I figured I might as well join in on the LS1 into a S13 fun that is happening on here. Snapped some pictures tonight and thought I'd share of the project my brother and I are working on. I know the car is a mess, got it after it was sitting for four years and I did a quick cleaning on it. Wanted to get it running and see how it was to drive before I went overboard on cleaning it up.

Here's how the engine is sitting in the car looking from the front. Ended up cutting off the motor mounting platforms and welded on 1/8" steel onto the crossmember to make a flat surface to bolt the engine mounts to. You can also somewhat see the boxing we did on the crossmember to allow the sump to fit. The motor mounts ended up being like 3 lbs each so they aren't all that heavy. The boxing that was added to the crossmember made it go up in weight some, haven't measured it's weight yet though but we wanted to make sure that it would be strong enough to handle the LS1. (will take some pics of that later when I pull the engine and tranny out again) We decided to go solid mounts for two reasons. One, it was the quick way to fab something and secondly it's a pretty tight fit with how we have everything in there and we didn't think the combo moving around a lot would be all that good.





http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181387333.jpg



http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181387341.jpg



Took some pics from the top so you can get a different point of view: (if anybody is wondering, yes the inner bolts are grade 8 and the outer ones aren't. I'm just using these bolts to hold it in place for now, I have all grade 8 bolts to use for when the car is running.)



http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181387349.jpg



http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181387298.jpg



http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181387345.jpg



Here's a few pictures of the oil pan and cross member:



http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181387308.jpg



http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181387320.jpg



Not the best pic of how the shifter ended up lining up but it looks like it should be in the ballpark of where it should be:



http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181387360.jpg




Somebody wanted to see pictures of the tranny crossmember so I snaped a quick pic. As I said in the other thread, drilled out the spot welds in the stock mounts and took them out. Actually used the threaded insert of the stock mounts on the ones we made custom. Drilled a hole in the center of the stock 240sx tranny crossmember so that it would bolt up to the center mounting of the tranny (the 240sx used two smaller bolts) and it turned out pretty nice. The stock crossmember should be plenty strong for the job and it's pretty light. Mounted the tranny with rubber for we've read that if you want to solid mount the engine or the transmission to have one of the two not be solidly mounted for it adds stress onto the tranny case if you solidly mount both.

It was tough to weld upside down and to also deal with the fact that the metal on that car is really thin. Ended up welding it pretty much all the way around to make sure that they would get held in place. I really need to clean things up down there and get some paint on it so they will stop rusting. Just some surface rust on them though.



http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181387357.jpg




I also took a pic of how the sway bar lines up right away as well for it was talked about in the other thread.



http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181387364.jpg



Hope you guys like the pics, tried to take them as best I could so you could see how we went about doing it.

 

I just got done cutting on the C5 exhaust manifold and test fitting it for the drivers side. It looks like it's going to be tight but it will fit if I can get enough of a bend going to get the pipe to go over by the frame rail and clear the steering shaft. It was hard to take pictures to show it for in the pics it's hard to see depth but it should give you the idea.

All these pictures were taken of the drivers side. I'll be working on the passengers side tomorrow but that side will be easier for the manifold almost fit just the way GM made it except for the fact that it hung a little low and hit the rack at the point where the boot is at.


http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181436804.jpg



http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181436814.jpg





http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181436798.jpg




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http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181436825.jpg

 

getting there .

 

good progress man, excellent pics!
best of luck to ya!

 

your motor sits much further back but higher than mine by far. i'll be lucky to get my swaybar back in there without some modifications to the mounts to clear the front of the pan.

 

Solid mount.... uh oh. That thing is going to shake and vibrate like crazy. Good progress and good ideas on the mounts. My oil pan is almost touching the swap bar.

 

Awesome job. Great pictures. The solid mount is an interesting idea. Looks like you did a significant amount of fabrication on the tranny mount. Keep the info and progress coming!

 

The whole car is gutted and it's pretty much going to be a race car. I'm going to be making it emissions legal so I can drive it on the street some but 'some' pretty much means not much at all! ha ha

 

Thanks man, the solid mounts should make for an interesting experirence for me since I've never been in a car that had them. Well, at least not that I know of, I rode in a Panoz race car at Road Atlanta once and I don't know if that was solidly mounted or not.

The tranny mount ended up being a lot of work but I don't think it's going anywhere. I'll post up some more pictures of the passengers side manifold later on here when I get it cut.

 

Thanks man, what do you have planned for your 240 in '07?

 

While I was taking pictures of the passenger side exhaust manifold I snapped a pic of how high I am off of the cross member right away. We used wood stacked up to space the motor up when we tacked the motor mounts in place. We could have went a little lower but it ended up working out nice not being so low as far back as we got the motor since it gives a little bit more exhaust manifold clearance:



http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181599603.jpg

 

Cut the passenger side manifold and test fitted it a bit ago. I'm glad we went with a pretty low profile engine mount for otherwise a lot more modification would have needed to be done to the manifold to get it to fit.




http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181599635.jpg





http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181599588.jpg





http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181599622.jpg






http://pic17.picturetrail.com/VOL828.../181599611.jpg

 

my mounts are going to be foreward from the stock location a little, which will probably help with clearance.

 

is your hood going to clear? those mounts look taller than the hinson ones im using, and my blower sticks out 4.5'', and its only 3'' taller than the stock intake manifold



also does the steering shaft go back on without hitting the headers? people arent having clearance issues getting the exhaust out, its getting the runners off the head, to a collector and around the steering shaft. the pics you took look like if you put the steering shaft on , it will have to go thru the #4 runner.

looks nice other than that

 

Haven't done any checking if the hood will clear or not beyond putting something straight across where the fenders mount up at. My prediction is that it won't clear and will stick up at least an inch if not more. Going to be making up a fiberglass hood and we are goign to make a small hood scoop to make it fit.


I am going to test fit the steering shaft in later for I'm working on other things now but from what I recall seeing the steering shaft should be be able to clear the manifold back under the #7 cylinder if that is what you are asking about.

I'll put the steering column back in soon here and make sure it won't be an issue, thanks for pointing that out, Mike!

 

I got lucky, looks like the steering shaft will easily clear. It's hard to get photos of that area since it's pretty tight but it actually follows the manifold down and has pretty good clearance all the way down:

 

wow, what manifolds are those again?

 

Those came off of a '99 FRC C5. I think the '97 to '00 Corvette's got them. I know the '01's and newer got cast ones but these, I've been told, are stainless steel. The easiest way I've found to tell which version they are is to find out if they have weld marks on them or not.

 

Pulled the engine and trans out tonight so I figured I'd take some pics of the cross member mods we did in case somebody was wanting to see it.


















Man, that $.99 can of flat black sure didn't make it look the best and it's obviouslly dirty but I wanted to get it covered up so it wouldn't rust. I might take all the pieces and sand blast them down later and put a nice coat of paint on them or maybe powder coat them. For now though just going to try to get the car running and driving soon here.

 

I edited my posts so the older pictures come up as links so this thread will load faster for people.