This is all covered in my swap thread, but I wanted to post up a thread all on its own devoted to making these work, and work well, with your 3rd gen. These really clean up the engine bay, and you might as well do them if you're already swapping an LS1 into your car.


First off, the coolant bottle.

The tricky thing with the coolant bottle/battery tray, is that on a 3rd gen, there is a fender brace right below the stock battery tray. This brace helps keep the fender from wobbling around in the wind when you're driving, so it is important that you don't remove it from the car. It poses a small problem when using the 4th gen coolant bottle though, because they hang down low and hit the brace, causing it to not sit flush on the battery tray.

The solution to this is simply relocating the fender brace. I found a hole in the frame that was pre-existing, so this mod requires no drilling.

1) remove the bolt holding the brace onto the frame, loosen the bolt holding it to the fender so you can pivot it

2) look approx. 12" to the rear of the bolt that was holding the brace onto the frame. You will see another hole in the frame, you're going to use this to mount the brace and it will give the coolant bottle enough clearance to sit properly on the battery original battery tray

3) you will notice that the brace needs to be a bit shorter in length now that you're moving it to a different hole on the frame. Pivot the brace to the new hole and hold it against the frame while you mark with a Sharpie how much shorter it needs to be. Put the brace in a vice, pinching down at your mark you just made, and bend it at a 90* angle. Then, take a drill and drill a new hole in the brace so you can mount it on the frame at its new location

4) re-install the brace in the new location

5) You will need to cut a hole in the battery tray to fit around the bottom portion of the coolant bottle. There's really no art to this, it's not visible so making it 100% perfect isn't really important.

6) I found that I had to drill new holes for actually mounting the coolant bottle/battery tray also. You may or may not have to, but I did.






This shows how the brace fits in the new location with respect to the coolant bottle. My finger in the top right corner of the photo shows where the brace mounted originally. You can see that it is now mounted about 12" to the rear of the stock location.



Another shot from the back, showing how I bent the brace and drilled a new hole in it.












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Now onto the washer fluid reservoir. This one is a little more tricky but it's not bad at all.


*This applies to Camaros, I'm not sure how the Firebird guys mount there,s someone may feel the need to add to this, as there is actual sheet metal covering the area where the bottle will go, making it much more difficult to do this mod on a Firebird. I know it can be done as there are a number of people here who have done it already.*



First off I will start by saying that there is one main problem with the way this piece fits in the nose of a 3rd gen. On a 4th gen, the bottle mounts directly to the front side of the frame. You can't do this with a 3rd gen, because the back side of the bottle will hit the lower support brace for the hood latch. This is how you can solve the problem:



1) remove the lower hood latch brace from the car

2) take a saw or whatever kind of cutting tool you have on hand, and cut a portion of the brace off like in the following picture (the portion cut off is on the bottom side of it in the picture):




3) the cut you just made will let the top of the washer bottle clear the brace

4) now, you still can't mount the bottle directly to the frame, it would still be hitting the hood latch brace, but what you will be doing is going to fix this also

5) find a piece of plastic or rubber approx 1" thick (you'll know how wide it needs to be when you put the bottle in the nose of the car, because it's going to be sitting in there a couple inches off the frame, and you can push it towards the frame but be gentle as to not break it). I used the black piece of plastic that is used to secure the battery to the stock battery tray. It is a trapezoid shaped piece, I cut it in half and used a sander to smooth the two pieces to make two rectangular piece. Drill a hole in each piece, and drill two holes in the frame, one on each end of the bottle so you can slide a bolt through to fasten the bottle to the frame. The two pieces of plastic or rubber are going to be spacers that will keep the bottle about an inch off the frame and allow it to sit properly.

6) You will need to cut the connector off for the bottle and splice more wire to the two ends so it will reach the bottle's new position. You will also need to get a longer piece of hose, because the stock hose won't reach either




Photos to show what I mean:


This is how the bottle will sit off the front of the frame before you put a spacer in between





With the spacers installed and the bolts mounted

 

More photos of the washer bottle:









Here you can see why you need to notch out the hood latch support brace

 

Just gone done cutting & installing the 4th gen coolant bottle. Looks like I cut out too much of the old tray.

 

That's ok. The hole I made is SLIGHTLY bigger than it needed to be, on the side closest to the fender. Nobody will see it though so it's not a big deal.

 

I'll go back later and maybe weld in a metal piece, but I need to make some metal brackets or something to hold the top of the radiator and dual fans in place. I'll eventually also get around to doing the winshield washer mod. It looks good.

 

Are you using the stock 3rd gen radiator and LS1 fans? I have an answer for that also. I posted pictures of my setup in my swap thread. Basically I trimmed off the back side of the radiator shroud so the fan mounting tabs are gone and the back of the shroud is flat. I got it to where the fans sit flush against the radiator and I used a couple zip-ties to hold it to the radiator. With the shroud fastened down to the stock location, everything sits where it should and is secure.

 

It is the stock 3rd gen radiator, but the dual fans are some after market brand that my buddy gave me.

 

I did the washer bottle in mine a while back. remade the hood latch bracket and used spacers as well.

 

Thought about doing this but,it looks like it wouldnt work with my stock iroc air intake.My buddy has one and it doesnt look like its possible without going with a different CAI setup.Any comment or suggestion?

 

Heres what I did for washer fluid bottle.Took it off my 89 4x4 Cheyenne.Used a hole drilled for a brace by the fender to mount one side,then drilled and tapped one for the other side.Plugged the hole for the pump mounted tank,since i`ve never had a problem out of my windshield washer moter mounted pump.Then I just switched the top from my old tank.Its not hidden,but itcleared up the fender and didnt get in the way of the Iroc air intake.I also did the coolant bottle but you all have seen what that looks like.

 

That's the first time I've seen something like that from another type of vehicle put in one of our cars. It looks good

 

Hey BlueZee28,

I agree with ShadyGrady doesent that affect the way the airwould flow into your engine? Or do you have like a intake type setup under there?

Thanks. Tony.

 

another option to throw out there - the old explorers used a battery sized container that had both reservoirs in one package. May be useful to you guys who don't have a charcoal canister in the way. I grabbed one a few years back to play around with from a junkyard, but it looks like we just started carrying it too:

Explorer Overflow Tank

 

i used the explore/f150 overflow combo on my parents 84 bird. it's working GREAT and cleaned up the bay a bunch

 

I have a custom cold air kit that goes in front of the driver side tire.

 

Well than that answers my question.

Got any pictures of that mod?

Thanks. Tony.

 

Sure do. There's pictures of how I actually made it in my swap thread which is in the LTX LSX forum also.