gradymayhem

Hey all, I’ve been binging people’s build threads lately and it has made me really wish I would’ve done one on my build. I’m not a big “picture” guy, I usually only use my camera to document something I need to remember for a specific purpose so I don’t have an awful lot of pics of the build process. That being said, I’d like to do some kind of a thread to hopefully help someone attempting this swap. I know it’s a common one, but I feel like I still ran into a bunch of issues that didn’t have answers readily available. I’ll update as I’m working on stuff and have the opportunity to take pictures.

gradymayhem

I started with a 92 Camaro RS 305 5 speed from San Diego with 17x,xxx on the clock. Compared to rust belt cars though, this baby was mint. In retrospect, starting with a rust free chassis wasn’t just nice- it was essential. I can’t even begin to imagine how much time I would’ve spent chasing down and eliminating rust, welding in new steel, and make feeble attempts at body work had I started with a native Wisconsin car. It would’ve added years into the project.

The day I bought it

gradymayhem

Next, I sourced a donor. A buddy notified me that a 2005 2500 express van was for sale locally. Perfect donor vehicle: 6.0, 4l80, still running with all original electronics. And I wound up knowing the previous owner, so I knew the history of the van and it’s issues.

It turned out that the trans was bad but everything else was great. Which was fine by me, since my first order of business was going to be a shift kit and clutches anyways. I don’t mess with transmissions, so I took it to a local guy who has done the transmissions in various other projects of mine and he got to work on a full rebuild+ upgrades.

I got to work gutting the interior, weather seals, engine, and transmission in the camaro, and pulling the engine, trans, and wiring from the van. I would’ve liked to use the van’s 14 bolt (I assume? Can’t remember) but in order to resell the chassis, I left it as a complete roller.

Once I had everything out, I started cleaning. Don’t have any before pictures, but here she is before deep cleaning

And after

gradymayhem

Pics in previous post are flipped. Can’t figure out how to change them. Obviously the one with oily rags is “before” and the clean shiny one is “after.”

Also, I didn’t take nearly as many pictures as I should’ve! Damn, wish I wouldn’t have been in such a rush and would’ve taken some more time to snap photos. Oh well.

gradymayhem

Next, I did the top end internals. Left the bottom end alone, as the van was pretty low mileage and I knew the previous owner, but did BTR platinum valve springs and retainers, BTR stock length pushrods, and BTR stage 2 turbo cam.

Then a Melling high output oil pump and buttoned everything back up.

Jimbo1367

Make sure you shim the oil pump to get it installed properly. I’d hate to “see” you trash the motor

jim

gradymayhem

Huh, the instructions didn’t mention anything about that as far as I recall. I just remember a couple flavors of spring to change pressure.

gradymayhem

Once the engine was cleaned up and put back together, I installed my Holley motor mounts in the car and my clamshells on the engine and set the engine in the car to start the mockup process. In this process, I snapped at least two (I think it was 3 or 4) of the clamshell bolts with a 3/8” ratchet. I wasn’t putting my full body weight into it or anything, I was just going for snug. Ultimately I replaced those bolts with grade 8 from the hardware store. Then the clamshells wouldn’t fit nicely into the motor mounts so I had to cope some material from the clamshells. Overall, I wish the motor mounts had slots for adjustment or slightly larger holes instead of just holes with a tiny amount of play. The motor mount lack of adjustment issue came back to bite me more than once.

I then got to work on hot side turbo piping mockup. In retrospect, running radiator hoses first would’ve been the better strategy but hindsight is 20/20.

I bolted up Speed Engineering forward facing turbo headers and started cutting pieces and tacking them in position. I modified an eBay t4 90* adapter to mate the turbo to the piping.

I used some (supposedly) 304 exhaust pipe from eBay with various mandrel bends and cut pie cuts for any angles I couldn’t make out of the bends. It didn’t weld like 304 and the wall thickness was inconsistent. But worst of all, it was horribly, horribly egged. I can typically get most of the high-low out of an even somewhat decent piece of sch 5 pipe- enough that a clean fusion weld will largely hide it/equalize it. But not with this stuff. In the end, I came out with a product that is probably adequate but that I don’t like. The egging was so bad that I had to use quite a bit of filler metal on what should have been fusion welds. Lesson learned- use quality materials for a quality end product.

The root on a coupon that originally had at least 1/16” of misalignment for reference. The eBay pipe had like 3/16”+ in spots. No amount of clamps and strategically placed tacks could fix it


Redoing the hot side out of some food grade high polish sch 5 304 (from work) with matching weld fittings (from sanitaryfittings.com) along with adding a flex is my first priority for this winter........ Or so it would be if I could get new flanges to match the header flanges. Speed Engineering uses an oddball size of flange on the header. It’s nominally 3” but none of my other 3” flanges will mate to it. It’s about 1/8” smaller in outside diameter than a standard 3” flange and the bevel is slightly different. I’ve contacted them hoping to purchase a new set of flanges so I can redo the hot side but customer service hasn’t been able sell me any or to point me in the right direction.

How I routed my hot side

gradymayhem

With the engine in for mockup and the hot side done, I got going on the cold side.

I should mention that I used the VSRacing 7875 kit and it is awesome! Seemingly decent components, responsive customer service, and a huge amount of bang for your buck. Plus it comes with way more stuff than you’ll ever need. I have a few untouched lengths of aluminum pipe, several unused silicone boots and 6 or so unused boot clamps left over.

The intercooler fit almost perfectly in front of the radiator without any adjustment, minus the adjustments to the core support I made to fit the radiator. I made up some steel brackets to hold it in place and made a few welds on the cold side piping and that was it. Easy and hassle-free.



As for the radiator, I used the Frostbite that is supposedly a direct fit for 3rd gen camaros. It didn’t fit directly at all, as it is oversized and required quite a bit of grinding and cutting of core support metal, not to mention the fact that it’s too thick to sit in the stock channel that the OE radiatior sat in. Eventually I got it to fit passably well, although visually unappealingly, and it all worked out for the best as I need all the cooling capacity I can get. I topped it off with dual Flex-A-Lite fans.

Some hack n’ slash

Also in the front nose area of the car, I stuffed a Hayden transmission cooler. I just bought the biggest plate exchanger style model they had and put it in front of the intercooler.

Transmission cooler in front, radiator in back

ryeguy2006a

iTrader: (27)

Great project! I think what Jim is referring to on the oil pump is shimming it to make sure that it is centered. I think you are fine either way personally. I've seen where people do either and have good results.

gradymayhem

Ok good to know. Thanks for the clarification. Had a moment of panic there thinking I missed a critical step, and I’ve already driven the car at this point so it’d be too late.

gradymayhem

The transmission install was uneventful thanks to the Holley engine/trans mounts working together nicely so I won’t go into too much detail.

Running a Circle D pro series multi disk 248mm torque converter stalled at ~3500. I cannot comment enough on the incredible level of build quality on the converter. The billet was flawless, the weld and finish was perfect. I felt legitimately bad installing it where nobody will get to see it, as it is doubtlessly the single nicest component on the car.

After destroying multiple 47re Chrysler transmissions, a TBSS 4L70, and what was left of the OE T5, I decided not to skimp on the transmission on this one.

gradymayhem

For the rear end, I bought two posi 3.73, 31 spline ford 8.8s from the local scrapyard. Being from explorers/mountaineers, each rear end has a long axle and a short axle. I used both short axles and shortened the longer axle tube to make a centered rear end.

For anyone else doing this swap, this method is less than ideal and I would not recommend it, as the overall length ends up being shorter than it should be. Instead, I would make the overall length identical to the stock 10 bolt and have custom length axles made. This will allow better function of your bump stops and give you more clearance when doing brakes.

Anyways, I cut the longer axle tube down to match the shorter one, borrowed an ultra clamp from work and welded it up. I then welded the axle tubes to the differential housing with 309 rod and a solid preheat and post heat.

Next, I got it sandblasted and put in all new seals and bearings.

For all the suspension mounts on the rear end, I:
- put the original 10 bolt on jack stands next to the 8.8 on jack stands
- put an angle finder on each pinion and clocked them to 0* and then tacked them right to the jack stands to keep them from rotating
- torch cut the mounts off the 10 bolt one by one, documenting each one’s rotation relative to the pinion and distance from center of the differential as well as distance from center line of the axle tube as I went
- tacked each mount onto the 8.8 preserving the offsets and clocking from the 10 bolt
- dry fit the new lay fabbed 8.8 to the camaro to verify fitment

Everything wound up bolting right up with no issues and the stock pinion angle was preserved so I went ahead and welded the mounts on permanently.

Getting the rotation mount by mount before torching