Daylan C said:
Finally got serious actually planning the logistics of actually getting to the challenge after the car is done. The only thing I see that could stop me from making it is if I actually do get the new job I'm trying to get and can't get the Thursday and Friday off. Looks like I'm on track to have the car ready in plenty of time unless my own stupidity surprises me. This weekend's plan is getting the motor mounted. I'm considering leaving the EGR and smog pump for now just so I don't have to mess with the tune as much. Unless either one of them proves to be faulty and cause driveability issues then they'll get deleted.
EDIT: My Indy dwelling team mate is apparently also planning on using this trip south in my car as an opportunity to buy a new beater. So this trip might get even more interesting depending on what he finds.
I almost bought a Rampage to tow another Rampage, so this sounds like a solid plan to me
I didn't really learn much from this exercise but I did it anyway.
Now to pull it back out and actually measure and mark for that motor mount.
In reply to Daylan C :
I was super lazy when i did my impala and had to move the mount forward for my ls swap mounts. I bolted it in on left mount and at crossmember with right mount bolted to block and just welded it on so I wouldn’t have to fight the engine back out and fight mount bolts having nuts up over the control arm
In reply to Patrick :
My dad told me to just put the motor in straight with the mount bolted on then weld it wherever it lands.
Which I was against until I thought about it more. That might be what I end up doing.
So I measured and marked, and then found this.
That's The mount with the front hole offset to the back hole, and another bolt stuck in another hole. Yellow marks are the traced outline of the mount on the old location with the line closest to the mount being the marked line I drew with the offset measurement I got.
Is that close enough? Can I be lazy and just drill a hole for the bottom and call it good? Did I screw up my measurements and GM was that lazy too?
Die grinder and oval the holes in the frame to slide it to your line
Patrick said:
Die grinder and oval the holes in the frame to slide it to your line
This .
If you dont have a die grinder, waller the berkeley outta the holes with a E36 M3 drill bit, then throw the bit away .
Good chance there will now be another 2 week delay in progress because of I cut myself pretty bad at work. Got told to take 3 days off, considering I left at lunch time to go to the hospital and I work 4 10s. That's a whole week if work lost with not enough PTO to cover it. So there's a dent in the money too. Probably won't get much done this weekend unless I get surprised with help and then I can never get anything done during the week because of my work schedule.
Suddenly realized I've pretty much missed the break I had between semesters to get all the work done on this thing. Next week is the first day of classes for hopefully my last semester of college for the foreseeable future unless I decide to get crazy and go for another degree. ( I currently have no such plans).
At this point I still intend to make a solid effort to make the challenge this year. But if I have to spend a weekend writing an English paper instead of working on the car...well I'm ready to be done with college so that's taking priority.
If the car isn't ready because of that, there's a good chance I'll come down to hang out anyway. Then come back for $2020 with a more dialed in car and more seat time.
Daylan C said:
Suddenly realized I've pretty much missed the break I had between semesters to get all the work done on this thing. Next week is the first day of classes for hopefully my last semester of college for the foreseeable future unless I decide to get crazy and go for another degree. ( I currently have no such plans).
At this point I still intend to make a solid effort to make the challenge this year. But if I have to spend a weekend writing an English paper instead of working on the car...well I'm ready to be done with college so that's taking priority.
If the car isn't ready because of that, there's a good chance I'll come down to hang out anyway. Then come back for $2020 with a more dialed in car and more seat time.
Come play regardless. But get this part of school done.
In reply to spacecadet :
Good news is once I'm done with this semester I'm done period. Graduated with my degree and not worrying about this part of life anymore.
But yeah, at this point there is 0 chance I'll be able to actually test the car outside of street driving no matter how quick I get it done, and I still haven't done any actual autocross nor have I ever actually made a drag pass.
Which leads me to another point. I don't actually know if I'd be allowed on a drag strip with this car. Gearheade30 made no attempts to hide the rust on this car, but I didn't care and bought it anyway.
Large chunks of rust fall out of the doors when I close them. I'm pretty sure it's leaving chunks of itself on the line if I leave hard. I don't know how big of a problem that actually is in that environment. Eventually I will fix the worst of the rust if only as a learning opportunity. But I don't see me doing it under budget.
For example this is above the floor. Driver's foot well area. That's insulation you're seeing if you can't figure out why the metal looks like that.
In reply to Daylan C :
Just come play then and we'll drink and have a good time!
In reply to spacecadet :
We'll see. I'll be there either way. Not giving up yet on making the challenge as a competitor. Might bug my team mate to see if he wants to pool money and go for last chance $1000 and see what happens.
So the wagon still needs to do something cool. So I still want it as a driver ASAP, and I'm going to attempt to fix the worst of the rust under budget. But I still have a fascination with CAM-T. And I like this chassis more than my 3rd gen F-body if we can get around the weight. So I may attempt to do the silliest thing I can imagine and attempt to get weight out of a GM b-body wagon. If I remember right the class minimum weight is 3,000lbs and if I read gearheade30's notes right the car weighed 4,400 lbs as he had it. If I could get it down to sub 4k I think I'd be happy.
EDIT: the 3rd row isn't going anywhere. And the car is getting AC. Those I'm not budging on.
Probably gonna blow the challenge budget but I figured out the passenger side motor mount.
So I realized I still need to get more parts before I actually make progress. But atleast the bellhousing fits and some dude on the internet appears to have guessed the right pilot bearing.
The guy I bought the 5.3 from apparently recently did an LS swap on a bubble Caprice and recommended some headers he said fit great. I'm pretty sure he used an automatic though and therefore didn't have to contend with a slave cylinder. Mildly concerned about if they'll fit on the passenger side. I didn't order them yet and am thinking I need to find some pictures of them on an engine to figure out roughly where the collector is going to land.
Went to a car show in town this morning, after wasting an hour with a failed attempt to take my friends Camaro to said show. Once I got there I met up with another friend and left with a Saturn full of LS stuff and $150. It's a good day for the wagon so far. Might get fancy and put the motor in when I get home. Maybe not. Who knows?
Daylan C said:
left with a Saturn full of LS stuff and $150. It's a good day for the wagon so far. Might get fancy and put the motor in when I get home. Maybe not. Who knows?
I thought fancy was for Sundays? Either way, good luck!
Ok this will probably surprise no one but the engine didn't make it into the car today.
List of various crap I realized I might want to take care of before I put the engine in the car, includes things I knew already but forgot:
- Broken exhaust manifold bolts in the heads
- Starter bolts (could be done in the car but I've decided to do everything I can while things are easy to get to)
- Tighten rocker arms
- Install valve covers
- Cylinder head steam vent berkery
- reinstall rear cover with new gasket
- Install oil pump pickup tube, find missing nut for the support bracket
- Install oil pan (currently just in with 3 hand tight bolts to keep things covered up)
- Install pilot bearing, flywheel, and clutch
- Mate transmission to engine
- Sort out motor mounts, one of the ones I have has a hump in the middle that won't allow it to sit flush against the ICT adapter plates I'm using. Either need to find another mount or remove that hump.
- Bolt passenger side motor mount back onto the frame
- Drill rounded off bolt out of the transmission crossmember and get new hardware.
Looks like tomorrow (well I guess today since it's almost 2 am) is going to be oil change on mom's Durango, making sure the C1500 makes it to its new home the next county over, and laundry so I can make sure I have something decent to wear to a funeral Monday. I'll see what happens with any spare time around getting those done.
So my breif review of the ICT LS swap motor mount adapter plates: not a fan.
They're designed with the assumption that you already have SBC mounts that will work with both your chassis and these plates. However all of the stock SBC mounts I had from 3 different 80s-90s cars all had a bump on the back that wouldn't allow them to sit flat against the plates. I struck out asking around to see if any of my friends had a pair. I did however find an OER part number through Jegs that are made in such a way that they fit. I got these plates as part of a kit I bought for my 3rd gen F-body, but if you buy the plates on their own they are I think $35 for the pair. If you're weird parts stash is a bit lacking like mine is and you buy the OER mounts, you're close to $90 for the whole setup. There are numerous off the shelf options for mounts to put an LS in an SBC hole for less than $90. From what I've seen in my research, older style mounts seem to have a higher chance of working with these plates. I have the OER mounts now and they fit like I need them too, but I of course screwed up the threads on one of the bolt holes on the passenger side plate trying to make the wrong mounts work. Probably going to end up tapping that hole for a larger bolt then loctiting all of them for good measure.
In reply to Daylan C :
Thats understandably frustrating
God, at that point I'd use the mounts as a blank and just design a custom out of plate steel so I could return them.
In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :
Yeah they aren't great. You can definitely do it both better and cheaper. But I have this crap now so I'll make it work.
Looks like so far some idiot on an LS forum was right. The engine and trans is all bolted together now with the flywheel from a 6.0/nv4500 Silverado 2500 and the clutch disc and pressure plate that came from the old 350 setup. It all went together easy after I drilled out the pressure plate to accept M10 bolts.
Use an angle grinder and chop the hump out of the mounts. Slightly better made mount adapters come with a hole so that hump can just recess into them.
