Energy suspension motor mounts are done, SacCity oil barbell and rear main seal done last night.

T56 input shaft was hitting a soft wall in all gears and neutral, so I took the mid plate off again. It doesn't bind when there are no shims in it. Seems like maybe I have it shimmed to tight? I am going to back down a few thousands and add some oil to see how it acts.

Current plan is to plan for April fools installation....

 

I was reading your AWESOME and very helpful chronicles of your T56 swap. And ran across this from some one else who did a similar swap. If you look at the photo carefully you can see that his brake pedal support bracket is way above that stud after he drilled the holes. So your assessment was correct, you drilled the holes a smudge to low. I wonder if drilling a bit higher will also let the Tick clear that stud thing? Cheers.

 

You may be right and the TM could have been moved up to clear it. Not sure if Tick has changed their design over the years as this was not an issue when I swapped over to theirs but regardless the OP got the job done and besides fabricating is just another one of the joys of making it your own.

 

Oh I agree. I’m just about to start my T56 swap so I’m reading as much as I can. Took about a year to accumulate all the parts. Hope it goes smoothly. Shimming the slave is kind of stressing me out. I bought the ls7 clutch and a stock slave so hopefully it won’t need it. How did you guys tighten up the TM bolts as you can’t reach them to hold from spinning?

 

It’s going in to this.

 

With the engine out and a car on a lift I had a friend assist me as I played contortionist under the steering wheel. I'm thinking with the brake booster out of the way you could get a wrench on the bolts and wedge it up against the body of the car or the clutch master itself. Nice car BTW!

 

I’m assuming you did the swap as well. How was the wiring? I have the pigtails, did you get everything to work right?

 

Hey CETA, great looking car! I'm not sure if drilling the holes for the master cylinder up higher will allow for enough clearance. The picture in post #13 where I show the Tick MC over top of the stud, it convers the stud quite a bit, but I don't think that the pedal set will allow the mounting holes to go up high enough to clear the stud. But, drilling it higher will definitely clear the issue I have with the Tick MC hitting the frame rail.

As far as the shimming goes, I am also running an LS7 flywheel, clutch, and stock slave cylinder combo. From everything I have read, there is no shimming needed on the LS7 clutch assembly. At this point, I think I am going to go on blind faith that the consensus on the forum is correct and no shimming is needed. I'll definitely let you know how it goes!

I was able to reach my hand through the hole from the brake booster being removed in order to hold a box wrench on the MC bolts.

 

Once again, awesome information provided. You are a godsend bud. Do you mind if I add some picks of my swap on here? This will be the authoritative post of t56 swaps. Or should i start a new one. I would like to keep posting here.

 

There have been many people before me that have helped me out so I'm happy to pass along any information I can provide. I don't mind at all! Although people may like to follow your own swap - either way is fine by me.

 

I spent nearly 10 hours on Saturday trying to figure out my "clunk" issue in my T56 swap. I shimmed and re-shimmed a dozen times but couldn't get the clunk to go away. I posted up my symptoms in the manual trans forum and was told to look at my input shaft for any knicks or burrs. Sure enough, one of the teeth was not machined properly. I tried to clean up it a bit on my end and was able to get it better but not perfect, and the last thing I want is to put this all back together just for the transmission to eat itself alive. So I overnighted a new input shaft from AMP distributing, hopefully it will be here tomorrow and I can get that sorted out. I noticed the tailshaft extension was leaking, so I split that and sealed it up with some RTV.

Sunday I took the old exhaust manifolds off and changed out spark plugs, at least I felt accomplished in something. I also painted the Mufflex exhaust with some high temp paint. Once the transmission is done and bolted on, I can get the TSP headers on and will be ready to slide under the car.

 

I got in the heavy duty input shaft from AMP yesterday and put it in, turns like butter. Doing a bit more investigating, I think one of the input shaft gear valleys wasn't machined down enough and was "pushing" the input shaft upward when it meshed with the countershaft.

I had the LS7 flywheel, clutch disk and pressure plate bolted up by the end of last week. I was able to get the T56 mated to the engine last night, and then put on the TSP 1 7/8" headers.
Have to finish up plugs wires, pre-bleed the Tick MC, and finish up a few grounds, but things are shaping up for it going under the car this weekend.

 

Ok I have a question. On your auto pedals are there any plugs on them that are used on the manual pedals? Any plugs carry over? I know you have a new harness, but if you didn’t? What do I need as far as pedal plugs/wiring? Seems like a lot of space for connectors on them. Thanx.

 

Here is a decent post which shows which switches are common between the pedal sets:

https://ls1tech.com/forums/manual-tr...l#post12069934

It looks like the two switches on the brake pedal will swap over (although you shouldn't need the convertor clutch wire connector).
I'll take a picture of what connectors my pedal set has when I am under there bleeding the Tick MC.

 

Ok, perfect, at least something will work with out to much trouble.

 

Hey, just one more quick one. ( i didn’t start to rip the car apart yet, to cold in the shop still) I am
getting all the bolts together. How long are the bolts that hold the pedals on? And is it a nut and bolt set up, or are the nuts part of the firewall? ( attached to the firewall from the engine side). Thanx.

 

The manual pedals reuse all the stock mounting locations, save the 2 bolts for the clutch master cylinder. There are 4 nuts that attach to the brake boost studs, one bolt that goes to the firewall by the gas pedal and one bolt that goes upwards into the dash reinforcement.

 

Put in some long hours over the weekend but finally got the LS1 / T56 mated to the green car and did the first start up / movement under its own power. I pulled the fuel pump fuse and cranked the engine over a few times to make sure the oil system was primed, and then primed the fuel system a few times before hitting the key, but it fired over on its first crank. I haven't done a true heat cycle yet, but the smoke was looking a little blue. Hopefully just some oil that needs to get burnt off from sitting for a year without running.

Clutch is adjusted really close to the floor, but it was enough for it to get in and out of gear. Head lights, fog lights, radio, turn signals, brake lights all work. Only thing I noticed is that the gauge cluster lights aren't working, but I'll look into that later, for now I'll take this win for the day!

 

Did you run a bore scope into the cylinders to inspect them for any signs of wear? How about a compression and leak down on the engine to verify you don't have leaking valves, valve stem seals or a ring issue before installation? Perhaps its just oil burning from the oil you injected into the cylinders to lubricate the bores as you turned the engine over by hand prior to starting the engine. Good to see it running on V8 power and hope everything seals up and you are good to GO!

 

All of those sound like things I should have done, and actually have the tools to do but never did! I guess I wasn't too worried about it beforehand because the engine was running (sounded healthy and didn't seem to have any blue smoke at the time) and this project was also just for getting the ability to run a LS platform in the V6. If the stock LS1 decides to go out for lunch, at least I know I can run any other LS platform in this car now.