I may experiment with building a girdle for the T5 to help keep the case from expanding. My understanding is that this expansion pushes the output shaft and secondary shaft apart, which ultimately causes 3rd gear to break. I have no idea if I'll have any success or not, but I may at least try.

 

The rear counter shaft bearing retainer is also a bad weak point. They make a solid aluminum piece to replace it and I think it is only like $45

 

The shafts flex in the middle, bend the case, the teeth spread apart and then boom, no teeth on the gears.
As long as you don't powershift or go full throttle and use the dump the clutch method you should be fine.
I have rebuilt so many T-5s for mustang guys its not funny. My friend had one he drove daily and at will he could nuke it. He knew how to do it and how to keep it alive. The car wasn't even close to stock.

 

Where does the case bend/flex? Is it at the ends between the shaft bores? Does it bend/flex vertically (stretches top to bottom), or horizontally(front to back)?

 

Subscribed, this is definitely giving me some ideas

 

Its not really just one place, its all over. The case is thin, some will take it and some won't. Its strange!!

 

My God I'm sick of porting these runners! I port matched to the gaskets today. Next step is to do the same to the plenum & base, then it's finally time to pull the car in and start yanking the 305.

 

just an FYI, i made 410 rwhp with a HSR, and vortecs on a 355" sbc, and mild roller cam with a TKO 600 behind it..

 

Those are great numbers... way higher than I see other Vortec combos making. Care to share your cam specs? That could really provide some good insight.

By the way, I've had virtually no progress lately. My wife gave birth to our 2nd child a couple weeks ago, so as you can imagine, I've been very busy tending to her and the baby. I did get out into the garage one night, and I started gasket-matching the plenum. once I finish that, I need to gasket match the base, and then I hope to pull the GTA in and start the 305 extraction.

 

Congrats on baby number two man!

 

Thanks! I actually had time to go out to the garage tonight, but I'm too tired.

 

Subscribed to this thread... awesome timing as I am planning on swapping out my stock 083 L98 heads for some Vortec's. My L98 heads were ported and they took my car into the solid 13.5-13.7 range but now I am looking to push the envelope a little farther and play in the high 12's-13 flat region...

 

is 350 Vortec heads better than lt1 heads and can those heads use with lt1?

 

^^hey buddy, make your own thread so not to take away from the original poster's topic.

 

This week I actually had time to sneak out to the garage for an hour on 2 separate occasions, and in the process was able to finally finish all of my porting & gasket matching on the plenum/runners/base. The only thing left to do with them now is to open the plenum-runner gaskets a little bit.

Next weekend one of my car buddies is coming to visit, and we're going to have a day long thrash session. The plan is to pull the GTA into the garage, pull the motor and transmission, and start prepping the engine bay for paint. Hopefully we'll get all of that done so that I can start working toward getting the new drivetrain into the car and usable before the snow flies.

 

great build keep at it, so tell me will the tpi runners match up to vortec heads, cuz a vortec headed l98 is looking better and better to me as i read, only problem is i dont like center bolt valve covers lol

 

The vortec heads require the use of a vortec-specific base. It's said to flow rather poorly, which is why I spent so much time porting it and cleaning up the runners and plenum to maximize flow.

Right now the plan is to pull the GTA into the garage for teardown on Sunday.

 

Progress!

Today my buddy and I had the whole day to work on the car.

I pulled the car into the garage at around 10:00 AM.


Hood off.


This extraction took a lot longer than pulling the 350 out of the IROC, which was a v-belt setup with no smog equipment, no A/C and separate chassis and engine harnesses, and headers instead of manifolds. The GTA was all stock, and in addition to having to pull off a lot more stuff, a lot of it came off a lot harder because it had never come apart before.

The worst part was that I absolutely could not get the T5 to separate from the bellhousing. It wouldn't budge, so we had to pull the motor & trans together, which I find to be a huge pain in the ***. Here's a pic of it halfway out:


Engine out!


Once we had the motor & trans out, we worked on separating the transmission. It took a while and required a lot of banging on the tailshaft side to side to get it to separate. By the time we got done, it was about 8:30 PM.

Now the garage is a mess, and I'll probably spend the next couple weeks just trying to get the garage clean. There's a lot of work to do to get the engine bay cleaned up and repainted before I can put the new motor in.

Here's a picture of the pair. Now I have 2 thirdgens without motors.

 

man jim, that gta is pretty!

 

lovin it so far, cant wait to see it done

 

I'm still watching this one progress... I am at the start of my TPI-Vortec swap. It all started with my oil pump ceasing up... once I started that I ended up with a set of 062 Vortec heads on my bench, old heads pulled and my engine in this state.... lol... talk about a bad case of "just as well's" ... I always wanted to go Vortec, this last bit of engine work just tipped me over the edge to do it

I am pulling the engine out on Monday...sure hope I didn't do any damage to the crank/cam... I went a fair distance on the highway with the oil pump ceased and the top of the engine starved of oil....

 

Is your GTA paint pearl?

 

Any recent updates or have ya put this one on hold for the winter?

 

I just surfed in, read the whole post. Didn't realize you were just down the road from me until I saw all the license plates tacked on your wall

from Wallingford.

 

Just found this. Looking to do a similar build. Tagging along!

 

Are you going to run an external coolent bypass?

 

I am doing this same swap and I will be running an external coolant bypass....haven't quite worked it out yet but I'll figure it out...

 

Bypass of what? I'll be eliminating the coolant through the throttle body and eliminating the diverter mess as well.

 

jim, how's this coming? the 408 for the iroc? any progress on anything?

 

I've read the Vortec heads (or block?) does not have an internal bypass to allow coolant circulation when the thermostat is closed, and the heater is off (and blocked).
The Vortec TPI base has an extra port which allows a hose to be plumbed to the water pump inlet to provide external bypass... Like a BBC.
I recall another thread here on TGO that the extra coolant port on the Vortec base interferes with factory TPI fuel lines.

Try this: vortec-heads-cooling-issue
Or Google "vortec coolant bypass".

Joe

 

If you are eliminating the diverter valve than you have nothing to worry about as the heater core will then flow all the time and be your coolant bypass. That is how mine is setup and it works fine.

 

exactly

 

Nope. New baby is making it impossible to get time for anything. Since I pulled the 305 in September, all I've been able to do is clean the engine bay and start painting some of the engine accessories. I'm hoping to start getting back out to the garage 1-2 nights per week real soon. I want the GTA on the road when the snow melts in April.

 

Congrats on the baby man! That's awesome news.

 

Congrats on the baby!

 

Ok, I'm finally bringing this back up. About a month ago the baby finally decided to start going to bed on a regular schedule, which allows me to get back out to the garage once in a while. I've managed to get all of the accessory brackets painted, and I finally got my powdercoat stuff set up and powder coated the accessory nuts & bolts. The accessory brackets are bolted to the motor, and I've installed the idler pulley that replaces the smog pump, and installed the alternator. I need to clean up the power steering pump and get that installed as well. I've got all of the hardware I need to bolt the intake base to the block, which I hope to do this week.

Once that's accomplished, I've got to move on to the task that I've been avoiding... preparing the engine bay for paint. There's a lot of surface rust around the radiator area and between the radiator and headlights. None of it is a structural problem, it's all cosmetic, but the thought of having to completely rip apart the front end of the car to fix it "right" is really bugging me. This car isn't a resto, and I don't want to take it to the ****-retentive level that I'm taking the IROC to, so I'm going to just need to find a faster alternative. Most likely I'm going to hit as much of it as I can reach with a wire wheel, then slag some POR-15 or similar product on it, then paint it. Right now I'm trying to decide between a black engine bay, or a body colored engine bay. I'm really not a big fan of black engine bays in thirdgens, but I'm concerned that my not-perfect prep plans and the fact that I'm not removing most of the engine bay parts (heater box, brake booster, fuel lines, radiator & condenser, headlights, etc) are going to result in a shoddy looking engine bay if I paint it body color.

Any opinions on the engine bay prep & color?

 

Ive always been a fan of body colored engine bay.

As for prep. Depends on how crazy you want to get. Id do 220 sand, 3 coats of high build primer, 500 sand, clean very well then couple coats of base and clear!

Thats how im going to do mine once I actually get around to pulling the motor.

 

Engine bay must be body color!

Look at my build thread, mine is down to bare metal at the moment.

 

Ugh. Come on guys, I'm looking for somebody to tell me it's ok to half-*** it on a driver! You're not helping!

 

Mine is a daily driver too, or will be once I get it back together.

I blacked it out before, and it looked like crap, imo.

 

I didn't think your engine bay looked that bad. Could you maybe just clean it up real good, remove rust in required areas, prime with gray primer, then shoot some white on there from rattle cans? You did say it was just a driver. Most of the areas in the engine bays of these cars are covered with stuff anyways. I agree with the other guys though. Body colored engine bays look so much better. Just my Ultimately it's up to you though.

 

If your going to half *** the engine bay, don't rattle can it with Krylon or some other crappy paint, use rustoleum marine paint like I did with a former build of mine, its cheap and its strong. The original white paint in the bay of my old '84 TA was in rough condition, so I sanded, primed and painted it the cheap way, and I went with Marine Black. Wasn't out to win any shows mind you, but it looked good for what it was, and I drove it daily a few summers ago, then eventually sold it. Here is when I got it with the L69 and started pulling it apart, redid the engine and converted it to TPI, then went with the Black engine bay scheme. This was before the clear coat I added, it held up fine, even to this day when I come across it...

 

if I do it in black, it'll be the Satin John Deer paint out of a spray gun. I rattle canned my IROC flat black, and I liked it so much that I'm going back to body color on it.

But, I did like that the flat black hid a lot of sins, and was easy to touch up.

My worry with going with the body color is that it's going to wind up looking even worse than the black. I'm not stripping everything out of the engine bay, which means that I'm going to have masking lines, and a lot of areas may get overspray instead of full even coverage. I guess I'll have to evaluate how good my body work looks after I finish it up, and then decide if I'm going to go with a satin black or with the body color. The other drawback with the body color is that it's a 3 stage pearl, and if I screw up with the pearl trying to shoot it into the cracks and crevices, I may wind up with a seriously fugly paint job.

 

body color

 

Agreed. I didn't rattle mine believe it or not, I used a cheap spray gun, but I definitely recommend Marine paint, holds up to the rain that gets kicked up very well. The reason why I did mine Gloss Black was because I pulled the stock Anniversary interior and installed an all Black interior, and the color scheme looked pretty good with the T-Tops off and the hood up. With yours though you may want to consider White again, mainly because you have a lot of Black surrounding the engine as it is. With mine it was Black engine bay, and aluminum/chrome engine... save for the block and accessory brackets. You have a very nice car by the way.

 

It's gotta be body color.

 

yay, progress!

Tonight all I did was bolt on the intake, but at least it's progress! I finally got the right bolts, the right washers, and the right RTV all at the same time!

Additionally, you can see all of the refinished accessories in the picture, including the lower smog pump bolt, which was an adventure all its own. Taking off the old smog pump was a nightmare, because that bolt had been festering in a bath of galvanic corrosion for almost 25 years until I tried to remove it. In my attempts to remove it, I shattered a Craftsman torx bit, and a Mac torx bit. Then I smartened up and torched the bracket to free the galvanic bond. Eventually I got the bolt out, but the torx was pretty trashed so I didn't want to reuse it. I learned that absolutely NOBODY makes a 3/8 16 x4" black oxide panhead torx bolt. I had to resort to grabbing one out of an F-body junk yard in NH. In any case, here are the pics:

Intake installed:


I couldn't resist, and I had to set the rest of my stuff on the motor.

 

It looks like we lost the body color engine bay fight. Engine looks amazing though!

 

the red car in the picture with the black engine bay is his iroc, which is getting an ls motor, and he said he is going back body color. the white car is his gta, and there are no pics of the engine bay up yet, so i'm hoping he's reconsidering going back white in there.

 

Yeah, I'm going to do the GTA bay white. Hopefully I don't regret it.

The IROC will have the remainder of the firewall components removed so that it can be properly repainted, but that won't happen until I get back the garage bay that the GTA is taking up.