Just want to say thanks for all the information and detailed pictures you have posted during your build. You have served as a great source of information for my furture LS swap. Wish more people would take the time during their builds.

 

subscribed to this thread.

 

great job on the car and thanks for all the detail, i spent 4 hrs reading the whole thead yesterday. i had a question and maybe i missed it but what was the alternator bracket it off of? it looks to be perfect for what i need for a swap im doing.

 

Read this yesterday and its still bugging me. Kids right " that car has seen better days" !

I know , I was their ! Those day when parents raised there kids to respect other people and not say anything if you cant say something nice. When "made in america" meant more than "it costs more", it meant quality. When the only thing imported from China was lead painted kids toys and noodle recipes. Yea , im like that dinged up camaro " ive seen better days ,too"

By the way ,GC99TA, love the car !

 

Absolutely no problem man. I've really enjoyed putting this thread together so far and the more folks that are able to pull something useful from it the better....so thanks for the great feedback.

 

Glad to have you following along. That's a bad *** looking 70 RS you have in your sig pic!

 

Thanks for the compliment, and even more so, thanks for taking that much time to go through the whole thread . To answer your question, the alternator bracket is a 98-02 F-body bracket that would normally be low mounted on the driver's side. I modified it only very slightly. I had to remove just a little bit of material from the back of it so that the flat bar brace I built (the one that runs from the head to the bracket) could slide in behind the alternator bracket. Let me know if you have any other questions......I hope that made sense.

 

I had to read through that twice to get your meaning, but I'm with ya man. Seems the older we get the better yesterday looked, don't it? I have a feeling every generation goes through this same sort of reflection and wonders what ever happened to the good old days when......

Thanks man, I appreaciate it. You have a pretty awesome example of an LS powered 2nd Gen yourself! If it weren't for me having my 99 Trans Am as my other "toy", my build and goals for this car probably would have been much more similar to one like yours or Tony's (tsnow678) 1st Gen.

To be quite honest with you, when I was in the very, very early stages of planning this build (like during the car buying process), my ultimate vision for it was a fuel injected LS motor, big(er) wheels, modern suspension upgrades, air conditioning, overdrive transmission, etc. And my Trans Am was planned to continue to be my dragstrip warrior....and get even more extreme to that end. In fact, I had planned to ditch the M6 in it and put a TH400 and loose converter in it. But then one of my good friends showed me how ***-backwards that would have been. His point was that the TA already has most all of the features that would have gone into the Camaro to build a pro-touring type car, and I would have been removing most of those features from the TA do make it into a better street/strip machine. Either way, I was going to end up with one of each kind of car, and the way I have done things turns out to be the smartest, I think.

 

thanks i love it.. they are fun rides.

 

Real nice. How are you able to run 87 octane?????

 

Thanks man. The abililty to run 87 octane comes from a few things. First because the motor is only a 9.67:1 compression truck motor that GM designed to run on 87. Also, I'm at a relatively high altitude. Up here our octane requirements a lesser due to the thinner air. The air up here is less dense with oxygen and the lower atmospheric pressure reduces effective compression. But I'm sure I won't get away with this for long. Once I'm back down near sea level I'll probably start running 89 or 93. I may even try some 89 while I'm still out here, just to see if it likes it better than the 87.

 

how much hood clearance do you have with the 4inch cowl? do you think a 2 inch cowl is possible?

 

Well, there's a lot of variables involved, but a two inch cowl MIGHT be possible with the correct combination. You didn't mention what heads you'd be running, which will affect your intake choices/heights.

With my current set up, including an L92 Victor Jr. intake, a 1-inch carb spacer, the lowest drop base K&N air cleaner set up, and a 3 inch filter element, I have about a half an inch hood clearance left. Well, maybe a just a touch more than half an inch left, but once I add a half-inch nitrous plate I will be completely out of room.

So with my combo....if you took out the 1-inch spacer, I would be at 1.5 inches of clearance......which is still at .5in too high to fit under a 2 inch cowl. But then if you look at the intake......my Vic Jr. is about 5 and 15/16ths (we'll just call it 6 inches) tall. I know both the GM single plane and dual plane L92 intakes are shorter than the L92 Vic Jr, but I don't know by how exactly how much. If it's at least .5 shorter, you'd probably clear a 2 inch cowl. But then again......I don't know if you're running cathedral port heads or rectangle......so you'd have to check the heights of the appropriate intake. There is some decent intake height info here but some if it is conflicting: https://ls1tech.com/forums/carburete...ke-height.html

The last variable I can think of would be your motor mount set up. Some mounts position the motor higher in the engine bay than others. In my case, if I wanted my engine to sit lower, I would've had to reposition my frame mounts further out and drilled new holes. I chose to not go that route and kept everything in the stock position with the Car Shop plates. The result was that the engine sat just a touch high. I hope this all helps you out a little. Like I said....there's quite a few varialbes and either way I think a 2 inch cowl will be very close with a carb'd set up.

 

Gary hope you are doing well! I still love that pic you have in your sig! Daylight under the tires, awesome!!! Anything happening in the way of the Camaro?

 

Hey Tony! Things are well here.....how about there? Yeah, that's my favorite pic of the car too.....well at least my favorite action shot....LOL.

I'd love to tell you that this is what's up with the car.........



.........but in reality it's just a bottle and brackets I borrowed from the neighbor kid to do some test fitting and to snap a few pics to use for messing with my buds back home....... I really had them going for a while with that shot......too much beer in the garage on a boring weekend makes me easliy amused.

I also pulled my front seats out and sent them to the upholstery shop to have them modified for my harnesses. I'm having slots cut in them to allow the shoulder belts to come through the seat backs and for the crotch strap to come through the bottom cushion. Even though I only have a harness in the driver's side, I went ahead and had both sides done......just in case. I should get them back tomorrow, so I'll post pics once I get them bolted back in. For now, the chalk marks shown below is the approximate location and size of the openings I'm having cut.



And here's how she sits without seats.......



Other than that.......I've just been messing with little things. Like Saturday I messed with the alignment of my passenger door a little bit and I also installed a new glove box insert. The old one was tore up pretty bad.



Sorry for the crappy pics.....they're from my phone. Seems like I take more pics lately if I just use it rather than going in to get the wife's good camera out of the house. I'll take better pics when I get the seats back.

What's been going on in your camp?

 

Nitrous bottle looks right at home back there! Man that interior looks nice!

A friend of mine was saying the other day he was going to add "racing" seat belts to his car. He wants to anchor them to the floor and for some reason I think it was you that said that wasn't a wise idea. Was it you?

Your belts should fit you better once they exit through the middle of the seat. I would love to have a 5pt harness in my car but without a cage whats the use. I did buy new 3pt seat belts for the front and used 02 Camaro rear 3pt seat belts for the rear. Guess its better than one lap belt for four occupants! Fuel level sender float is hung under wires or hoses so out comes the tank. Need to install the seats I bought a month or so ago. Stilll waiting on the 408 to be completed. Other than that, its work and fix things around here.

Your what, 6 months from the move? Any luck finding a house?

 

Yeah.....it really hurt me to give it back. His whole kit is for sale, but it's a lot more kit than I'll ever need. It's a 1 inch plate, double spray bar two stage pro shot. Pretty serious set up .

Yeah, that was me. I don't have any first hand experience with them, but from what I've been told the NHRA/IHRA outlawed those style belts where the shoulder straps mounted to the floor behind the driver's seat because the straps were so long that they stretched too much in a collision. Since no major sanctioning bodies allow them, you'd probably be hard pressed to find any manufacturers still making them. The only real way to mount shoulder harnesses is with some sort of cross bar behind the seats. Maybe he could think about doing a simple four point set up with a main hoop and rear down-bars in the back. It wouldn't be legal for under 11.50's, but if he just wanted the harnesses and the look, it would be good for that?

Sounds like you'll be busy getting all the belts and seats installed. Sorry to hear your fuel tank has to come out. What a pain in the ***! What's the scheduled completion date for the 408? Have you guys gotten any snow or are the roads still clear enough to enjoy the car?

Yep....a little less than 6 months out from the move. We've been keeping our eye on some houses we'd like to check out on line, but no comittments as of yet. We plan to go there in late June to look at some places and make some offers. That will hopefully line our closing date up with our arrival in early to mid-August. We're rolling out of AZ for good on August 1st. Can't wait to get back "home" to the tall trees and green grass........oh yeah and the humidity.... Oh well....can't have it all.

 

I bet it did hurt! Get a rotating assembly made for it and move forward! I see 9's in your future.

I understand. I couldn't remember the reason why but thanks for the reminder. He has a 72 Vette with a lap belt. I showed him a few options in the way of a 3pt harness.

Yeah alot to do and I am not feeling it at all. No word yet on the 408. I haven't been bugging them as I am in the middle of so much at this point I dont mind a few more weeks.

Not a bit on the ground. Other than two cold weekends, we have had the mildest winter that I know of. Its supposed to be around 60 tomorrow.

Welcome back home!!!

 

Just ordered some new toys to play with the next time I hit the track.......

FAST Dual Sensor Wideband


And a Holley Jet Kit

 

subscribed.........my build soon. great build.