The Saturday go to is still Katie's in Great Falls. Have to get there super early and in season it's always crowded. The C&C of the rich and famous in the DC metro area.

On Sunday there are two. The Larger of the two is at the Dunkin Donut at Dulles Landings. They are having the same issue that killed the event at Kohl's. Burnouts, high speed passes and people acting stupid. I stopped attending due to these issues and frankly the gathering is 'clickish'. Mopar's with Mopar' / Jeeps with Jeeps etc..,

The smaller and more 'adult' is held at Camron's Chocolates and Coffee at Fairfax Circle. It start a 8 AM and usually go until 10. We often get a number of people driving back from the Dulles C&C stop by. It's small with 20 - 50 cars in season. This is the one I frequent to help keep the total estimated value of the cars down Weather looks good so I'll be up there on Sunday.

Pictures of Katie's and Cameron's can be found at www.6speedonline.com/forums Tab down to the regional section / Northeast / Mid Atlantic section.

PS. If you're ever down in Richmond there is a C&C held at Regency Mall every other Saturday. (Check the internet for schedule). In season, 300+ cars, well run and super friendly people.

[This message has been edited by steve308 (edited 02-21-2020).]

Got the heads off my '06 engine. That's not a lot of progress for a weekend because I spent a good bit of time looking at cam sensor parts and scratching my head.

First, here's a quick tour of a 2006+ Northstar.
Overall picture: Note the Y2K+ style intake manifold. The vehicle this engine was in had a fire, and the plastic power steering reservoir (already removed) and intake manifold were damaged, but it looks like the block is fine. It also sat out in the junk yard for... a while, I guess. It's supposed to have 14k on it, so it should clean up nice. At this point, I've already taken the harness off.




This is the connector for the "valley harness" which is a new sub-harness element added for 2006 as the number of gizmos in the valley increased dramatically. It's a 10 pin connector with 3 for the crank sensor, 3 for the cam sensor and 2 for each knock sensor. GM eliminated the manifold sub-harness that earlier year engines had. That sub-harness carried wires for the injectors and MAP sensor and made R&Ring the manifold a snap. I still have it in the harness I removed from The Mule and will incorporate both valley and manifold sub-harnesses into my new harness, although I will re-route the valley harness to connect at the pulley end of the engine.
There's also a bullet proof heat shield around the EGR valve.



Right bank overview with nifty coil on plug ignition. I don't think these will fit the older heads, but I'll check it out. Each bank has a coil sub-harness. The flange on the exhaust manifold is for an AIR pump. The big wire and connector hanging over the cam cover is the crank wire coming out from under the intake manifold.




The grommets and o-ring seals mechanically isolate the valve covers from the cylinder head for noise reduction. They were built that way from day 1 in 1993. This also means that the valve covers are electrically isolated from the head as well. The <'99 engines have a 8ga or so ground wire from the coilpack baseplate to the cylinder head. Without that wire, the engine WILL NOT run right. When GM shifted to the coil on plug ignition, they had to incorporate healthy grounding for each coil pack baseplate. They chose to use short braids from the valve cover to the cylinder head instead of heavy gauge ground wires from the baseplates to the heads.




This is the cam sensor connector. These wires run from the valley sub-harness connector all the way under the manifold and come out here, even though this sensor would have been just as easy to reach with a branch off the main harness. Interesting that the organized it that way. This is also the first thing that made stop and think for a minute. This cam sensor is on the INTAKE cam, while the <'05 sensor is on the EXHAUST cam.




Here's the left bank overview. At some point the dipstick moved outside the waterpump. It used to come up to the left of the waterpump belt. Not sure why they changed that. I can't re-use my old dipstick tube as the new one is smaller, and thus the hole in the lower crank case is also smaller. The exhaust manifold hides it, but this engine has a 3 bolt oil filter adapter flange instead of the older 2 bolt flange. I need to snag a 3 bolt oil cooler filter adapter off eBay...




Here's the left cam cover ground braid bolted to the bolt hole that the old dipstick bolted to.




There were a bunch of these connections on the PCV system. The clip on to an upset tube with a nifty little spring clip. They slip right on, then release with the flick of a finger. Super easy to use.




Here's the DBW throttle acutator, MAP sensor and center feed returnless fuel rail with large diameter tubing to obviate the need to a pulsator. You can also see one of the hose clamps (!) that connects the intake manifold to the water manifold.



This is one of those weird Northstar things. The water manifold bridging the backs of the block and cylinder heads is the reason this engine fits in a Fiero. If the waterpump were at the front, it wouldn't fit. The water manifold casting has an element that sticks up. The throttle bolts to this element and the intake air passes through it. The MAP sensor and brake booster vacuum connection in the prior pic are actually in the water manifold casting, not the throttle casting. The water manifold also serves as an EGR cooler, and the EGR gas is introduced via the casting element the throttle bolts to. The intake manifold just has a large diameter nipple and a very short hose coupler connecting it to the back of the water manifold casting.




This view shows the EECS solenoid now integrated to the water manifold casting, as well as the hose clamps between the intake manifold and water manifold.




Different heater fitting on water manifold than previous years had



Front of the engine, with the same idler & tensioner layout they've always had. At some point the front cover was changed to expose the bolt hole just to the left of the crank pulley, so I need to keep the newer cover with this newer block. Of course the big wire is the starter cable.

[This message has been edited by Will (edited 04-02-2020).]

Here are the troublesome cam sensor sprockets:




It looks like both old and new sensors are at the "6 o'clock" positions relative to their respective cam sprockets. The new sensor is smaller in diameter and the hole is closer to the centerline of the cam. I think an eccentric bushing could mount the new sensor in the old head just fine. It would also allow me to tune the reference angle a little bit if the CASE learn fails when I get an ECM on this frankenmotor.






Here are the two trigger sprockets next to each other. Note that the older sprocket has timing marks for both right intake and right exhaust. The new sprocket has the fancy 4x cam trigger pattern used by the 58x systems.




Overlay the two with the exhaust cam drive pin slot on the old sprocket lined up with the intake cam drive pin slot on the new sprocket and they're only off 1/5-1/4 of a tooth. With 40 teeth per sprocket, that's 1.8-2.25 cam degrees. Even if that were the best I could do, I'd bolt that **** together and send it.




Line up the TEETH of the sprockets and the leading edges of the drive pin slots line up. The new cams use 0.184 drive pins (well... really alignment pins) while the older cams use 0.234 alignment pins. I left the new sprocket with the prototype machinist so he could stretch the slot in the new sprocket on its trailing edge out to 0.234. Then it should exactly match the timing of the original sprocket, while only rotating the 4x trigger wheel by ~2 cam degrees, which is 1 crank degree, which *should* stay under the CASE learn limit of +/-2 crank degrees.




Lingenfelter confirmed that their TRG-002 58x=>24x converter does not care about crank to cam reference angle, so the ONLY foreseeable problem is the potential for CASE learn issues. As noted previously, I intend to mount the new sensor in an eccentric bushing, which will give me some fine-tuning capability to eliminate any potential CASE learn problems.

[This message has been edited by Will (edited 04-02-2020).]