LTX and LSXPutting LT1's, LS1's, and their variants into Third Gens is becoming more popular. This board is for those who are doing and have done the swaps so they can discuss all of their technical aspects, including repairs, swap info, and performance upgrades.
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Ive started work again on my iroc-z, and the fact that i have car ADD, and cant seem to ever leave my car alone, i decided my iroc needs a solid foundation to support future mods, for when i can afford a turbo, or a bottle, or something along those lines.
Anyways. So the progression on this car has been:
'Aug '06 - My 16th birthday present
'June '07 - Cammed 305, road worthy, new paint!
'Sept '07 - 17th birthday, more milestones must be completed
'Oct '07 - 305 dyno's 202rwhp/287rwtq. Gross.
'Feb '08 - Car is on display @ Speedorama in toronto
'Aug '08 - 5.3L Is running in my camaro (Plus a sh!t ton of other mods)
'Dec '08 - 5.3L is stripped, buy LS1 block to buld
'Feb '09 - LS1 goes bye bye
Soooo. Thats me and my car's relation ship slammed into a few characters.
And now we wonder...LS1 byebye? wtf...what now?
Well. 6.0L. Yep, simply put.
Enough of my rambling.
This year's portion of the iroc will be a cammed 6.0L/T56, and doing a mucho amount of cleaning up on my swap, cause my last swap was a bit of a hack job. New swap will be ultra clean and quick to boot!
Basic changes:
Motor
Trans
Fuel Feed
Trans crossmember (Copying justins, sorry man, just looks so perdy haha)
Wiring harness reshaped (Truck harness was fugly)
LT1 Rad will be used w/ LS1 fans. May customize my rad support for extra room for future turbo.
Headers - Redone in 1 3/4" tubing, or stainless works ones will take place.
Thats the basis.
This will be jammed packed full of pictures.
Ill do it on a day by day basis, since ill be working on it a **** ton.
Day 1:
Anyways. Past that, here's harness progress:
Made up a board with the connectorp lacement marked where iw anted it, then just shortened and extended wires as i wanted.
Turned out excellent. Very happy with that.
Tonights project is hang 6spd pedals, and cut shifter hole. Updates to follow.
Helllll of a day 1
Last edited by SheldonZ28; 02-12-2009 at 08:50 AM.
Ugh - sorry that happened to you guys, are both of you OK? Should be a great project (based on your last swap thread), looking forward to watching this one as well.
Ugh - sorry that happened to you guys, are both of you OK? Should be a great project (based on your last swap thread), looking forward to watching this one as well.
BTW, you still need more cubes.
Baby steps :P Next time will be a bigger crank
Im hoping to make this one a hell of alot nicer then my last motor swap, taking what i learned and trying to do some better with it.
Summer time plan is to cruise down to the states to meet some of you LSx swappers!
Last edited by SheldonZ28; 02-12-2009 at 08:55 AM.
Where did I get the impression that you sold the car????? Good luck with the new swap.
I tried parting it. Ever tried parting a $10,000 car during these times?
Aint happenin
Gave up and decided to just keep it and knock a couple seconds off
Chevy - If your refering to the LSx, do it. The 5.3L's now are $430cad (Thats like $350us) at the junkyard near me. The 6.0L i bought was $600!!! 80k on it, mint shape, complete pull out.
I tried parting it. Ever tried parting a $10,000 car during these times?
Aint happenin
I understand completely..... just like the 468 I have built that I need to get rid of to start my next project...... I can't seem to get it sold for a decent price .....so I am stuck with it for now...
Chevy - If your refering to the LSx, do it. The 5.3L's now are $430cad (Thats like $350us) at the junkyard near me. The 6.0L i bought was $600!!! 80k on it, mint shape, complete pull out.
Their not that cheap around here normally I got lucky, searched 6.0 on car-part.com for the hell of it, and these things came up!
Again, cell pics, cause im half retarded and keep forgetting my cam. Real pics tommorow, promise!
Oh, and yes, thats an auto tailshaft. It will be gone tommorow.
And one futher note, ive gotta give alot of credit to justin (Ghettocruiser) for his swap, its freakin excellent, ill straight up admit, i printed pictures of his shifter hole and cut mine to match his :P
Last edited by SheldonZ28; 02-12-2009 at 08:47 AM.
I tried parting it. Ever tried parting a $10,000 car during these times?
Aint happenin
Gave up and decided to just keep it and knock a couple seconds off
Chevy - If your refering to the LSx, do it. The 5.3L's now are $430cad (Thats like $350us) at the junkyard near me. The 6.0L i bought was $600!!! 80k on it, mint shape, complete pull out.
$600 cad is....$500ish USD. You get my drift..
What yard do you go to? I cant find any yards nearby with LS parts. I need sensors, coilpacks, wiring harness, all kinds of stuff :S
YES!!!! I knew you couldnt let her go! And I wouldnt exactly call your last swap a hack job man. Dont sell yourself short. You're a young guy, and you got the swap together and working. Thats further along than a lot of people get with these swaps.
One of these days...Ill be making a choice. Im either going more cubes, or Im going FI on a 347. One day.... haha
As for the crossmember. You are more than welcome to use my crossmember as a guide! When it comes to that part, let me know if you need any help. You'll be able to build something that will work. Are you running a trans mounted torque arm or a crossmember mounted unit? I forget.
J.
__________________
ARE shortblock, Ross custom boost pistons, arp rod bolts, ARE ported oil pump,
MTI 2e 5.3L ported heads milled .030 with double springs,
228/224 113+1 Comp XE-R, Cloyes adjustable timing chain, LS6 valley cover,
fast 90mm intake, NW 90mm throttle body, SVO 30lb injectors, 85mm MAF,
ASP underdrive pulley, 160* t-stat, stainless LT headers 1.75" primaries
YES!!!! I knew you couldnt let her go! And I wouldnt exactly call your last swap a hack job man. Dont sell yourself short. You're a young guy, and you got the swap together and working. Thats further along than a lot of people get with these swaps.
One of these days...Ill be making a choice. Im either going more cubes, or Im going FI on a 347. One day.... haha
As for the crossmember. You are more than welcome to use my crossmember as a guide! When it comes to that part, let me know if you need any help. You'll be able to build something that will work. Are you running a trans mounted torque arm or a crossmember mounted unit? I forget.
J.
Haha, thanks!
Im running a crossmember mount tq arm right now cause my 4L65 didnt have provisions on the trans. The T56 does, so i may use the trans mount one this time untill i can afford a chassis mount spohn or somethin along those lines
Todays goal is get the motor's back in 1 peice, and dress them up in f-body accessories. Need a pilot bearing, and then i gotta find a clutch install tool to get my trans on, then more progress will be made.
Autozone's got the pilot BUSHINGs as well as the alignment tool. Atleast they usually do. I went with a bushing as opposed to a bearing...seems a lot of LS guys do that to save their input shaft.
As for your torque arm mount....If you are already mounted on the crossmember...then Ide stay that way. You are already looking at fabbing a whole new crossmember. So whats alittle more fabbing to mount the torque arm? I would either hack up your current crossmember and move the mount over to your new one, and contact steve sphon and have him send you the parts to build your own mount...which is what I did. Depending on what torque arm and mount you are working with now anyway....
Im excited to see this go down! I wanna see how good that 6.0 runs for ya!
MOTOR IS IN THE SHOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Needless to say, im thrilled! Looks clean inside, i just couldnt resist, so i spent the afternoon tearing it down and cleaning it up to dress it in LS1 accessories.
Only point id like to make is truck motors live a completely different life then LS1's & car motors. Generally the LS1's are more beat on, and heavier wear from extra time in high rpm's etc, however their pretty much always pretty and very visually pleasing
Truck motors tend to be caked in dirt, dusty, surface rust on them, big ugly intakes, etc. But on the flipside, their generally run at lower rpm's and rarely see abuse past towing. The motor i got, the truck must have spent some time working on a construction site, or on a dirt road, as it was rather muddy. No worries, i cleaned 'er all up and she's sittin pretty now so im content!
Tommorow ill finish putting my f-body pan on, and getting the truck balancer off (Those balancer bolts are a pain!) so i can swap out the cams, then get started on setting the trans up. From there, its installation baby!
Gah, im so excited I want to make the 6.0L marking on the block glow or something so everyone can see it hahahahaha.
Anyways, enough excitement for one post.
Updates tommorow with pictures!
Last edited by five7kid; 02-12-2009 at 02:53 PM.
Reason: bypassing swear filter
Their not that cheap around here normally I got lucky, searched 6.0 on car-part.com for the hell of it, and these things came up!
Again, cell pics, cause im half retarded and keep forgetting my cam. Real pics tommorow, promise!
Oh, and yes, thats an auto tailshaft. It will be gone tommorow.
And one futher note, ive gotta give alot of credit to justin (Ghettocruiser) for his swap, its freakin excellent, ill straight up admit, i printed pictures of his shifter hole and cut mine to match his :P
what happened to the skyline you seemed so enthusiastic to go import. And just so you know, you are probably the 5 or 6th person i know who has bought a 600$ 6.0l so they aren't that hard to find...good deal anyways. good luck.
So mucho pictures to add, along with mucho fustration. Ever tried getting an underdrive pulley off a LS1? Its damn rediculous. There must be like a 1" press fit on the damn thing!
Anyways. Got the motor stripped down, put my f-body pan on, put in a new oil pump o-ring, put on my LS6 intake etc.
So, engine pictures:
And here's dads motor chillen beside mine.
Good god:
Yes, i work in this pig sty. In my defense theirs wayyy to many parts in our shop, from the 3 cars we've parted, in a 700sqft shop, not to mention 2 complete (mostly) cars, a motor cycle and a butt load of random contractor bits haha. Also i havent got around to picking up my tools, or sweeping up my oil dry. Afraid to while theirs open motors around!
If you look realllllyyy close, theirs a '70 firebird, or something along those lines back there.
Last edited by SheldonZ28; 02-13-2009 at 12:40 AM.
The project starts here, since i cant even drink yet. 7 months, 15 days to go! :P
Werd.
Pleasant surprise, the motor is quite clean inside. Oil changes could have been carried out a little more regularily, but 0 sludge, so i cant complain
Dooooool
Oh, and a very pleasant surprise also, on my motor was the end to an oil cooler, it had the lines cut where it previously met the cooler block, but none the less it had the pieces i needed, including the main feed block and the lines to the front of the block. So i can put my own neoprene lines from there to a tube/fin cooler and have a trick factory oil cooling setup. That made me happy.
Bunch of gauges showed up today also! Pictures to follow of them soon. C2 - Boost, Fuel press, air fuel, Ultra Lite - Boost, Air fuel, Carbon fibre- boost, Fuel press. All electronic, and all $150!!!
More tommorow.
Last edited by SheldonZ28; 02-13-2009 at 12:38 AM.
6.0 is probably what Ill go with when I go FI. You cant do much to the alum ls1 as far as boring. Unless you sleeve it or whatever. You can punch the 6.0 alittle bit...and it'll take some abuse
Man..everytime I see your car, I want a red camaro. And Im not a camaro guy. And your garage isnt a pigs sty... its just an regular working guys shop. You should see mine!!! Right now you cant even walk through mine, and even when its clean its too small to get my car in and work on it. haha. My poor car is sitting over in a storage shed because I couldnt fit her back in the garage after the project
I went with the 6.0L for the 4" bore. Because its easy to make a 402 later down the road, and the 4" bore means i can run a L92/L76 top end.
Cam, right now ive got a TR230/224 im probably gonna run, cause ive got it here, its not massive, but its a hell of alot more then the stock cam, and on a 111LSA, so it will get a raspy idle. In the future ill upgrade the cam with the intake, and set them all up to compliment each other. Right now im trying to get some reliable power on a budget.
Gonna be fabricating some new headers as my 1 5/8" primary's simply arnt acceptable anymore. Not sure if i should go 1 7/8" to save the need to build yet another set of headers when i decide to stroke and poke the motor.
Its no more expensive to go 1 7/8" as my brother can bring them to school and machine out the flanges a little larger on the schools CNC.
Im going to put on a LS2 timing chain with the cam, and while ive got the pump off, im going to port it for some extra flow. Im trying to save money where i can on this motor, but theres places i refuse to skimp. Like timing chain and valve springs. 2 Parts that if **** goes wrong there, bye bye motor.
Oh, and for the record, i had a 5.3L Last year, i pulled it, bought a LS1 block, bought LS1 pistons, used my 5.3L crank (same PN as the LS1), covers, cam oiling system etc, was going to use that motor, then i saw the cheap LQ4, so i sold my LS1 tuesday morning and bought this guy wednesday morning To save myself some flaming, i wont even say how cheap i sold a rebuilt LS1 with new bearings, hardware, gaskets etc for($700!)
Cam, right now ive got a TR230/224 im probably gonna run, cause ive got it here, its not massive, but its a hell of alot more then the stock cam, and on a 111LSA, so it will get a raspy idle. In the future ill upgrade the cam with the intake, and set them all up to compliment each other. Right now im trying to get some reliable power on a budget
Nice build. Let me know if/when you want to sell that cam I want to try that grind.
You should def. make some good power than, i would be suprised if it made less than 500 fwhp.
And that tr230 should sound pretty nasty, def. gonna need a sound clip once you get it up and running
If you got money for the l92's then i say go for it.
Eh, technically i dont.
My dads selling his NIB PRC Stg 1 LS6 heads for $1000. I might grab those off him cause he wants to do a L92 top end. Saves me buying an intake, TB, rails and injectors.
Ive read that L92 Heads are picky with cam's on a 6.0L. Not bad if you've got the money to pick a cam, but i dont. Atleast with the heads from my dad, i can somewhat finance them off him. He wants L92's for his 6.0L Anyways, so its a win-win for us.
Can just throw the heads on. Will raise my compression also.
Past that, i ported my oil pump, had a write up on how to do it, so i figured id give it a shot. Turned out quite well, certainly cant make it any worse
Outlet isnt as perdy as the inlet. But i know forsure it will flow better. Gonna shim it also. Pretty happy with the outcome.
Its FAR smoother then when i started, i tried to get the left lower edge better, but couldnt. Ill try this, see how it works, ill likely buy another used one since their cheap and giv'r another shot.
Now waitin on my LS2 chain
Plans for tommorow are to get my front suspension back in the car and put in the 6spd pedals. Waiting on head decisions before i make a move with that, when i know, ill pop the heads off and sell them, then install the CNC's and be on my way.
Hopefully the 66cc chambers, which will bump my compression, with the TR230 cam will throw me over the 420rwhp goal. Contemplating a MS3 cam still. Its not too late to put one in.
Last edited by SheldonZ28; 02-15-2009 at 11:43 PM.
Hopefully the 66cc chambers, which will bump my compression, with the TR230 cam will throw me over the 420rwhp goal. Contemplating a MS3 cam still. Its not too late to put one in.
Geez man, with CNC'd heads & a cam, I don't think that 420 hp is going to be a problem...
Geez man, with CNC'd heads & a cam, I don't think that 420 hp is going to be a problem...
TR230 is a pretty little cam. Thing about the TR230 is its basically a crutch for a lower flowing intake. Certainly isnt going to be the case with my motor.
If i went MS3 id have no problem getting that.
the 66cc chambers(LS6) with stock gaskets are about 10.2:1 compression.
The CNC LS6 heads dont flow nearly as much as the L92 heads, which sucks.
i favor the trex over the ms4 cams
but then again ive nevr had a ms4 cam, but i did go 10.9 with heavy *** m6 ttops car with stock kmember and stock 243 heads with a ls6 intake, lt, and tune in a vr cut 5.7 ls1
i favor the trex over the ms4 cams
but then again ive nevr had a ms4 cam, but i did go 10.9 with heavy *** m6 ttops car with stock kmember and stock 243 heads with a ls6 intake, lt, and tune in a vr cut 5.7 ls1
Wellll. Today was a good day, got a fair bit of work done.
Decided to stitch weld the strut towers, since the front end was apart and it can only help:
Anndd, with a kickoff to my motor build, i pulled the heads off, the pistons looks beautiful, but i cleaned them up.
Taped off the top of the motor and got it looking prettier, painted the front cover aluminum, though i may sand it off and do it in a "cast iron" color. I like that color. Think im gonna do my waterpump in it also.
Made a deal with shift06 on the boards for his FAST intake, so needless to say im thrilled about that. This motor car is really coming together!!!
Plans for tommorow:
Finish getting auto trans out
Install K-member
Install front suspension
Clean shop
Buddy dave's deal here, got a '96 Bonneville SSEi w/ a supercharged 3.8L for $250cad (200ish us) with a good motor!
Hes putting it in reatta, well, ill end up doing it, but its the thought that counts i guess haha. Needless to say, i think reatta's are fugly, but to each their own
Reatta:
Donor:
Yeah, i know. Its sideways! wtf!! hahahah
Its mostly unhooked and should be out tommorow.
More updates as parts arrive.
Monday i should ahve my patriot valve springs, and LS2 timing chain. MS3 cam comes wednesday now cause the guys at UPS (Useless parcel service) are ab unch of friggen monkeys.
i would have gone G5x4 or similar over that very peaky texas speed cam. Both the ms3 and ms4 are peaky with high numbers, but the G5 cams make more average power. In fact I liked the F13 futral cam as well for good torque and hp numbers.
__________________ 2011 chicago world of wheels placed in super street class
Best Engine '11 Thirdgenfest
Best Modified Camaro Thirdgenfest '05, '07, '11 Second place Camaro Modified '06, '08, & '10
MFBA March 2008 Featured Calendar Vehicle
i would have gone G5x4 or similar over that very peaky texas speed cam. Both the ms3 and ms4 are peaky with high numbers, but the G5 cams make more average power. In fact I liked the F13 futral cam as well for good torque and hp numbers.
I bought the cam used for a steal. I may switch the cam up over the summer. Putting in a plan to put the car on a dyno and try out a few different cams.