Why did GM do this?
December 4, 2009
I do not understand why GM thought it was a good idea to scale the coolant temperature gauge like this. There is no way you can look at it and figure out what the temperature is unless you are good at doing odd fractions in your head really fast. All you know it is somewhere between two numbers. Why?
GM installed poor-quality stepper motors in most all GM trucks in the 2003-2006 model years. Amber’s Tahoe was covered because she had under 60000 miles, but Quadzilla is a year older and has 20000 more miles so I was SOL. After a little research I figured out I could replace the steppers myself and save about $500 off the cost taking it to the stealership. There are guys on ebay that will change them out too, but it looked easy enough for me to do myself, that way I would not be without a speedometer for the time it took to ship it off, get it repaired, and wait for it to be shipped back.
I went ahead and splurged and also bought a set of white gauge faces. These are vinyl, you just apply them on top of the existing face. I was impressed that the tick marks and numbers align almost perfectly and the backlight still through the black parts. I read on some ricer forums that white gauges will give you at least an extra 20 horsepower. I do like the look! So for less than $75 and a few hours of my time, I have a working speedometer again, all new stepper motors, and a fresh new look in my dashboard.
Door Repair
November 29, 2009
I’ve been driving around with a little door damage caused by some worthless waste of flesh a while back. I wanted to try to repair the damage myself, so I finally upgraded my wire welder to a MIG. The cylinder cost me twice what I paid for the used welder in the first place, but now I have have it for future projects. I figure the money I’m saving more than paid for it anyway.
I had to take the inside door panel off 
to start with. This is easy if you know where all the attachment points are and where to pry, but it is a bit of a pain if you are not a pro. Here is the torn up sheet metal.
Of course, when I bent it back, the shape was all off. I tried using a hammer and dolly to beat it back in shape, but I couldn’t get it to come back out to the right shape. I gave up and decided I’d use filler to get the shape right later. 
I welded a piece of sheet metal behind the door to strengthen the area a bit. It was pretty floppy before I did this.
All I had on hand was white primer, so that is what I sprayed on the bare metal as the sun was going down. I installed the Jimmi’ Jammer before I reconnected the control rods. This little fitted plate adds a bit of armor to protect from this kind of break in.
Building a New VE Table
November 22, 2009
This is what I spent the better part of today working on, the VE table for Quadzilla. I’ve done this before, but now I’m dealing with a 2-bar OS, so I have double the range of pressure variables. There are two ways to go about building this table, one uses a wideband AFR recorder in open loop mode, and the other uses the factory narowband sensors in closed loop mode using the fuel trends. I did it both ways, and got different results, which is a symptom that I’m doing something wrong. I also got different results when the MAF sensor was plugged in, even though I had it ‘turned off’ in the computer. After hours of reading through the forums, I think I have a handle on that situation. I have the non-boost regions (under 110kpa) tuned in, but I’m not sure how I’m going to get the cells above 4psi dialed in correctly. My alcohol spray comes on around that point, adding ‘undocumented’ fuel to the engine, which is lowering the AFR a significant bit. I have more learning to do for sure.
This is the VE table from the factory. Comparing the two gives you an idea of how much more air the supercharger adds to the process. Notice the stock engine peaks at around 105% at around 4500 rpm. The regions I have tuned correctly are already around 150%, not sure what the real number will be at redline.
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Gallery
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