I haven't done a forum build thread in many years since my turbo Buick days, but I figure I'll put up some pics here of my current project, a 2006 Z06 that I (stupidly?) decided to convert to an LS9 style supercharged motor. I bought this car with a bunch of miles and track time, it was somebody's drag toy with a big cam, E85, and probably nitrous (I found disconnected wiring in the rear). It had a broken trans and a broken axle, as it turned out. Pulled and rebuilt the trans, new clutch, used axles, put it back on the road with occasional track days at the FIRM.
It finally ate a lifter and that cam lobe at 130k miles. Time for some sort of rebuild.
About that time the new Kong blower was coming out, so there were lots of LS9 superchargers for sale. I bought a Kong ported blower and snout. "How hard can it be? Slap the blower on there, it's only 3 years older than the ZR1, surely everything will interchange" <-- foreshadowing..
Well, the short version is no, everything does not just bolt on. Initially I was going to freshen the LS7 and put the supercharger on it with some adapter plates. I bought a ZL1 supercharger lid and brick, and an adapter/spacer to allow it to seal to the LS9 supercharger. This is when I started scrounging and realized that the entire accessory drive is different, the adapter plates would probably mean cutting up the cowl of the car, a good chunk of the wiring had to be reworked, yada yada.
I decided to just build a new engine for the supercharger with some decent parts that would hopefully be stronger than the LS7. I bought a Darton sleeved 5.3 block from Thompson in Texas, along with a 4.00" stroke K1 crank, Manley H beam rods, Diamond pistons, a cam spec'ed by the machinist, who's a race engine builder friend of mine. I had never built an LS engine but hey, I watched a bunch of Youtube videos..
This is also when I got serious about finding all of the accessory drive parts, an LS9 lid and intercooler bricks, all of the different sensors, yada, yada. I forgot to mention, the heads are Trick Flow LS3 style port heads, which match the blower without adapter plates.
It is a huge pain in the ass to build an engine from a bare block when you don't have any factory fasteners, you're buying parts new, used, and making stuff when you can't find the factory stuff. I was surprised to find that the power steering bracket and pulley are discontinued from GM and unavailable, for example. The LS9 uses a splined power steering pump that inserts in the back of a massive cast aluminum bracket with its own bearing and a huge 11 rib pulley to take the belt load from the supercharger. Nobody makes an aftermarket part; LSX Concepts is supposed to be working on one but hasn't finished it.
I ended up buying a Holley bracket intended for LT5 retrofits, cutting it up, and welding it to a large chunk of 1/2" aluminum plate. Here's a shot of the in-progress PAD (Plywood Aided Design)
Actually, I think it was MDF. Whatever. After a BUNCH of finagling (the bracket had to fit in the tight confines of the space available, the belt had to line up, and it had to accommodate one of the 3 or so available belt lengths with the tensioner in an acceptable range) here's what we came up with. Beautiful aluminum TIG welding by a friend of mine, Tracy Grimm.
Here's the engine starting to come together with accessories, the LS9 lid, etc.
OK, we have most of an engine, time to get the LS7 out and start on all of the changes needed.
I decided to change the ECM for an E38 ECM from a 2009-up car; it would work with my wiring harness and offered bigger tables and resolution. Had to get it programmed for my VIN to keep VATS in the car. Then I pulled the tune file from it and sent it to Cal Hartline, a friend of mine who has extensive experience with these supercharged engines; he did a start up tune for it and will eventually dyno tune it. I pulled the engine harness, the trans harness, and set about de-looming it and changing wiring where necessary. The alternator, MAF, MAP, ATS, and probably some others needed rewiring, different plugs, or swapping to the other side of the engine. It had some really nasty wiring, with some char on the passenger side, we're guessing possibly a small fire on the header.
Cleaned up and starting to re-loom:
Finally it was time to lower the car back on the drivetrain.
After this I spent a long time working on everything from fuel/power steering/oil cooler plumbing, to.. hell, I don't know. Stuff.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when we started it for the first time.
All in all, I was happy. Good oil pressure, no ugly noises, the blower belt didn't immediately fly out and slap me in the face. Onward!
Well, maybe backward then onward. It had an oil leak from the rear of the engine. Guess how you get to the rear of the engine on a C6. Yes, the whole rear suspension, trans, torque tube, bellhousing, and clutch come back out. Turned out that when I changed the pan after the initial assembly (I swapped to the LS9 oil/water cooler and pulled the pan to mount it) I didn't RTV the rear cover/pan junction. Also, one of the few parts I used from the LS7, the crank sensor, was leaking around the o-ring. We're caught up to the present; here it is a couple of days ago.
Hopefully I'll get the stuff on the ground reunited with the stuff on the lift in a week or two.
That's a heckuva shop! And one of my favorite cars. Very cool
birdmayne said:
That's a heckuva shop! And one of my favorite cars. Very cool
The shop belongs to a good friend of mine; we work well together and share tools and work on each others' projects. I am finally building a big shop myself so pretty soon we'll both have more space. I hope to continue to work on stuff together though; it's very motivating and helpful to have another set of hands and eyes sharing the work.
Finally, an application that MDF is actually good for. Good luck with the build; it sound like it will be great when it's up and running!
MadScientistMatt said:
Finally, an application that MDF is actually good for. Good luck with the build; it sound like it will be great when it's up and running!
New houses with OSB everywhere make me cringe slightly. My last house was built in 1949 and didn't even have plywood on the roof; it was stripped with 1x4s that were actually 1" by 4".
I mounted the heat exchanger in the shroud today which required cutting the shroud up quite a bit; I then made an aluminum replacement for the open section, riveted and glued it to the plastic shroud. Trying to get even small aluminum rivets to hold in the plastic was doomed to failure; I may go back and sandwich it with a strip of aluminum. The shroud now needs a coat of flat black paint. Lousy pics:
I used MDF to prototype a custom bracket to mount a Powerdyne centrifugal supercharger on the LQ4 6.0L in my 01 GMC Sierra C3. Used that to fabricate real brackets out of 6061 T6. One large bracket mounts to the front of the driver's side cylinder head with 3 large bolts, another bracket bolts to that with 5 large bolts through tubular standoffs, blower case bolts to that bracket. Had to do it that way for the correct offset to to get the drive belt alignment right - it mounts next to the alternator, uses a longer belt than stock to drive everything.
Been on there for over 15 years and over 100,000 miles...so far.
759NRNG
PowerDork
11/1/22 10:40 a.m.
Sure is sweet to have a buddy with a lift!!! Hey what are the dims on this building? Oh and the vette is going to be a brut.
earlybroncoguy1 said:
Been on there for over 15 years and over 100,000 miles...so far.
That's a lot of miles for anything with a supercharger! Good to hear.
759NRNG said:
Sure is sweet to have a buddy with a lift!!! Hey what are the dims on this building? Oh and the vette is going to be a brut.
The lift is amazing. I'm never going to roll underneath a car again if I can help it..
Buddy's shop is 28x50, my new one will be 30x65. Hope I can avoid cluttering it up with too much junk!
Kendall Frederick said:
759NRNG said:
Sure is sweet to have a buddy with a lift!!! Hey what are the dims on this building? Oh and the vette is going to be a brut.
The lift is amazing. I'm never going to roll underneath a car again if I can help it..
Buddy's shop is 28x50, my new one will be 30x65. Hope I can avoid cluttering it up with too much junk!
I'm liking that layout with a side door and a lift in the center. Lots of space in front for daily parking and in back for longer term storage.
The stuff on the ground in the earlier pic is now back in the air and bolted to the car -- put the rear cradle w/diff, trans, rear suspension, and torque tube back up in the car today. Took me a couple of tries to get that rear cover sealed, but it stayed dry overnight with 5 quarts in it so I hope it'll be good now. Headers and some other junk tomorrow, waiting on some heat shield to put on the tunnel cover plate before I put the rest of the exhaust back on.
I broke both my MIG and TIG welders in the last two days trying to weld up a couple of seams in an old roll bar/light bar for my buddy's truck. First the MIG jammed the wire repeatedly until I finally gave up and said OK, we'll TIG it tomorrow. Started in with the TIG this morning and about 1" into the first weld I got some "BZZT" noise from the welder and no arc. Foot pedal still switches the gas on and off, maybe I burned up the contactor, dunno. This is a 50 year old Miller 320 machine and maybe it's time I joined the new millenium.
Kendall Frederick said:
Then I pulled the tune file from it and sent it to Cal Hartline, a friend of mine who has extensive experience with these supercharged engines; he did a start up tune for it and will eventually dyno tune it.
Now there's a familiar name. He assisted in a couple BGN setups I did.
Watching build with interest. As soon as you mentioned mixing and matching supercharger stuff to an LS7 I thought, okay, here we go 
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Yeah, I've had a bunch of turbo Buicks, and I've known Cal since we were going to Bowling Green in a convoy in the 1990s. He's tuning and working on a bunch of CTS-Vs and renting Orlando for a Cadillac Attack race these days.
The Vette has all 4 wheels on again; I'll try to fire it again this coming week before I leave for a trip and it sits a bit more.
It's been leaking from this oil galley plug above the oil cooler boss since we first fired the engine. Tried a new crush washer, a new plug from GM, etc. Had the header and exhaust and oil cooler on and off about 4 times now.
Get up there with a bright light today and yep, it's cracked. Limited options without pulling the motor, so I've JB welded it and will put it back together tomorrow and see what it does. It may seal, and be fine. Or it could continue to crack into the cap cross bolt area just below, which would be.. bad.
This block was a "seasoned" (used) 5.3 block that was CNC machined for Darton sleeves by Thomson in Texas. I'm guessing it was cracked from the start and they didn't catch it and neither did my machinist who did the finish machining.
In reply to jfryjfry :
Yeah, I could weld it. At the very least I'd have to take the drivetrain back out. With the necessity of repairing the holes for another plug, it'd probably be best to do a repair on a bare block. Not high on my list of desirable things right now. LOL.
JB Weld failed me. Still dripping slightly after I reassembled it today. I'm going to move on to the various items it needs to be drivable and get turned up. After those items are cleared the drivetrain will probably come out again and I'll weld it.
Might as well mention some progress items. Too lazy to find pics, but it was jumping a rib on the blower drive belt at first. I pulled the fabricated bracket, machined the spacer that goes behind it to correct the alignment, and it seems to be tracking ok now.
Got the brakes bled yesterday with the assistance of a new Foxconn scan tool that enabled the ABS solenoid bleeds.
Heat exchanger water pump is mounted in the back.
Next items:
Ice tank for the hatch area.
Plumbing for same to the front of the car.
Wiring for water pump, E85 sensor, and 2nd/3rd fuel pump Hobbs switch.
Still need an air filter for the blower that fits in the now-reduced space up front, a new hood, a low vacuum bypass for the blower, and a bunch of minor BS.
I'm calling this "Big Ugly"...
Ever watch one of those Ron Covell videos where he uses some simple hand tools to form compound curves in aluminum, then welds it together, finishes the welds to make them disappear, and the whole thing looks like it grew that way? Well, I'm not Ron Covell.
The good news it that it doesn't have to be pretty. I seriously want to get better on forming sheet metal and welding aluminum, and I am realizing tips and tricks trying this that may make it into Rev 2. Or not, I have plenty of other things to work on.
Water tank for the heat exchanger arrived today, I have to plumb it and wire the pump, and then I will probably take the entire drivetrain out of the car again to weld the block. Sigh.
Damn. It has been 10 months since I posted on this thread. The good news is my new house and shop are (sorta) done. The bad news is the Z06 mostly sat down at my buddy Matt's shop.
Well, tonight I deprived his cat of a second home and it's now in my shop, with actual room around it. I'm stoked to get back on it and get the drivetrain dropped out again for the whatevereth time and fixed.
Mmm, that dodge.... And the corvette is cool as well.
Great to see the car back with you at home!
