Hi! This is a sort of public introduction, a humble admission that I may have been way off base for way too many years, and the announcement of a neat project called “SLURP”.
“My name is Jim Gnitecki (“Jim G”) and I’m a rodaholic”. I’ve been playing with cars, trucks, and bikes since I was about 17 (about 40 years).
Being a “baby boomer” born in late 1950, I distinctly remember cars and trucks of the forties and fifties serving as hide and seek props as I played in the streets when I was 5 or 6 years old (in those days, you COULD play in the streets relatively safely compared to today!). I lived the “American Graffiti” dream with my high school buddies, and share the distinction of being one of four testosterone-charged guys in a souped up 30’s Plymouth that around 1967 lost a race with a transit bus, when the sudden application of full throttle at a light caused first gear to abruptly disappear. I still remember the girsl we were trying to impress giggling at us . . .
I was the son of a struggling blue collar carpenter, and so in college, my daily transportation was a string of progressively larger and more powerful motorcycles (I couldn’t afford any decent car or truck!). My roommates and I at one point actually sub-assembled a Honda 305 basket case within the basement of the boarding room house we were staying at (with the landlady watching nervously), completed final assembly outdoors in Southern Ontario Canadian winter weather, and actually got it running. My pride and joy bike of all time was the 1970 Norton Roadster I bought in 3rd year college. It had a propensity to vibrate its exhaust pipes off, and a clutch that only a weight lifter could love, but when you opened up its throttle, it was like an unstoppable locomotive!
When I graduated from college, I needed instant reliable, low input daily transportation, first to get to work daily, and later to shuttle a family around reliably, and so gravitated for years to newer cars that I COULD work on, but did not NEED to. I lost track of how many cars and trucks I have owned over the past four decades, but the count 10 years ago was in excess of 60. At one time, I owned two cars and six motorcycles simultaneously, and would have liked more, but being a family man with a mortgage and responsibilities, had to be “mature”.
I have a mechanical engineering degree and I manage large scale computer projects for a living, so I have this irrational drive to make every vehicle I own at least a little bit better, confidently assuming that I know something that the factory engineers don’t! That’s how, for example, my all white automatic transmission 1990 Mustang convertible (a shameless attempt to inexpensively simulate the mysterious white T-Bird in American Graffiti, while still being able to haul a wife and 2 kids) acquired 3.73 gearing versus the silly 2.xx factory gearing, along with headers and minor other mods, and dropped its quarter mile time from 15.9 to 15.1 seconds!
Being somewhat of a “techie”, I have, until just very recently, over the years embraced the creeping invasion of onboard electronics, accepting that they would improve fuel mileage, emissions, and safety, while also enabling much more aggressive and precision tuning, because computers do react far faster than humans can when quick and decisive action is needed - sometimes many times per second. In the back of my mind, there was a persistent warning chime that kept trying to get my attention, but I happily ignored it until two months ago, basking in what aggressive electronic timing and electronic knock detectors could do working together, and enjoying the fact that shift points on an automatic could be adjusted by computer keyboard versus playing with a TV linkage.
The pivotal project that ultimately finally showed me the complexity and costliness of doing mods this way has ironically also been my most successful project by far.
In late 2004, I was a contract computer project consultant, and was temporarily unemployed. I had sold one of my two family cars, and I knew the next assignment would come soon (hopefully  ), and so I was on the lookout for the next “right vehicle to play with”. As fate would have it, GM had just four months before that reacted to automotive magazine criticisms that its gorgeous Chevrolet SSR retro pickup was underpowered because of its weight (4635 pounds before any fuel or driver), and had dropped the 400 hp Corvette LS2 engine into the SSR for the 2005 model year. This left a bunch of unsold 2004 300 hp LM4-truck-engine-equipped SSRs sitting on dealer lots, which did not sell well. Finally throwing in the towel, GM gave the dealers holding these some extra discounts, which prompted one of our local dealers here in Austin, Texas to drop the asking price a WHOLE lot, and caused me to drive over there and buy one! That turned out to be a momentous decision for me.
What happened is that I discovered an existing website devoted to the Chevrolet SSR,
www.SSRfanatic.com, and I quickly became first a rabid reader, and then a voluminous contributor to the content on that site. Over the course of the next couple of years, I was the visionary and guinea pig on a number of bold modification ideas, the majority of which turned out to be runaway winners. I quickly became the “go-to” guy on the website for any questions on mods.
I proposed for example that the apparently stiff factory rear axle gearing of 3.73 was in fact “moderate” and “insufficient” given the large tire diameter of the SSR (29.25”) and its 4900+ pound weight with driver and half-full fuel tank. I proved it electronically by modeling the SSR in software that I wrote that was able to simulate a quarter mile run on the computer, and projected that even 4.10 gearing would be marginal, but 4.56 gearing would be ideal. I actually made the physical swap, despite the warnings that fuel economy and engine noise would both go to Heck. The results were as I had predicted: BETTER engine feel at highway speeds, incredible nimbleness around town, fuel mileage dropped only about 4%, and the quarter mile time dropped by over ¾ second, just as I had predicted.
The next step was headers and custom dual exhaust, designed by Reese Cox at MTI Racing. This added only about 18 rwhp, but improved torque by an AVERAGE of over 30 ft. lb. throughout the power band. The portly SSR was starting to acquire meaningful nimbleness.
A 2002 (not 2001!) Corvette Z06 cam, when added to the exhaust mods, produced an incredible 58 additional rwhp horsepower.
A Magnuson supercharger kit and painstakingly adapted 90mm LS2 throttle body (despite the incompatible electronics) got the dyno rear wheel horsepower to about 10 rwhp more than a current Corvette Z06, despite the automatic transmission. Calculations show that the lowly LM4-truck-based engine is now making close to 600 crank horsepower, and that’s AFTER deducting the 67 horsepower consumed to turn the blower at 6300 rpm. Peak power is obtained at 6000 to 6400 rpm, and peak torque is achieved at over 5200 rpm (!), despite the “truck” heads on this engine!
I documented every single one of these mods (and MANY more), with all the attendant roadblocks and detours, in writing, faithfully on the SSR forum, and soon acquired a tremendous reading audience because I always reported all the facts with all the required hands-on detail. All this success, and the attention it got on the SSR forum, prompted a lot of suppliers to contact me and ask if I would be interested in installing their product onto my SSR and writing honestly about the results. I got a lot of the hardware I needed (e.g. an MMC driveshaft) on very attractive deals, or free, and paid a really good friend, Randy Peurifoy, who is a professional mechanic, hotrodder, and restorer, to help me get everything professionally installed so that my “reviews” would be fair and accurate.
I was persistently asked by many SSR forum members to write a book, which could act as a guide and an inspiration for others. I ended up writing and self-publishing a 320 page e-book that has sold like hotcakes. It has turned into “the bible” for anyone contemplating the purchase or modification of an SSR. (If you are interested, you can see my ad at
http://www.ssrfanatic.com/forum/f22/jim-gs-e-book-ssr-experience-26127/). It’s been a GREAT ride for the past three years.
The bottom line is that I now have a VERY special SSR, supercharged, producing almost 600 horsepower, that gets a bit better than 20 mpg at a steady 60 mph on hilly divided highway, despite its refrigerator size and weight, and that could, if you have the skill to manage the traction (I do not), get to 60 mph in under 5 seconds, and run the quarter in the high 12s despite the 5100 lb. weight (with blower kit, driver, and half a tank of fuel). Not bad for a “truck”.
Trouble is, I’ve hit “the wall” from both a cost perspective and a complexity perspective, and there’s something inherently dissatisfying about a 5000 pound, high bucks vehicle. Let me explain.
I know what the SSR should get next. It should get decent heads to replace those LM4 truck heads that flow far from ideally. If you look at the dyno chart and the boost curve for my SSR, you quickly see that the heads are an obvious and highly effective next step. But, decent heads, plus Randy’s labor to install them would cost near $3k (I pay Randy market rate even though he is a good friend, because “the workman is worthy of his hire” and this is how Randy feeds his family).
The next step would be far costlier yet. I am safely and reliably running about 7.5 psi boost on the cast-versus-forged components LM4 (over 20,000 miles so far), but that boost climbs to 9.2 psi at high rpm, due to the truck heads becoming such a restriction. To run more boost, I would need to swap out the crank, rods, and pistons for forged pieces. That would generate a huge increase in power, but would be BIG money to do.
Then, there’s the complexity. The results of all the computerization and sensors are certainly impressive (e.g. the engine idles at 16 inches vacuum, and there are zero external clues that it has been so significantly hotrodded, except the exhaust tone). But, this is no longer a vehicle that you tinker with in your back yard. You need a laptop and EFILive software to diagnose and tune it. The wonderful sound system is certainly impressive (best I’ve ever had), and the ride is certainly quite and smoooooth, but there’s an awful lot of hardware and knowledge inherent in achieving these.
There’s also an awful lot of weight. Isolation from noise, vibration, and harshness (the “NVH” that automotive engineers are always talking about) requires materials that have heavy mass. And, some individual items like that power, multi-dimensional driver seat weighs a LOT. Twenty inch wheels and tires are inherently heavy. And, the SSR is a RETRACTABLE ROOF pickup truck, and that adds not only the weight of the retractable roof and its operating mechanisms, but also requires a lot of additional weight in other body and chassis structure, to keep a convertible pickup from becoming a large “noodle”. This is weight that you cannot significantly reduce, at least not without spending WAY too much on carbon fiber this and that!
My overall feeling is that my SSR is a wonderful vehicle just the way it is now, but trying to do “more” would be a case of spending lots of time and effort to get returns that are less impressive than what has already been achieved. This is the right point to stay at. I should simply enjoy it.
But that is not me. As my wife has pointed out, I always need a project.
So I have found one.
It all started subtly when I did the research for my e-book. You see, the original SSR show truck design was based very clearly upon the 1947 through 1955 Chevy “Advance-Design” pickup series. If you look at photos of an SSR and of an Advance-Design series truck, you can clearly see that.
(Posting continued below . . . )
