An aluminum LS1 block.

 

I traveled about two hours yesterday to look at one of those unbelievable ads you sometimes see on CL. This time it was legit.....I'm the new owner of a 2002 LM7, 4l60e 2wd truck transmission, all accessories and brand new full uncut Painless wiring harness. Motor and tranny had under 50k miles when pulled...........for $700.

Pretty happy today

 

Great news! Congrats!

 

Well last weekend I brought a lil sumin sumin home........Also checked some stuff off my list.

1. swap motors on engine stand - DONE
2. orginize shop a bit - DONE
3. add support legs to bender - DONE
4. get all the suspension and wheels on the car - DONE
5. get car on the ground - DONE
6. start bending stuff! - NO QUITE



It's time to cage! The garage looks like a pit....because it was. This was taken a day before my little sisters wedding, apparently a shop doubles as wedding decoration storage.....

The new motor/trans I picked up.







So new it still has the factory stickers on the motor and trans. My other LM7 is going to get set aside for something else I have planned.....


I did play around with the motor fitment though. It was nice to see it on the ground again, it had been on stands since Mayish.



I had a spare block and I was itching to see what kind of fitment I had.



We got it to this point and realized I needed to modify the oil pan. Many guys just go get a Camaro or GTO pan, but I'm stubborn, and own a nice grinder.....

clearance issue...


Marked up.


Cut.


I'm still undecided on whether I'm going to use it or not.....One being ground clearance. What do you guys think about the depth of the oil pan? I'd have about 5" of ground clearance after the motor was installed.



I'm really thinking about making my own oil pan, possibly front sump. I really haven't decided yet.

We also checked fitment on some other important areas.....



I'm going to have to lower the seat and adjust the mounts towards the center. My head it really close the the roof, once the cage is in I'd be bashing my head against it constantly. Also move the mounting points on the floor back about 5-6". We'll see, I have some other seats in mind as well, might say screw it and get those instead.


I also got the bender all fixed up. We were going to start bending pipe then realized that the nesting software we had used for the pipe had calculated it wrong. It was such a pain to get the pipe to my shop we wanted to make sure it was right so no bending. Plan is to get that started next weekend!

Stay tuned!

 

Well I started bending the cage up this last weekend. Not a lot of pictures, I'll do a better job with that next weekend. Anyways I had a shop helper, I needed an extra set of hands so the wife put some gloves on and I put her to work.



Got the main hoop done, Unfortunately I did some math wrong.....I'll be using it for smaller parts, or maybe put it in a e36......It was a touch to wide. I got some bendtech software that will help verify my math going forward.

Here is a little video of the bender I built in action, thing works great!

More cage updates next weekend!

 

Well I got to play in the garage all day Friday. Was able to get a large part of the cage wrapped up so I'm pretty happy. Hoping to have it finished next Saturday.

A big hand to Chuck and Adam for helping me out, wouldn't have gotten that far without them!



I move from a single stall garage to this.........and I still find myself complaining I don't have enough room....

I'll just post up a bunch of pictures of the progress.




These are final fitment of the main cage area before we dropped it through the floor.



it was not easy to weld inside this thing........I'm not exactly a small guy. notice the temp door bars, I'll do them last as I'll need to modify the tunnel for my transmission.



These areas were the worst. I thought I could get the cage low enough by just dropping the front.........which technically I did, next cage all 4 points are going through the floor.



I had to climb through the pop out window to get back there.......I might post the video, pretty amusing watching a 255lbs. guy shove himself in there.......





Thats all the pictures I have for now. I got all the outside areas welded and we got the cage pulled back up through the floor and in place. Next will be to get the interior welds done and box the front mounts up. Toss in a few rear laterals and X bars and folks, I think we have a cage! Just in time to push it out of the shop and back Unloadedak's ride in for his cage.

Stay tuned, more pictures this weekend.

 

Welding a cage will definitely test your true welding ability. It is a LOT different than welding on a bench. There were a few times I got quite frustrated. This is especially true with tig and having to find good angles for both the torch and your filler rod. Looking good though!

 

It's not to bad, I've been a professional fabricator for the better part of 10 years, building custom handrails for my company for about 4-5 of those years. I was planning on tigging the cage but two things came up.

1. My notcher is a POS HF one. I've done my very best to get squared notches but you can only fight junk so much. out of all the notches I've made maybe two have been perfect. Mig welding is a little more forgiving on that. Saving for a nicer jd3 or similar, maybe a Christmas present.

2. I should have dropped the cage through on all four corners instead of just the front. It was bad enough trying to get the mig gun into position, a tig would have been a nightmare.

I'll be caging my buddies e30 next, I have already learned a ton in doing this one. I'll approach the next one a little different. I'll say, Even with the handrail experience I have, caging a car is a class of it's own......tough, but I love it. Get lost in the garage for hours.

 

thas rite.....the car don't know no better!!!

 

5yrs later

 

Dang - he did get lost in the garage....

 

Dang, Dawg, you're getting ALMOST as good as me at this stuff! LOL

 

thanx......first friendly fire I've seen on this site.....I'm a hated man here!.....

...it's ok though cause my cars are still better than 95% of theirs!!!

 

.......so if KCS got me banned ,how am I posting this? Or did I just get banned from that thread?

 

just curious , is that 1.25" black iron pipe. ......a.k.a . Residential gas pipe

 

Dude...The OP's last log in was 4 years ago.

Andrew

 

I know....thank you for kindly pointing that out to me!!! Most people on here just get bent outta shape.....maybe he will check his email one day and reply......

 

What do you drive?

 

6 cars....all black....

 

cts-v a/6