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Just looked thru the shots of the "incident", and just glad you're OK! As said, could have been in a worse place, and a tougher fence! lol Keep at it, you'll be back in action in no time!
[QUOTE=chuckd71;19330185]Here we are again, motor is back out of the car. Transmission is coming out tomorrow but today I managed to get the Holley oil pan and new steam vents on. Also made some wooden stands to get the car up high enough to work under.
Picked up some Planted seat brackets and it looks like with a little bit of modification they should work out okay, letting me move the seats out far enough to get the Camaro console in and the seat recentered behind the steering wheel. The driver's side bracket I bought is for a Chevelle, but this passenger one is for a Civic; the only difference is in the feet, so if you can weld you might as well save some cash and pick them up dirt cheap used on ebay.
Chuck, I have been following your build which Gave me the confidence to attempt the swap on my car. I am also trying to use the same seats you did in your car. What year passenger seat mount did you use? Also is the driver mount just a Chevelle bucket seat mount, I’m a little confused on what you used on the driver side?
Here we are again, motor is back out of the car. Transmission is coming out tomorrow but today I managed to get the Holley oil pan and new steam vents on. Also made some wooden stands to get the car up high enough to work under.
Picked up some Planted seat brackets and it looks like with a little bit of modification they should work out okay, letting me move the seats out far enough to get the Camaro console in and the seat recentered behind the steering wheel. The driver's side bracket I bought is for a Chevelle, but this passenger one is for a Civic; the only difference is in the feet, so if you can weld you might as well save some cash and pick them up dirt cheap used on ebay.
Chuck, I have been following your build which Gave me the confidence to attempt the swap on my car. I am also trying to use the same seats you did in your car. What year passenger seat mount did you use? Also is the driver mount just a Chevelle bucket seat mount, I’m a little confused on what you used on the driver side?
I was also wondering why did you use the civic bracket versus the planted Chevelle passenger side bracket since they make both? Also did you have make additional holes in the seat brackets to mount the BMW seats? Do you have any additional pictures of the seats mounted to the brackets?
I got a civic bracket super cheaply on ebay and have a welder so no real reason to spend the extra $$$ in this case.
I don't have any more pictures on me, but I'm going to be pulling and selling the seats in a couple weeks and can take some more pictures when I do. Don't recall making any new holes but don't take that as gospel. I have bolts running through both the seat rails (the heads of the bolts I used fit between the seat tracks so it still slides all the way up / back) and the bracket.
Just looked thru the shots of the "incident", and just glad you're OK! As said, could have been in a worse place, and a tougher fence! lol Keep at it, you'll be back in action in no time!
Yeah, it could've sucked. I found a shop here in Florida and had an insurance adjuster come by and look at the car on a lift. He also went back and added a bunch to the exterior damages that weren't addressed before and the insurance co has apparently signed off on it. Have to drop the car off in a couple weeks. From what I understand they are replacing spindle, control arms, spoiler, etc etc and having someone come in to rewrap the hood. We'll see how it goes I guess.
Once I get the car back I'll slap on the Hooker swap headers and Wilwood FNSL6s that have been sitting on the shelf.
Originally Posted by Motown 454
OK thanks for getting back to me, funny I'm on vacation in Palm Bay Fl.
I've got the car back now and will try to get that bolt measured this weekend. Keep getting off work too late to mess with things during the week.
Nothing crazy happening, the car has been in the shop for almost two weeks now and apparently it's a bigger job than we initially thought. Bumper is pushed back into the front clip on one side and the driver's front fender is getting pinched when you open the door. Total repair cost is getting close to what I originally paid for the car, but insurance is covering it and I've been keeping it insured for the last decade or so that it has just sat in a garage, so I guess it all evens out in the end. Amica has been great so far.
In the meantime I've picked up some new seats to replace these BMW ones. The BMW ones are fine and I like them, but Morris just came out with these and I'm going to give them a try. They are making me some in charcoal which should be done by the time I get the car. https://www.morrisclassic.com/collec...int-seat-belts
These are the seats I'm going to try, they are from a mid-90 300zx. They are comfortable, they tilt forward and the driver's side is power. Fairly cheap as well. Not sure how they will work out but they are worth a shot just for something different.
So it's been at the shop for three months and after not doing **** for 2.5 of those months, this is as far as they've gotten. Everyone at this place is really nice but I'm trying to get my car fixed, not talk about unrelated bullshit, so based on my experience thus far I wouldn't recommend taking anything to them (I'll wait until I get my car back before I post the name of the place, maybe they'll redeem themselves and it's possible I'm just in a bad mood because they are dragging ***). They haven't ordered the suspension parts yet, and they didn't even try to keep the body prep dust out of my interior or top. Pretty pathetic, but I'm pretty much stuck here at this point. I'm not really a "get mad" kind of guy, but dealing with these people borders on impossible; nobody ever has anything resembling an answering regarding what is going on or what their plan is, it's just sort of a clown circus every time I stop by. Anyway, some progress is better than no progress I guess.
The Morris belts came, and while they look good I'm not certain if they will fit with the Fesler panels. I suspect I might be able to have the brackets rebent a bit, but if not I'll likely have to return them. Not the best pictures (hard to hold this stuff with one hand and keep phone in the other) but you can get the idea. The metal bracket mounts to the convertible top base bracket, then the retractor mounts on the floor between the seat and door where the original lap belt was. As per their reputation, the customer service was great and the quality (like the price) is very high. Whether they are worth the cost is not something I hope to ever test.
The 3.20 gear in the rear of the car is okay but not great, and I feel it might be a tad too numerically low for use with a T-56, even the wide-ration version I'm running. I'm thinking these 3.70:1 gears will liven things up around town. I wanted something made here in the States and from what I gather US Gear is what Strange uses so with any luck these will be solid, quiet(ish) gears.
If there is a bright side to the car delay it's that I've been able to clean my disaster of a garage. I got lucky at Lowe's and scored this setup for $275. Tons of room for pretty much all of my non-power tools, plus the headers-in-waiting and their way overpriced connector pipes (pipes that I still have to rent an expander to use). At least I got the tubes on sale, during an ebay bucks promo, with discount gift cards from Samsung Pay and using ebates, which together knocked about 36% off the price. Every little bit helps.
I'm also going to replace this loose, poorly-fitting shifter boot:
With this sweet Ring Brothers one I of course scored on ebay. I haven't tried to test fit it yet, but I would think getting it place shouldn't be a huge deal. The billet will match my door handles and the a/c vents, and I think it'll be one of the small details that ties things together.
And finally, in keeping with the theme of reusing things sourced from the salvage yard, I picked up some door armrests from an 80s Mitsubishi pickup. It was hard finding some with flat backs that might potentially work with my door panels. The Fesler armrests are stupid expensive and don't even come covered, so I'm hoping to avoid needing them. I'm out of leather, so I found some approximately the right shape in a 2014(?) Volvo. The leather unzips and the backing was easy to pull out. These pieces were the rear seat side bolsters, and I'm thinking that with a little trimming I can line that stitch up so it'll look like it was custom made. For ~$6 it doesn't hurt to try.
Fingers crossed my next post will be sometime in the next 6 months with fixed, painted and clean car.
Finally, after months and months of waiting for who knows what I finally got the car back. The bodywork looks good and the pain is nice and smooth on the front and driver's door, but it only makes the rest of the car look shitty in comparison. The shop said they went through a handful of vinyl people because nobody wanted to mess with cutting out the stripes; this seems dumb to me as I got it 85% right my first try with my mom helping me. Regardless, this guy, much to my surprise, got it very nearly perfect and it looks great unless you get super close.
The bumper is now painted black as opposed to plasti-dipped, so that's a bonus. I still need to fix the sway bar, but that will require some cutting and welding to basically reverse the way it mounts so I asked them not to mess with it. They gave me the cost of their labor back so win/win there. New Speedtech lower arms look great, like the uppers they are super sturdy. Compared to the Ridetech arms they raised the car ever so slightly, which is a good thing. These are bad angles but it's late and I didn't feel like getting the car on ramps.
I had arranged for Speedtech to sell me a single spindle but for whatever reason the shop ordered two and just asked my insurance company for more money, which my insurance company coughed up. If I remember correctly they also paid for one or two new upper arms for some reason, the end result being that I now have almost an extra front end to sit on or sell. The shop checked things out and none of the parts taken off appear to have more than cosmetic damage, but since I reported it to my insurance replacing everything was more or less a liability issue for my insurer. If they hadn't agreed to replace it all and I got in a wreck then I could sue them, or at least that is what an appraiser I spoke to the other day said. Who knows. As it stands I have one new right spindle, my used undamaged left one, two lower ridetech arms and I believe two (or at least one) new upper Speedtech arm/s (I have several boxes of suspension parts still loaded up in my van to go through). I also got a new Spoilers by Randy spoiler. While wrecking a car always sucks, having a couple grand worth of leftover parts helps take a bit of the sting out of it.
I worked until almost 7 tonight so haven't messed with much else but tomorrow I'll test out those Morris seat belts. On a whim I did pop the Ring Brothers shift boot in and it doesn't look like it's going to work. It's too wide and is intended for mounting on the floor/ carpet. Maybe I can figure something out but this might have to be retired to the parts drawer for a different build.
Depending how the day goes I'm also hoping to get the new headers on, replace the motor mount bolts and possibly the seats tomorrow but I'm feeling lazy and that might ultimately be too ambitious a goal. Maybe I'll just try to install the Vaporworx PWM controller instead. Or I might try just actually driving the car the for a while to shake things down. First auto-x is set for April 7.
To run it I went with this, as it seems to do everything the Speartech one does but for $400 less, plus I bought on ebay for an extra 8% back in ebay bucks. Will likely buy the E92 (sans AFM and DoD) and pedal from them as well. https://www.psiconversion.com/produc.../HAR-2001.html
For front accessories, since I'm already using the high-mount holley brackets I picked up this 21-5, which will let me slap my old stuff onto the LT. The guy I'm buying the motor from is throwing in an LT truck crank pulley, so that should take care of that.
I got a Holley 302-20 pan on ebay for $385, minus another $38 or so in ebay bucks and cash back, so $350 overall, which isn't too terrible.
For motor mounts, I'm reusing my Hooker rear biased frame-side mount in conjunction with the Hooker LT clamshells, with the end result, per Holley tech support, being that my trans will stay more or less in the same place at the same height. This is them - https://www.summitracing.com/parts/h...commendedparts
and https://www.summitracing.com/parts/hok-71221019hkr Whether this is simply a case of Hooker rebranding some things and raising the price I'm not sure, but for what little they could've raised it I think it's worth it just to know it's the right stuff.
For fuel I'm going to keep using my Rick's tank with a ZL1 pump, but I'll finally get around to installing the vaporworx pwm controller.
Exhaust I'm not sure about, but apparently truck manifolds work and Speed Engineering makes something that might work. I wanted to avoid Chinese were possible but options are scarce at this point.
Should be a party. Hope to have some progress updates in the next couple weeks or so.
Does the t56 bolt up to the gen5 motor? I thought that one of the bolt hole locations changed. Car looks great, glad you got it back from the body shop.
It does, but like you said one of the bolt holes isn't used. Not really a huge concern though. What is more difficult is finding a clutch. Nobody seems to sell the stock kits, not even under a Luk or Valeo name, so aftermarket is the only option I'm finding. Ram makes a basic single disc but it's still almost $600. I'm just building a cruiser so I don't need anything fancy.
No first hand experience, but from what I understand the LSA flywheel and clutch assembly should work with the Gen5 motors. The LSA flywheel has the same 8 bolt pattern, and you would also need a 3/8 bellhousing spacer.
That's good info. Finding a stock LT1 clutch kit has proven impossible. Maybe I can find the Luk part number for the lsa somewhere and pick up one of those.
Chevrolet Performance offers a clutch kit for LS (8-bolt crank versions)/LT engines as part number 19329635.
Jeez, that is crazy. I found a LUK kit but it was still over a grand. Not sure if the basic Ram for $600 is the way to go or it's worth stepping up a couple hundred bucks for a dual disk.
Work was fairly slow and the motor came several days early so I was able to pick it up yesterday afternoon. Looks like everything made it without damage, which is kind of surprising.
There are a couple ports I'm not certain about, the one under the yellow looks like one of the old emission ports from the ls stuff [edit, it's a sensor port, evap is up front]; the other inside the black coming from the valve cover I never thought about until now but will investigate when I get home. Looks like a simple valve cover port. I also need to figure out if the new set of LS spark plug wires I bought will work, but that should be easy to test.
The Holley pan and the adapter brackets to make their LS front end drives work came, and I'm expecting the fitment and front end parts of the swap to be fairly painless. The pan has no gasket, which is the new standard as I understand it, but it did come with all the other bits and bolts. Plus windage tray.
Here is how these brackets work, for those who haven't seen them. Part 21-5.
The LS comes out tomorrow and with any luck this will be in sometime in the next 3 weeks.
08-04-2018, 03:32 PM
