TC76 Turbo + 1999 Trans AM = Fun

[69MyWay]

I'm helping a friend put a TH400 behind the LS1 in his 1999 turbo charged trans am. Now the downside of this deal, is he took an excellent WS6 T/A - loaded with T56 and all the goods and gutted it to make it a "street legal" drag car.

He did a homemade Turbonetics turbo and intercooler with head/cam work last year. He wasn't happy with his prospects of racing with the T56 - even after dumping a ton of cash in a high end clutch/flywheel - etc.

Anyway - in his effort for speed he nixed the a/c - ABS - and went with a strange 9" - all adjustable drag bars...etc and topped it off with the TH400 with a full manual valve body, trans brake, and 3,400 Art Carr t/c.

He is needing to heat cycle the new rear end before dyno tune with the auto trans, and the car is here at my shop...so I offered to take care of that for him - 15 minutes at a time.

Now...the car won't stop very well, or turn very well, and has parts so low to the ground that it scrapes everything - but for those few seconds you can get it up on boost....it is a rush.

The exhaust dumps at the oil pan, but for some strange reason it really isn't too loud - in fact it sounds amazing - and you can still hear the turbo spool.

Took my 6 year old son for a ride - and he said "Dad...it sounds like an airplane is taking off..."

"Exactly..." I said...."Exactly" - and it feels like that too - and I haven't kicked it because we are just breaking the rear end gentle....

[WSSix]

That's a pretty serious setup. Why does he not have a transbrake if he's setting it up with a 400 and to be a drag car. The brake would allow him to spool the turbo hard on the line as well. Sounds like the rest of the car can handle that type of launching too. Have fun with that one Chris.

[69MyWay]

Yep...it does have a trans brake as well. I wired it all for him and have tested it in the shop, but we are not ready to try a launch with the car yet. Right now we have been running it in circles to heat cycle the axle prior to going to the dyno. He had it tuned with the T56, but the tuner told him that it would be crucially important to have it re-turned now that the loads have changed before attempting to do any real running with it.

We had it scheduled for this Friday but they are moving that now to April because he is going to make some changes to the down pipe and a few other SFI parts swaps before the tune.

I'll post some pictures later. My new camera is a 12.1 mp - and the pictures I have are way too large to post. I have to resize and resave them to share.