geestyle4

my mom is going to give me her car 2001 grand am . my brother bought her a vette. and iam going to put my 5.3 that i have collecting dust this is going to happen later as iam still collecting alot of parts as gonna need a shorten 9 inch many many things more... but thought id post up wat iam working on. i always like the look over the gto so iam gonna make my own version

geestyle4

this is the car

Tuffguy610

iTrader: (2)

Wow that is going to be a lot of work. Good luck. Do you have a lot of welding/cutting tools to invent a trans tunnel to convert that to rear wheel drive? This should be interesting.

bonecrrusher

iTrader: (1)

Dude, save your money and get a GTO!

geestyle4

haha yea its gonna be a long project but the car is free and i got a 5.3 siting around so sounds like a cool thing .. but yea good thing iam a welder this proly wouldnt be possiable if i didnt know how to weld and fab.

V8Rumble

iTrader: (9)

Dang, I'm gonna be paying attention to THIS one... I've always said that I'd like to put a turbocharged Buick 3.8/200R4/10-bolt combo into an Alero (which is effectively the same car).

No one would EVER see it coming...

SheldonZ28

iTrader: (4)

Make sure you havnt bitten off more then you can chew. This is 12450655x more difficult then you think.

Hell, i figured it would be easy to swap a 5.3L into my 89 iroc which is the closest vehicle to an 4thgen f-body, it was suppost to be a simple swap and go, it took me 4 months to do, which was all custom mounting, custom exhaust system, custom fuel system ,custom intake, custom cooling system etc etc etc.

Ive got plans to do a RWD Buick Reatta with a buddy of mine, but we are looking at spending alot of time on this car and getting everything done perfect, no mistakes will be made. The rear chassis section of the car will be completely custom. Make sure you ont just feel your a good fabricator, make sure you have some realistic skill to back everything up. Your looking at a custom rear suspension & Drive system, alont with a completely custom trans tunnel which will require interior modification, you must also keep in mind that you will be eliminating structural parts of the car in certain places to accomodate the rwd drivetrain, so be sure that what ever rigidity, you put back, an with more if you can.

Our plan for his reatta is simple, its 3" Shorter then a 3rdgen camaro, and 2" narrower, so we simply will run a thirdgen rear suspension system, with custom offset wheels. Ontop of that it will need a fuel cell due to the fact that the fuel tank is located right in the way of a rear drive setup,

Not meaning to discourage you, just makign sure your aware that there are alot of factors in altering the driveline, chassis, steering & Suspension that will affect the way it performs and drives in the end. The car may have been free to you, but it still has a value to it, if you can successfuly complete this, man, you have talent, but just make sure you have a solid game plan before you dive in

HustlinSnow

So what're you gonna do for rear suspension?

frojoe

iTrader: (10)

I've been dreaming about putting IRS and a de-stroked ls1 or all-aluminum 5.3 (LM4) into my '89 Honda Accord coupe daily driver. The car handles very well now, and the cockpit is spotless and fits me like a glove... I just can't stand the idea of dumping money into an inline 4, or FWD, or worse a combination of the two.

jetlag

iTrader: (32)

I agree...it's the same thing

sciff5

iTrader: (1)

I agree.. its not worth it. If you want a sleeper project at least start with a rwd platform.

I am putting an ls1 in an rx7 and its considered a pretty straight forward swap. Its taken me 2 years working on it slowly and I just got it started last week, that was after getting help on the wiring because I ran out of know how/ ability when it came to the wiring.