For a cleaner install I would run another battery cable (from the motor) to a stud on the role bar under the dash were you can get to it easily. You can take a 5/16 bolt and weld the hex head end to the cage and create a stud. Take all the grounds to that and you will be doing the same thing without taking all your misc. grounds to the motor.

Another couple of tricks I use are this.
Buy a starter relay for a ford mustang or truck and run you positive to it then to the starter. Run all you positives to the remote relay (under the dash). This gets all the big power cables off the starter. This helps for a quick starter replacement. I also use a tractor starter button with the rubber cover for a momentary start button and mount it on the firewall for running valves or bumping the motor over when nobody is around. As for the starter, after you install the remote relay take a jumper wire (#12 or bigger) from the big lug were the cable goes to the small terminal that engages the stator.

 

You are doing great work! The fact that you post in such detail is amazing! Thanks for all the pictures.

 

The fact that he posts in such detail..and while getting the job done as well kicks a**!!!

 

Thanks for the tips! I'll keep all that in mind as I complete my wiring. Right now I've only got the bare minimum done to fire the motor.

 

Hey, thanks to both of you for the really kind words. I'll try and keep the pics coming. Sometimes though I get so involved in what I'm doing that I foget to stop and take pics til it's done.

Hopefully I can get a little more done this weekend. I've got some nit-noid little stuff I need to do first, but once that's all done I hope to hook up my shifter cable so that I can test out my transmission on the jackstands. After all, I've had this Rossler TH400 since last summer so I'd like to just test that all the gears work and get some fluid flowing through all the passeges in the valve body. If (and that's a big IF) that all goes well, I'd love to at least get a good start on fitting up my new exhaust system. I'm waiting for some stainless band clamps to arrive from Summit (better than the U clamps that came with my system) for the tailpipes and mufflers, and I'll probably have the front section (collectors, headpipes, x-pipe and rear pipes to mufflers) tig welded up after I tack it all together on the car with my MIG.

 

I got a real late start today, but I still managed to get something accomplished. I started installing my shifter cable so I could finally test that my transmission has all the gears but I decided to not go too far down that road before taking the shifter back out and painting the mount I built for it last weekend. While I was at it I also modified my shifter cable bracket to fit my deep cast aluminum pan and painted it and the shifter arm as well. Since I couldn’t do much more with the transmission, I decided to fit up my 3 inch Torq Tech exhaust system. I fit it all up under the car and tacked it before pulling it out to have it fully welded.







And here it is once I pulled it back out as one piece. I dropped all this off tonight to be fully TIG welded. Everything else (mufflers and tailpipes) will be band clamped together so it can all be taken off easier when I go to the track.







But of course I didn’t pull it back off without taking another crappy phone video of it running through the mufflers. Remember though that nothing here is clamped or fully welded, so it still has some exhaust leaks.



I also threw all of my gauges in the dash today for a few pics. The only thing operational here right now is the oil pressure gauge. Still lots more wiring to do……





Hopefully I'll get a few more things done tomorrow.

 

Looks and sounds great! Excellent job on the exhaust.

 

Ahhh, this build takes me back... Nice work, and remember, it's never really done, is it?

 

Thanks man. I can't wait to get it back from the welder so I can put it back on. I like being able to start it up to test things out, but I'm sure the neighbors aren't digging the open headers.

Thanks. And no, they're never ever done. Hell, my 99 Trans Am that I started building 11 years ago isn't even done....it's just on a break till this one catches up.

And I guess it took one step closer today. The car actually rolled under its own power. After reinstalling the shifter and routing the shifter cable, I tested the transmission on the jackstands. Everything checked out so I took it down off the stands and drove it down the driveway and out into the culdesac so I could turn it around and pull it back into the garage facing in this time. Now when I run it in the garage it won't fill up with fumes quite so badly.

 

Awesome! I hope nothing on this thread ever gets deleted, tons of useful info here. If I ever finish up the engine build I may need this for a guide!

 

Thanks man. No plans from my end to ever delete any of it. So, as long as no one else shuts it down, it should be around for the foreseeable future. I used to have to deal with photobucket shutting down my pics every month once I would reach my data transfer limit, but I pony'd up the $25 bucks for a full membership back in August, so that's not an issue anymore. Thanks again for the compliment.

 

Well, I don't have anything terribly photo-worthy to add this week, but here's a small update anyway. I got a call earlier in the week from the guy that was supposed to be TIG welding my exhaust. He was having a hard time cleaning off all the aluminizing from around the joints to be welded and called to see if he could just MIG it instead. Well, I own a MIG welder and probably could have managed that myself, but I allowed him to do it anyway since I was POSITIVE he could do a much better job than me. Once I got the piece back I painted the welds with silver header paint to hopefully keep them from rusting too soon. So the first thing I did Saturday morning was to bolt the exhaust under the car and finish it off with the mufflers and tailpipes.





Next I added some Thermo-Tec heat sleeve over the portion of my shifter cable that loops directly over top of the X-pipe to keep it from getting too warm. It doesn't rest on the pipes or anything, but heat rises.



Then I moved on to my fuel lines at the rear. When I first routed these, I had not intended to run tailpipes on the car at all. So, I didn't worry about how close they may be. Well, now with the exhaust in place, they were too close for my comfort. There's really no moving them now, so instead I disassembled them from the trunk floor bulkhead fittings and added some Thermo-Tec heat sleeve over them as well. They should stay nice and cool now.



Next I messed around a little bit with my speedometer cable. I already knew my factory one was going to be a little too short and it also has a factory push-on style end. The Autometer speedo requires a screw-on end so I had already picked up a cheap Pioneer CA-3004 cable that would have worked great, but it was about a foot and a half too long. I've go no room for routing that extra length so I pulled the screw-on speedo end off of it and got the bright idea to put that end on my old factory cable......but oh yeah, it's too short. Then, since I already had the end off the new cable, I decided to shorten the case and cable to the length I needed and reassemble it. That was going really well until I realized that the inner cable is only squared at the ends and the rest of it is round (so it can spin freely, duh ). So that wasn't gonna work either. At this point I set the speedo cable aside and cussed myself for not buying an electronic speedo. Oh well, maybe a trip to Napa will turn up a usable length cable, even if I have to swap ends.

Everything else I did Saturday revolved around wiring of some sort. First I wired my electric fans to my fan Flex-A-Lite controller (which works very nicely, I might add). Here's a pretty bad pic of where that's mounted.



Then I pulled out my gauge panel and built a crude wiring harness that connected all the grounds for each gauge and their lights, another wire to connect the ign inputs for each gauge, and yet another for the 12v connection to all the gauge lights. That at least minimized the amount of connections for each gauge. Then I reinstalled the panel and routed the individual wires for the fuel level gauge sensor, water temp gauge sensor and tach. I still need to run a sensor wire for the trans temp gauge, but everything else listed above works great so far.

I also rewired my ignition box to the master disconnect switch because, even though it was wired to kill the battery and alternator simultaniously, for some reason the car wouldn't shut down when the master switch was thrown.....but that's fixed now. Other things left to wire on the car include: neutral safety switch to shifter, reverse lights to shifter, transbrake to button on dash, and line lock to button on shifter. I think that will pretty much bring me up to speed on wiring until I decide to buy my N2O kit, but that shouldn't be any time real soon.

Oh yeah, and right as I was finishing up and running the car for the last time on Saturday, my alternator quit charging (I had a voltmeter plugged into the cig lighter). I was pretty tired of wiring stuff at that point so I left it be until Sunday. It's a long story in and of itself and I posted about it separately to get some help/advice. The short story is, it seems now it wasn't an issue with how the alternator was wired as I first feared. It must have just died. So, I picked up a replacement yesterday and everything is good.



If you'd like the long story, check here: https://ls1tech.com/forums/conversio...e-voltage.html

 

OK, I finally got a decent idle video with something other than my phone. I also took some pics tonight of some of the stuff I described above, but Photobucket is down right now. Here's the new video for now. Oh and don't mind the smoke out of the tailpipes. The exhaust tubing still has a bunch of shipping oil inside that hasn't gotten burned out yet. It didn't smoke at all with open headers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wb31k-sgjQ

 

I edited post #332 with some pics that I took last night. And, I don't think I ever posted a pic of how I mounted my trans cooler, so here's a shot of that as well.

 

Duals sound great!

I looked back at your specs and you have a similar cam to what I have. I am in the middle of the 6.0/L92 swap and have been following your thread close as I almost went with a carb but my wife insisted we have fuel injection as that was my excuse to swap in the first place. The cam has a nice lope but not too over the top. I am at 236/242 at .050" .580/.590" lift 112 lobe seperation.

When is the first trip to the track? I would shake it down and then make a couple of passes before the paint and body get finished. Your close enough to make some runs. Slap on some slicks and skinnies and lets roll. Great job!!!

 

Thanks man. It's pretty quiet with the tailpipes on. At least quieter than I would have thought 2-chamber Flowmasters would have been. I guess it'll keep the neighbors happier though.

My cam is only a 228/230-114, so you've actually got quite a bit more camshaft than me IMO. Eight more degrees on the intake and tweleve more degrees on the exhaust is gonna sound quite a lot meaner than mine. Plus, yours is ground on a 112 compared to my 114 which will add to the idle chop as well.....that's quite a lot more cam. Your lift is the only thing comparably lower, which does tell me it has less aggressive lobes, but you won't "hear" lower lift. Have you checked piston to valve clearance with that cam and the L92s? Just curious. The relatively high intake duration and tighter LSA make me wonder. The dished pistons in your LQ4 will help things but the 2.16 intake valves in these L92 heads can make things a little tight on the intake. Mine had a little over .100 on the intake and it wasn't even close on the exhaust side. As a comparison, the 230/232-112 in my LS1 TA (flat tops but only 2.02 valves) has a little less then .080in and .100exh.


My current goal is to have it drivable on the street by this fall sometime, but that could come sooner than expected if I don't hit any major roadblocks. But, to get there I still need to: Finish all my wiring, mask and paint my roll cage, install the headliner and a few other interior pieces, carpet the rear deck, strip and re-paint the dash panel(damn fisheye ), polish and install the front, rear and side glass, strip, POR-15 and prime the front fenders, prime the upper and lower valance, nose piece and rear spoiler, install all the front end sheet metal, install the bumpers, lights etc, install the gears, posi and wheelstuds in the rear, go through all the suspension to include installing the caltracs and cutting down the front springs, and get a front end alignment..........so, I've got some work to do....and I'm sure I've missed quite a few things .

But, once I get some good street driving/testing/tuning in, I won't be far from a trip to the track.....so maybe late fall/early winter since we can race all year out here. In fact, the later in the year the better since our DA out here typically sucks! Yeah, I'm definately going to be working out all the kinks in this thing both on the street and track before it ever sees paint. I'm not sure exactly what I was thinking when I was planning things the other way around, but I think I'm on the right track now.

 

When I added the tail pipes to my 2 chambers it quieted it down considerably. I originally had them dumped straight out of the mufflers right before the axle and it sounded great until the family started to ride in it.


The exhaust had plenty of piston to valve clearance. I checked the intake but did not worry to much about the intake as it is chasing the piston down. The exhaust is the main concern since the piston is chasing the valve down and any hiccup could cause the piston to hit. I had at least .100" on the exhaust. The gasket thickness I am using is a stock thickness, the block is standard heigth and the heads were new without anything trimmed off. I was going to mill the heads and deck the block but that would send me down a path I didnt want to travel. I wanted an engine with good power and reliability that will not see much dragstrip time. More of a cruiser.

It seems you are doing everything right and will end up with a strong reliable car yourself. I say hell with the paint and lets go run it. Button up the wiring and lets see whats shes got!!!

 

Gary,
Sounds and looks great. Was that noise before starting the engine, the electric fuel pump? If so, does it really sound that loud in person vs. the video?

 

Thanks Jim. Yeah, that noise before starting the engine is the Aeromotive A1000 electric fuel pump. And yeah, it's pretty close to being that loud in person. But, consider this: The pump is inside the fuel cell which is only 1/4 full of gas, so the pump isn't even submerged at this point (just the pick up). The cell is mounted in the trunk and I was inside the car which has no interior, no glass, and just a 24 guage steel sheet bulkhead separating the trunk from the passenger compartment right now. So, I may as well be filming from inside the trunk at that point......LOL. Once the car is complete (glass and interior) I'm sure it'll be significantly quieter inside the car, but I'm certain you'll still somewhat hear the pump when the motor isn't running. But, all that is right at home on this machine .

I was able to solve my speedo cable problem this evening. I went to Napa and it turns out they sell the inside cable separate from the casing as a universal replacement. Because it's a standard lenth, the one end is already squared and it comes with a stake-on connector for the other end that is squared off as well. So, you simply cut the cable to your desired lenth, insert it into your proper lenth casing, and stake the square end piece on. The cable came with a small staking too, but I just used a hammer and a chisel. I installed it and ran it through the gears on the jackstands and the speedo worked just fine. Small victories.....

 

Awesome bro, the cam I'm thinking of using is close to your specs...she sounds good!