster would read in MPH instead of KPH.

This unit from Dakota Digital was easy to calibrate.

There is only one wire to cut when installing the SGI-5.  It’s the GREEN/WHITE wire going into the stock speedometer.  Hook one end to INPUT, one to OUT 3, and of course, the power and ground.  That’s it!

The process was even easier by doing this modification to a Buick Roadmaster Sedan.  You see, the Climate Control Unit in the dash has the ability to be set into Diagnostic Mode.  In Diagnostic Mode, there is a tachometer and a SPEEDOMETER function.  Nice huh?  I just set the Climate Control into diagnostic mode, set it to tell the car’s speed, and then calibrated the new cluster with the Dakota Digital Interface.  Easy!

Here is the end result:

Now all of my gauges match.

Even the Fuel Pressure Gauge under the hood matches my new gauge cluster…

I finished off this cluster with green bulbs.

The Autometer Gauges in the A-Pillar have green lighting too.

All the gauges match the stock green lighting in the car.

It is important that everything matches IMHO.

Now I have a 200 MPH Speedometer / Gauge Cluster that matches the theme of my RoadMonster.

It really finishes off the interior quite nicely IMO.

What do you think?

A friend of mine just sent me these:

I’ve never owned anything made by Hotchkis before.

All I can say is “WOW!”

Beautiful machine work with a black powdercoated finish.

These parts are automotive artwork, really.

I need to get these installed!

Here is the product info on these parts:

Hotchkis Website

Thanks again my friend!

The LT4 Knock Module is a modification that a lot of B-Body owners do.

The Knock Module (not to be confused with the Knock Sensors) is located in the PCM (Powertrain Control Module aka Computer).

There is a little access cover on the bottom of the PCM.  See below.

The LT4 Knock Module is less sensitive than the LT1 Knock Module.

What this means is that it is less likely to sense “false knock” from your roller rockers, headers, etc. and retard the timing.

Here is what GMPP says about the LT4 Knock Module:

“These GM Performance Parts knock sensor modules are specifically designed to monitor detonation at the piston and will send the signal back to the computer to retard the timing. These modules are less sensitive than stock modules which eliminates retarded timing from false knock created by noise from modifications such as larger cams, roller rockers, or headers.”

So, if you have added headers, roller rockers, etc., you might want to consider adding an LT4 Knock Module on your “to do” list.

LT4 Knock Module part #16214681

As the RoadMonster’s engine bay has evolved from daily driver to show car status, I have needed to upgrade many components.  This has been a snowball effect.  When I upgraded to the Red Smoothie Fuel Rail Covers from the stock black ones, I found that the blue Goodyear Hi-Miler Hoses not longer fit in.  What I needed was a set of Samco Sport Red Silicone Coolant Hoses.  These are hand made in the UK.  They are the best.

It took awhile to receive them from London, but the wait was worth it…

When running silicone hoses, you need special hose clamps.

Regular clamps will chew up silicone hoses.  Not good.

I bought two sets of Summit Racing’s #390500 Lined Stainless Steel Hose Clamps.  You’ll need two sets of these clamps to get the job done.

While I was at it, I added this nice little chrome plated brass coolant bleeder valve.

I bought matching thick red silicone hose for the bleeder valve, so I could route this hose down the front of the engine.  This allows the cooling system to be bled, and the coolant will not run all over the front of the engine, and on to the Opti Spark Distributor.

Some other nice parts that I used are these polished billet hose separators made by Billet Specialties (part #68720).

They keep the heater hoses in place, and do it with a touch of class…

As you can see, these hoses are a work of art.

Not only that, but they’ll last a long, long time.

I am very happy how these hoses have improved the look of the RoadMonster’s engine bay.

Samco Sport Website

There is a list of US distributors on Samco’s website.

I bought mine at Brits Inc.

My RM came stock with an open differential (non-posi) and 2.56 gears.

It would spin one wheel…

The highway gears were good for the highway, and that’s about it.

Not so good off the line.

So, a series 3 Eaton posi carrier was installed with 3.73 gears.

The Impala SS came from the factory with 3.08 gears and positraction.

3.08′s are certainly better than 2.56′s, but really, it’s not enough gear for these big heavy cars.

I think that most B-Body owners would agree that the 3.73 gears are the perfect all around gear.

The car feels a thousand pounds lighter.

It’s quicker.  MUCH quicker.

With the overdrive trans, it’s just fine on the highway too.

I originally thought about going with 3.42′s, but my wife’s Denali has 3.73′s, and I like how quick that big heavy rig feels.  Her GMC is over a ton heavier than my RoadMonster…

Finally, 3.73′s with a good 3000 Stall Torque Converter will turn your B-Body into a beast.  The best bang for the buck, IMHO.

Here are some more parts that I have collected for an eventual manual transmission swap.

I’ve got a few other parts stashed away for this modification as well.

I don’t know exactly when I’ll do the T-56 6 Speed Manual Trans swap…

Is a project car ever REALLY done?