94 RMW Sleeper project

Hi all, I've been a member for quite a while, and fiddling with the car off and on for almost a decade now. Health problems keep intervening and stalling the project. I will start with a brief project description, then flesh it out with subsequent posts on specifics.

I always liked the big B-body style, and with 5 kids a wagon with decent mileage made sense, especially during the first Obama presidency when gas prices first got stupid. I learned to drive in an '84 caprice box wagon ( the gutless diesel variant, no less) but I always hated the woody stickers on the sides. Fast forward to 2014, and I decided to stop at a white RMW parked in a driveway. It was on my way to my parents' house, and unmoved for several years. Long story short, the owner's dad bought it new in '94, and left it to him when he passed away. It didn't run due to chewed wires from a pack rat that had made a nest in the air cleaner box and ate the coil wires. After some shrewd negotiating, we settled on $800 cash, IF I could get it running first. I brought some wiring tools, a shop vac, fresh gas and a new battery. 2 hours later it fired right up and I was on my way to the DMV! Here is the saga of how it morphed from a family hauler to an a$$ hauler-

The car was in pretty solid shape, 80k miles, no rust, only non-original work done to the car was a pioneer disc changer under the passenger dash. First thing I did was a complete tune-up, then drove it for a year or so. It felt pretty peppy with the LT1, especially compared to the diesel wagon my parents had when I was growing up. After a bunch of reading about these cars, I decided to do some basic performance mods. I started with Afterburner headers, a high performance coil and a Swiss cheese airbox with home plate delete, then got Tunercat and did a basic tune. Definitely more fun to drive. Then I did high ratio roller rockers. My brother worked at the drag strip around that time, and finally talked me into getting a quarter mile time. It ran 15.0s, which I thought wasn't bad for a tank of that size. Well, the 4th time I went racing, it lost oil pressure and spun a bearing. That instigated the next phase of the project.
There's a children's story called "If you give a mouse a cookie" I used to read to all my kids. It starts out like this-
If you give a mouse a cookie, he might ask for a glass of milk. If you go get him a glass of milk, he sees the fridge and decides he wants to draw a picture..... and on and on the mouse takes over adding project after project, all because you gave him a glass of milk. And THAT, my friends, is what happened with the Sleeperwagon.

"If you give a mouse a cookie" Pt1

As long as the engine was apart, I decided to stroke it to 383. I planned on trying to add a turbo, but I was afraid my newfound tuning skills would not be sufficient to make it run with boost. In the meantime, we needed a family hauler during the rebuild. In a fit of juvenile irresponsibility, I bought a V10 excursion on 40in tires, with a shiny chrome bottle mounted in the back. Thus began my love affair with Nitrous. That 5,800 lb behemoth ran 14.9s on HUUUGE tires with a 300hp dry shot. Sooooo, I decided the wagon needed a kit. Especially since it would require way less tuning that a turbo. So my engine build plan changed to the following specs-
Eagle 4340 383 crank, internal balance
H beam 5.7 rods (NOT 6" for reasons that follow)
Custom nitrous pistons, with ring pack moved down and a thicker crown to prevent melt-thru
Oil squirter jets milled into the block to cool underside of pistons
Splayed steel main caps
Block filler up to bottom of the freeze plugs to stiffen lower casting
Heavily ported iron heads (the clamping surface under the head bolts is thicker than the F-body aluminum heads, and aftermarket heads kill the sleeper vibe)
ARP studs
High volume big block oil pump
High ratio rockers and beehive springs
ZZ409 cam
OEM throttle body bored to 52mm and new blades fitted
F-body MAF added to Home Depot CAI
Intake manifold heavily modified- more on this later...

"He's going to ask for a glass of milk" pt2
Then I decided it would really wake it up if I put 3.73 gears in it. So I pulled the rear end to completely rebuild it. At those power levels, aftermarket axles seemed prudent, so I looked at Moser alloy shafts. I couldn't find anything other than full custom shafts in that width/bearing dia with the big wheel bolt pattern. They DID however, have sedan width axles with the standard GM 5 lug pattern. Which reminded me that I had some FAT wheels and tires I pulled off my old Trans Am in the back of my shop. And the backspacing would be juuust right for the narrower axle.
So, off to the junkyard I went. An axle came home, and I proceeded to cut all the outer brackets off and move them to wagon width. THEN...

Pt 3

With all this go, I needed more stop. So I ordered a Wilwood disc brake conversion kit as long as the axle was out. In order to ensure the proportion valving was correct, they suggested their 4 piston front calipers. SURE, WHY NOT? Well, they required larger rotors. Also, my front wheel bolt pattern no longer matched the rear. SOOOO, I bought new rotors and bearings, chucked the brand new rotors up in my lathe, and promptly cut the brand new rotors off the hubs. I faced and turned the hubs to fit C6 corvette rotors (since they are not integral to the bearing hub, brake rebuilds would be much easier) and drilled and tapped the hubs for the smaller bolt pattern. Now I had bigger, slotted, 4 piston brakes up front. But by this point gas prices were even higher, so the 3.73 gears got me thinking...

Pt 4

Mileage was gonna be way worse with more cubes and gears. Besides, I really missed driving a manual on the street, and the T56 is the same length as a 4l60e...
And it just so happens a guy down the road from my shop had a convertible camaro, and a tree fell on it during a windstorm. I talked him out of the engine, transmission, and wiring harness with pcm for $1000. (I figured the new lt1 and my old 4l60e would be perfect for the 55 Chevy pickup I started building with my sons. But that's another story for another forum...) It even had a Hurst short throw shifter on it, and a 0.5:1 6th gear. But, if you put a stick in there you need a shifter console...

So I cut the 60/40 bench into 40/40 buckets, and put a console out of a Chevy Blazer in it. The woodgrain was a perfect match, it had a storage compartment, and even had cupholders. I dyed the carpet and plastic to match my blue interior, and made a shifter boot for the manual. I filled the gear indicator slot with a panel and mounted a switch for my 2-step/line lock. Looks pretty factory other than the switch...

Pt 6

I had installed a gauge pillar with tach, oil pressure, and wide band O2 after the spun bearing, but it really killed the sleeper vibe. I eventually stumbled across a post on the impala forum about putting a Camaro cluster in the B bodies, which would give me the oil and tach, and a 150mph speedo. Then I just needed to hide the O2 gage, or delete it since my data logger records it all on my laptop anyway. And with the woodgrain finish, the new gauge cluster looks like it belongs-

I wanted a shift light, but again, there goes the sleeper vibe. So I drilled 6 holes in the bottom of the cluster lens, and mounted 6 blue LEDs to trigger with my shift light output. The whole display lights up, so you don't even have to look down to see it come on-

I made a master switch panel for the nitrous controls, and mounted it in the sunglass tray below the radio, so it is completely invisible when the drawer is closed

Then I put the Nitrous computer where the ashtray used to be in the drawer below it

I suppose I should do something productive, but I will post more info and pics later. In the meantime, here is the mounting bracket I made for my MSD ignition with 2-step rev limiter and nitrous retard-

Slight detour from the chronological story to share today's project- I pulled the passenger side fender (what a PITA) in order to plumb the nitrous purge into the power antenna housing. Fitting is threaded in just higher than the water drain hole, and hose is routed through the firewall to the purge solenoid hidden behind the glove box-

The earlier cars have a flapper over the end of the cowl drain.