Not too much to report right now, I had another one of my F-buds come over for an hour or so with one of his shop trucks, so we wheeled the car out into the driveway & hit the engine compartment with the pressure washer. (I'd been wanting to do that for a while!)

Since then, I've just been "keeping at it", painting a little bit under the hood, test-fitting the DBW pedal, etc. It's just a little bit frustrating to be spending all my time at work (13+ hrs/day lately), wishing that I had that time to work on the swap... (And yes, before anyone gets the wrong idea, I AM very glad that I have a job to go to...)

I'll have some updated pics up before long..

 

OK guys, I've run into something that has me a bit nervous, & could use a bit of HELP! real quick...

I'm bolting my oil pan back on, while trying to follow the instructions below (taken from a GMHTP article that I found online)...

Now what I've done is to place a thin layer of black RTV around the sealing surface (between the gasket & the block), let it tack up for a few minutes & then set the (new Fel-Pro) oil pan gasket onto the block. Then I've carefully aligned the pan, set it gently down onto the gasket & threaded all of the bolts in with my fingers.

Once the bolts were all in finger-tight, I tried to push the pan toward the front of the block as much as it would go. When it didn't really appear to go flush with the back of the block, I gave it a few "love taps" with a rubber mallet - no luck. As it stands right now, both the gasket & the rear of the oil pan are extending "behind" the rear face of the block by approx. a quarter of an inch (which is a HUGE amount if the article above is to be believed). For what it's worth, the pan & the gasket have the same contour/shape, even though the pan is from an F-body & the gasket is for the L92 engine...

I'm tempted to say "screw it" & just push on ahead, except that the pan has a warning stating 'Oil pan alignment & torque are critical' cast into the bottom surface. I don't know if this is because I'm trying to use an F-body pan on a truck engine block, or what but I'm just not comfortable with barging on ahead until I get some more information.

Guys, I'd sure appreciate some feedback here...

Thanks.

 

Huh...so the pan and the gasket are both sticking far out from the rear of the block? Got a picture of the area???

When I put my pan back on, I went ahead and boltled my bell housing up to the block tight. And then bolted the pan on. Seemed to work.

But if your pan is sticking out that far, that might not work for ya...

J.

 

Yea.. I talked to a GM tech. He said you can break the oilpan with miss alighnment.

 

Yeah, that's correct. I don't have a picture at the moment, but it wouldn't be too tough for me to get one - it'll have to be tomorrow night though, since I'm putting in extra hours this week...

That actually sounds like a really good idea, except for the fact that my engine's mounted on an engine stand (using the bolts at the rear face of the block), so I'd have to call my buddy up to bring his hoist over again so that I could do it that way. Might very well be worth it though.

I'm not going to do anything about it right now (there are other things that I can be doing to move the swap along), I'm going to "sleep on it" for at least a day or two, I might very well figure out what's going on with it...

Just in case anyone's interested, here's a link to the thread that I put up on LS1Tech...

 

In an earlier post, "SheldonZ28" wrote:

For whatever it's worth, I bought an accelerator pedal from an '07-'08 Vette, thinking that it would be as small/compact as a GM DBW pedal was going to get.

That may be the case, but there's STILL a fair bit of modification necessary to make it work in a thirdgen. Just so that people have an idea, here are a couple of pictures of the area we're talking about (The stuff at the bottom & right of the picture is the carpet, the "furry" stuff w/ the black backing is the sound-deadener material in our cars [which I've trimmed quite a bit so that the "rounded area" can be seen clearly], & the cardboard is just there temporarily so that the paint that I'm spraying under the hood doesn't come through & mess up the carpet...):



In the picture below, I lightened the area at the top right in order to provide a bit of perspective - this is where the OBD-I connector is on a stock vehicle. (In this picture, it would be immediately "forward" - or to the right of where the picture ends.)

The rounded area is there to provide an area for the wiper motor to sit, so you can't just mindlessly eliminate it. I have an idea of something I want to try, but I'm going to see how it works before I get into it.

If you look for it in the two pictures above, you can see the two studs that I cut off that were originally used to mount the stock accelerator pedal - this last picture shows how they were before I cut them off - I figured that they'd be in the way, but I'm thinking now that the left-most (top) one probably could have been left in place. Oh well, I'm gonna say that I did it for weight savings - YEAH, that's the ticket!



Never dreamed when I started this swap that I'd be getting into things like ergonomics & "human fitment" issues...

(In other news, as I briefly mentioned above, I'm doing some painting under the hood, & it's not quite going as I would like it to. My wife says that I'm a perfectionist, I don't see it - but then, I might not be the right one to ask, either...

Got a bit disgusted with the results of my earlier painting efforts, so I broke out the 220-grit paper & went for "Plan B". I should know in 2 or 3 days if THAT'S worth mentioning here...)

 

I should pull my pedal back out to show my spacer i made. the firewall curves there which makes it hardest. I realized the vette pedal would have been easier, but they also mount flat and come striaight out which will cause you to hit into the trans tunnel.

My pedal is space up 1.5" on the one side to make up for the curve, i used the lower right stud, and then drilled & put in a new bolt for the lower part. Worked out okay. It turned out to be more then i had anticipated. The system better work or ill be mighty pissed. haha

 

Guess it wasn't worth mentioning?

 

You mean the under-hood paint?? No, not yet... I've done some more with it, but it's not yet how I want it...

I HAVE managed to make a little bit of progress this week, but I'll need to put pics up a bit later - I've got a whole bunch of "real life" stuff going on this week...

I DO appreciate the interest though, thank you.

 

OK, "Plan B" indeed was NOT worth mentioning, so I might just follow Justin's lead & re-spray it using an HVLP gun attached to my compressor - but I'd need to buy another quart (or more) of paint, which is yet ANOTHER unplanned expense...

In the mean time, I have another question - does anyone have a PN for the thread-on fittings that you can use to convert the stock fuel-line connectors to a standard -6 AN?? I went to the local speed shop where I'd gotten them before (when I installed my HSR a year ago), & this time they had no idea what I was talking about...

Thanks guys.

(I'm HOPING that I'll be able to surprise one or more of ya with some progress pics before too much longer...)

 

V-8,
I just got my engine, and have been looking it over.
My take on the lines to the fuel rail: I think those are quick disconnects, that you need a tool for. Short of putting in aftermkt rails, I think the thing to do is get -6 ends put on the part that does not connect to the factory rail.
So you use the factory connections to the rails, and ANs on everything upstream.
Note: this an initial idea only. I have not done this yet.
Hang in, you will love driving your car.

 

Thanks, I truly appreciate the sentiment. Today, it looks like I might've gotten screwed out of about $100 on the project, and it's REALLY starting to feel more like "something I've been sentenced to" rather than "something to look forward to"... I was out in the garage, had time to work on it, & just walked away. Trying to retain the VVT is just about becoming more grief than it's worth.

Hopefully it'll be different tomorrow.

 

Man do I recall that feeling. I had a perfectly clean, fast, running, 350/t56 combo in my car when I started this swap and about 6 months in I kept asking myself "What the heck was I thinking this is insane!" and then I regrouped and totally ditched my deadline for summer of that first year of my swap and then just did what I could when I could and most importantly I stayed on it I never let it sit longer than a week or two TOPS without wrenching. I enjoyed the build a hella lot more and only in the end did I put on the big push and finish it off which I had to stay on it wiring and all I needed focus. In the end its worth it.

More than a few days I was going backwards not forwards so I did exactly as you did and walked away and took a day off to shoot the breeze and have a couple pops and went at it again another day after a regroup.

 

Man don't give up. I was there too. Some stuff wouldn't come together right for me too.. First the stroker package I got from DynoFlo was crap than did research on the ls1 I picked up based off vin (carfax) and the engine had more mile than I purchased it with..Thank the wiring harness had the wrong injector pigtails..Fun Fun

 

Hang in there..!! don't even want to think about how many times I wanted to sell the darn thing, last rebuild took two years, but leaving a long burnout makes me quite happy I didn't stop.

 

Yeah, that was the decision that I made as well - I was spending every minute that I could spare working on it so that I could drive it this last summer, & doing that just rips all of the fun out of it. Now that I've decided to try & get it done by tax day I find that I can be more relaxed about it - & now I'm getting a bit annoyed if I go a week without working on it...

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I haven't made much *obvious* progress (I've been cleaning out & finishing my garage, fixing stuff around the house & getting ready for winter - car work has just been stuff like removing & shampooing the carpet, etc.), but with any luck I should have most of today to work on it.

Thanks for the feedback/encouragement guys. I hope to have updated pics up tonight.