So since this car has more significance to me than most others, I feel like for the first time in half a decade I'd do a build thread for it like the good old days before forums fell hard to social media. Really glad to see TGO still is one of the few holding good activity/community vs so many of the other platforms. I've been dead set on getting into a third gen again for years to do my ideal street setup in

I've known about the car for about 5 years. I have a friend who lives about 40 minutes away I used to swap DSM parts with now. He's a very gifted fabricator and his dad is as well. His dad had a full gutted/built cutlass he traded for this car as he wanted a street car. I was in love with it from the first time I saw it. I sold my mustang and wasn't sure what to replace it with but was thinking a third gen or new edge mustang shell to finally do an LS swap in. My buddy just happened to mention that his dad mentioned selling this. So next think I know - I bought it pretty much instantly. I paid pretty much what I expected to have in just buying a shell & motor so I couldn't be happier.

About the car - It's originally a 1984 4 cylinder car. I'm not as in touch with all the different years as most but if my memory serves it has the updated tail lights, front end, and of course the fake iroc/z28 badging. Not sure of miles on the chassis as it has all autometer gauges

My friend's dad traded for it already swapped but he cleaned up and fixed a lot of misc stuff. Had a 4l60e originally that **** the bed and he threw in a Th350 he had just to have it on the road. Build isn't too crazy, Rebuilt LS1 with aftermarket pistons my buddy's dad couldn't remember. It does have arp studs, 243's, fast 92 intake, 60lb injectors, Comp Cam unknown (he's supposed to find the cam card for me). Stock GM ecu, th350, B&M ratchet shifter, some random converter that flashes to like 4500rpm. Still a 10 bolt and it whines a little bit. Has all tubular control arms, k member, etc. Wilwood front brakes Autometer speedo/volt/fuel/tach/oil pressure in factory locations minus the a-pillar fuel gauge. Also has a wideband that is just loose on the floor right now lol. Weighs in at 2850 currently.

My current plans: Ended up going with QP 9" and blower didn't happen yet but stll in the plans
I have a line on a 31 spline explorer 8.8" rear to replace the dying 10 bolt. My buddy is excited to help with the fab work for this car since he always wanted his dad to do more with it. I'm going to be taking him the 10 bolt and having him swap the axle tubes to the 8.8" and basically keep a lot of the factory mounting location spots for overall ease of install as I'm not as mechanically inclined as most so I'm trying to keep it easy but also realistic as I could go drop $2500-3k on a complete 9" but it just isn't necessary for what I want.
I'm still transmission shopping but looking for a T56 magnum or a built/fresh regular T56. Worst case I have a line on a core and do a stock/mild rebuild which a place locally has done for around $800-1200 in the past.
Budget & time permitting I also would like to go to a blower this winter as well but I'm prioritizing the Trans & rear swaps first as I'm fine with enjoying the H/C/I setup for next year instead of having the car down because of a blower build.

While I begin searching and buying parts though I'm still enjoying the car as it is - it's still very fun to drive especially as I pretend I don't hear the popping and droning from the 10 bolt. I'll be trailering it to the track Sunday and I hope to break into the 11's. Honestly with past experience with my cam only and H/C 4th gen's - I'm hoping this one can see mid 11's but the tune isn't perfect. It's a very "safe" rich tune.

I picked it up Sunday and it was pretty filthy from sitting in the back of my buddy's warehouse at his fab shop. So naturally first thing I did was cleaned it up and took some pictures.











I actually sold my built C6 to a friend - here's a picture of the two cars together


Little about me/my car history now:

To preface while I'm not new to the game, It has been a decade since I've been in a third gen and back then I had no idea what I was doing with my bolt on 350 TPI Formula. I'm really not brand biased at all and have owned a bunch of different cars. My bread and butter was always DSM's and I still have my original one I bought in 2009 that replaced my 91 Firebird. I've had 10 or so DSM's, a few 4th gen fbodies 2 of which I did heads/cam/intake setups on, lot of bikes, an LS2 c6 vette I fully built (TMS forged 6.0, Vortech T-trim blower, etc), and I just sold my 20k mile blown 14 GT because I just couldn't find motivation to modify it further.

Have been a few other fbodies/mustangs/vette in there not worth mentioning as well but in the end pretty much since I sold my old 91 bird my friends have known me for constantly talking about wanting to find a good third gen again to do my ideal LS street build in. I got close a few times but something always came up or the car wasn't what I expected as I've been very picky.
I tap out on the 600-700whp area as I feel like that's the sweet spot for me in a street car. Most of my friends are now seeing the 700-1000whp range and doing more serious racing. My end goal would be to hit 9.9's which was my goal in the vette but I didn't want to end up replacing my stock diff, axles, or trans lol. Above all else though I just want to be able to go on a couple hour road trip without much worry and be able to rip some gears.

Here's a random throwback to 2009 - my first car, the 92 teal non turbo laser, my 91 formula, and my 92 Talon TSi AWD I bought back in 2017 and still have today.

 

Nice car! Someone put a lot of time and money in it at some point.

 

Nice. I'm jealous.

 

Thank you! No doubt, I've also found a few things where I really wish they had spared a bit more cost or time lol.

Quote:

Nice. I'm jealous.

Thanks brother!

Couple updates - made it to the track and into the 11's yesterday as it sits - I also made the first plunges and bought a BNIB hawks t56 crossmember off FB market place for a great deal and also a ~500 mile practically new looking Monster LT1 Twin Disc full clutch kit including its flywheel and all for $700.
I've had poor luck finding a decent deal on a trans so I think this week I might take the big plunge and just buy a fresh T56 Magnum straight from Tick Performance. I did source my 8.8" just need to go pick it up and then wait until I put the car into the garage for the last time in November to pull the 10bolt and take both to my buddy to fab it up for the car.
Also purchased a generic black aluminum coolant overflow that is about 1/4 the size of the stock one and should look way better. Also picking up a 4th gen brake booster to clean up some room by the third gen's huge can of one.

Yesterday was the last big track day at our local 1/4 mile track so a few people from here took their cars. The night before though I wanted to change the oil before going just because I wasn't sure when it had been done last. I found the following on the drain plug, full of needle bearings!
Initially called it quits on going to the track. Turns out my buddy's dad just had one fail and did a trunion upgrade and just didn't change the oil. I pulled VC's and everything was great.


Then decided to throw in my new kenwood x304 headunit I splurged on and was hoping to find the issue with my tail lights/dash lights in the process. Sure enough a few wires just loose in there - a gray one was the culprit. However I found the wiring situation an absolute mess behind it and also under the dash on the drivers side. Bad enough to the point that I'll probably be rewiring the entire car. Going to plan to keep it as is for now to focus on the 6speed/rear/FI build. Then next winter focus on wiring and probably switching to a Holly Terminator and get away from the stock ECU. That said though I currently have tail lights/sidemarkers/dash lights that I never had before.





Then loaded up and hit the track! I made 3 passes. could of made a few more but I really would like to keep driving the car for a few more weeks so didn't want to abuse the very noisy 10 bolt anymore lol
I ran 11.8@114 11.7@115 and 11.8@115. Both 11.8's it spun a bit on the launch and the 11.7 I must not of hit the shifter right and it bounced the limiter a few times before I hit it again into third. The DA was also crap @ 3200 so I would like to think this thing could even of clicked an 11.4-11.5 though it doesn't have a ton of mph.
Either way for a fairly rich tuned essentially cam only LS1 I was pretty happy with it. Glad I got to get at least get a time out of it with the auto/10bolt before I yank it all.

Few pictures from the day:



My buddy who had never used a DSLR was working my camera so didn't get the best positioning down first time but still got some decent pictures.


***** and giggles my buddy's car I went with who were break into the 7's - he originally had a matching C6 to mine except he had about 900-1000whp to my 600whp haha. The foxbody was coyote swapped with an intake and 5 speed and ran 10.5's then my two friends decided to combine the cars to try to competitively race stick shift classes. They've won a bunch of stick shift stuff at Anarchy/SCT and a couple other big events and got few solid sponsorships including from procharger and had a few best of 8.2's - yesterday they were fighting wheelies and then they got a perfect run and it lost power at the top end. Then it didn't want to stay running and we definitely think it's hurt - but regardless it had a great year with a lot of money/events won.



That was the weekend though, was good to get the car out and have some fun with it. I'm getting eager to start pulling everything apart for the 6 speed!

One of the runs:

 

Great looking Camaro, you're from around the Des Moines area? I also had a C6, sold it when I bought my house, bought the GTA shortly after. I liked the old C6, I still miss it time to time.

 

Nice car. You'd never know it had a 4-banger. You're a more courageous man than me with an LS and big tires using a stock 10-bolt. I'd be afraid of major carnage resulting in the axle walking out of the housing and the tire destroying the quarter panel.

Looking forward to updates.

 

Sorry all spaced the thread a bit here!


I'm from SE Iowa, Burlington to be specific right on the Illinois border and about 40 mins from missouri.
I loved my C6 and would really like to get another one at some point ideally just a cam only targa car for cruising as this car gets a bit more serious. I'll always drive the hell out of this thing but I'd love to have a C6 alongside it.

Absolutely - I couldn't believe it when they told me it was an 84 let alone a 4cylinder car. I'm pretty thankful though for the lighter car it gives me as well as stuff like the factory AC-less system so I don't have to hunt forever for a heater box or run the factory unit with the accumulator hanging there taking up a ton of space. Honestly I fully expected to destroy the rear at the track that day - it makes so much noise right now howling and slow speed grinds/pops so I wasn't sure if I'd even make it the one pass. Still going though haha at this point I'm just happy I've gotten to enjoy the car as is a bit after buying it before it goes under the knife and stored for the winter. Plus we're getting a lot of nice days right now.

Still nothing real new on the car, got my clutch and crossmember in. I also put in all new speakers which changed the audio entirely, it sounds so good now I don't even care to put my 8" amp/sub combo in out of my truck to keep it clean of wires. At this point I'm just waiting until Black Friday to hopefully find a deal that might save me a $100-200+ off a brand new t56 magnum.

 

Well I should probably update here. Not much new. I got the COVID and a close family member got it and passed away from it so I pretty much haven't been able to give any attention to the project which is mostly still ordering parts right now.

I did however right before chaos hit here get my order out for my new T56 magnum from Tick Performance and for my complete bolt-in setup 9" from Quick Performance. Got the magnum here before Christmas - still waiting on the 9". Still need to get the other odds and ends ordered though like master cylinder, pedals, a shifter, and anything else along the way.

We still have yet to really have snow here or anything despite people an hour north getting dumped on so I've still found occasion to drive the car a couple times a week too.

 

been a long time but finally worth updating.
Life stayed super busy and I didn't touch the car with the upgrades.
I still drove it a lot up until a couple weeks ago though with the TH350/10bolt but the 10bolt was getting noisier and noisier and frankly I'm tired of 4.10's and TH350 and I've had more free time.

I took it to a buddy's shop with A/C for his help and it was in the middle of the 90-100 heatwave a couple weeks ago.

I've been founding a few things I forgot that I've been scrambling for but we're about there. The main hangup right now is my rear brakes for the 9" I thought I had LT style rears but they are third gen rear discs so I bought a set of LS style rear brakes for it.

So currently rear end is in - still need to have bearing pressed on axles which will be done this week. Going to move to interior to cut shifter hole and will hopefully be able to raise the magnum into her new home for the first time. Fingers crossed!
I'm not really in a huge rush but I'm hoping to have it on the road in a couple weeks.

 

Like most projects a couple weeks turned into months lol. Lots small things and waiting on parts and researching stuff held things up.
Had a bunch of issues with figuring out my brakes before I had a "Duh" moment and realized I didn't have the brakes I thought I did.
My other issues were wiring woes which this car has a lot of and some issues with my rear suspension. Everything fits and works now but it has made me certain I'm going to be upgrading from my non adjustable LCA's and panhard bar in the next month or so. Then other holdups involved some ujoint/yoke issues that I THOUGHT we had but ended up we were just not being mean enough to it and ended up fitting.

One big issue that I had last year is one of the wheel studs backed out of the wilwood hub on the front. Then after removing the wheels to test fit some new ones once, I noticed one had broke and another backed out I tried to get it in again but it had ruined the threads already. So I had one side with a backed out stud. Another with one stud broke and one backed out. So that was when we only took it to a couple cruise nights locally and then I started the work in August whenever I was able to have time at my buddy's shop. I opted to forgo a lot of other stuff until I could bring the car home such as the parking brake (need to fabricate bracket), trans wiring, clutch safety wiring, etc just because it had took too long to get where i was and my buddy was getting busier and busier and I just wanted to have the car home. So in December we finally got her on the ground moving under her own power again. I managed to drive it in single digit freezing temps about 2 miles across town to my house where it sat for January/February/March until it was warm enough I cared to mess with it

I ordered a new wilwood hub and new wheel studs as well as bearings and replaced everything on the driverside front. The passenger side I'm now waiting for my new stud since only one has backed out and the threads arent too bad I'm going to hopefully save the hub and remove and reinstall the other studs as well with red loctight and hopefully be in the clear. Otherwise last week I also fixed an issue with my brake light switch wiring which had been keeping me from driving it because they were stuck on. I fixed some mess around the ECU and made it a new hanger under the glovebox since it has been laying on the floor since it fell out last July from the old crappy rig.

I also install some 3" turn down tips as unfortunately my exhaust no longer fit as the header points directly at the new crossmember. So she's temporarily extremely loud until I can get it in with my buddy to have him fabricate some fancyness and I plan to reuse at least the over-axle part of my old exhaust as it was a good true dual setup and rather than the single muffler with single dual exit point I plan to do a more typical out the back exhaust probably with borla bullets or something after I get the car to him.

I began driving it a bunch last week and even drove it for work one day which is 30 miles each way and it did great on the highway. Even did a mpg test since that matters in today's world lol and she managed 27mpg.
Yesterday I heard a clunk and one of my brake backing plate bolts backed out and another was loose so I have it in the air - tonight when I'm off work I'm installing new bolts with loctite and checking the other side.
That said though things are finally shaping up for it and its driveable. Still need to plan for tackling the wiring disaster and setting up things like a clutch safety switch and my speedometer.

I also haven't been able to fit my street wheels on the front because of the wilwood hubs I need adapters for - for now she's mismatched. I also removed all the fake IROC decals/pinstriping.

Having the car at home and my schedule freeing up a lot has been giving me a lot more time to give it attention.

here are some pictures from the last few months

Old very noisy and tired 10bolt







New magnum & 9" looking pretty






Rear is in/mocked up








Trans is in







Underside:







Interior work:

 

Hit img limit in last

Random shot of car/rear and gf keeping company while we work lol




Out for a drive






Video from first time shifting gears driving it home in December

https://i.imgur.com/cPq36nt.mp4



Video couple weeks ago after finishing replacing the front hub and studs. Can't wait to have exhaust on her!

https://i.imgur.com/28W8urn.mp4


To close my primary to do list to be summer fun ready

• New Adjustable rear LCA's
• Adjustable Panhard Bar
• New rear shocks not sure what I want yet might just do vikings and be done
• Electrical (Clutch Safety / Reverse Lockout / Speedometer)
• Exhaust fabrication to include bracket to cleanly install my parking brake
• Review tune but should still be solid
• New wheels/tires for the street - also might roll fenders in the rear since my slicks hit them in bumps occasionally

I plan to just enjoy the car this summer as it is - what should be a bullet proof H/C/I LS / T56 Magnum / 9" street car.

It's very hard to ignore however how much of a wiring nightmare/shitshow the car is. At one point the car had a Holley Dominator when first swapped many years ago. Car was almost never driven and then traded and part of the deal was they kept the dominator. The chassis harness had already been in poor shape but from what I can see they just wanted the Holley out quick and the stock PCM in quick. The engine bay wiring isn't perfect but it's decent enough. Once you get to the stuff you don't see though it's awful. Everything works but I don't even feel safe wiring my tiny 10" amplified sub all-in-one lower power unit into the current harness. One thing I've purchased a from a friend is a Holley Terminator X setup. I'm also buying a full rewire kit to rewire the chassis. It shouldn't be too bad beings that the car is a bare option car with almost no power options to worry about. That said I HATE wiring and have never done a full resto around it but being into DSM"s I've had to rewire plenty of hackjobs and brittle/broken wires so I'm sure if I hunker down and take my time I can make it work without reinventing the wheel and I can keep it clean.

That will my big plan for this next winter and if possible look towards the blower. It's easier to talk about it than it will be to be ready at the time though and I may just choose to fully focus on leaving all alone until I get all new wiring done.

 

So apparently my backing plate bolts weren't tight enough, lost two fully yikes. Could heard the sound of the caliper moving somehow despite how loud the damn car is right now. I ordered from amazon a brand new set of T bolts and got my package Wednesday, the amazon white padded envelope was totally open like it had never been sealed. No parts, now amazon is "forcing" me to exchange my defective parts for my new one so I'm literally sending them the empty package back lol so whatever. My replacement bolts should be here today but we have some plans with my gf's parents so tomorrow I'll hopefully have it back on the road. Happened on passenger side but I'm replacing the ones on the driver side as well and loctiting them. My buddy bolted them up after he took the axles to his work to have the bearing pressed on the axle so i just want to be sure the other side is good too, I ain't upset since i caught it at least lol, plus I didnt realize they were just hardware store bolts someone had used before I owned the car so I'd rather replace them all anyway with proper T bolts.

I also wasn't sure what people use for shift boot retainers in third gens. I found one for fourth gens that is an actual console mounted square piece with clip points but the only one I saw for third gen is like $23-30 for just a ring. So I just stole some welding wire out of my amazon flux welder, it works lol.

One thing I did buy my Holley Terminator X today! For the future but can't wait to convert it over and redo all wiring.

Random pic of my shift boot since nothing else interesting lol. Also got my little locknut to align the **** and I have coming an interior hardware kit from hawks as well as their 6 speed diagram to go over the 5 speed. It's the little things

 

Get yourself a claw foot to get into that tight space behind the brakes and use a proper torque wrench to tighten those T-bolts. You'll have to use a corrected torque with the extra length of the claw foot, https://www.engineersedge.com/manufa...e_wrench_1.htm

Use blue Loctite and apply a lot of it onto the bolt. I've seen engineering studies of breakaway torque with Loctite and I can tell you it doesn't do jack squat unless you apply it like a sloppy mess. You can use red but you might not ever get it apart again without a torch.

 

Ty for this! I didnt post when I read it yesterday but was about to make it more complicated for myself until I read here, totally forgot claw/crow wrenches were a thing and bought a cheap set for $12 from Harbor Freight that worked perfectly. Got her all back together and gf and I went on a little cruise. I gave it the first WOT in 1st gear I've done and it just spun. Cruised a bit more then on the trip back home was hearing some popping noises and some scraping noise when rolling slow - as hard as it is to hear over the exhaust right now. I jacked it up took the wheels off and looked around but can't find anything wrong.

Almost sounded more from rear or driveshaft area, was late and tired though so left it be for now. Super busy week between the 2 days ill be at work and being out of town for 2 different concerts driving all over the midwest. So unfortunately I might not have time to mess with it until next week since we'll be coming home Sunday evening.

 

You're welcome.

 

One of those typical "I know it's been way too long" updates but here it is. The car hasn't progressed much since my last post. I ended up having a fuel issue shortly after and I replaced the fuel pump and filter and it ran after the new pump for a day then wouldnt run again. I removed it and checked it and the pump is good and I couldn't see anything wrong. I started tracing some wiring and as I've mentioned before - the wiring in this car is a disaster. Engine bay isn't the worst but it's not great but everything behind the dash, under the console, and throughout the chassis is just hell to the point I'm not sure how it could even of gotten so bad. I essentially just lost some interest/motivation in even bothering to get it road worthy until I was ready to just re-do the entire car which is essentially what is now happening. The other big factor was also simply that to do what I wanted to do I didn't want to piecemeal it too much - and my fiancee quit her job to pursue her dream job which had her being an unpaid apprentice for awhile. Now her career is taking off and she is making more than I ever have lol, and has been more excited about us being able to cruise this car again than even I was the past year or so. I also picked up a nice stock 88 Trans Am i made a build thread for a on here that has been a motivator too as I've been having a lot of fun getting back into it. It's crazy how much you can somewhat forget after taking a break like this. I've been having a lot of fun with the 88 TA being able to enjoy it as a cruiser.

That said where the camaro is at:

still isn't running because of no power to the pump, I'm now 90% sure this is within the sending unit wiring itself and now it's just the fact I have a bunch torn out of the car I haven't done it yet, but I plan to bypass the factory sender plug in the next few days and see if I can at least finally get it started again. I'm not going to rig anything permanent up as it's still all going to be coming out, it'll just be to verify the issue.
The big day for the car will really come in September when our tuning & wiring guru friend is coming back from Arizona for harvest and is picking up side jobs. His main career is doing wiring setups and tuning on cars much more wild than mine will ever be so I'm super excited to have his quality work replacing the mess that is in the car now. He'll also be doing a fresh tune with the Holley Terminator X. He'll be rewiring the chassis as well.

To restart the project I've bought a few things so far:
Corbeau RRS Sportline Seats - making my car look like more of a clone of LSXMatt's all the time on youtube but after a lot of back and forth thinking I was going to go with the LG1's, I got to sit in an RRS and it sold me so I purchased a set including the corbeau 3rd gen adapters.
Hawks 82-89 Restoration Dakota Digital Cluster - was originally set on doing a set of electric autometer gauges but at the last minute decided I loved the idea of the stock appearance and modern functionality of the hawks cluster so I pulled the trigger.
Full Carpet Replacement - Bought a black front & rear full carpet set from rockauto I'm excited to get into car along with the seats to make it much nicer.

Then today I pulled the trigger on a the 5000lb rated quick jack setup as I'm starting to spend time working on this and the 88 TA and I had been so close to buying one a couple years ago so I made the impulse decision. Once it get here I'm going to order some braided fuel line as well as the aeromotive third gen sending unit/pump and run all new lines. I have some other prep work but that will the majority of it before it gets re-wired and retuned as the current NA setup. I'm hoping to be able to enjoy it a bit before winter. The moment I know the car is good on my end to go get re-wired and tuned I plan to buy my Boost District LSA blower kit. I may even do it in the next month or so after I sell my camper and truck that are just taking up space anymore as we never use either of them. Anyway that's the current status. I'm finishing up a couple things on the 88 Trans Am this week then will be working solely on the camaro.

Kilmat - going to gut the interior and put it everywhere for sound deading, I used it in our camper-van and we love it.


new seats


hawks restoration cluster


Yesterday had to roll the camaro out and make room in the garage to fit the 88 TA with the massive storm coming. As you can see we have way too many vehicles so hopefully my truck (mostly hidden behind the garage) and the camper will be gone soon as fiancee wants to find herself a good deal on an auto GTO for a fun car for herself.




I will inevitably have more updates for this car this year finally as I'm still in the process of spending a ton of money on it

 

Well I was right, I can't believe i took so long to bother with it but I've been busy with a lot of other stuff including working on my 88 TA which I just fixed its main bogging issue and by wednesday I should have my MWC SFC's installed along with my new ac compressor and other new ac components, so I can finally focus on driving it and enjoying it and focus on prepping the camaro for its re-wire and tune in August/September.

That said though I finally cut the factory plugs off and just hard-wired the sending unit harness with nothing other than twisting them together and electrical taping them, and she fired up after about 4 seconds of cranking after not running for over a year at this point.
Naturally I had to at least take it out and give it a quick blast at the car wash, I mostly did it for the underside which was loaded in cobwebs and gravel dust that comes in from my driveway when the garage is open. I don't plan to really touch wiring now that its running/driving until I drop it off for its re-wire/tune as I just want to be able to drive it to my buddies here soon to finally set up an exhaust on it and weld its existing bolt-in sfc's, and then move it around my driveway/garage as needed. I did order a new drop in aeromotive sending unit im waiting on. The 340lph pump will work fine for a bit but I have a 525 I'll swap in with the LSA this winter/next year.

Had been sitting collecting dust and "art" from my fiancee



quick low effort blast at the manual wash



only temporarily threw my drivers seat in to be able to move it around, after I take it to get the exhaust done I'm going to take out the seat/console and my nasty grey carpet and install the new black carpet I bought through rockauto. Also picked up a new mpi steering wheel through motion since I'm not a fan of the grant I bought the car with.

 

decided to hold off installing the carpet since I purchased new UMI SFC's and I'll want to pull it out when welding anyway and then also the full rewire job coming at the end of the august means I might as well not go through the work of getting it in all nice just to come back out. Today I spent about 3 hours just cleaning and wiping down the car and getting into all the crevices in the interior and the engine bay. The years of gravel dust have really accumulated from the short amount of gravel in my driveway just being kicked up

That said there was a cruise night tonight and I decided to meet a couple friends there and my fiancee wanted to go so I installed the other seat and made it feel a bit more complete. Didn't take any pics at the show, only after I got it home.

 

Starting to get in crunch time here for the car as our buddy from AZ will be back and doing a professional rewire and then giving the car a solid tune at the end of August. I've been delayed a lot on getting this to my buddy's shop to get the UMI subframe connectors on for him to weld but this weekend should be it.

I thought I had posted it already but I guess not but I have had regrets going with the BMR crossmember. Fitment is great for the crossmember itself but as I was worried about at the time, it limits my exhaust clearance too much. Would be fine for something without full exhaust but I was broke when I was buying these parks so the $130 vs 270 for the blackheart seemed like a better option at the time. Now the blackheart is over $400 and the others $200+ lol. Either way I ended up buying a blackheart and I'm going to sell my BMR once I have it off.
I'm hoping this weekend while he has it in the air welding, I'm going to swap the crossmember and then I also have a UMI Adjustable Torque Arm to swap in place of my current non-adjustable BMR that I'll install into my 88 TA.

Then I ended up going with a speed engineering true dual setup, I just couldn't stop going back to it at $499 still for what you get. Hopefully by the next update I'll have everything mentioned here installed.

 

Take it for what its worth, but I have this same exhaust and I have been fighting drone since day one. I have cats, spintech mufflers and one (working on finding a pace for a second) borla resonator to help kill the sound a bit but it still drones at cruise RPM. If I had to do it all over again I would have bought the mufflex 4" system and been done with it. You'll also likely need to cut and weld to get the system to tuck cleanly. This is not an easy endeavor and I want to give you a heads up before you totally commit. The cheap cost of entry was immediately destroyed when I had to turn it into a one off system with replacement mufflers, cats, resonators.

 

Definitely I actually was dead-set on this exhaust and then didn't order it forever because of Fireball ******'s video of swapping his out because of the drone. In the end the price did win me over and I did buy this with the plan to swap borla XR1's in place of the muffler's from Speed Engineering to bring it down a little bit but seems like multiple people have tried about everything to quiet it down. Thankfully my machinist buddy is also a hell of a welder/fabricator and is going to help me do the install at his place. Seems mainly like I need to do some cutting/welding at the collector?

I eventually justified it to myself that I'll be able to live with it being fairly obnoxious as long as it's not my only car to cruise lol. All my cars have always been extremely loud. My built/t-trim blower c6, heads/cam/intake 99 TA, old built 99 formula, and a 99 z28 I had I all put SLP Loudmouth 1's on because they were cheap and stupid loud. I'm finally getting into my 30's and starting to have the desire to be a bit more reserved but think I got a few years left of being able to happily tolerate the drone of this true dual setup haha. I'm also keeping my 88 Trans am's exhaust very tame and if I'm looking for that more reserved comfortable cruise experience I'll stick to it. I definitely would not rule out though that some day I'll be in a place that I want to dial back this car whether it's exhaust or swapping out the corbeau's for something more comfortable.

Plus I've been driving this thing around on and off for 2 years with open headers, anything will be better lol

 

It's good that you've thought this through and I too have/had this same thinking. Its not so much the loudness, but the drone at cruise. It goes to your bones. The resonator and replacing the bullets with Spintechs did help a lot but not enough to go without hearing protection on long drives. If you have someone that can tig you'll be in a good spot. I tig'd mine system together and also added V bands.

 

As usual running late on the original plans but she's moving along! We got hit with another nasty long heatwave and crazy heavy storms, lots of damage all around us. Worst I had was a section of our fence down that took about 15 minutes to put back up and then the cover blown off my TA which led to a wet interior from the t-tops leaking but was easy enough to clean and dry out the next day. One thing that slowed me a bit is I impulse bought yet another car, this time a 4th gen even though I've always said I wouldn't own one again unless it was to flip or for parts lol. Then I also finally got my headers/y-pipe installed on my TA as well as well as other things I did along the way. Splitting attention lately has been difficult in between all the crazy temps and weather.

All I ever knew about our buddy doing the wiring is he'd be back late August but he's taking a few jobs before mine as mine will be a bigger job than his various tinting / tuning / small wiring as I'm having him do the entire chassis harness including everything down to every light on the vehicle, and then he's going to tune it. I likely have 2-3 weeks before he's ready to take this thing and have it for 1-2 weeks.
So it finally cooled down and got back to it on this thing



one thing I did was grab this 3d printed piece for mounting my terminator x lcd screen


Got the last piece of my fuel upgrades (for the moment) in over the weekend as well. Already have braided 8an line from filter to the rail, but with the aeromotive sender I got some more to run in place of the sender hard lines to the filter. Going to keep my current walbro 255 and sell the aeromotive 340. Have a Walbro 525 on the shelf I've been saving for down the road. At some point in the future, probably this winter, I'll be getting a proper aftermarket FPR and running a full return line in place of the corvette filter I'm running now in preparation for the LSA. Otherwise decided to go ahead with running a flex fuel sensor on it and using one of motion's nice pieces for it. Believe the only thing I have left besides a better FPR for the fuel system for my final plans is getting some injectors, probably ID1000's. Right now I have bosch 60lbs.


With that though finally swapped out the bmr torque arm, BMR T56 crossmember, and whatever subframe connectors these are that I bought the car with. Have a buddy buying the torque arm from me, but need to list and try to sell the crossmember/SFC's.


Swapped in the hooker crossmember, UMI adjustable torque arm, and UMI subframe connector. Didn't take a good picture of them on their own but can see a bit of them below in exhaust install. My quick performance 9" came with their torque arm mount with the two tubes the bolts run through. I didn't think we gorilla'd it too much but i could NOT get them to budge and rather than risking breaking it myself I took it to my buddy's shop and had him look at it with me. He had me leave it there and messaged me next day told me he had tried everything and eventually they twisted and snapped inside the tubes. He then took it all off and tried torching it until it was glowing and still couldn't get them out with a press even. He ended up cutting the tubes/bolts out of it and getting some new tubes and hardware and welded them back in place all in a day. After that, while we still had it there at his shop we got the crossmember and the umi sfc's in and he welded them up for me.

Now I need to get the speed engineering true duals on, originally we were going to do this at his shop too but he's backed up with work right now and another friend of mine offered to bring all his welding gear to my house so we could set it up here so we started on it yesterday afternoon. First I pulled the headers and installed the panhard relocation bar from SE.


We started with mocking up back to front, as I expected I really hate the tips provided. I'm just installing everything as it comes for now but expect to see these tips change pretty soon after I have it back from being re-wired and tuned lol.



Main area needing some magic worked, we're cutting the ends off the x-pipe to route directly into the reliefs on the hooker crossmember. The headers main reason I pulled was for him to modify, you couldn't even get a flathead screwdriver between the passenger collected and the subframe, and he's cutting and adding a bit of an angle to the end of the headers and converting it to vband clamps which will make things much easier in the future. Can peep the new ride hiding there too.



Otherwise everything is looking pretty decent - was just missing some hardware and needed to replace some stuff that I don't want to re-use going back in. Should have everything by Thursday and we're going to try to finish it up Friday or Saturday at the latest. Then I'll just have a few final small things to get in order but I'll be ready to take it for its date to finally become less of a fire hazard and properly tuned.

 

That exhaust looks like it's gonna be loud AF.

 

It is. I have a modified version of the same kit and have added resonators and replaced the bullet mufflers with spintech units. Its better, but still drones at cruise.

 

For what I want the car to be, and the fact I've been driving it with dumped open headers under me for 2 years, I was just happy to get a full stainless exhaust out the back that leaves nothing on the table for $449 with a coupon on ebay lol.I fully intend to at least throw on some borla XR1's at minimum, may get to resonators eventually but I can live with some drone in this car, right now i'm just wanting it to have a full exhaust before getting re-wired/tuned here in the next weeks.

The 4th gen I just picked up is a pretty high effort LS1 motor at around 470whp n/a, has an electric cutout but otherwise a hooker aerochamber catback and it's super quiet but smooth. Between that and my bolt-on LB9 that is super quiet I figure I can live with this car being obnoxious

 

nothing ever goes to plan of course lol was hoping to be done last weekend but had things come up and didn't have too much time to spend on it over the weekend or beginning of this week. Actually worked on a few other unrelated issues throughout the car with my random 30-60 mins i've been in the garage most nights. Last night got back to the exhaust and my buddy came over to start doing the main bits of fabbing/welding. Just figured I'd post up progress of getting this thing in there. Once we have the exhaust all the way in I still need to figure out the rear tab bolt for the crossmember and add the last sfc umi sfc crossbeam. Then this area will be pretty wrapped up.

 

Once again struck by the classic "things never go to plan" so here's the long-overdue update.

I cant lie I got a bit frustrated with the guy who was supposed to be rewiring/tuning the car telling me every week he'd be ready for me the next week all the way into November. I know he kept picking up some projects that were more serious no-prep style stuff. It had been a week since the last time and I messaged asking if things were still looking good and never heard back, couple days later he was back home and wont be back in the area until Sept 2025 and I still never heard back again. I definitely had no issue paying his price for the quality of his work but I just wish I wouldn't of planned around it and done more on the wiring myself through the Fall.

I was going to start tearing stuff out on the odd warm winter days. One of my best local friends, who did my exhaust, decided semi-last minute late Fall to have a small shop built behind his house and told me I should just wait and leave it driveable until he got it finished and bring it over and do it there. Recently he gave me the all clear to bring it over. Originally I only ever planned to re-wire and clean up parts of the car and re-tune and enjoy the car as is with the mild N/A setup it had - but I got caught by constantly getting into the "Well while I'm doing that it'd be nice to do do ___" mindset. Now it's also getting an LSA blower, it actually just showed up today. At this point I'm actually super glad it fell through having it rewired. Doing it with my buddy at his shop has definitely motivated me to do a lot more than planned and gotten me pretty excited. Plus I'm glad I'll know pretty much everything going on in the car.

So the current parts list that I have already:
- boost district "starter" LSA Kit - this includes the blower itself, fuel rails, gaskets/sensors, snout, bypass valve.
- Dirty Dingo LSA Cathedral Adapters
- Ebay heat exchanger, might need to go bigger here at some point but it still should be way more efficient than the stock LSA exchangers.
- Fuel System - ID 1050X Injectors / Racetronix FPR / Aeromotive Sender/Hanger with a Wally 535 pump as well as all new fuel line ill be running
- Motion Raceworks LSA Steam Kit / LSA Throttle Cable adapter / Flex Fuel Sensor mount
- BTR PDS Stage 2 Blower Cam & their Dual Spring kit
- Johnson lifters
- Innovators West Full-8 Rib Conversion Kit & Crank pin kit
- OKW LSA Fbody/Gto Front Drive Adapter

Another thing I have a good lead on and I'm hoping I'll end up being able to pick up tomorrow is an all new dash, and maybe center console if I like any this guy has. Mine barely has any mounting points that weren't broken or glued on and there's no way I want to reuse it.

Main things I'm still needing are
- Lid & Brick - I really wanted the ZL1 lid but didn't realize that last fall they stopped being able to get them, every place that offers them has them backordered with no ETA. So the price has skyrocketed, so I'm keeping my eye for a lid even if a cts-v lid for another week or two before i just order a custom lid like the mast unit and use a a cts-v brick. This is the main reason I went with Boost district's starter kit instead of the fbody kit which used to heavily discount the ZL1 lid with the kit.
- Coolant Pump / Reservoir - we're going to figure out how we want to mount it all and get the heat exchanger set up before I decide what Im ordering. Pump I'll probably grab soon at least.
- Dash mainly as mentioned so we can start going on the wiring with a new dash assembly in

Overall goal is to make an easy somewhat-tame 500-600whp, should be capable of 700+ up until the injectors would run out of steam but this is essentially a stock rebuilt LS1 so I want to be somewhat easy on it haha. Hoping next winters project will end up being a forged 6.0/6.2 and I can recoup some money selling the LS1.

Today was definitely late Christmas





Beginning








-

 

Love the shop! And the drop off of parts is something, like you said, 'late Christmas'.
Should be a very nice setup.

 

Still chugging away on this

A bit of escalation, nothing crazy but as always have ended up finding a lot more things to spend money on.

Ended up finding someone selling a bunch of interior stuff cheaper than anything else I'd seen. I grabbed the dash, center console, and some under-dash panel covers I was missing. Came with a lot I didn't need but I'm not against adding to the parts shelves or reselling some stuff. The dash itself wasn't in as nice shape with cracked plastic as I hoped, but the main thing I bought it for, the mounting locations, are all in great shape minus one. So I decided to buy a plastic welder and I was pleasantly surprised how easily I was able to patch/reinforce spots of the dash, thankfully mostly in all non-visible places but I still cleaned them up.
Wasn't originally going to pull the heads but decided to have them cleaned/surfaced and a valve job.
Been making use of another friend's parts washer and had him do everything from valve covers, timing cover, and other misc pieces. Some like the valve covers/timing cover another friend of mine has been starting to get into powdercoating out of his garage and he did them for me and they turned out great. Only pic I've taken so far is one of the timing cover I'll post below. I'm also going to have him do my lid when it comes in.
Never could find a ZL1 lid or a cheap enough CTS-V lid so I bought a Mast Aftermarket lid and a CTSV brick that I'm going to have reinforced here. I also decided I didn't want to try to make/modify the stock LSA rails to work so I purchased a set of Holley rails.
So far the chassis wiring is almost finished/cleaned up. We've checked that everything works as it should minus my heat which we're pretty sure we have it correct. Eliminated the old weird push button start and should function properly with the key now.
I was super excited seeing the hawks cluster lighting up for the first time and everything like signals/dimming all working. Need to modify a couple final small things on the holley termi harness and then we should be about ready to run it and we'll mount the dash back in too.

I also spent a bunch of time cleaning the interior from scrubbing to steam cleaning to try to purge some of the pounds of years of grime/gravel dust and then my wife laid down kilmat throughout it outside of places where I'll still be working which I'll do at the end. Here on a nice day before we do a final mounting of the blower we're going to wheel it out and I'm going to go crazy cleaning the disgusting engine bay and touch up the engine bay paint.

Parts I still need/waiting on

• Pump & reservoir - not sure why i've waited so long on this, probably will buy something this week
• MAST Cast LSA Lid - i ended up buying this on February 17th. I was told about 3 weeks ago they'd likely be ready this week and ship out this week or next. So hoping I'll see mine so that I can get it to my buddy for powdercoating.
• Pressure Sensors - went with 2 lowdoller motorsports 100psi sensors for my fuel/oil.
• Motion Vented Catch Can & cap adapter & 12orb to 10an fittings as I saw a couple FB posts about LSA guys having issues with blowing out rear mains from excess pressure so want to eliminate that weak point for myself

Still obviously lots of other small things to do but that's the quick summary. On another note i did sell my built 4th gen z28 so after I paid off all the debt I had at the moment, I'm putting some of the money along with whatever I sell my daily beater vibe for to upgrade the daily a bit, and then the rest I'm keeping for building a short block. I'm not in a huge rush as I'm not going to want to pull this motor out now until winter probably but I'm hoping in the next month or two I can find an aluminum 6.0/6.2 and accumulate parts over the summer and hopefully have it at the machine shop by the time its getting cold out.

New dash/interior pieces


Kilmatting the area's cleaned so far. Also peek the hideous trap-door from a previous owner. I'm not a trap door hater but this one is pretty bad but still going to pull the tank when running the new fuel lines here soon and then my buddy is going to help fab up a cleaner solution to what's there.


Dont mind the mess or grimey engine bay - but this is the textured black powedercoat I'm doing things like the valve covers/lid in.



Mocking everything up for the first time - ended up grinding a lot on the back of the blower to keep my wiper motor. Is good now but if there's contact when engine is running I might cave and grab an 80's maxima motor based off what I read on here.
Gotta say the OKW drive kit is awesome and was well worth the $ and wait.



Holley LSA rails will make running for my return & flex fuel simple



Some weeks it slows down but every couple weeks there's a few more massive piles that show up haha
I'm definitely hoping it pays off

 

Finally reporting back - it's funny in my last post in March I said how MAST told me I'd see my lid in a the next week or two. Well I finally got the lid last week, June 10th. Not going to get too upset about it because honestly have had so much other stuff going on I needed the break from this project. That said though the lid definitely seems to be a nice piece and for $600 can't beat it vs the $1600-2000 people are wanting for ZL1 lids. Even CTS-V lid prices are going crazy now. Because of waiting on the lid it made more sense for my buddy to stuff my car into the corner while he worked on other jobs coming through. Since the lid arrived and his shop cleared up a bit he went ahead and used the DSE fuel access panel and clean up the way it was hackjobbed previously. This weekend we're going to put the tank back in and run all the fuel lines. We test fit a few things with the lid but I just dropped off the lid and a few other things with another friend to get the powdercoat treatment. More wiring done as well - no video of it but we got everything running off the key and ran power to the starter to ensure everything was good and I'm happy to officially know the rigged wiring/push button start crap that was in it is all fixed as well as things like clutch safety switch.

We really can't see why we couldn't have it wrapped up in the next 3-4 weeks but you know how that goes.

the usual photo updates:

new DSE access panel in place of the questionable access panel from a previous owner, big thanks to my buddy for his work on this. There was a lot of extra material to fill in here from previous owner cuts.


blurry photo - but gauges powered on, love these already


as you can see my original belt sizing idea was off loll so i returned it and measured belt-wrap with a string, I have two cheap 6ribs showing up today to check fitment tonight when I go over there and I'll order the proper 8rib for it


CTSV brick in the MAST Lid - I originally didnt put two and two together in my brain and ordered a regular 10an coolant manifold that would only allow me to mount the brick with my coolant lines coming out of the back like with a cts-v lid. I returned it though and am waiting for the longer ZL1 style so I can run the lines from the front.


Just happy to see the lid on it finally - though these pictures make me even more excited to just get the car rolled down into my buddy's driveway before final install of everything so I can clean the engine bay up/clean up the brake booster. When I finally get my new shortblock for this thing I'm probably going to respray it black as well.