clainhart3

iTrader: (2)

Heres the picture of the ls block modeled in solidworks. It's not perfect and doesn't include everything, but it should be enough to design motor mounts and maybe build an exhaust off of. I will be doing the heads and probably the waterpump next week.

hefftone

Omg, would love to have access to one of those. Cool swap car, and very cool with arm and the solid modeling. Thanks for sharing!

clainhart3

iTrader: (2)

Thanks Heff. It does come in handy quite a bit.

Hopefully I will get the trans done next week and maybe finish up the engine bay the week after that so I can finally start putting together a design for some engine mounts. I already have an idea of what they are going to look like, but I can't decide whether to ball out and get them cnc machined ($$$), have it laser cut and pre-bent ($$) or just have all the parts cut by waterjet and then do the final assembly my self ($). I think that the cnc parts would be around $300 which is a lot, but they would look pretty baller. I guess we will see how much cash I have once I get to that part of the swap.

68steiny

iTrader: (1)

What are you plans for the rear suspension? I think you can find a good 16v LSD differential but they are expensive. I've heard of guys doing the GTO swap and you can get it all for a lot less.

clainhart3

iTrader: (2)

68 - I plan on leaving the stock diff alone for now. The car is a 16v and has a lsd in it already. Some guys have put around 350p through the stock diffs with turbo setups without trouble. Also, this car will probably only have 235/45/16s out back for a while. I can't fit anything bigger on the car without putting a widebody kit on it. I am hoping that the tires will be the weak link for the time being. Down the road, I'm going to have to figure out how to get a bigger tire on the car. If all else fails, I was originally thinking about using a ford 8.8 lsd diff. You can find them pretty cheap and they hold a decent amount of power and people have already put them in 190s so I know they will fit. I haven't heard of anyone using a GTO rear end before in a 190e. I will have to look into that and compare it to the Ford unit.

clainhart3

iTrader: (2)

So to show that I actually have been working on my car and not just drinking, I took a couple pics of garage. It's messy as **** right now, but I'm hoping to clean most of it up tomorrow. I have been working about 30-45 mins a night for the past 2 weeks. I have been going through the wiring harness bit by bit trying to figure out exactly what to keep and what to get rid of. I think that I have finally figured it all out, and I am now ready to pull the dash and pull out all the junk. I want to pull everything without cutting anything so that if I screw anything up, which I probably will, I can go back and fix it easily. Plus I will try and sell what I can at the end of the swap to try and recoup some money.

Anyways here a just a few pics of the car and the garage:


Car in the garage. Nothing to special here.



Here is the engine bay. Looks like a mess right now. I will hopefully clean this up a bit soon. If I get the dash tomorrow, I hope to pull the ABS, Cruise control and engine harness tomorrow.



Here is the rest of the garage. You can see the T56, 16v, and LS block and heads. the orange thing in the bottle left of the picture is the leg of the engine hoist I bought from Harbor Freight.

Well, I think that I might have found a LS1 T56 wiring harness, fuse box and pcm for sale here in Chicago. The sooner I get that the sooner I can start splicing it into the 190 harness.

Hopefully I will have another update tomorrow.

clainhart3

iTrader: (2)

Well, I got the dash out of the car along with the engine harness and cruise control harness. I broke the cruise control stalk in the process of pull the dash which sucks. I even loosened the steering bolts in order to get it out of the way.



I'm going to slowly go through the engine harness and thin it down to only the stuff I need. The inside of the car looks like a bomb went off.



I wanted to pull the ABS harness, but the rear speed sensor wiring is holding me back. I really don't want to have to pull out the whole interior for just one wire. I'm thinking about cutting it, but I'm afraid that no one will buy the system if I cut the wire.

I'm going to Atlanta for labor day, Richmond the following weekend for the Nascar race and to see my sister and then the following weekend there is a Nascar race in Chicago which I might be going to, so process might be slow over the next couple of weeks. I will be working on the car throughout the week. I hope to have the heads, water pump and trans cmmed on Wednesday. Hopefully I will have an update then.

clainhart3

iTrader: (2)

Ls1 wiring harness acquired. I just bought it off ebay hopefully i didn't ripped off. I wish I was going to be at home for labor day so I could work on the car. Oh well.

I'm also very close to buying a gto oil pan. The guy is sending pics tomorrow. Hopefully that plays out well too.

clainhart3

iTrader: (2)

Not really a build update, but I bought a new computer today. Actually I bought a new stack and mother board and had the guy at the computer transfer everything from my old computer over to the new stack (my old motherboard died). So now I have a working computer at home. I will be getting a copy of Solidworks for my home PC soon. Hopefully I will have some rough mock ups of motormounts done in the next week or so. Then I will send those off for quotes from our CNC shop.

I won't be able to cmm the trans tomorrow bc I have to go pick up the wiring harness I bought. I got a engine harness, fuse bose, and pcm for $250. Pretty awesome deal. Also, I'm going out of town on Thursday and won't return until Monday, so I probably won't have an update til then. Hopefully Tech kicks *** on Thursday night and I drink myself into a comma for the rest of the weekend. See yall on the other side.

Dracer35

iTrader: (7)

interesting project. Im looking forward to seeing some more update and pics of a Sexy gm v8 sitting pretty in a benz lol

74novacustom

replace that heater core while your in there, Mine went out in my 190E and i just looped the heater hoses because of the work involved, plus im in AZ so no real need for it.

clainhart3

iTrader: (2)

Well I guess it's time for a little update to this thread. I haven't done a whole lot over the past couple of months. I did finally decide on a steering rack. I'm going to use a Mitsubishi EVO 8 rack. It has a similar ratio (13:1, 16v is 15:1) and the lock to lock is 2.9 turns where as the 16v is ~3.2. The dimensions of the rack are pretty similar too. Plus I found one on ebay for $190 shipped to my door. Not a bad deal. I am hoping to start building the mounts this weekend. Hopefully I will have some more pics up soon.

Alright here are the motor mount teaser pics. I am still thinking that I want to have them CNCed but I'm not sure that it will be cost effective. The other option is to have all the pieces waterjetted and then weld them all together. I just sent these models off to be quoted so hopefully I will have some numbers by the end of the week. I will probably end up changing a bunch before I finalize the design. The "LS190" logo is only a place holder at this point and I plan on changing it to something a bit cooler than that.





I am also playing around with anodizing colors. I will probably end up going with boring black, but baby puke green is growing on me.

Any suggestions are welcome. I am still pretty new to this, so any extra information would be awesome. Thanks

Skip Intro

Green looks good. Yellow maybe? Orange?

krmilton

Is there any way I can get the 3d model of the engine block from you. I would like to have a model of the block with all of the hole locations. In particular the front bolt holes and the engine mount holes. I want to do a LS swap in my El Camino in the near future and I can machine all the parts I need. I have access to (2) CNC machines. The models of your engine mounts look pretty good to bad I can't use them. Thanks
Kevin Milton

clainhart3

iTrader: (2)

More teaser pics of the motor mounts. I decided to go with a different approach. The billet pieces were going to be too much money. These new mounts will be cut from .125" 304 stainless steel. They will have slots cut along all the bend line so that I can bend the piece by hand. I will then weld the part and have it powder coated. I still have a few things to tweak on these mounts, but they are pretty done. The first picture is what the mount will look like when it comes off the waterjet. The second and third pics are what the mount will look like after I bend it into shape. Then I will weld all the seems and send it off to be powdercoated.







Krmilton: I can not unfortunately share the cad data with anyone b/c it was done at my work and my boss does not want to release the information. Sorry

sjbdeebo2

Very nice! Are you going to be planning on selling motor mounts?

clainhart3

iTrader: (2)

So I got the EVO 8 steering rack in today. Here are some pictures:



It has started to rust a little, but I plan on pulling the rack apart and painting the body. The tie rods are about 3 inches too long so I will either have to find some that work or make my own. I am really hoping that I can just find some that work. Maybe something out of a DSM or older gallant. Although I know that as soon as I put DSM parts on my car, I will punching myself in the dick once they break.

The rack has an interesting mounting solution from the factory. It sits down in the cross member and one of the mounts is on the rack while the other is a collar they goes over the rack and then gets mounted into the cross member. Here is a close up



The other mount goes just to the left of the yellow writing. I will be making two mounts out of .125" mild steel to mount the rack to the 190 cross member and using a factory collar. I will be making them very similar to the engine mounts. I plan on measuring the rack this week and start building the mounts in CAD.

I am somewhat concerned that the rack won't clear the oil pan. I might have to trim some of the pan or cut a bit of the pinch weld on the cross member to make it fit. I'm not too concerned about it. I have not some up with a solution for connecting the 190 steering column to the EVO rack. I'm not even sure how many splines are on either haha. Guess I will have to count them both and then go from there.

I sent out the new motor mounts for quotes today.

sjbdeebo- I am going to sell the mounts probably around $300 without bushings. Maybe around $400 with bushings. Are you interested in a set?

sjbdeebo2

Unfortunately I do not have a W201. But by the work you put into these I think it would be a waste of talent not to market these

clainhart3

iTrader: (2)

sjbdeebo - Well I hope that one or two people buy some mounts. I would help to pay for the rest of this swap.

I got some more parts today. Larry (Larry @ AMS on this board) at work hooked me up with a basically brand new LS6 intake, 28lb injectors with fuel rail, and a throttle body with electronics. I can't say enough about Larry. If anyone needs anything LS related, you have to talk to Larry.

Alright enough nut swinging. Here is a pic of the stuff



I am sending my valve covers, front and rear engine covers, water pump and oil pan to get powercoated black this week. I hope to have them back right before christmas. I am a little hesitant to go black as it will make checking for fluid leaks more difficult, but I think that I am willing to spend a little more time checking everything over in order to have a clean looking engine bay.

Hopefully I will get the steering column measured tomorrow and into CAD so that I can start making mounts for it. I will post up some pics when I am done with them.

clainhart3

iTrader: (2)

I got the steering rack measured today.



I then turned the measurements into a CAD file, and dropped that into my CAD file. Looks like everything should clear. I am going to have to come up with something weird u-joint for the rack.





Also got the dash back in. Next project is to figure out the final wiring. I might end up buying a harness from Yates EFI. I haven't quite decided yet.