Ok folks alot of you have helped me so far with this process. As of right now, the motor is running fine and has been for about 1000 miles. I started off with 93 octane and have staged it down slowly to 87 since I am not boosting. I didn't think I was going to do this at first after hearing what everyone said but my god was the exhaust smelling rich and my headers were getting quite hot with unburnt gas. Also the car sounds "stock" again at that octane. when I was running 93 it sounded very akward.

As far as other things go, I still have 1 problem. At idle, I get a weird chattering noise from the engine. It sounds like the valves chattering or the transmission. I am about half a quart down on trans fluid (yea I should fill that up soon) but I dont think that is the problem. As soon as I pop the gas pedal the noise is gone. Just at that low idle i get a resonance vibration. It could be a loose bracket or bolt I'm guessing too. I didn't expect it to sound completey stock afterwards but does anybody else have an idea if the car should be doing this at idle after doing what i did to it..... sleeves rods pistons valves ??

 

Congrats on getting it up and running, Id like more details on your build...so your not boosting-then why run such a low compression? The car will be a dog off the nitrous I see in your sig. Contrary to popular belief stock compression or even slightly higher (built) + nitrous work great together.

edit-I run Arias ED (no silicon supposedly louder) pistons + sleeves and it sounds almost as quiet as stock at idle...

 

did you do this to run reg gas?

 

I guess I am doing this backwards from everyone else. I wanted to upgrade the engine before I boosted it.
Here is my current setup
Darton Sleeves
Pauter Rods
Wiseco Pistions stock bore 8.8CR
ARP Studs & Mains
Ferrera valvetrain kit (superalloy valves)

This thing is built to be a F/I beast but I currently am out of funds to boost it. How sad Anyways I figured while i was running the low CR I would have to adjust it somehow because the car would run very rich so I just lowered the octane which made it all better and saves me some $ in the meantime.

 

You did 1/2" studs right? What headgaskets?

 

i'm in a similar situation -- 8.6CR w/ pauters and +.030" arias (plus tomeis and a decent bit of headwork)... my exhaust tips are solid black -- i'll try dropping the octane a bit and see if that helps. After the next trip to the sandbox, I should have the fund ceiling to toss on a nice TT kit and test out the 100 octane pump gas (95 octane US spec -- R+M/2).

 

unfortunatley i didn't go with 1/2 inch studs. this may bite me in the but later on. I went with stock headgaskets only because I heard 100 horror stories about aftermarket ones.

 

You have a light weight flywheel and nonstock clutch? Those will make quite a bit of noise sometimes. I am also building my engine before i turbo it 9.1 compression. I am going to advance the timing on the local dyno here as far as i can to get some power back.