thehazz12

Wedding??? Get out while you still can! Kidding. Congrats man. If you're gonna hold off a year for the cam I would say hold off on any port work. If you were to do it right now you would have to take the heads apart. If you did that it would only make sense to upgrade all that now. My advice is just do as much at one time as you can. And if you hold off on the springs for now you can get a cam kit from TexasSpeed. It will save you some money overall. Choice of cam, springs, pushrods, retainers. It's $700-ish for the kit with strong springs. Not a bad deal if you ask me. That's what I'm saving up for.
I think it's safe to say you caught the mod bug!
As far as painting the intake...IMO I would leave it. You have a black car with no colored accents under the hood. It might look out of place. Rather than do that I would paint the fuel rail covers. That seems to be the more common choice.
I'm putting a 5.3 Vortec (in the Ls family) in my '81. I painted the block black today

and I'll be painting the valve covers tomorrow> I think that contrasting with the the aluminum heads will be a good look. And I'm leaving my ls6 with just the stock black plastic look.

blknSS

WS6store.com is where I got the intake runner gaskets/lid/umi control arms and adjustable panhard bar. They had good prices on those items.

blknSS

Why Strano v. Eibach? I have hurd nothing but good things from Eibach on many different applications. Im not to familiar with Strano.....As far as shock I am a Bilstein man. Got them on the 4runner.

why87

I put bbk lt's and offroad y pipe on a few weeks ago. great decision, they fit great, were easy to install (had to get the car high enough to put 2x4s under jackstands) and they slid right in. the y pipe fits great too, I think if ou go with those you will love them.

blknSS

I think i am going to hold off on the port job....it just really bugs me putting the intake manifold on with the intake runners looking like that.

As far as the modding bug goes i have a 97 4runner i have done some work to... IMHO everything needs to be modified in some way lol.





And about running away from this wonderful woman, well c'mon, she lets me have all these toys and tools and she puts up with my ****.......i have to marry her.

That paint job on the block looks good. What kind of paint did you end up using?

blknSS

This is good to hear, i like hearing the words "easy to install" and "they slid right in"

thehazz12

Once you have the intake manifold back on and you don't have to look at the runners they won't annoy you as bad. Once you're in the car smashing down the throttle you'll forget all about it. It shouldn't really be hurting you any. Just do it when you do your cam and everything.

That looks like a lot of fun! I have a Toyota I've done some work to, as well!


Haha! I wish I had some pictures of the interior. Took out the middle seats. Put up a wall behind the front seats with sliding partitioner windows and a 19" flat screen with built in DVD player. Mirror on the ceiling with LEDs around it. Bull horns. Dual side exit exhaust. I'm sure there were a few other things I'm forgetting. It was just a little fun thing I did to take a friend to his prom.

Haha! The ones that let you have cool tools and toys are rare. I can't blame you there. To be honest, I'm not sure what the paint was. I'm guessing it was some sort of engine enamel. It was just something Gpa had laying around the shop that he had used on a previous build and had success with.

blknSS

This feeling.....ahhhh.

And that van is pimpin pimpin. Not going to lie, id whip that thing.

I did some things last night. Picked up an extendable 3/8 socket drive so i can put the intake on easier than it came off. I bought a fernco 3x3" coupling for the intake and cleaned most of that **** off of the valley and buffed it up some. No pic'c my phone died but progress nevertheless.....

thehazz12

Doesn't get much better than that...especially when you have the 3rd man pedal.

It's my winter beater. I really don't care what people think so I tend to do things to embarrass my parents. So I did this. The next day, my dad took it to work lol. I drove it to school when it wasn't too hot. Being able to just relax in there between classes and watch a movie was great. I would just open the sliding door and back door for some airflow and people would just pop their heads in and tell me how cool it was lol.

thegodfather899

iTrader: (1)

sorry for not checking the thread sooner. i havent had any issues with my pacesetters. the fitment was good and they were perfect for my price range. as far as catbacks, i like my magnaflow and got it for 400 from a vendor on ebay. like stated its pretty quiet until you get on it. Plus if you want loud, then just get a cutout.

blknSS

I need some advice/input guys. The ls6 intake I bought doesnt have the egr. So I am going delete the egr system as well as the air system. I know inorder to pass emissions I will need to have the codes tuned out of the computer. So im thinking I might as well buy/install my exhaust/headers before the tune, right? As far as cats go do put a high flow cat on to protect me from a visual inspection or risk it and run just an off road pipe? Btw im thinking about getting a mail order tune from frost, good idea?

so before I send out for my tune I will have the following done:
Slp lid/fernco mod
Egr/air delete
Ls6 intake
Pacsetter lt headers (cat or no cat) and magnaflow catback

Is that good or is there something I am missing/should do before the tune? Thanks in advance.

philsblwnz28

iTrader: (10)

Sounds to me like you are going down the right road. I just mailed my PCM to FROST 2 days ago. If you do research on FROST you will not find one negative comment about frost. That is how i made my decision to send my PCM to frost.
You can send your PCM out to frost say like Monday, print and fill out the paper he has on his website and just tell him you have the LT's, SLP lid, Exhaust, so you can get your PCM back ASAP and drive your car. So when you add your exhaust and lid your PCM already be tuned for your parts

Also look up CHRS1313 ram air, I gained .4 tenths from it.

thehazz12

Honestly, a custom tune by a reputable tuner is your best bet. They will be able to optimize your tune based on your car. No motor/car is the same. Sure there's other cars they've done before with those exact mods but they may be a tad bit different. Plus it might be cool to know the numbers your car is putting down if you're into that. Catless will offer you louder sound if you want that. When I bought my car it had no cats. So I stole some of a wrecked T/A we have and welded them to some pipe that slips right in between my headers and h-pipe. So once every 2 years I'll take off my catless mids and put these on for a day or so to pass and then take them back off. If you're putting headers and a better exhaust on that car I recommend doing this. Just keep everything interchangeable and you'll have the best of both worlds...easy emissions passing when you need it and louder sound when you don't.

blknSS

So would I need to get 02 simulaltors? If so where?

blknSS

And I would rather get a mail order now so I dont have to drive it 50+ miles with it running like **** to get it tuned. I will put it on a dyno, later when I put the cam/heads on

thehazz12

I'm not sure what you mean by o2 simulators. I'm not sure how to word this really but if you get it tuned the tuner can basically turn the rear o2 sensors off. They'll be there but won't send any readings to the computer. Everything will be based off the front o2 sensor readings.

Mail order is not worth it IMO and most will probably agree. What you're doing so far is minor. I may have listed what mine has done previously but anyways...My GTO has longtubes, catless mids, h-pipe into Flowmaster catback with a K&N and ported TB. I'm still on the stock tune and it runs fine. Definitely rich but it's not running like ****. My point being, with what you're doing you really don't "need" a tune. When you do your cam swap you'll NEED a tune. To save money you can just wait until then for a tune and I would recommend doing your heads at the same time.

blknSS

Ok, sorry. Like i said im a newb when it comes to tuning a car ect.

I am concerned with the fact that i need to remove the egr and air (well dont NEED to remove the air but since im doing the egr because of the ls6 intake, might as well, no?) and my
inspecition is coming up in March. So i need to make sure what i need to get done to the car so that the CEL is not on and car will pass emissions. I will have to travel to get a tune on a dyno (im hearing slowhawk is very good, 2+hours away) so i dont really want to be driving around with a bum inspection sticker. The headers and exhaust i will be installing myself, but like with all projects, i want to give myself enough time to complete it right only being able to work on it in my free time. I am ordering the cat-back monday because it is on sale. Then i will order my headers the following week. So ,with shipping, i should have everything i will need by the first week in march to start putting this beast back together. If i had to do it again i would have inspected the car before doing any of this but i didnt so i have to make it work. Hope this explains my dilemma better. Thanks for your help btw. Its hard reading threads for hours on end, reading through the crap to get to the REAL HELPFUL responses.

thehazz12

I don't know anything about that EGR stuff...that was on the earlier Ls1s I think so I can't help with that. Getting a good tune is important but be prepared to spend big bucks. The tuners around me charge $500-ish. I'm driving 3 hours to have a friend of a friend tune mine. A buddy with an '04 Goat pushing close to 500 hp/tq raced an '06 Goat that had been tuned by this guy that had simple bolt ons, tune, and suspension. He finally started pulling away in 4th. That's how good this guys tunes are.
Now why can't you just do the inspection with everything stock and put your mods on after? I hear ya about the threads. Everybody has different opinions and does things differently so it's hard to get good really good info. I won't claim to know a whole lot and will admit when I do, but I'm glad to help in matters pertaining to my knowledge.

blknSS

I dont have the stock intake manifold anymore and the ls6 i got doesnt have the egr set up. I could drill a hole into the manifold and put the egr back in and rtv it in there or something but i dont want to do that. Im going to call Slowhawk when he opens and see if he can spell it out for me on what i need to do.

Ordered my Magnaflow cat back this morning as well.

BOBS99SS

iTrader: (2)

looks good man, i dont know what your looking for out of an exhaust but imo the gmmg is the best catback for these cars, duals owns them all but ifyour sticking with a catback borla,gmmg, are prettygood, depends on how loud you want it to be