iv been toying with the idea of puting a 455 into my ta and with that iv had to think about things like how strong the car is and if it could handle the power or not. i was talking to a guy in town with a thirdgen camaro about my 455 idea and he had told me that a g body frame should bolt up to my ta's body and that should take care of most of the strengh problems.

so would a g body's frame bolt up to my ta? has any one ever done this and if so got any pix or things i could read about it ?

 

Third gen wheel base 101". G body wheel base about 114-118". That's going to be quite a swap. I'm not even sure about the width.

 

It wouldn't be even remotely close to a bolt-on, F-bodies are unibody cars with welded-in subframes.

 

yes i realize id have to cut the subframes out thats somthing i sorta figured out awhile ago lol

 

if your going to go thru all that trouble why not just put in SFCs and a cage..?

 

a full frame would be stronger then sub frame connectors and a roll cage wouldnt help me much for this

 

Sure it might be stronger, but how strong do you really need?

 

strong enuff to handle a 455 with 500-600 hp and 600 or more tq

 

Too much work for not enough benefit. Just go ahead and through it on a blazer chassis...

SFCs and a 10 pt wouldn't be enough?

 

I would expect that subframe connectors would be just fine then.

 

i cant have a roll cage or roll bar the car has to remain stock well atleast have a stock look to it.

 

Why do you have to have it look stock? Besides, tint the windows and most people wouldn't even be able to tell you've got an 8pt?

I think the car might sit alittle higher if it was on a gbody frame. Kinda like a body lift on a truck.

 

The unibody can easily handle that amount of power with subframes, and a few other unseen goodies. But if you are putting that much power down then it is obviously not much of a daily driver anymore. So just put in a roll bar and be done with it. Or go cage it.

 

???

I can’t believe that people have even entertained this this far.

No, a g-body frame won’t even come close to bolting up on an f-body, we’re talking about 2 completely different body/frame structures, different sizes…. To make something like that work you’d have to not only cut out the whole subframe, but also the floor and almost all the structure besides the outer shell and rebuild everything to match up to a cut/shortened g-body frame. At that point, if you have the skill to do that you might as well build a full on, tube frame car. Yea, people put them on blazer frames and other BS, but that is when you’re looking for height, and they just set it on top of the frame and make mounting pads. If you did that with the g-body frame the thing would look like a 4x4.

As far as doing it to swap a 455 in… make some motor mounts, possibly a custom oil pan and be done with it. If the car is going to see real drag use with that kind of power then you’ll be required to put a cage in anyway, and otherwise you won’t put enough force on anything to really hurt it. If you want to reinforce “things” first, then while the car is disassembled clean all the seams that you can find and seam weld them tying all the pieces together so they can’t move.

 

well as far as the cage and roll bar idea does thats still a no go it cant be done on this car because of what im doing. im not building a drag car im building a daily driver. i guess ill have to go to the junkyards with a tape measure and start measuring frames on other pontiacs until i find one thats a close enuff fit and if i cant then ill just make my own.

 

You are being downright rediculous, and dumb, and a few other things we wont mention, run a set of subframes, two if you want, but please come to your senses before you end up lighting a bunch of $ and time on fire.

 

What an idiot

 

What part of what you wrote do you not understand?

 

i've gotten into the habit of looking at people's profiles before i post anything. he is a 19 y/o kid (not much younger than me) with an idea. he posted it here to see if it would work. he is undereducated about the chassis of these cars or he wouldn't have posted it.

zeek: do you really expect a 500-600hp/600+ftlb motor to live on the street everyday? have you ever built a motor of this magnitude? if you did manage to get it built, do you have another car for when this one tears the bearings up cause you didn't install them correctly? this swap is not for the faint at heart, look at the top of the engine swap forum. it's time consuming and very expensive to do CORRECTLY. i do not see how any 19 year old can expect to afford such monsurous goals. have fun learning with the motor that is already in the car, then, when you have a better paying job and a SECOND VEHICAL, make this car into your go-fast weekend warrior. trust me, i am 20, i know where your at man. my daily driver is just a 305. it has already ran best of 13.75 and has more in it with traction. i get excited as you do about building crazy motors. but instead of doing up my 4" bore motor i have sitting on the stand right now, i am solidifying the drivetrain with a good torque converter/tranny that can handle the power, and getting a nice tranny cooler to keep the tranny alive on the street everday. i plan to upgrade the rearend to a 9" before the end of next year, but as insurance, i am putting an aluminum cover on my 7.5 with set screws to help with deflection. do these things first to make sure the car will live with that crazy power you are trying to eventually accomplish. the car will be just fine with a set of subframe connectors, don't worry about that. my 305 should see low 13's high 12's before it gets pulled out and my bigger motor goes in, but before i do that, i am getting a little geo metro or some other "throw away" car for gas mileage and insurance sake.

 

sound advice, see above!

 

I wouldnt be so quick to judge what people can fund or are capable of by their age, when I came here I was 18, LT1 swaps were whispers and ghost storys, there was one completed in a thirdgen that i could find on the whole net, erics "lt1powered85z" and he was less than helpful. I proceeded and completed the swap, and continued to provide information and advancement of the LT1 swaps, now they're a lot more common. Judging what someone is capable of, or might be able to do, by their age, is downright rediculous and ignorant.

 

i'm sorry, you must be one of the few people younger than 22 with money, or someone willing to almost give away parts. i am 20 and doing it all on my own (rent/food/utilities/insurance/etc.) i don't have much left over for hotrod parts, nor do most of my friends. sorry that i over-generalized.

if he has a decent job for a 19 year old and still lives with his parents, then he will have the money to do cool stuff with cars, and more power to him, but in most cases, it's not like that.

 

well for starters Z28racer and mw66nova you 2 seem to be more helpful then any one else so far even if your only helping with slight suport lol.

as far as other things go yes im 19 but im so close to being 20 lol and i do live with my parents still but i also pay my own bills,insurance = $3000 a year, food = $200 a month or more, cell phone $50 a month, along with alot of other bills i just spend $1000 in bills today which was pretty much all the cash i had saved up.it wasnt exactly all but a decent portion of it. so yes im still young paying my own bills and i dont make much money an hour. but as far as cars and engines go i can build an engine with out a problem and i dont plan on dropping an engine with that much power in right away. thats my over time power goal. and if i knew everything about chassis and frames i wouldnt have asked the question and thats y i asked it. but i got the idea because a few years ago a friend had a 70s vega and we dropped a stock 396 into it with in 10 minutes that car was a twisted wreck so we got the idea of geting a frame for it and we were able to find one in the junyard to put under it and it fit like it was ment for it. " the frame was put under a diff vega body the first one was junked" but with my ta i thought about that old vega and started thinking of 80s pontiacs with a full frame. and i know the g body shares pretty much every suspension part as the fbody so i thought that maybe the frame was the same overall size and thats when i poped into here and asked my question. now as far as a SECOND car goes eh what would be the point in owning a first car if u drove the second car more often lol. gas is gas no matter what we will always have to pay for it and id much rather drive somthing i wanted to then somthing that was ugly but cheaper.

 

Actually there isn't really anything in common in the suspension between the G and F bodies.

 

the springs are the same,sway bars are the same,kmember is the same,A arms are the same,lca's are the same, and so on. go to anyweb site that sells suspension parts for both cars they have the same exact part numbers for the gbody and fbody.

 

I'm afraid you're mistaken. The first and second generation F bodies had fairly conventional suspensions which had parts in common with other GM platforms, but the thirdgen has a completely unique suspension design with modified macpherson struts in the front and a torque arm rear. Nothing similar has ever been used by GM on any other car. The GNX had a torque arm rear suspension, but it's a different design and isn't interchangeable.

 

zeek, look into spohn and alston subframe connectors, there are also some posts you can search for about seam welding, I assure you there are more powerful thirdgens than you are planning to build without some cobbled together full frame swap. Either the alstons or spohns can be used to strengthen the car, or if you want both can be used with each other, which is the route im about to travel here shortly.

 

a vega is a compact car. plain and simple. an f-body is not. the vega was designed around a four banger, the f-body was designed around an 8. get the picture? these cars with the right reinforcements are frickin' deadly man!

 

Your not going to gain anything with a G-body chassis, except upper control arms for the front suspension and a body that sits about a foot higher than it did with the stock f-body. The front sway bar, lower front a-arm, lower rear A-arm, and steering box are the only parts that swap between the two cars. Not to mention that g-body frames are weak, they twist bad enough to crack windsheilds and ripple fenders. A 6-point cage is a must if your lifting the front wheels with a g-body. A f-body with subframe connectors and no t-tops is going to be as stiff if not more so than a g-body just for the fact that it's a unibody. The weak point on most cars is the span between the front frame and the rear frame, on g-body's there is only a thin stamped C-section that keeps it from flexing, on a f-body the entire car body resist this flexing, g-body's have soft rubber body mounts between the body and frame so the body doesn't get in on act. I installed a 6-point a while back for road racing and it has made a huge difference in stiffness. If I take the pins out of the door bars, (they swing out) I can actually feel them move a quarter inch or more when I get in and out of the throttle. I only run high 13's so I can imagine what it would do if you could pull the front wheels.

 

my car makes 470 at the wheels, so well over 500 at the crank

i have no body strength problems at all....and i have t-tops

8 pt competition engineering roll cage, and SSM subframe connectors

the car is so stiff you can easily jack one corner, and get 3 wheels off the ground

i think you're vastly overestimating how much strength you need in the chassis for that kind of power.

 

You may want to contact SSM. They have stuff to strengthen the underside of F bodies like you wouldn't believe. My dad runs a blown 383 (which is is wickedly fast!) is camaro and the body has been strengthend by a complete lift bar system. Of course his has the axles welded solid making it only good for straight line but it is still quite streetable. They do offer kits that won't weld the axles solid. With helping him put this in I can tell you that it is pretty much a weld in frame. This route would probably save you time and money. Time being the big expendature.

I have no doubt that you could figure out how to stuff a different frame under there. I can tell you that I wouldn't have a clue as to how to do it. I personly wouldn't invest the time. But that's because I know there are alternatives that are made to fit out there. My only suggestion is to look into something else before you are dead set on one thing. If you want the number for South Side Machine I'll get it for you. If you decide to go with the frame I would be interested in seeing some pics. Good Luck!

 

tell me again subframe connectors, radial tires, and stock style suspension isn't sufficient.


granted, the car has quite the cage inside, and runs 7's.

 

I'd call that proof in picture! That is insane!!!

 

im not dead set on the g body idea it was just somthing that poped into my mind and i posted here to see if it would work or not. and then all these morons started jumping all over my case just because i had an idea and desided to ask about it before cutting up my car.

 

this picture doesnt prove much. the only proof in this picture is that you and have enuff power to launch it into the air and let body panels get crushed when you land. it really has nothing to do with my idea

 

Nobody's jumping on you because you had an idea. Ideas are great, it's good to see someone thinking for themself. It's great too that you ask questions.

To some people it could appear that you asked a question, and then disregarded the answers you were given. This happens all too often on here.

The picture does prove the point quite nicely. If that car with a mostly stock frame and suspension design could be reinforced to withstand the torque necessary to launch it to that kind of attitude without folding up like a wet noodle, then you'd have nothing to worry about with your mere 600 HP goal.

Of course it will get damaged when it lands, there's absolutely no way around that. The only way to prevent that would be to keep it from lifting the wheels so high in the first place.

 

Subframe connectors will do just fine, These people know more than you ever will about third gens if you wanna disagree with them and hack your car up into a million pieces trying to put it on a different frame go for it your loss

 

http://nsca-racing.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7555

that thread shows the sequence of how beautifully straight that car went up and came back down. no signs of twisting, and still ran a 7 second pass. i have been trying to help you see what you can do with a simple set of subframe connectors. if you do reach your so desired goal of 600hp and are able to get it to the ground without absoluetly abiltorating the tires, you'll need at least a 6pt. rollbar if you EVER want to take it to the track. 600hp is a stupid goal for an every day driven car. it's not streetable. and if you did do it, i wouldn't feel safe anywhere near it without at least a 6pt. bar.

 

Um, yea… if you look at those pics you’ll see that it’s only vaguely a stock suspension (not only is just about every component replaced, but things are significantly changed to the point that I don’t believe that it would even follow “stock type suspension” rules), and major parts of the chassis has been replaced/changed. Not that it’s unexpected for a 7 second car, but it is not a good example of what is being discussed here either.

BTW, those do not appear to be radials in that picture, but I can’t really tell for sure. They look like MT ET streets.

Well, the car is reasonably strait. OTOH, if the suspension was right then that wheel stand would never have happened.



Yes, exactly, but then add in the fact that the way the question was asked you really have to wonder if he’s ever actually looked under a 3rd gen f-body or a g-body. Anyone who would have the skills/knowledge to pull that job off wouldn’t be asking the question anyway.



Um, yea, see my previous comments. That and no where does it suggests that is the same pass where it ran a 7, and I seriously doubt that it was. It is an impressive wheelstand, and that’s all it is. It proves that with a lot of modifications and reinforcement you can perform impressive wheel stands. Apparently, assuming that someone actually saw this thing run 7’s it may also prove that the setup on that car is adjustable enough to be tuned to control the wheelstand.

The chassis could be made stiff enough without a 6pt, but there isn’t much point if you ever plan on running it at the track. For the most part, on the street you’re safer without the roll bar then you would be with anyway.

600hp could be streetable, but not in the form that he’s suggesting. For that matter, a 455 would imply either a poncho, olds or buick. The buick just doesn’t have the parts available to make that kind of power reliably, and the olds would be super expensive in that power range. The Pontiac is a possibility, but in general, ALL of these engines are not meant to rev, not designed to do it, and would be very difficult to see that kind of HP from consistently. There are some stroker combinations for them, especially the poncho that could do it, but then again, we’re back into the megabux category.

 

i'm gonna rephrase how i put that.

the car is using the new mt drag radials. all of the suspension that is under that car is a direct bolt in with the exception of the torque arm. it is using a BMR extreme torque arm with the front attached to a bar the runs the width of the car. but it still bolts to the rearend like any other aftermarket deal. Everything on the suspension is aftermarket, and it's all readily available to you or me. everything on that car falls into stock style suspension rules for the Drag Radial class. personally i think it is a great example for this deal.

 

.

 

600hp could be streetable, but not in the form that he’s suggesting. For that matter, a 455 would imply either a poncho, olds or buick. The buick just doesn’t have the parts available to make that kind of power reliably, and the olds would be super expensive in that power range. The Pontiac is a possibility, but in general, ALL of these engines are not meant to rev, not designed to do it, and would be very difficult to see that kind of HP from consistently. There are some stroker combinations for them, especially the poncho that could do it, but then again, we’re back into the megabux category.

I disagree, pontiac has stock heads capable of supporting 600hp with porting. That alone is gonna save you from buying aftermarket heads. Your not gonna find a BBC sitting in the local junkyard for 150 bux. True these engines are not high revving, they don't have to be. There's a certain 400 based pontiac engine i know of, stroked to 468 inches a fairly streetable cam, and about 10.5:1 compression.. it's makes more torque at idle than most sbc's do at WOT. He might not have 600hp he's got 600ft.lbs of torque though and it starts at 2500rpm. I'm also pretty sure a similar BBC build would cost twice as much.

The only real downside to Buick,Olds, Pontiac is transmission selection and parts availability. The pontiac engines really are superior to chevy in many aspects, the major weak link in pontiacs are the rods, which you'd want aftermarket anyway- Rods, pistons, and cam would be just about the only major expense to a BOP build. Your stuck buying those parts no matter which engine your trying to make 600hp with whether chevy,ford,or pontiac. Anyone can pick up the phone and order a 502 crate motor, shave the heads and swap the cam out for six hundred daily driveable horses. Why couldn't a pontiac engine with 455 cubes do the same thing for less money? Reliability is in the right foot, not the name on the valve covers.

 

Sorry to get off topic there..

I think if you used perimeter style SFC'S and the other one's that go down the middle of the car you'll be fine for chassis strength. I think the proof is in the picture up there, if 7 second car's don't need a full frame..? A roll bar would be fine for a daily driver, just get the crossbars that bend down by the doors or swingout kits. getting in and out wouldn't be a problem, i think the real reason you don't want a rollbar is for a sleeper street racing maybe? I know I wouldn't be in a hurry to race someone that won't pop the hood AND have a rollbar ..

 

Well, rephrased that way you’re basically agreeing with everything that I said besides if the car is a good example for this thread. I guess as far as not having to go with another frame/tube frame/something else for those kind of power numbers I’d agree with you….



maybe one of the RA heads and/or some serious, $$$ porting, but not the stockers that most people have access to.



Not suggesting that you would… OTOH in my friend’s 67 Lemans we ditched the poncho for a big caddie, but that is because we had a 71 sedan deville sitting around just rotting with the big pile of caddy cubes sitting under the hood with less then 60K miles.



a 400 based 468 is a much better combination for both rpm and power production then the 455 that he said that he will be running. That 455 will have to see over 6K rpm at 100% VE to make that kind of HP at the crank, which is not going to happen without some serious aftermarket parts. The 468 will require some decent parts to do it also, but it won’t be as hard as with the 455.



heh, the last 2 BOP projects that I played with somehow had a BOP TH400 show up for free… I’ve never had that kind of dumb luck with a chevy project.



How? Not that I’m not a big fan of poncho stuff (I’d much rather deal with it then BBC), but I’m not sure that I can give any good reasons why it would be superior.

I’ve yet to see parts of the kind of quality that are easily available for the chevy (or available on current the chevy crates) turn up for ponchos. They are available, but that’s not what we’re discussing here.

 

i dont have a problem poping my hood before a race never said i did. but when it comes to a rollcage or rollbar thats a no go. its not that i dont want one for the sleeper look its i dont want one for the stock look my idea is to build the car the way it should have been built and no company has ever put a rollbar in a stock street car.


as far as the 455 stuff goes and with you guys talking about the 468. i had planed on starting with the 455 block sense thats the same as the 400 basicly but also geting the stroker kit and borind it 30 over to. cant think off the top of my head right now how many cubes that is but its a decent number and would be as reiliable as the 468 that you guys are talking about just a lil bigger : )

a friend of mine had had a 83 monte carlo and he crashed that and bought a 88 iroc body and transfered alot of the suspension parts over to the iroc so i had thought that maybe it was possible to put the g body frame on my ta it would have sat at normal right height if done correctly and not just thrown togeather. but after doing to a junkyard and checking out the gbody cars and a thirdgen that was there i came to the conclusion that it would work if this wasnt my daily driver and a weekend toy " in other words if i felt like taking my time and spending a month on the frame and body" but with the info i figured out that day from looking and measuring the two i have desided to scratch that idea for a rainy month some time in the future and just try and think of some other idea even if it means building my own subframe connectors and just suffering and dealing with them.

 

your thinking too hard. just search the suspension and chassis board and be done with it.

 

Not to quibble, but have you heard of the 91/92 Firehawk? Some models came stock with aluminum blocks, fuel cells, 6-speeds, and yup...you guessed it, rollbars.

 

...but, how many were made?

Anyway, it's a neat idea, but not feasable. Sure it could be done, but it's not worth the work and it is not neccessary.

Many have big blocks (yes, I know, the 455 isn't technically a big block lol) in their 3rd gens, and none are running anything that radical.

 

The Firehawk wasn't a stock car. None of them rolled off the assembly line like that, they were delivered to a customizer and modified before being sold.

 

Well if you're getting that technical, then my ASC modified vert isn't stock either.