MrWhite

This build thread will document the steps of upgrading an LS2 engine with L92 heads, then dropping the engine into a 350Z.

To the build:
Fueled Racing is a company that manufactures custom kits for various vehicle applications. These include everything needed to drop a LS into a vehicle, P/S lines, engine and gearbox mounts, headers that will fit, clutch lines that fit right onto the OEM lines. There are gearbox mounts and main shafts to choose from whether using T56, Magnum, GeForce, Jerico and most other popular gearboxes, spline count and length all accounted for.

We started to remove the old powerplant. The frame needs some small repair after a little love tap with the outer rail of Wall Speedway New Jersey. So it's time to take care of that too. Also a lot of the hoses can be removed now from the elaborate installation of a watercooled turbo setup, hopefully making the engine bay a very clean and simple story in the next few days.

First photo is one of the engine mounts, ready to bolt on and will set the engine low and far back in the vehicle for best weight distribution and low COG. Very solid piece, and designed so that if the polyurethane piece breaks, the bolt will still retain the engine where it belong, instead of dropping somewhere onto the bottom crossmember and steering rack. It is also marked up nicely so the customer doesn't have to waste time figuring out which side and way it goes in.


A custom oil pan (with a huge amount of baffles) is supplied with the kit, proven to avoid oil starvation problems during road race like conditions. The oil pan will fit so that zero mods are needed to the existing vehicle's frame / subframe.

As for the headers, they are very nice and long 4-1 pieces. Pretty impressive in my humble opinion. They exit far back and spread wide from the gearbox (making sure to no heat the gearbox oil more than necessary) and it's child's play to attach a couple of 3" pipes to the back of the car (sidepipes not allowed,don't ask me the exact reason why). X-pipe will be something we will try later to see if we can engineer a unique sound character from the engine.


For the motor, it is a GTO 6.0 LS2, low mileage at that, so it looks extremely clean inside out. The 243 heads were the first to come off though and a pair SD L92 heads preassembled w springs for .600 lift will go on as soon as we have put a XR281HR off-the-shelf cam into the engine. Should be in two days if UPS are doing the delivery on time. I'm pretty sure we'll be going with some other cam options in the future but right now time is short ahead of the next event and we need something that will fire up with our standalone AEM Series 2 engine computer and work right away without headache, but with decent torque curve and increasing hp potential through the rpm range. A lot of the engine planning has been done by research on this forum, so filtering all the info available I am hoping we're making some good calls based on what's been written about here. Once thing I haven't seem too much of is E85. We ran E85 before with great results, and the plan is to do the same here. Injectors from FiveoMotorsport will handle the needed flow up to 800 hp (for future turbo boost on this engine). The car is setup with a fuel cell and my biggest concern is capacity/consumption. The pump is good enough to drain Lake Michigan in an afternoon, but the fuel cell is a lot smaller than that. Remains to be seen how thirsty this goat engine will be when we are done with it.


Next update in a few days.

MrWhite

Removed, will soon be posted along with the complete 243 heads as: LS2 intake for sale in the classified section. It's almost too nice to remove really, but it has to go bc the L92 rectangular heads.


Almost looks like it was never used.


This will also be posted up as a 2005 Pontiac GTO clutch kit for sale , since we'll be installing an ACT kit with LWFW, single plate racedisc (non sprung) and heavy duty pressure plate, rated for 925 lb/ft.

dmonotjr

how much you asking for the intake? what all is included with intake?

MrWhite

Everything you see in the photos is included.
TB, fuel rails, injectors.
Is $695 way out of line?
Happy to ship at buyer's expense.

red04montels

iTrader: (1)

Excited to see where this goes, any actual pics of the car it's going in?

MrWhite

Mint 243 heads removed. Will either become nice paper weights or get their own 243 heads for sale thread in the future.

MrWhite

MrWhite

To the cam swap. First the front cover has to come off.
There you see the camshaft sprocket, timing chain and the LS2 "tensioner". It's not really a tensioner, it just keeps the chain from flopping around excessively, bc flopping it does even when just turning the crank by hand. That is bound to be making some noise... curious how they got away with that design.


Before removing the sprocket and chain, the oil pump has to come off. Definitely a lot easier when the oil pan is off since the oil pickup tube can be easily removed. Sits with just one 10mm.


The marks on the crank and cam sprocket have to line up when installing. I figure I'll align them already before removing, then they are in the right spot to just bolt back on.


A lot of time has been spent describing how to get the chain on the right tooth. I just lifted the sprocket off with the chain on it, and laid it aside. This only works if not replacing either chain or sprocket. I am keeping the original ones with 20k miles, OEM is usually pretty well tested for durability so not messing with things that work.


This is what it looks like after oil pump and sprocket and chain is removed. The cam plate now has to be removed.

MrWhite

Before the cam can come out, the lifters have to be either kept up by using dowel rods, or magnets. Or just hoping the lifter guides will hold them up. I just removed the 4 x 10mm bolts that hold the lifter guides and pulled all the lifters out. Less risk for blockage or damage and gives a good insight and change to inspect and lube them with assembly lube, to help the cam get broken in gently.

MrWhite

Now with the lifters out, the cam was a reasonably easy job to gently pull and rotate out. One has to be careful to not damage any bearing races or such inside the engine. A cam removal tool will definitely help for leverage, but putting bolts into the camshaft end for leverage also works. Sorry about the rotated pics, I should have rotated them before upload. This pic shows the empty hole after the cam was removed.


And the camshafts next to eachother. First I didn't really see much difference but then upon closer inspection, the new cam definitely offers longer duration. Any more detailed "data" must be measured and is hard to see just by eyeballing it. The comp cam seems to have some additional "tooth" at one end, must be for engines that have the cam pick up sensor at the rear end of the engine. On the LS2, the cam pickup is done from the cam sprocket.

MrWhite

Next I wanted to check the oil pan out. It comes nicely packaged with a custom oil dipstick with easy to read markers, and oil pan gasket as well as studs and nuts to replace all the OEM oil pan bolts.

MrWhite

All good to go, so assembly could begin.
First slide in the camshaft and reinstall the lifters and the cam shaft plate.

Then line up the sprocket with the marks 100 million % lined up, and then tighten the sprocket using new ARP bolts.


Regarding the oil pump reassembly btw, it should only be hand tightened, then you rotate the crank multiple times to get the pump to center itself, and then you can tighten it down. Also it is a good time to put the oil pickup tube in place. Also the oil pickup tube is longer, to reach all the way to the back end of the engine. It was easy to install although I had to tap the end of the oil cover underneath the crank a little (1/8in, bottom left corner of the photo below) with a mallet , right under the end of the oil pickup tube, to get the pickup tube to line up perfectly with the oil pump - and here I wanted to have a 100% perfect seal between the pump and the pickup tube.

MrWhite

Before installing the pan, I took the opportunity to update the Rear Main Seal with the new version. It's really boring work but it's well worth it. The back plate comes off, old seal had to be faught a little, new seal went in pretty easy using the old seal as perfectly matached "socket" to tap on with a mallet to press the new RMS into the rear plate.

Put a fat bead of RTV on the rear seal, they are known to cause minor leaks.


Front plate went on in a similar way - of course make sure surfaces are clean and that the gaskets are good. Also don't tighten too hard / follow specs and go symmetrical to avoid bending those plates bc then you will have leaks to no end. Maybe I will too even though I took great care, we will find out when we start it up....

MrWhite

GM recommends RTV in the corners of the rear and front plates, and where they meet the oil pan. I was concerned a little beforehand about this, but once seeing it, it was not any weird looking gaps or anything, just another few beads of RTV and then put on the Moroso oil pan gasket and bolt it on.
The little studs are neat, and tightens down into the block with allen heads.


Cleaned the top surfaces a little, so the heads are now ready to go in.

MrWhite

Been extremely busy building all the way to engine startup, but here's an update in the following posts. Please feel free to ask if you have questions about any particular part of the installation. You gain a lot of experience doing this with no manual - and hopefully this will help to serve as a kind of overview/manual.

Block cleaned up and headgaskets laid down. Pretty serious gaskets. They are marked which way goes forward and there is only really one way they fit. The marking shows that these are good for both 6.0 and 6.2 liter engines. If you run a 6.0 with heads from a 6.2, you need to ensure you use gaskets for a 6.2.


The next job was to put the heads on. These were assembled with springs strong enough for 0.600 lift, which would be a fairly aggressive cam. If you want really high lift, you have to consider cutouts in the pistons, to avoid PTV contact.



I used ARP headstuds. Use the lube and torque carefully according to specs, and follow the GM instruction to torque the bolts in the correct sequence. This is really important.



With the heads on, the intake can be installed. Nothing special here, tighten using the same patterns as on the cylinder heads for even load distribution. They don't have to be torqued hard or anything.



Next, pushrod and rocker time!

Before installing the pushrods, the length needs to be determined. There's a special tool for that, which allows you to adjust a measurement pushrod to a certain length, and then define the preload on the valve spring. There are a few methods to do it. I liked a method where you use a fixed length setting of your measurement pushrod, then tighten the rocker by hand until zero play. Then torque the rocker to spec while counting how many turns you have to turn the bolt to get to spec. Since the thread has a specific value, each turn accounts for a certain amount of "distance" of the rocker to pull down. With the leverage of the rocker, this translates into adjustment of the pre-tension. Different applications need different pre-tension. Mine came out at factory using the factory length pushrods, even with different heads. Some like it tighter (= longer pushrods), it makes less noise, but the risk is that the valves won't close all the way. Too short can result in gaps and the rockers hitting against the pushrods, creating noise and impacts which can break the valvetrain prematurely. The GTO uses hydraulic lifters that will adjust against any noise, and I'd rather have valves that close than having the most silent engine. But I also don't want any play, so the factory pretension seems like a pretty good idea.

As you can see in the photo, LS3 style heads use angled rockers for the intake valves, so you cannot reuse the old straight LS2 rockers. Also the rocker stand supports (rails) do not fit from LS2 heads, need new ones.



Finally, once all the rockers are tightened to spec, the valve covers can be installed.

That fuel rail connecting hose in the photo is not the final one, just there while waiting for a specific 90 degree AN elbow for a correct length hose.

One thing that was pretty nice, is that the VQ injectors work directly in the LS2 intake, so you don't have to buy a full new set, just get two more of what you already have, if your total flow is enough for the power level you are gunning for that is.

I use injectors exclusively from Fiveo Motorsport Fuel Injectors, simply because they are great, calibrated evenly and they have a huge variety of flow rates and compatibility for all kinds of fuels, plus the customer service is top notch, from advice of choosing injectors to simple handling of shipping etc. I had injector delivered overnight, when I placed my order after 4pm, so it really helps. The accuracy of the injectors allows me to run E85 and turbo down the road = BIG flowing injectors, yet very accurate and so quick that idling is never a problem.

In case you want to use VQ injectors with the LS3 intake, you need to shim the fuel rails to sit higher bc VQ injectors are 2.5" tall and LS3 injectors are 2" tall. Also, you need to use thicker o-rings from the stock LS2/3 injectors, to seal in the LS3 intake.

MrWhite

Next up, a proper clutch and gearbox installation.

ACT Advanced Clutch Systems is a great and proven choice in performance applications, and their single plate disc for LS2 is rated for 925 lb/ft with a very light flywheel.

I really recommend using NEW flywheel bolts. They come from GM pretrated with loctite. Follow the factory torque specs and torque down evenly.

Now clean off the light coat of oil that is on the flywheel during shipping.



Nice 6-puck racedisc, ready to do work.



For the pressure plate, use new or old bolts. I used a little blue/medium strength loctite for vibration resistance. Torque evenly to spec, and go in MANY steps. Don't torque very hard at all in the first few rounds, this is important. It is easy to bend the pressure plate if you torque it unevenly and thiat can kill your clutch system fast.



The little alignment tool comes with the ACT kit and is necessary to install the gearbox.

When it comes to gearbox installation time, it is straightforward, but there are a couple of challenges.

1. The gearbox is heavy.
2. The gearbox wants to stop before it goes all the way on.

Solution to 1: Deal with it. We put the gearbox on a tire, then arranged the engine hoist to the correct level and angle, that way we could wiggle and push the gearbox onto the engine, and you have access to move the outgoing shaft with the gearbox in gear, so that you can adjust the spline to match up with the clutch. Again, the engine and gearbox are heavy pieces, and in between you have a delicate clutch assembly that you don't want to screw up, so it takes some care, to get some sort of "feel" and it comes down to as mentioned above aligning and balancing the engine and gearbox to connect without tension on the shaft.

It works pretty good until about this gap (problem 2 above):



The reason is that the spring loaded release bearing stops any further advancement by using polite force. Now onto the "no compromise" style. Get long bolts with double washers and simple torque the gearbox onto the engine. Obviously, make sure that the gearbox really is centered and is on the splines, if it doesn't get all the way close like in the photo above, check again before using bolts to torque the gap down.

Once you used long bolts to torque the gearbox closer to the engine, start putting in shorter bolts and screw them on evenly, step by step alternating sides and middle bolts. Torque to spec when done.

MrWhite

Now you're ready to hang this thing into the car. Almost.

First remove the shifter from the gearbox, as to not damage the shifter linkage.

Also, we found out that before you can fit the engine into the car, you should drop the steering rack. It is enough to remove the rack bolts and steering column joint and let the rack hang in the tierods. The steering rack needs to be gone to give clearance to the oil pan when installing, and later to gain access to install the remote oil filter lines on the driver side of the engine.

Maybe it is because my LS3/L92 cylinder head castings have some extra material on the corners, or the way my subframe (base for engine mounts) has lived it's life, but we found that we had to hammer the firewall on the passenger side to get the engine to fit.

MrWhite

After a few rounds of moving the engine in, then back out to hammer on the firewall and then pushing the engine in again, it is finally in place, on the mounts and with the rear gearbox mount installed.



On my gearbox, there is a tiny extra little piece of aluminum at the back which seems to interfere with the mount. However, the mounts have a lot of material and the holes are elongated so you can adjust a little back and forward, so all we have to do is do open up the center mounting hole which is just a round hole, and slide the entire gearbox mount back about 1/4 inch to clear this little strange casting piece on the tail of the gearbox.

The Fueled Racing driftshaft installs just like the OEM Z shaft. Put it on the outgoing shaft from the gearbox, and bolt on at the back to the diff, reusing the Z bolts.

As you can see the cable throttle body and all accessories are on place. Those are all very easy to install compared to installing accessories on a VQ35.

We hung up the Godspeed Project performance radiator to be able to test start the motor (fabrication of radiator/oil cooler mounts and new crash bar is coming up next). Our Godspeed radiator has stock 350Z fit and will work perfect with the already very good stock 350Z dual fans, the fan shroud lines up perfectly. The Godspeed radiator offers 40% higher cooling capacity, this is extremely important for any performance build.

MrWhite

Now all we had to do was fill fluids and hook up the AEM Series 2 standalone ECU.
Once plugged in, it took my tuner 3 attempts for the motor to fire up, the first two attempts because I had forgot to put a ground strap from the chassis to the block....

I use Champion sparkplugs exclusively in my builds due to superior firing quality under high performance use, especially with boost in mind. For a mild LS build, 3983 are a great smooth running plug, but 9405 will be a little colder/better insulated for running with boost.

I should also make a quick mention about the Fueled Racing longa** headers, they are really sweet, thermal coated and they install from under the car once the motor is installed. You will need someone to hold the header under the car to get all the header bolts to line up and be careful with the aluminum threads when putting the bolts in, be really really careful about this. We did ok on this but it was close once or twice that the bolt wanted to go in slightly angled, but as soon as the header is "balanced" the bolts go in straight by hand.

I made a video from inside the shop but the car is so loud the sound from that video is completely garbage. So I loaded the car up to get it over to fabrication of radiator mounts and took a video with the car outside, thinking the sound level would echo less and give the phone microphone a chance. So at strict idle it's a little better.

How do you guys like the Comp Cams XR281HR XTREME RPM HIGH LIFT idle sound? (listen towards the end of the video)

As soon as the rad mounts are fabbed up and we have bled clutch and routed all harnesses and hoses safely, we're taking this beast to the dyno, should be towards end of this week. Stay tuned for more video (with better sound). Should sound cool at high rpm!

greenvortec97

iTrader: (1)

this is a BADASS build guys! very impressive that you guys got this done so quickly. I am a firm believer that LS engines are by far the easiest to work on and understand. the power versus cost ratio is great as well when you compare to other engines!