Are you gonna make it down to LS Fest this weekend?

 

If I can get my spring seats and valve seals changed Iplan to stop by for a day. It won't be ready to autox or dyno so ill just be looking at other peoples cars this year.

 

Been reading about this car for so long, would to check it out.

 

I think for sure I'll make it for one day. Also, in case anyone else is interested it looks like speedhut is having a sale. Looks like it's 10% off plus the usual 15% off for buying 4 or more gauges. I think I'm going to pick up a gps speedo (to make trans swapping simpler), a tach, a quad, trans temp and fuel pressure. Or at least some combo of the 4. I think they will fit (with some work) in my stock dash cluster.

 

Very nice work. I plan on doing a '70 Chevelle when I finish school next year. Seeing this definately makes me want to do it more!

 

If I were to do it over I would start with a complete running engine/ trans combo, throw a cam in it and call it a day.

 

^with a fuel injected motor? I was thinking LQ9/turbo, possibly even an LS7 crate motor depending upon my financial situation.

 

Yes, absolutely. Part of why I went ls in the first place was to ditch the carb stuff. I'd get a n/a setup up and running before I went turbo though. Was tossing the turbo thing around myself but I think after the air ride and brakes I'm going to try and keep an eye out for a 4l65 and a compushift 2. Crate motors are $$$. Cleavland pick a part sells tons of complete pull outs over on lateral-g that they test and guarantee so that might be something to consider as well.

 

I was questioning speedtech... then I figured it out speedhut! Thanks for the tip about the sale now I may have to spend even more $$ lol

 

Crap, I always make that mistake when typing that out. Thanks, I fixed it. I'm just trying to decide if I want to replace my trans temp and fuel pressure in my a pillar. They don't match any of my other gauges but I kind of like the blue C2. Edit- ended up getting 6 or 7 gauges and will be selling pretty much all the autometer stuff I've accumulated.

 

Been having an issue with it blowing some smoke when I start it and it seems to have progressed to burning a little oil almost constantly. At this point I think it's a valve guide issue. Having guides replaced and getting a valve job and the heads milled a tiny bit for straightness is looking like it will be $400ish. Seems like it might almost be cheaper to get new heads. I redid my PCV setup and added a catch can but it didn't help, so at this point I'm hoping it won't be anything worse than a guide or two.
If it turns out to be a ring issue I think I'll have tsp make a 383 out of it unless I can pick up a 408 or something from the classifieds.
I got one of these to use when I was replacing valve seals and it works really well, much better than the tim's tool I used before. One of the problems I had with the screw-down type of compressor was that if the spring was a bit off-center when putting them back in you had to unscrew/rescrew and try again which took forever. With this you just let off a bit and try again. I put a 15 inch piece of pipe over my ratchet and just held it down with my arm pit while putting the locks in and knocked out the passenger side heads pretty quickly. It's the lingenfelter tool.

 

Not much progress due to work, football and the garage being a mess but I did get most of my parts in. Still waiting on some rear brake pieces but otherwise almost everything is here. No sign of the speedhut gauges but I don't feel like tearing my dash out just yet anyway as there will be plenty of time for that later.
I used some amazon credit I had to pick up the Hellwig pro-touring rear bar to compliment the ridetech musclebar I ordered for up front. The Hellwig bar is pretty light weight but has a nice finish on it while the Ridetech bar is much more substantial feeling but the finish isn't as nice. The both look to be well-made though, and I like that they are both from here in the states (or at least I think they are). The lower Strongarms are nice-looking as well.
After weighing the cost of having my motor 383'd I had decided it might make more financial sense to just buy a motor/trans combo but the one I wanted sold, so instead I picked up a T56 from some guy here in town. Came with a new slave, a billet flywheel with a new disk and the bellhousing. I'll just think of it as my silver medal. Still need to buy a clutch, master and a shifter but am in no real hurry.
The Hellwig bar was only $210 shipped at Amazon. Pretty reasonable all things considered. The bolt threads were painted though, which is odd (at least in my mind) but I'll hit them with the wire wheel.


The finish


More or less how the musclebar ties into the lower control arm. The posi links are pretty cool and there should be plenty of tire clearance for whatever I end up with.


The bar has three main pieces. Perhaps at some point center pieces will be available in different rates, sort of like a splined bar. This is just a guess on my part.



T56 stuff. The trans itself even came in a fancy deluxe carrying case, aka a tupperware bucket.





I need to figure out what exactly the reverse lockout does and how to hook it up. Speedo output is a non-issue with the gps gauge, but I will need to get the vss hooked up and make sure the computer gets whatever info it needs. With no real way to cut or bend metal of the required thickness I opted to buy this clutch master bracket from ebay. Some guy sells some for $60 but this was half that and I didn't really see much difference - http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...84.m1439.l2649

 

chuckd71 - That flywheel looks just like the Fidanza piece I picked up for my swap. Also, that is the same guy I bought my clutch mastercylinder bracket from. He produces good quality stuff.

 

This flywheel said spec on it. I've heard of the brand but don't really know much about it. It's really light though.
Went out to pull the heads today thinking it would be a quick and painless operation, which it was for the most part until I realized that to get to the lower bolts I'd have to take my headers out. Pulling heads with the motor in the car sucks *** compared to working on a stand; I don't know why it took me so long remember that. Anyway, at that point it started raining so I said to hell with it and headed back into town. All things considered it might be best to go ahead and do the brake swap once the headers are off, since I'd have to remove the driver's side anyway to relocate the distro block. The plan was to be able to drive the car by Oct 8, but at this rate I'm thinking I should shoot for a year and give up on a specific day.

The guy I bought the trans from told me about a place by the fairgrounds called TN Clutch and Supply so I grabbed the flywheel and headed down there. Given that I know nothing of clutches or what goes inside them I just told him what I had and what I wanted and let him do the rest. This looked like the kind of place that would know a little bit about clutches. What I ended up with was a double-something ceramic and organic deal, some new bolts, a black plastic thing for aligning pieces (I guess) and a bearing, and done in under an hour.



The speedhut gauges I ordered a week and a half ago are still not here, and according to the live chat they won't be until sometime next week. She said I could pay more for expedited shipping but the idea of paying extra just to get what I ordered less late is pretty stupid. Kind of sucks that so few companies actually deliver on what they promise. If only Summit and Amazon could sell everything I want this car would be finished already.

Also, mainly so I don't lose track of it, here is a link to a thread with some helpful info for people swapping from a similar trans to a t-56. It answered most of my vss/ reverse lockout questions. https://ls1tech.com/forums/conversio...harness-q.html

 

Finally got the heads pulled, and despite the hassle I'm glad I did it. I'm not an expert, but for a motor that only has a few hundred miles on it it looks pretty nasty. The heads and all of the pistons have a black flaky crust all over them. It was getting dark so I couldn't get a good look at the cylinder walls but I took some pics and will post them below. The smears inside them are just from my greasy fingers when I was feeling for rough spots.
How could there be this much build up so quickly? One cylinder I could maybe understand, but the crap being all over and all the plugs looking foul makes me thing the problem is more global in nature than something like low compression in one cylinder or one piston having bad rings. If anyone sees anything or has any ideas feel free to comment.
Some of the cylinder walls do have a kind of crusty ring very near the top. Does that mean something?















To this point there has been no oil in my water or water in my oil or anything like that. Just as a side note, pulling the driver's head first will help keep your starter from getting soaked in coolant when you pull the passenger side.

 

That's just carbon build up. Completely normal but based on the looks of it I would say looking prolly at closer to 50-60k on the motor.

 

Yeah, that's the thing though, when I put these heads on everything was pretty clean. All that built up in <500 miles. Just dropped the heads off at Shacklett near the fairgrounds to get them checked out and etc. Should know more later today. This would be a good time to throw in an LS2 though...

 

Didn't hear back from the shop but my Speedhut stuff came in so the day wasn't a total downer. It's kind of past my window of opportunity for installation any time soon but at least they are here. By now I'm sure we've all seen them online but I was surprised how good they look in person. The wiring looks super simple and the gauges themselves are really shallow so I don't anticipate any trouble sticking them where the stock ones currently are. I'm not sure where to put the clock but I can worry about that later. My only concern after a quick once-over is the oil pressure sender; it's pretty big considering where it needs to fit. In order to keep it away from my headers I might have to find a short length of braided hose to run between it and my oil pan outlet.



Wires look easy enough to manage.

 

Man, Ive spent quite some time looking through threads. I love this car and what youve done and are doing with it. Your build is an inspiration. keep up the good work!

 

Inspiration? You are too kind by far sir. Objectively, I think of it as more of a "hey, watch this guy show me what not to do" type of thread, but I hope it helps. Try, fail, lather, rinse, repeat as desired.

I did get my heads back yesterday and if I can get the bolt holes cleaned out today I hope to get them back on today. It looks like a nice day so I'm hoping to be able to drive the car out to go watch football later. If it still smokes I'll pull the motor next weekend, throw it in the lake, close the garage door and find a new hobby for a while.
This massive pile of parts in the living room can just continue to sit.