I'm not hearing that loping sound that you often get from a cam swap, but the engine does have more growl to it now. The PO had an exhaust package on it, so it was somewhat loud to begin with but this has increased the decibels a bit. I don't know if I can upload a video to the forum or not, but I do have one of the knock before this work, maybe I can take another one after the exhaust leak is finished.
So since bad luck comes in threes, I've (hopefully) now had the third thing happen this week. 1. Intake manifold leaks and damages lifter 2. I rear end a Lexus in the Land Rover 3. Temp sensor or maybe the nail I picked up in my tire on the Camaro this week. May 2019 has not been my month! So she sat at the tire shop for two days while Tire Rack shipped me a new Cooper Cobra for the driver's side front. Guess that means I should probably replace the other three this summer too. I had hoped to drive those tires until just before winter and replace them then, but I guess that's moving up since the other ones are (out of production I think?) Kumho's so I've got a tire mismatch now. Since I've got some work that's going to take me away from home most of June, I probably won't get the rest of the tires until July at the earliest.
That also means instead of getting to work on the exhaust/temp sensor on Wednesday or Thursday that I didn't get to it until Friday, and then had a couple bolts shear off and need to be drilled out....So hopefully I can get that finished up by end of the day today-and the temp sensor connector fixed too. That's what I get for calling it an "easy enough fix" I guess.

 

try using a backwards drill bit. I did and the busted part came out while I was drilling it

 

Two different exhaust flange gaskets sets later and I still have an exhaust leak-I cannot seem to get the manifolds to seal against the y-pipes properly. While I reduced the leak with the Fel-Pro (second set) I think it's still leaking around one of the bolt holes. Even better, this morning the temp gauge returned to zero after I replaced the pigtail on the sensor earlier this week. Worked for about 70 miles this time. There's nothing I hate more than an intermittent issue in electronics. I've thought it was working three times now, and every time it has failed again. Which would seem to indicate that I've been replacing parts that may well have been working. So that's pretty much it for my expertise on the temp sensor. I guess I'm going to have to have my mechanic look at it because 1. I'm pissed off about it and 2. I'm not that good with electronics, and the basic troubleshooting things didn't provide a permanent solution plus 3. I don't have time to monkey with this before I'm supposed to drive it 250 miles next week. I'm pessimistic about that too, since it starts working every time I've changed something-so I envision another temporary fix happening.....

While it worked the engine was still operating at 150ish degrees. I do wonder if that's part of the problem, if that new failsafe thermostat is stuck open.....but it makes no sense to me why that would cause the temp sensor to fail, unless the computer is deciding that the temp can't be right so it's shutting it down. Both these problems have gone from what I thought was going to be a quick fix to amazingly aggravating. I'm seriously considering replacing the stock headers to fix the exhaust leak problem, which is ridiculous, but FFS are those original bolts in the flanges weak (broke two of them taking it apart this time) and I'm fairly certain that there's some warp in the flange itself which is preventing me from getting a good seal-hours on these two problems with little progress to show for it.

 

So, after a three week stint overseas with my Uncle Sam, I'm back in the states and have a bit of progress to show for taking the car to the mechanic. First off in the list of my mistaken assumptions, it appears to be the stepper motors in the instrument cluster causing the temp reading failures. I say motors because after sweeping them a few times with a better ODBII scanner than the local parts store has with my mechanic, it appears that the temp gauge doesn't sweep all the way to the right, and after doing that it appears that both my tachometer and speedometer are now not working properly either. Which brings me to the sweet realization that it appears no one has remanufactured instrument clusters or replacement air stepper motors for the 2002 Chevrolet Camaro-at least if they do I cannot locate them in all of the vastness of the internet. How this occurred I don't know, since there appear to be plenty of them before and after that year for multiple Chevy vehicles, but not for the Camaro 02s. However I have to consider the possibility that I simply don't recognize the ones that are out there, so if anyone knows where to get some I'd love to hear it.
So I guess I'm going to have to buy a used cluster and either scavenge the motors from it or do a full cluster replacement with said used cluster. I will be swapping out the cluster lights next time I have the cluster out to green of course. Mechanic also can't get the y-pipe to seal any better than I could. Guess I have a good excuse to buy some headers after all, so there's a set of Pacesetter armor coated mid length headers in my near future.
Already have a set of SuperBright LEDs on the way for the cluster (8 in total). Perhaps I can find a cluster with a better condition clear panel cover, mine has had some sort of water spotting from something that was probably not water from before I owned it. The instrumentclusterstore.com is where I'm getting the replacement cluster from, ordered that today as well as the lights from SuperBright. I will most likely scavenge the three motors that I need from it since it doesn't match on mileage (they did say they would rebuild my cluster if I shipped it to them, but that would have the car out of service for me for at least another week, which I am not really wanting to do as it's still my daily driver.)
So probably my engine isn't operating at a significantly cooler temp, and there's also a chance that my RPMs were lower because the stepper motor was fading, not because it was running at lower RPM. Cluster should be here within a week, bulbs about the same time, so with any good luck I'll have the gauge/temp sensor issue resolved sometime shortly after the 4th of July weekend.

 

Ordered the armor coated Pacesetter mid length headers from KMJ performance today. Since they're only a few states away, should get those early next week as well, they had the best price by about $50 on them.

 

I've added a new alternator to the list. Since I'm replacing that I'm replacing the serpentine belt with it as well. Should be here Friday, the original one appears to have given out on Saturday.

 

New Belt, O2 & Alternator

Green backlighting, like it should be


Missing manifold

New Pacesetter Header
The new headers are in, and they definitely changed the tone of the exhaust, without question they make a much deeper sound-plus it eliminated the exhaust chatter I couldn't get rid of with the stock manifolds. Had to bend the straight boots on the MSD wires a bit to get them off the headers on the passenger side. Thinking about perhaps getting a Taylor set that has a build your wire option for 8mm plug wires so that I can angle the wires away from the headers properly. Also saw that MSD has a single performance 8.5mm plug wire that might work, but not sure if it's long enough since it has to reach across the engine from the coil packs. The one O2 sensor that I had never had out during my ownership of the car took most of the threading with it from the old manifold, so I ended up picking up a Bosch replacement for that as well. Other than that the Pacesetter kit had everything that I needed to get the headers in, and it joined up reasonably well for me (I was a little concerned about this since the exhaust was modified by the PO, but it worked out with very little in the way of problems).

Instrument cluster is also replaced-happy to find that was a plug and play deal. Just inserted the new LED backlights and plugged it in and good to go. I suppose that in about 150 miles I'll know if the issue is actually resolved, since that seems to be the time frame that it likes to fail in. With any (good) luck this time it'll hold. As an added bonus the replacement cluster I received had a better clear pane than the one I had, so those annoying water spot looking blemishes I had are now gone!

Of course, the work wouldn't be complete without at least one follow on problem. That problem is the Air Bag light came on-no flashing solid light. However, in the grand scheme of things that's not critical to driving the vehicle, although I'll probably need to figure out what went wrong there-hopefully I just didn't get a connection right or dislodged the connection while working on the cluster. If I'm really luck it's a fuse or the air bag connectors under the dash (perhaps the second, since I was working in that area). I'll stop by the parts store and see if their OBD II reader can tell me what the problem is if I can't find a loose connection tomorrow.

Of course all of this has got me thinking about doing the rest of the exhaust back from the headers. However, I should probably do some work on the Disco for a bit, I've got a couple parts to install there and a new front bumper on the way as well for that truck, so unless something goes wrong again, probably going to take a little time off from the Camaro to work on the truck. Except the plug wires. I should replace those, the current ones are getting a little aged.

 

nice, I used the stainless mid length headers. wires was a pain to get routed to work in original place but I got it. you should get it tuned now.

 

Driver side header

Boot protectors

passenger side header
Yeah, I was looking at the tune chips from the performance shop I got the rocker arms from, fairly reasonable price wise. I am thinking about it but do need to put a little focus on the Discovery II for a bit. Right now the only thing I've got slated for the Camaro is to replace the other 3 tires after putting a single Cooper on. This weekend should be a good shakedown test since I've got a 600 mile round trip coming up.
Reaching around the headers is a little challenging to get the wires set up, but the bent boots seem to be working fine.
Added a couple of boot protectors to the plug wires on the passenger side since they were sitting a little close to the headers. Put in a couple of wire separators for the plug wires, and then went to work on the truck instead yesterday (air intake hose replacement). Bumper should show up today.

 

You know how I said I was going to focus on the Disco for a bit? Didn't really turn out that way. A week or two after the prior post I was coming home from and rounded the corner about a block from my house when I noticed a rather pronounced thumping noise from the lower end of the engine. Well, I don't know if that was from the changes to the top of the engine, but I bent/broke a piston rod. Because I am lucky like that I guess. A sensible man would probably have thrown in the towel at this point (as my wife has pointed out to me on multiple occasions since.) That man still isn't me. Got a rebuilt engine. Swapped the top end parts (rockers/rods/other bolt ons). Replaced several other items at the same time like the AC system since it was all out anyway. Now have a car with very few miles on the engine and a lighter wallet. I did look around a little for a replacement when this happened and considered buying a manual transmission car that was in the area, but they wanted 5k for a V6. Looked at a couple of 4th gen Firebirds around the same time frame. Beat up and overpriced (I did find one where if you turned on the radio the engine sputtered to a halt-interesting safety feature?) With no reasonably priced WS6 around the engine replacement was the best option imo. Still have the old engine, haven't figured out if I'm going to return it for core or if I want to take it apart and see if it can be rebuilt. Also briefly toyed with the idea of a cam swap (would have had to rebuy the rocker arms-didn't take) or getting a performance block (with no real plans to supercharge/turbo/boost this engine didn't seem sensible-I've got better projects to spend that type of money on ultimately).