[old66tiger]

Thanks. Now that the firewall is done, time to move on to bigger and better things. Next stop...LS3

Sent from my SCH-R970 using Tapatalk

[old66tiger]

Its been awhile so it is time for an update.

I bought the LS3 525 HP engine from Gandrud in Green Bay, WI at the beginning of October. Nice guys and they price matched Pace Performance and delivered right to my door. I bought the engine, drive accessories, flywheel, clutch and fasteners.

Not a very pretty engine, but this thing ought to make this bucket of bolts haul. Brand new, full warranty and a butt load of potential.








Engine stuffed in the car. Not bad. Notice that I am prototyping a set of Ultimate Headers shorties. More on that to come.





I played around with the Holley 302-2 pan for a bit and I had excellent clearance in the front of the pan. I didn't like the lack of clearance between the back side of the frame and when I spun the motor over without a gasket, I noticed a little incidental contact between the pan and one of the rods. I would assume that the 1/8" thick oil pan gasket would take care of this, but I opted for the 302-1 pan instead




I can keep the full length windage tray with the 302-1 and it is a better casting overall. The 302-2 casting was not nearly as nice as the 302-1. I have about 1/4" clearance before the gasket and should have better than 1/8" with the gasket.



Tie rod clearance that is acceptable for my application. The Ridetech arms limit a tight radius. Even if I had more tire turning radius, I think I would be OK to a point.





Note the Lakewood scattershield that I am using with my LGT-700. Sourced from Bowler Performance. More on that later.





Holley engine adapters 12611, Car Shop BOP to Chevy frame mounts and energy suspension 3.1114G mounts (short and wide required.








Bosch SR8581N starter from Rock Auto. $107. No core and brand new.








Trail and error with Doug's D3336-R headers. The headers fit fine at the frame and clear the steering column OK. I tried the Dougs SK100 mounts which are IDENTICAL to the Hooker mounts except that the engine can move forward by 3/4" from stock location. If I put the engine 3/4" forward, the headers barely clear the lower a-arm suspension pockets.








While the D3336-R headers fit OK at the engine and between the frame rails, they are really tight to the floor. I have about 1/2" at best between the header flanges and the floor. I am exploring other headers with Ultimate Headers to see what they can do. My other option is to cut off the flanges, weld in some 3" elbows to move it away from the floor and clear the crossmember. I ordered a new Summit Racing cross member and should have a good idea where things are going after that arrives.

[6 Grrrs]

Subscribed as I'm in the process of building a 461...

[PurplePackFan]

Hi Bob, great thread. Just found it tonight, hadn't realized you were starting this already. Looks like you're doing a great job.

Subscribed.

John in Green Bay

[old66tiger]

Long weekend in the garage with some decent results.

I got the Radaflex 1/0 donkey dick starter cable from Cable Yard and I got that ran that on the passenger side from the trunk to the starter. Waiting on the hydraulic crimper to arrive and I can go to town terminating the cable. I was going to mount the battery on the passenger side of the trunk, but I am seriously considering running a spare tire and the factory spare hook is still in the trunk which makes the location ideal for the spare. With the LS, I plan on driving this thing a bunch more and I really want a spare for the piece of mind. Just need to find a 04-06 GTO spare - close fit...enough to get me where I need to go.

Next on task was to figure out a bracket to mount my proportioning valve and the clutch master reservoir. I opted for a Ring Brothers billet deal which is killer and only a few bucks more than a plain plastic deal. I knew I wanted everything to be located on the brake master cylinder to keep the firewall clean. Starting with some poster board templates, I played around with some patterns. Using some 0.090" aluminum I had sitting around, this is what I came up with. Pretty clean installation





I made up some wire templates for brake lines and I like stainless so I will be shipping these templates off to Right Stuff to have them bend them up for me.

Next on tap was to tackle the clutch pedal mods. I have played around with this before and knew that I could not do a simple heim joint at the clutch pedal because the pedal and the clutch master are not in perfect alignment. Side load is death to a master and so I needed another solution. SOOOOOOO...What to do?

Starting with a piece of 1/4" X 1" flat stock, I welded a long rod nut to the flat stock. I then drilled a hole in the end of the stock for a pivot point.



Because of hydraulic setup does not have as much of an angle as the mechanical setup, I had to make a bracket that relocates the pivot point lower on the clutch pedal. As mentioned earlier, the clutch pedal is not in alignment with the master rod. With the new push rod bracket and the clutch pedal adapter piece, I end up needing only a 0.030" thick washer to get the push rod dead nuts in alignment with the clutch master. For the vertical angle, i used my Wixley digital angle finder to match angles between the master body and the input shaft. The angle finder is very compact and I was able to measure the angle off of the master body and the input rod and set the two equal to each other. I plan on adding a bronze bushing for the pivot pin.





I also made a clutch pedal stop and welded that to the clutch pedal. Just need to find a bumper and a 5/16" rod.



Next up was to make an adapter plate for the crossmember to the transmission mount. Using 3/8" plate, I welded up a couple of pieces of steel and finished them off with a grinder.



Last weekend: I got my order of Aeroquip parts from the Hose Warehouse a week or so ago and plumbed up the Corvette style regulator. Just wished that the input and the return were separated a bit more.





I really like the TFE hose. The ends are super simple to assemble and by running a continuous run of hose from the regulator to the engine, I minimize potential leaks. All clamped off for a clean installation

[gtospieg]

Nice work....Would be interested to hear more about the Legend Gear 5 speed when you have this done and put some more miles on.

[Scarebird]

Have you sourced an adapter bracket for the drive-by-wire pedal?

[old66tiger]

Much like everything else, this is a design as you go deal. Besides, I doubt that anyone offers a pedal bracket anyway

[b-man]

Originally Posted by old66tiger

Much like everything else, this is a design as you go deal. Besides, I doubt that anyone offers a pedal bracket anyway

I made my own out of angle iron, bolted it to the firewall.

Design as you go is right.

Here are some shots of the accellerator pedal mounted to a bracket I made up out of 2" X 3/16" angle iron that's 7-1/2" long, it's plenty stout and won't flex. I drilled tapped the bracket with 5/16-18 coarse thread for the two bolts that mount it to the firewall and 1/4-28 fine thread 2 places to mount the pedal assembly to the bracket.



Later on the bracket will get cleaned up some by removing some unnecessary metal in a few places and rounding off the corners, a little black paint will finish it off.



The pedal bracket mounts at the very top inside the firewall using two existing bolt holes (opened up to 5/16") that were originally used to mount the voltage regulator.



Firewall side showing the two bolts I used to attach the bracket. They're actually stock Pontiac V8 valve cover bolts with flanged heads. Keep Your GM Car All GM.

There is also a third smaller existing hole you can see at the bottom that was originally used for a small sheetmetal screw. For a little more rigidity I'll put a 10-32 thread hex head bolt there after drilling and tapping the bottom corner of the pedal bracket.



Pedal mounting position is very close to where the original one went.



Here you can see how the original pedal sits directly over the new pedal, positioning is right on the money. Later on I may decide to use the original pedal to actuate the throttle, making that work won't be too difficult.

[Scarebird]

Originally Posted by old66tiger

Much like everything else, this is a design as you go deal. Besides, I doubt that anyone offers a pedal bracket anyway

We are going into this field and am looking for test vehicles. We have a 67 Firebird pedal assy to work with; guessing this is roughly the same as the early "A" body pedal assemblies so an adaptor will work with both (crosses fingers).

Hope to get my LS3 EROD transplant fired up today or tomorrow.

Mark

[old66tiger]

If you want me to demo one of your products, I would be interested. PM me and we can work something out. I am using a standard pedal from Speartech.

[old66tiger]

I would like to say that I got a ton done this weekend...but that is not the case. I got my new battery cable crimper off of ebay and was able to crimp the end of the 1/0 at the starter. Didn't like the wire templates for the brake lines so I bought some brake line from Farm and Fleet and spent some time bending up with lines to be used as templates for the stainless. Glad i did because when I checked the final design against the wire templates, I was off a bunch with all of them. No biggie...I have about $10 into the brake line.

I have a Duration AGM battery from Farm and Fleet that is about 2 years old and has been flawless. Like the Optima, it is sealed, but there is the potential of out gassing on overcharging. Optima even says that their AGM style batteries should be put in a battery box with a vent to the outside when installed in a trunk. SO...I bought a Moroso battery box and decided to mount the battery in the trunk. The directions say to pop two 3/8" holes through the trunk floor and use the threaded rod included in the kit to hold it down. The engineer in me said that was kind of hookie so I decided to engineer a mounting plate to create 4 mounting points instead of 2. Using the box as a template, I made the plate out of 10 gauge and welded two coupler nuts to the plate for the hold down. My cheapie Horrible Freight steel band saw made quick work of this. Using four 1/4-20 bolts at each corner, this will be a more secure solution. I even included a small bracket on the side of the box for the starter solenoid. I like the idea of using a box because it finishes off the trunk better and protects against incidental shorting of the battery terminals. Using top post





Keep on plugging away.

[old66tiger]

Originally Posted by b-man

I made my own out of angle iron, bolted it to the firewall.

Bart, that is a great idea. I have been waiting for my harness and pedal to arrive before tackling this but your design looks very doable. I like it and I think I will borrow your wisdom on this one.

[davekocsis]

really enjoying the build so far! I'm planning a similar build for my 66 lemans. have a all aluminum 5.3 and making my parts list. was wondering what you have for your hydro boost set up? I'm leaning toward hydro boost and looking for the best option. Thanks and cat wait to see some more pictures!

[old66tiger]

Dave. Sorry for not responding sooner. I have the hydratech deal and it worked awesome with the 461. I am sure that it is not needed for the ls3 but I own it and it is not worth selling at this time

[old66tiger]

So…it has been awhile since my last update. Lots going on and things just got side tracked. Here is my mass update.
I am using the Holley 302-1 pan and I decided to stick the pan to the engine for the last time. Using the Holley o ring on the pickup tube, I installed the tube to the oil pump. Observation: the Holley oring is not as pliable as the GM oring, but it is smaller and more compatible with the shape of the tube. The tube is held in with a single 6 mm bolt. Instead of using the shorter Holley bolts supplied with the kit, I used the GM bolt because it was longer and has more thread engagement – which should ultimately be better. I will be the first to say that my OCD was probably kicking into high gear during this part, but every time I started to torque the 6 mm bolt to 106 in-lbs, I had this sinking feeling that the threads were starting to let loose. I must have backed this thing out 5 times, inspected threads. Everything looked good, but being somewhat paranoid and unwilling to have to replace the pump because of messed up threads, I decided to use my dial torque wrench instead of the clicker. I bought this torque wrench a few years back at a swap meet. It is nice USA quality and when I checked the calibration, it was pretty damn close. So, with some blue thread locker on the threads, I ran the screw up and used the dial torque wrench to creep up on the 106 in-lbs. As soon as I hit the mark, I got off of it and called it good enough.
I opted for the trap door baffle and when I installed that in the pan, it did not fit. The assembly was too tall and it did not sit down on the mounting bosses – leaving about 1/8” of space. I called Holley and of course, they were surprised that it did not fit. HAHA. I wasn’t. Instead of dicking around with getting a new one, I elected to trim 1/8” off of the bottom of the baffle assembly to allow it to sit on the mounting bosses flat. 60 minutes of careful grinding and fitting, I had it perfect. I installed the bellhousing to the engine and then installed the oil pan. I used the two lower oil pan bolts to pull the pan tight to the bellhousing and then torqued the oil pan bolts. The two 6 MM bolts on the rear of the pan were my nemesis….again used the dial torque wrench to tighten these. Did I mention that I hate aluminum and super paranoid of stripping threads????


Installed the pilot bearing so I anti-seized the register and tapped it in with a large socket. After it was in, it wasn’t as smooth as I thought it should be and I elected to get another. I tried pulling this thing out with my little slide hammer and that was useless. So I took a trip to Autozone and rented a blind hole puller to pull the pilot bearing. That thing worked slick! SO…word to the wise, if you have to pull a pilot bearing, rent this tool and your life will be a lot easier. Froze the bearing overnight and tapped the new one home. Perfect! Threw the bell housing on and slid the trans in to make sure that there wasn’t any pilot interference. Looks good.


So…I made several checks on the bellhousing to make sure that everything was perfectly flat and true. With the bellhousing torqued to the block, I set up my dial indicator to measure parallel. My first measurement showed the the bell was out of true about 0.008” – which is greater than the 0.002-0.003” spec. I called Quick Time and they said that these bells are trued up on a broach before they are powder coated and sent out the door. He suggested to block sand the engine block and both sides of the bell to ensure that there is no “junk” pushing on the bell. 400 grit on a wood block made short work of this and the subsequent indicator read 0.0025” within parallel. Good enough. Time to check input shaft alignment - With my dial indicator on the crank, I measured 0.011” run out of the bell register. Offsets are needed to get it within the 0.010” maximum. I made a call to RobbMc and he sent out a set of 0.007” offset dowels for the GM housings. Popped out the old dowels and threw these in and my measurement went from 0.011” low to 0.010” high. What the heck! I checked this thing several times and it came out vastly different than what I was expecting. Thinking that maybe the factory dowels were just too short, I ordered up a set of Moroso extra-long straights. Popped them in and I came within 0.006”. Just as I was thinking that I was done with this deal, I pulled the bell housing bolts off and as I removed the last bolt, the bell fell off the motor. This got me to thinking that there was something wrong with the bell. I checked the pins and they came out at 0.6205. I checked the bell housing and that came out at 0.630”. Almost 0.010” too big. I checked my old POS Pontiac bell and that indicated at 0.625”. Just for grins, I tried fitting the Pontiac bell on the LS motor and it slid on tight but was snug like it is supposed to be. After talking with Ross McCombs at Quicktime, he had me send the bell back for inspection. They have no idea how it got machined that loose, but none the less, they are going to fix it and make sure that it measures right to spec. At least this explains the erratic measurements..
I also checked the flywheel to see how true it is. I am using the LS7 flywheel and torqued to spec using the old bolts. I block sanded the crank flange and the back side of the flywheel first to make sure there were no burrs. Dial indicator came within 0.0045” total run out. Not ideal, but by Poncho was 0.006” and I never had any problems. Good enough

[old66tiger]

So, I was not perfectly happy with the last paint job on the firewall and elected to wet sand it flat and give it another shot. I had my body shop buddy come back down and re-shoot the entire firewall. It turned out very nice. The SEM Hot Rod black is very consistent and durable. Re-painted the wiper motor and installed it and the cowl screen. I got some button head cap screws, painted them and installed the heater delete plate.

Got all of my parts ready for the powder coater. I chose matte black to get close to the firewall color. The color came out a bit shiny. I may opt for scuffing the tubs and the core and hit it with hot rod black

I bought a set of the Holley Valve covers. The first set of covers had loose vent tube holes and I called Summit and they sent out another set right away. The second set was better. The finish is not black crinkle like they lead you to believe. It is more like a black powder coat. The #1 coil does not fit in the stock location due to high mount alternator. They give you a bracket to offset if from the alternator, but this only works on flat style coils.

I called Holley, and the response was like I expected…no solution. So, I took matters into my own hands and made my own bracket. I sent Holley my drawing and I got no thank you for my efforts. I would have expected a t-shirt at a minimum.


Sent the LGT-700 back to Legend Gear and Transmission. I had a slight noise in 4th gear and the shifter centering spring wasn’t as tight as I would have liked. They sent a call tag out and turned this in about a week. WOW! What customer service. Jack Simms and the boys at Legend are a first class act. They replaced a few parts with updated pieces and put stiffer springs in the shifter. Time will tell if it is good to go, but I am confident that if there is any issues, they are here to take care of things. Highly recommended.

So, this whole process got slowed down by several factors….holidays, Cub Scout den leader responsibilities, the need to repaint the firewall….and one of my closest friends passed away unexpectedly a few days before my 48th b-day. My buddy John was 50 years old and in perfect health. Avid weight lifter, moto X racer and was probably in better shape than most guys that are in their 30’s. He dominated local races and was forced to race in the older leagues to give the younger guys a chance at competing. Active, jovial and an overall great guy – you would rarely hear him say anything bad about someone. John had a major brain aneurysm that ended his life quickly. We had talked 30 minutes prior to this event and he was perfectly fine…no warning signs. The only positive thing that came out of this was that he was in such great health, his donor signature allowed him to donate his kidneys, liver, lungs, heart, corneas, and skin – not sure if I missed anything. His gracious gifts saved the lives of 6 individuals that will probably never know how wonderful he was. The heart went to a 60 year old vet that very night. John leaves behind a wife of 30 years and a legacy of giving and helping anyone that needed a helping hand. Truly a legacy that many strive for, but few actually achieve. He leaves a hole behind as he was a helpful hand and a true friend. He lived 1 mile from my house and we were always helping each other out. Most work sessions ended in a minimum of an hour of bull***** that had both of us in stitches. It sucks when many a$$holes live forever and the good ones exit before the rest of us are ready to let go. RIP Johnny.

[old66tiger]

for those following this build, the website was down for awhile and I never kept up with updates here. You can see my posts at

http://ls1tech.com/forums/conversion...nvertible.html

http://www.pro-touring.com/threads/1...TO-Convertible

Ask any questions.

[ponjohn]

NIce attention to detail.

What is the oil separator for?

[niceta]

Very nice. It is refreshing to see someone actually building a car instead of worrying about the correct colors on the drive shaft and the crayon marks on the firewall.

Keep up the good work.