thehazz12

Hell I can get one cheaper than that at a salvage yard I'm sure. I'll definitely look into it. Guess I'll be making some calls to some machine shops. Thanks!

thehazz12

Got the car up on a "rotisserie" of sorts today.




It should help with fixing the few small rust spots, running the emergency brake cable, and the gas line.

thehazz12

Checked into doing this swap and I'm pretty sure we're doing it. I did some research on the rears to find the years I need to look for. Upon, going to the salvage yard just to check them out I found that some of them come with solid axle and some with IRS. Now, because I'm building the car for road courses and AutoX, I'm putting heavy thought into swapping in the IRS rear. My question is...Is this possible or what complications would I run into?

Whitecrewcab

iTrader: (2)

Is it possible, yes. Is it easy, NO. There are a few IRS kits out there for our cars, but they are major $$$$. The frame widths would be the biggest headache to installing it in the Camaro. I doubt an Explorer and a Camaro have the same frame widths. The axles would have to be made to fit the width and the mounts for the cradle would have to be fabricated.

thehazz12

Yeah I'm not looking to spend big $$$ on a kit. The rears from the salvage yard only cost $150. Gpa is a genius when it comes to fabrication. I have total faith in him. If only we had some of those fancy high dollar machines I know we could do it without a doubt. But, if not, I'm only out $150. I tried looking into maybe finding a Cobra IRS rear but I doubt I'm going to find any and if I do it's probably going to be crazy expensive.

blknSS

IRS would be sweet, you would have to find a rear that would be strong enough to hold with all that hp/tq you want to put out, no?

thehazz12

That's why I started thinking about trying to find IRS out of a Cobra. But I just don't see it happening. I'll probably just go with the Explorer IRS and see how long it lasts. If it has no problems...fantastic! But if something breaks...then I'll probably go back to the salvage yard and get the part/parts I need. And if I keep breaking the same thing I might check into the aftermarket and see what's offered. Being that the suspension is out of a fairly large SUV with towing capabilities it should last for a while. I looked into maybe finding IRS in a GM truck/SUV but anything that would be big enough to handle my power is all 6 lug.

thehazz12

Progess on this build will be very minimal for the next year or so. In the next few weeks I'm going to start on my uncle's '66 Lemans convertible cloned to a GTO. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the car, but it's not much to look at now anyways. The body is pretty well disassembled already due to the cloning process .He got the car when he was 16 or so and drove it for a few years, changed a lot of the suspension, and swapped in a few different motors. The motor in it now is a 462 BB with the '72 HO heads.
Now, he's wanting to go the Ls1/t56 route. If you read my first posting in this thread, I mentioned a wrecked '01 NHRA edition T/A that we have. So, we already have the motor and trans. But, years ago some ******** stole a bunch off the motor. They took the Ls6 intake, computer, coilpacks, and maybe some other things that I can't remember. He told me to look for an Ls6 intake for it, but I'm trying to convince him to do something like the Victor Jr. with an older style air cleaner and an SD tune so we don't have to run a MAF. We'll see. He wants it to be a nice cruiser that he can take his little girls out for a drive in so he doesn't want crazy power. He wants somewhere around 400whp. Easy enough. Cam, tune, 243 heads, and the Victor Jr. should make that easily.
As far as interior goes I think I've talked him into putting in the interior out of the modern GTOs. He wants to paint it black with a white top so I thought the seats from the modern GTO would look fantastic. I, personally, thought that a metallicy black cherry/purple-ish would look great. I talked to the painter last week and he agreed with me and said he could use some black candy and shadows to make it really look good. I think the "crimson black" color on the newest Nissan Maximas would be a good starting point.
He wants a mixture of modern and classic looks on the car so he wants the car lowered and some bigger wheels. I mentioned to him using the 19" 5th gen. Camaro wheels. We'll see where this build goes. I'll post a link to the new thread here once I get it started.

66vert

iTrader: (3)

cool build. never seen a car rotisserie like that before. I'm doing a 5.3 Turbo build in my 68 too. I bought the dirtiest 5.3 for sure, but I think yours is pretty close looking at the before pics.

thehazz12

Oops. Haven't looked at this in a while.
Yeah I don't know if "rotisserie" is the technical word for what that is, but it works nearly the same. I've actually changed my mind on my build, yet again, which I'll explain in my next post. Yes that motor was absolutely filthy. It looked like they submerged it in mud and ran the damn thing. BUT...once I got everything off and got into the internals a bit it was extremely clean. I was hesitant at first when I saw it, but everything worked out fine.

thehazz12

Well, after talking with Jon Barret of Magnuson Superchargers a couple days ago at the Power Tour, I've decided to go with one of their products instead of a turbo. I'm a sucker for that roots-style whine. Plus, the install and tuning will be much easier and offer a cleaner look under the hood. Jon recommended I go with their 1900 for my 5.3, but I think I'll go with the 2300 to allow myself room for more future growth. It's gonna' take me a while to save up to make this happen. So, until then, I'll be working on this for my uncle:

I've gotten a little done on it since I last posted on this page, but not much. Just a little disassembly and things like that. It will be going to the painter in the next 4-5 weeks, though, so I need to get cranking. Gotta' verify that the BB runs, pull it, pull the trans, and get the Ls1/t56 dropped in.
I believe I've got him convinced to paint it the MBM *Midnight Blue Metallic* from the 2005 GTO keeping the white convertible top. This is going to be a beautiful car once it's done.
And I've finally remembered to get a shot of the donor car. It's too bad such a rare car sustained so much damage. Here she is:

thehazz12

Changed my mind again after talking with some people more educated on FI than myself...going with the 1900 and e85.

Edit: Change my mind back to the 2300. I can't count how many times I've changed my mind on different variables of this build.

stang_kllr

iTrader: (6)

awesome build. not too many people built the late second gen camaros. i also have a 81 camaro that i did a 383 procharged set up on it. suscribed to this thread, i wanna see this bad boys progress!

thehazz12

Yeah I can't quite understand why more people don't build them. Honestly, I get tired of the 1st gen builds. They're great looking cars...no doubt about that, but go to a car show and count how many you see. Now count the number of 2nd gens. I'd love to be building one of the early 2nd gens, but my budget was not allowing that. I'll warn you, progress will be slow for a while, but once I've gotten all of my parts, it will hopefully move much, much faster.





I got that^ sometime last week. After my uncle stole the t56 back that I had planned on using, I had to explore other options. Ended up scoring this. We've already strapped a new radiator to it, fixed the power steering leak, and drove it around our shop's lot to assure ourselves of everything working correctly. This works out well for me as I'm the proud owner of an '04 GTO and I can steal some parts for my own and sell the rest for some profit.
Now that I've got my tranny, again, I need to get my rear end. Once I've got that in, I can trailer it to a local driveshaft shop where they will build me something that hopefully stands up to the power. I could take some measurements and send those off to DSS, but I really don't trust myself to measure perfectly. Plus, this place does it much cheaper and I've been told they're products are fantastic. I've contacted Supercharger Connections and plan to buy my TVS 2300 sometime in the next year. All that's really left after that is suspension, fuel system, exhaust, cage, and gauges. Oh, and paint, which I may do myself to cut cost.
Hopefully, I can get a safe tune emailed to me so I can drive it from here in STL to Mooresville, NC for a great tune from Heintz Racing. I'd get all of the break-in miles out of the way on the way there.

thehazz12

I guess I never showed a pic of my other baby.




This one likes some love, too, but she's just gonna' have to deal with no mods for the next year or 2.

BIGRLZ

Would like to know what motor mount should I use to sit this LS1 engine into my 79 Firebird, I purchase so 79 camaro motor mounts but they look to big to fit on the swap mount. So can anybody point me on the right path, and info on a bracket to move the Alternator to the side.

thehazz12

I'm not quite that far. I'm seriously thinking about just making my own. With minimal fabrication skills and some measuring, you could do the same. Or...just go over to nastyz28.com and do some research there and ask questions. I know Dirty Dingo makes a motor mount for Ls swaps for Camaros, but I can't say if the Camaro and Firebird front subframes are identical or not. You'll be able to find the answer to all of your questions over there. Hell, you can probably find it here, too. Just create a new thread and ask away.

thehazz12

Another update: Scored this iron 6.0 block for $50 the other day.


It needs a little love so I'm gonna' do it right and get a full, forged rotating assembly. Just another expense on this increasingly expensive build that started out as something quite the opposite. Oh well, at least I can build it once and not worry about it for a while. That will leave my trans as being the weak link in this build depending on how hard I want to push the motor. I just couldn't turn my head to all of the options that the larger bore of the 6.0 brought. The almighty Ls3 heads are a bargain, high-performance
head. Might as well make the most of what I can and do it right, once.