Oops

 

I think you posted this on the wrong thread

 

You are correct. I was on my phone and I accidentally posted to your thread. Sorry about that.

 

no problem

 

I got my new upper strut mounts in yesterday & got them installed today for a mock-up so that I can get the holes drilled for my STB.

I figured I better get this done before I paint the engine bay.

As you can see, I'm making progress on the engine bay. I must say that this self etching primer I got from the paint store is WAY better than that crap you get from the auto parts stores or Walmart! Well worth the extra few bucks.

 

Well, after reading this from GhettoCruiser's thread I'm thinking I should replace my stock rod bolts as well. I didn't do them when I had the engine apart because I was told I would have to resize the rods. And my engine was already assembled and ready to go. I would rather be safe and take it back apart and replace the rod bolt now rather than blow the engine. I'm assuming around 460 flywheel HP, so it would probably be a good idea. Do you guys agree?

 

I don't have much of an update. I've been too busy with work. All I've gotten done in the past few weeks is getting my STB holes drilled. I also found one of those 5/8" heater hoses with the 90* bend on one end at AZ the other day. You can see it in the background. I have a plan for my heater hoses that I hope will turn out the way I want.


I've mostly just been gathering parts to finish the swap. I've been looking for a chrome brake booster, but haven't found one yet for a third gen. I also got a price from AZ for the LS1 master cylinder. I may check on e-bay for one.

 

These look like stock rod bolts to me. What do you guys think?


I might go ahead and change out the main bolts to ARP's as well. We'll see. As always, input is always welcome and encouraged.

Which ARP rod bolts do you guys recommend? Pro-Series? Do you think main studs are really necessary on these engines?

 

If you can upgrade the rod bolts, its a cheap insurance.... they are the weakest link

btw, I posted up some heater hose part numbers plus some pics of how I ran my heater hoses the 2nd time around......

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/ltx-...-valve-ls.html

 

Thanks Jason! I can always count on you to help me out. The stock main bolts should be fine, right? What version of the ARP rod bolts would you suggest?

 

well on my latest motor, I studded the lower end, but the stock bolts should be ok

 

Man... two months since my last post. Time flies when you're working your **** off! lol. I finally got back out there and worked on it yesterday. I had to clean the garage first though. It was a mess. Anyways, I finished drilling the holes for my STB at the firewall. I drilled a 2" hole near the firewall on the drivers side to hide my wiring harness.

I tried to come up with a spot that I liked to drill the 2" hole for the ECM wiring harness, but was unsuccessful. I have a few ideas, but I really need my harness back from Pocket so that I can see if they will work. Speaking of... has anyone heard from Pocket lately? I PM'd him about my harness three weeks ago, but haven't heard back from him. He has had my harness for four months and 10 days, so I am getting kind of worried. Just to be clear, I am not bashing him in any way. I know he's a busy guy.

 

I found another bad rust spot while working in the engine bay yesterday. So now I have to figure out what to do. This spot is rusted through

I have two options in my mind:
A) Buy a nice media blaster & some good media and attempt to fix it myself and hope for the best. Or...
B) Put the front end back under the car and have it towed to a body shop to have it fixed professionally.

I also found more rust in the cowl area.


So, at the moment, I'm leaning toward option B so that it's taken care of correctly and will hopefully never have the problem again. There are a few other things that I would like to do to it too at the body shop if I go with option B. I want to put a new windshield in it & get my hood to fit much better than it does.

That really took the wind out of my sails yesterday!

 

I understand the fight of cleanin it all, man does it suck. Especially since my whole engine bay was coated in bee wax,....I used a bunch of autozone engine cleaner and sprayed the crap out of the engine bay and everything else and it eventually all came out.

 

Yeah you do... we are in the same boat at the moment. Both cleaning up our engine bays. Bee wax huh? Sounds kind of odd. That must have sucked. You might want to check your cowl area to make sure you don't have the same problem I do. My rust was just barely showing under the seem sealer.

 

Oh yeah, my buddy Larry from my local NAPA store came over yesterday to look at my car. He's going to call his friend who used to paint Ferraris, Lambo's & such for Ultimate Motor Works here in town to see if he can fix & paint my engine bay for me. And probably the rest of the car again eventually. So that will be awesome if it happens. Hopefully the guy isn't too busy.

 

This thread is pure win. Great job so far man.

 

Thanks Nathan! I appreciate that.

 

The paint & body guy came over last night to look at my engine bay & rust problems. He said it wasn't too bad and gave me a price of $500 for material and labor to get it fixed and painted. So I thought that was a pretty fair price. He has a special dolly to put the front end of the car on to move it and he also has a trailer with a winch on it to get the car over to his shop. So that pretty much takes care of everything. So hopefully this will all happen here in the next week or so.

He said I should remove all of the old seem sealer. He is buying some special "two step" sealer to reseal everything back up. He said the one step stuff you buy in the store just isn't as good. He wants to epoxy primer everything too before he puts the new sealer on there.

He also got me a price of $240 to remove & replace the windshield which includes a new windshield and trim. So I thought that was a decent price as well. We are going to wait to do the windshield though until after I get the car running again when I am ready to repaint the rest of the car.

We also discussed getting my fiberglass hood reworked somewhat to make it look better on the car. The gaps between the hood and fenders are just way too big for my taste. That work is going to be quite a bit more expensive though since there is going to be fiberglass work needed. I am going to have him ghost-in stripes on the two ram air bulges and probably put two on the rear spoiler as well once we get to that point. It will probably be next year before I am to that point though.

 

I'll try to post pics of this process for you guys

 

Alright guys... I need some input from you swap veterans about where I want to put my 2" hole for the harness to go inside the car. Pocket showed me a pic on this thread a few pages ago of where he drilled his hole, but I am considering putting it in a different place.

This looks to be about where Pocket drilled his hole

Looking at it inside the car, some of the A/C box plastic would have to be trimmed off to put it there, which is no big deal. I'm just concerned that the wire loom may be visible below the under dash plastic panel in that location. I found another location that I like much better. I used this hose like it's my harness to show how I want to route it.

I think the wiring harness should fit through there just fine since the hose will fit. I could always flatten the harness out a bit to get through there if necessary.

About where the sticker is on the hose is where it would turn into the firewall on this pic

 

...continued from last post.

With the lower part of the A/C box removed, here is where I am considering putting the hole. The black line is the outline of the lower a/c box.


Here is where it would be inside the car.

This would keep the harness concealed by the plastic panel. It appears that it would add about three inches in length to the harness though over Pocket's location since it has to go below the A/C box and back up again. I would like to ask Pocket if his harness will be long enough for this, but I haven't been able to get a hold of him. I will try PMing him again. I guess I will have to write him a letter if that fails to check on the status of my harness.

I removed most of the original seem sealer in the engine bay this past weekend. What a pain in the ****! I will finish removing the rest of it this coming weekend so that I can get it over to the paint shop ASAP.

 

I routed mine that way, and it was a pain in the butt haha. Its a really tight fit between the HVAC box, and inner wheel well. I would of had to force the box down while someone bolted it back in. I ended up taking a pipe and hammer to clearance the inner wheel well. Maybe if the harness was 6-12" longer it wouldn't have been a big deal, either way Id try and get in touch with Pocket to extend it.

 

Thanks for the input Rich. I really appreciate it. Do you happen to have any pics?

 

Here's what I did:




Used this tool, with side-by-side holes punched then cleaned up with the die grinder:




Passing the connectors through one at a time:




With harness passed through:




With the AC back in:

 

No pics but it looks like five7kid has you covered.

 

Oh man... that's perfect Five7! Thanks for posting those pics. That's exactly what I envisioned in my head. I have three questions though:
1. Did you have to lengthen your harness to go that route?
2. Was the harness thin enough to go between the inner fender and the bottom of the A/C box?
3. Did you seal-up where the harness goes through the firewall to keep water from coming through?

Please share any other input you may have about this. Thanks again!

 

Another piece of my puzzle was delivered today... a new 5 wire truck MAF.

Here it is beside the LS1 MAF.


Here's the original LS1 MAF on my ram-air box. It was pretty much the same diameter of the outlet on the ram-air box as you can see.


The diameter of the new one however is quite a bit larger as you can see in this pic.


So now I'm going to have to figure out a solution for this problem. Maybe I'll look into a fourth gen ram air box or something.

 

I'm trying to figure out where to cut the hole for the wiring harness with my swap right now too. Hopefully Pocket's harness is long enough to put it in your suggested location. So cutting the hole in that spot won't affect any interior plastic or be seen from the interior?

Pocket messaged me fairly recently and said he had been out of town a lot for work. I was able to get my harness back from him so now I just need to cut that hole and prep and paint the engine bay before the LS1 goes in

 

Best I could tell from when I looked at my car, if you cut the hole in that spot, it will be above the interior plastic & hidden. I recommend that you verify that for yourself though just to be safe. Maybe Five7kid can verify it since he drilled his hole there already.

I've tried a couple of times now to get a hold of Pocket with no success. I'd like to verify that his normal length harness will in fact be long enough for this hole location. Hopefully he'll contact me here soon. Good luck with your swap V8SC.

 

My car is now ready to go to the body shop.

I got the hole drilled in the firewall for the ECM harness & I removed the A/C harness.


I got the hood latch cable removed along with the steering column. And, as you can see, opened up the rust hole on the firewall from the cowl area when I was removing the seem sealer in that area.


I think I may remove the hard lines (fuel, brakes) that go to the back of the car, but I haven't decided for sure on that one. I am going to call the body shop today to get this ball rolling.

I am going to buy a new GM hood latch cable today along with some ARP rod bolts & a Lokar throttle cable. I looked for a new steering column gasket/seal to the firewall with no luck. Any ideas?

 

Oh yeah, here's the hole in the firewall for the harness on the inside of the car. I measured where the center of the hole needed to be, then drilled a small pilot hole from the engine bay at an angle because of the inner fender. Then drilled this hole from the inside of the car. It worked perfect.


And Pocket contacted me this weekend as well. So hopefully I will be getting my harness here soon. Yay!

 

He must be a busy guy, he's had my harness since 11-6-11, and I still haven't seen it yet.

 

Sounds like he received your harness about a week before mine. You might want to send him a PM about it if you are in need of it.

 

Yep, I have. Sounds like he's had a lot of harness work lately, tough when you're trying to do it all on the side.

 

Yeah, no doubt.

 

Did you ever find out if the "Hidden under HVAC box" harness option has enough length to route the wiring with the hole that you cut? I really like the looks of what you did.

 

Oh thanks. I asked Pocket about it and he made it sound like he would have to lengthen the harness a few inches. Maybe PM him to verify.

 

My new hood latch cable & Lokar throttle cable was delivered today. My new rod bolts & steering column gasket material should be coming next week.


Gary, the guy that is going to paint the engine bay, stopped by this evening. He seemed to be impressed by my prep work and he said that he is ready to get going on it. I am going to go pick-up the dolly for the front end from him on Monday. The plan is to have it ready to go by next Friday so that he can pick it up & take it to his shop on Saturday. He said he would start on it that following Monday & have it back to me by the following Friday. So we'll see how it all plays out. I could be putting that engine back in as early as May. That would make me very happy, but I'm not getting in a hurry.

I told Gary that I'd like to photo-document this process of painting the engine bay. He said that wouldn't be a problem.

 

I've been looking into cold air boxes for 4th gen T/A's with ram air and came across this

I think I may try to either adapt this to my car or use the piping & filters and build my own box to get true ram air on my car since I already have the ram air hood. What do you guys think? Have any of you tried this yet?

 

Is there a part number on the box? I need one of those

 

I can do you one better...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/370601611564...84.m1497.l2648
I'm pretty sure this was the cheapest one I found.

 

I've been making some decent progress here lately. I worked on the accelerator cable mod this afternoon that HP52TA used on his car. I did mine just a little bit differently though.

I used a pair of vice grips to remove the cable from the firewall adapter. I couldn't get it to come out until I got the cable to spin completely around in the firewall adapter. Then it came right out.


I used my the cut-off wheel on my Dremel to remove the collar from the firewall adapter. Then I drilled the hole out slowly going up one size at a time from 1/4" to 5/16". You can see the bit with the plastic remnants on the left of this pic. The metal sleeve on the Lokar cable fit real snug in the 5/16" hole.


Here I removed the cable from the braided sleeve. Then I removed the clevis end and installed the (red) ball end in the plastic adapter on gas pedal arm. It fit perfectly. (this is where I differ from HP52TA's method)


to be continued...

 

...continued from previous post

I ran the cable back through the braided sleeve & test fit it to the engine as shown below.


I used the hex head brass fitting that came with the cable on the throttle body end. I may flip the hex head end over on the other side of this, but I'm not sure yet. It aligns better that way, but makes it very difficult to tighten the set screw that's inside the fitting that tightens onto the cable.


Here I'm lifting the front end up to put it on the dolly so that we can take it over to the body shop this weekend. I still need to modify the dolly a bit to make it work the way I want it to.

The engine bay is ready to go. I cleaned-up all of the hard lines (fuel & brake lines) in the engine bay so that I won't have to mess with it when I get the car back. Well, hopefully I won't have to.

 

Progress is good!

 

Yes! I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere on it.

I just talked to Gary about picking the car up today or tomorrow for paint. Looks like the weather is probably going to push things back a bit. It's supposed to be rainy here until Sunday. So he said he'd probably pick the car up first of next week.

 

Yay, my rod bolts came in today!

I know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow

I don't know if anyone wants or needs to see them, but here are the pics of the dolly under the car. The front of the dolly is secured to the front end of the car. Real high-tech stuff! lol


The frame rails are just sitting on the back of the dolly.


Hopefully this will be enough to get it there and back without a problem.

 

hey man great progress on your car and it looks like ill be doing the same mod when my lokar cable comes in.

 

Thanks man. Yeah, it's fairly simple. Just take your time with it.

 

We got it on the trailer and over to the body shop yesterday. Yay!


I couldn't get my red T/A started to get it out of the way. I think the coil may be bad. I am going to work on it today.
Edit: We'll, it's not the coil. I'll have to check if the coil is getting full power. It's definitely getting fuel though.