Can PS or PB be added to a midyear without NCRS deduction?

[Timothy B.]

Re: Can PS or PB be added to a midyear without NCRS deduction?

Hi Dom,

I am not a engineer so I don't know which one is better for the Corvette brake system. Seems like both types work well except the fact that the lip seal needs a spring to keep the piston against the pad.

I can say that a older 70's model gradall we owned used the chevron lip seals and that machine could lift some very heavy objects. Circuit relief on some of those cylinders may have been north of 3000psi.

[Domenic T.]

Re: Can PS or PB be added to a midyear without NCRS deduction?

I took a bite from the apple in 1971 when I bought a 1967 435/427 coupe that was going to be parted out because it was wrecked and only worth a few thousand bucks in good contion.
I had factory air installed (not a option on the 435) at the dealer. I installed it there myself and had a work order on the car to keep it there and not get in trouble with management.
I had the chance to remove the A/C during my frame off recently and decided to keep it. The dash was cut with templates and everything else factory.
when you say surviver, I think of it differently with my car, it survived death as it wasn't worth fixing at the time. I brought it back to life and believe I am the second owner as it only had about 17,000 miles on it when I rescued it. It's nice tolook at something that was doomed and now standing proud.
I believe in original, and getting your car judged. I also believe in making your car the perfect one in your eyes. I don't have a trim tag and it only had the tele wheel, speedo warn, and power windows, no side pipes. I wanted A/C back then and had a 3:36 for driving when I wanted the 4:11 to take a rest.
The engine now is a CE 1967 427, the trans is not original #'s as I wanted a perfect one at the time because there was all the evedence that the car was drag raced as it had headers and a modified exhaust system. It also had the 4:11 and I was sure daddy bought the car for his boys graduation.
I would have finished my vette long ago if it weren't for correct bolt markings and keeping every thing as original as I could.
It doesen't fit NCRS well because I didn't wan't rust, overspray, or poor acceptable workmanship, etc. But I feel comfy here anyway because my needs are met with all the knowledge here and some understanding as to where I was going with my restoration.
I feel for you guys that want to add options, not a easy choice.

DOM

[Jim R.]

Re: Can PS or PB be added to a midyear without NCRS deduction?

Which still results in a low pedal. C'mon guys.........

Michael I changed to orings about 6 years ago on my 65 and what I can tell you is I have not had to do anything to the brakes since, the pedal is right at the top (no low pedal at all) and as far as feel there is no difference from the lip seals with the exception that these do not leak.

[Michael W.]

Re: Can PS or PB be added to a midyear without NCRS deduction?

Michael I changed to orings about 6 years ago on my 65 and what I can tell you is I have not had to do anything to the brakes since, the pedal is right at the top (no low pedal at all) and as far as feel there is no difference from the lip seals with the exception that these do not leak.

I was dismissing some of the myths of lip seals vs. o-ring vs. pad knock-back vs. rotor runout. Neither type is as good as the hype and neither is as bad as the other side says.

My newest caliper was installed in 1996. The oldest predates my ownership which started in 1989. None leak, all are conventional lip seal type.

[Michael H.]

Re: Can PS or PB be added to a midyear without NCRS deduction?

I was dismissing some of the myths of lip seals vs. o-ring vs. pad knock-back vs. rotor runout. Neither type is as good as the hype and neither is as bad as the other side says.

My newest caliper was installed in 1996. The oldest predates my ownership which started in 1989. None leak, all are conventional lip seal type.

I installed new/sleeved calipers with lip seals on my 66 in 1984. Very disappointed because the LR started leaking after only about 20 years.

Oh, and that was with the old style fluid.

What should I do?

[Joe C.]

Re: Can PS or PB be added to a midyear without NCRS deduction?

Assuming I used remanufactured original parts (are they date-coded for PS or PB units??), and was carefull to change any related parts correctly, is it possible that judges wouldn't notice they weren't O.E., or wouldn't care, therefore no deduction? I don't have a build sheet or window sticker, and I'd be carefull not to represent the added PS or PB as being original (that, of couse being fraudulent misrepresentation).
My goal here is to make the car more driveable without looosing points, not to fool anyone.


thanks

If you know that it was not original, and you add it, then it's a MORTAL sin, and you will be banished to purgatory until Jesus Christ and The Holy Ghost check the POP and build sheet for authenticity. If it is not origional, then you shall be forever banished to the fires of hell.

If you aren't sure whether it's original or not, then it's a venial sin, and ten our fathers and 10 hail maries should fix you up.

[Ralph B.]

Re: Can PS or PB be added to a midyear without NCRS deduction?

Good grief! this is dogmatic thinking will lead to NCRS will die out. Come on, if he goes through the trouble to use all OEM parts and his car could have come that way…are we really so dogmatic as to judge it as inappropriate. loosen up!

IMO your comment is "spot on" in every respect and would even expand to include all and any factory options providing it was not excluded with certain combinations which I believe can be determined via the Trim Tag.

[Terry M.]

Re: Can PS or PB be added to a midyear without NCRS deduction?

I installed SS sleeved calipers in the late 1970s. I assembled the calipers myself with SERVICE GM parts from that time frame. Also converted to DOT5 at that time.

When we rolled the car out of its recent 9 year hibernation I was pleasantly surprised to find a high firm brake pedal. I expected the worst given all I have read on the Internet about long term non-use of the brake system with lip seals. Am I lucky?

[Timothy B.]

Re: Can PS or PB be added to a midyear without NCRS deduction?

If you know that it was not original, and you add it, then it's a MORTAL sin, and you will be banished to purgatory until Jesus Christ and The Holy Ghost check the POP and build sheet for authenticity. If it is not origional, then you shall be forever banished to the fires of hell.

If you aren't sure whether it's original or not, then it's a venial sin, and ten our fathers and 10 hail maries should fix you up.

You better get to confession with a post like that, Joe. :-)

[Chris E.]

Re: Can PS or PB be added to a midyear without NCRS deduction?

Back to the original poster, it depends on what you want to do with the car. If you want to pursue a Flight award at the Chapter level, the added options you are talking about might get missed. In that case, you wouldn't receive a deduction. If you want to take the car to the Regional or National level, the judging experience is higher there. Added options have a higher chance of being discovered there. If they are, what would happen?

Power steering components are 16 points (8/8). Additionally, the pulley would be different, so that item is in Mechanical under Balancer & Pulleys and it shows 8 points (4/4). You would also have a configuration issue where the tie rods connect to the spindles, so that's probably another point or two. You would also have a missing slave cylinder for a non-power steering car, that's probably another point or two. And (from memory) there might be a couple other small finish or configuration issues between non-PS and PS steering sectors.

All told, I think by adding PS to a car, you're looking at in the vacinity of 20-25 points deducted. PB is another matter, but probably in the same vacinity of points down.

What do you want to do with the car? Get Top Flight? If so, you can afford to lose 270 points. By adding PS and PB to the car, you're down close to 50 points (probably, worst case). That means the rest of the car can only afford to lose 220 points. Operations needs to be flawless and the paint job would need to be really close to typical factory production. If you want to pursue the Duntov Mark of Excellence, the threshold gets even tighter with only a total cushion of 135 points at the Regional & National level. Now the car has only just under 100 points to spread across all of the other judging areas. That's NOT MUCH.

I think a lot of the discussion thus far has been assuming you want to take the car to the highest levels. I haven't read so far that that's what you want to do. Perhaps a Second Flight at the Chapter level to learn what kind of car you have is all you are interested in? Don't know. There is a big difference between a Chapter Third Flight and a Duntov Mark of Excellence. But at the end of the day, both cars go through the same process and the components on the cars are judged the same.

So, it depends on what your goal for the car is.

[Joe R.]

Re: Can PS or PB be added to a midyear without NCRS deduction?

Thanks Ara, but still curious why only the L79, as the 300HP and BBs also had A/C, AR, etc. but no P/S associated with their suffixes.

Hi Michael:

As Terry points out, there had to be something different about the engine assembly, as it left the engine plant, in order to justify having a separate engine code.

I have researched this question regarding the HP code used for an L79 equipped with BOTH power steering and air conditioning. The difference is in the placement of the fan flange on the water pump. GM generally used special deep-groove pulleys on the L79, compared with the standard-groove pulleys on the base engines. The wider deep groove pulleys required that the fan flange on the water pump be moved forward (toward the radiator) by 1/8 inch compared to the base engine. The entire L79 pulley set is engineered to line up correctly with the fan flange in this forward location.

For some reason GM decided to use the standard-groove base engine pulley set on the L79 when it had BOTH power steering and air conditioning. This may have been due to the low production volume of this configuration, or it may have been due to the fitment problems that a deep-groove pulley set would have created for the power steering pulley hitting the frame rail kick-up (this fitment problem would be unique to an L79 with BOTH power steering and air conditioning).

In any event, using the standard-groove base engine pulley set on the L79 required that they change the fan flange location to match the base engine. This, in turn, created the need for the unique HP engine suffix, to differentiate this particular engine assembly from other L79 configurations.

BTW, there has been much confusion about the fan hub position being specified as either 5-9/16 inches or 5-11/16 inches in various documents. The reason is that both spacings were used, with 5-9/16 used with the standard-groove pulley sets and 5-11/16 used for deep-groove pulley sets. Interestingly, most water pump rebuilders simply split the difference and set their water pumps to 5-5/8 inches.

[Gerard F.]

Re: Can PS or PB be added to a midyear without NCRS deduction?

If you know that it was not original, and you add it, then it's a MORTAL sin, and you will be banished to purgatory until Jesus Christ and The Holy Ghost check the POP and build sheet for authenticity. If it is not origional, then you shall be forever banished to the fires of hell.

If you aren't sure whether it's original or not, then it's a venial sin, and ten our fathers and 10 hail maries should fix you up.

[Michael J.]

Re: Can PS or PB be added to a midyear without NCRS deduction?

Hi Michael:

As Terry points out, there had to be something different about the engine assembly, as it left the engine plant, in order to justify having a separate engine code.

I have researched this question regarding the HP code used for an L79 equipped with BOTH power steering and air conditioning. The difference is in the placement of the fan flange on the water pump. GM generally used special deep-groove pulleys on the L79, compared with the standard-groove pulleys on the base engines. The wider deep groove pulleys required that the fan flange on the water pump be moved forward (toward the radiator) by 1/8 inch compared to the base engine. The entire L79 pulley set is engineered to line up correctly with the fan flange in this forward location.

For some reason GM decided to use the standard-groove base engine pulley set on the L79 when it had BOTH power steering and air conditioning. This may have been due to the low production volume of this configuration, or it may have been due to the fitment problems that a deep-groove pulley set would have created for the power steering pulley hitting the frame rail kick-up (this fitment problem would be unique to an L79 with BOTH power steering and air conditioning).

In any event, using the standard-groove base engine pulley set on the L79 required that they change the fan flange location to match the base engine. This, in turn, created the need for the unique HP engine suffix, to differentiate this particular engine assembly from other L79 configurations.

BTW, there has been much confusion about the fan hub position being specified as either 5-9/16 inches or 5-11/16 inches in various documents. The reason is that both spacings were used, with 5-9/16 used with the standard-groove pulley sets and 5-11/16 used for deep-groove pulley sets. Interestingly, most water pump rebuilders simply split the difference and set their water pumps to 5-5/8 inches.

Thank you Joe! Good to have a thorough explanation of this. Sometimes these engine code differences are puzzling, but when explained they make perfect sense.