Alright, I will try to keep this as short as possible but no promises. Lets start all the way back in the beginning, back in 2008 I believe. My best friend Chris bought a red 1998 Trans Am WS6 clone from a local guy. The car was immaculate, and basically stock from what I can remember. Over the next 6 or so years we built the car into many versions. Started by building my first ever turbo kit for the LS1 with a Percision 76mm turbo. Then we ditched the 6 speed for a TH400. Put in a Midwest Chassis 9" and rear suspension. Then came a Texas Speed forged 6.0 and a revised turbo kit. It went back to Midwest chassis to beocme the prototype car for thier front suspension. It also got a 10 point cage at that point and the 9" got narrowed as well. Then came rev 3 of the turbo kit, Holley Dominator, and more. After a long stretch of work on the car we got it on the dyno and had a blow out of the dump tube from the wastegate. We had to repair it before we could continue, and as we were talking the car off the dyno I noticed that the turbo had touched down on the housing. That started a massive round of changes which included a new Garrett GT5533R 94mm turbo, Dart LS Next based 427 (I think it was the second block released to the public), a 25.5 upgrade, bigger fuel system and so on. As the car was coming together with mini tubs, new rear mencer coilover and so on Chris lost interest in the project. He sold the car as a complete roller (everything minus engine and trans basically) and then sold off the engine and everything else. I was pretty crushed by this after so much time and effort on the car, and I always wanted to try and get it back.

If you want to get fully caught up on the history
https://ls1tech.com/forums/drag-raci...ld-thread.html

The new owner picked it up, and started doing some work on it. He started by having the car painted black, and having the suspension adjusted to drop the car and corner balance it. He also had the windshield and rear hatch glass replaced with optic armor. They then got his engine and trans in the car, and all wired and plumbed. As far as I know its been on the dyno once, but he never ended up taking it to the track. I was on him for years to run the car, and/or to sell it to me. Well after 8 years he FINALLY said come on down and get it! This happened sometime around June of this year and I was trying to see if I could really make it happen, and if he was really serious about selling. We went back and forth, and it seemed to be getting locked in. He was supposed to send me current pics and videos showing me the car since I hadn't seen anytning for a few years on it. That dragged for a bit, but when he finally did he mentioned I should just buy it complete. I responded with I am sure I cant afford it, but I have to ask how much. He threw out a crazy number for the whole car, AND his enclosed 28' trailer that I could not pass up. I booked the flight, booked a rental truck, got the money and impatientally waited for the big day!

Friday FINALLY came around and I was a wreck from not sleeping for the previous two weeks. Thursday I got to bed around 1:30AM or so, and I was wide away at 4:45! The flight wasnt until 10:15 but man I couldn't wait, I was nervous and excited and didnt know what to do with myself. Lets just switch to pics with captions to make this a bit faster (its going to be a LOT still)

Our plane pulling up!





Goodbye Chicago





Hello Tampa





My chariot awaits! I was not expecting it to be a diesel, but I was happy it was





Had to make a Walmart trip (well this was the first) to get a hitch and locks. Pain in the *** having to get a 2-1/2 shank for a 2-5/16 ball. The selection wasnt great, so we had to go big, which worked out because it was a larger drop as well.



Even had to buy a pipe wrench to put the ball on. Lou (a machinst) was like dont let anyone see me using a pipe wrench, so I grabbed a pic LOL



AND HERE SHE IS!!!





Grabbing the trailer from storage





In the box





Back to Walmart for some straps. He said he had some, but they were not 2" so no dice for me for 20+ hours of driving. Met a super sketchy dude while we were changing the tiedowns!





Much better even though they are crazy long.





First fill up. Honestly I have no idea why I didnt do this before we got the trailer, but oh well we had time to kill.





Had to get some Waffle House! Only a little sketchy, across the street was worse but thats what you get in Valdosta at like 1AM or whatever it was.





We had a hell of a time finding a room. We made it almost to Atlanta before we found a hotel with 1 room.





Still there in the mornig!





Same with the other engine....





And the car [img]data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7[/img]





We made it back to my house about 1AM today. Here is a shot of it in the driveway after I slept a few hours.

 

I had a great plan to install a hitch like I did on the SC so I could use the ATV to move the car around. I had ordered the hitch a week ago, and when I went to install it I found that we had covered the access holes years ago. So that project will have to wait. Got the car rolled out to get a look at it and come up with a plan.





We were able to just remove the chute and use the anchor point for it.





DAMN she looks good!!!





I am going FULL hillbilly over here LOL





Trying to charge the battery, but shes dead dead.





Of course everyone wanted to come check out the car, including the old owner [img]data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7[/img]





He is VERY excited that I have the car, and loved looking over it all just like I did to see what has changed (not much).



So I wanted to get it fired up today. I have never messed with a dry sump before, and wasnt really sure what I needed to do. Long story short I over filled it and made a little bit of a mess. With that dream shattered I got it on the lift in the garage.





No pics under the car yet, I need to clean it up some. I also need to run through the wiring and the Holley configuration to see how he had it all setup. The car is like 95%, just needs a little finishing here and there and some changes to be current and legal. One thing I didnt really expect is that the Holley screen is so old that I will have to replace it, along with the harness. Not the end of the world, but I thought that was going to be more optional than required. The other big thing to resolve is the chassis, making sure it current.

 

Well that's a super cool story! It's crazy the attachment we get to cars at different times in our lives. Look forward to the updates.
Just a little advice, if you're going through the trouble of changing the Holley harness in a car like that, I would probably spend the extra $, and buy a harness from Devin Vanderhoof. HCR Innovations. His are a much better quality than a Holley.

 

Subscribing

 

Glad it all came together Sean. I need to cruise out there and check it out. I remember seeing you and Chris race it back in the day.

 

Congrats on getting the car. A major plus (in my book anyways$ is he had it painted black.

im glad you kept it short. LMAO

 

Awesome. it is always nice to get an old friend like that back in the family.

 

Well a little more work/investigation this weekend. I got the intake off, found some lose hardware doing that.





I was also surprised to find that it has a traditional gasket and not an O-ring style like I am used to on LS





The one breather like for the oil tank was knocked down from at least -12 to a -8, and was then just slid over the tube on the stock valley plate. That's gonna change!





Besides that I just figured out what is feeding the oil on the valve covers, that the TB is 90mm (surprised by that), and minor other things. I didn't get too crazy yet because I was still deciding what my plans were going to be. I think I am starting to get locked in on what I want to do.



I also recorded some video, and hopefully will have that edited together this week to post.

 

Whoa, just noticed that my last post was cut short. That should be fixed now.

I am pretty sure I am going to go with dual fuel systems. I am debating modifying the intake I have, or getting something else. Doesn't seem like there are many options for dual RAIL intakes for LS7 heads. Also I have seen some others that use a paper gasket like the one I have. Wonder why they are not using the o-ring style?

 

I finally got around to finishing the video about the new car!

 

Cool story for sure. Was that an industrial type rental as most companies won't insure the truck if used for towing?

 

Is ole plumbob still in business? I really want one of those motor plates....

 

That was just Enteprise truck rental, which is seperate from the normal locations. They knew that was why I was renting from what I remember. You are correct though, its not easy to find a rental pickup to tow with.
Yeah, Bob is still doin the damn thing!

I have updates! I posted somewhere else, so am going to just copy and paste. I will do better next time Alright fine, I guess I can post an update. Of course I cant do a damn thing without moving **** around.



Ahhh there it is



Lets give her a walk around and see what it looks like













That was fun, now lets tear it apart [img alt=""]data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7[/img]



Took a nice gas shower today. Its old E85, or whatever VP has for E85.



Where I ended off for the day.



I need to take off the fuel pump and the bracket for the old fire bottle, and then pull the wiring out from inside. I drained out all the fluids, but left the oil lines on for now until I get some caps that I ordered. Fuel lines, trans cooler lines, coolant lines, turbo feed, steam port stuff, breathers, are all off. I need to take out the catch can, and somehow take out the catch can for the drysump tank which I know is full of oil. So not only is it heavy, they bolted it though the shock tower so I need to try to reach around to get to the nuts.

I had to put the chevelle back in to go grab some dinner, and I didnt want to run it late putting it away so I guess I will have to finish in the morning. I am trying not to hack out the wiring, but we will see how long I can hold out. There was a lot more house wire in there than I expcted to see LOL. That wasnt us as far as I know, but I also never did anything with any of the wiring on this car, I left it all to Chris.

Alright, back at it today since the clock is ticking.

Looks so weird without tail lights



You will see more of this kind of stuff later but this was wiring for a sensor that was like 12ga. Probably a bit overkill



I was trying to not hack the wiring even though I had no plans to re-use any of it. So I took my time getting it all through the engine bay.



This was a bit of a suprise. I am pretty sure Chris sold the car with the Holley coil packs. I was planning on changing them anyway, but still didnt think it still had truck coils.



Harness out with only a little bit of cutting!



Engine bay cleared out. Besides the O2 sensor



Lets look over the wiring shall we











So yeah, that just got chucked in the garbage. The only thing I maybe considered keeping was the engine harness, but there was too much damage and modifications.

Here is most of the AN lines out of the car. There are still a few oil lines in there, and some others that I had taken off a while back.



What looks like 2 grand in zip ties alone, and I keept finding them for like an hour after I cleaned up this pile



I still need to remove the bracket for the fuel pump and the fire bottle, but I needed a second set of hands for that. I also have the oil lines up front but I left that for now so it wont drip on the chevelle. I have caps coming this week, so I can knock that out real quiick next weekend.

Lets see what it looks like all stripped down.





























I will probably take off the door panels, and maybe some more **** like the coil packs.

Also, anything that came off the car is for sale [img alt=""]data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7[/img] Stock dash, door panels, rear firewall, 5lb fire bottle, fuel pump, fuel filters, fuel cell, catch can, other catch can, oil filter. More stuff will be up for sale later, but if you are interested in something just ask.

Well thats all for now. Next update she should be loaded up and heading out.

 

Not much of an update today, but here we go.



I got the lines all pulled off and everything capped.





Put a temporary new wheel on





Driverside rats nest of door wiring. Considering the only things connected were the windows, what in the hell!





My new fire bottles showed up today!









I got the windows rolled up, that took some doing! I am going to replace both motors and regulators when it gets back.









Then it was time to shuffle everything around









Thats better!





The Chvelle has a bit of leaky diff





I think everything is all ready to go! I am going to put some d-rings on my trailer and then its just waiting until Friday

 

Well I couldnt leave the car so dirty, so I gave it a half *** wash.



I hit it with a pretty gentle nozzle on the pressure washer to knock off the bigger stuff





Then foamed it down. I actually did this a couple times









I didnt agitate it at all. One it was too cold outside, and two I didnt want to rub any dirt in. So I just hit it with a little more agressive nozzle.





A half *** dry, and back in the garage she goes.













Last interior pic





Last little project was adding some d-rings to my trailer.





I spent a decent amount of time deciding where to put them and make sure I didnt hit anything under.





Whew missed it all!





Second one done!













NOW I can just impatientaly wait until Friday.

 

Going 4 link?

 

Well were all loaded up and ready to go!



First up, I really hate how mich this ******* truck sags, even with an empty trailer!





Anyway, it took a little doing but took my time and got it up without too much drama. Shout out to my wife who was a very unwilling helper in the car making sure nothing catostrphic happened.





Strapped it down, and got it backed into the driveway





Damn she looks good!





New D-rings didn;t immediately rip out, so thats good!





I checked/filled all the tries on the trailer and the truck, torqued the lug nuts on the trailer, have the trailer aid, wheel chocks, impact, sockets and inflater loaded up in the truck. I am ready to hit the road first thing in the morning.

 

Finally back, so time for an update! Did around 550 miles today, and the truck and trailer didnt miss a beat. This was my first time towing any distance with the truck and it was very nice.



Woke up a liittle later than I planned, but still hit the road nice and early





Stopped by my buddies house to make sure I was good and stressed out dealing those narrow southside streets!





We did decide the car was too far forward at one point, but it was all towing fine so we didnt bother moving it back.



Anyway we made one pit stop on the way out, so that means another picture of course!





And here she is in her new home at J&E Chassisworks!





I dont really want to let lose the plans yet, but I will update as I get more pics along the way.



In the meantime, my wing came out of the mold today [img alt=""]data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7[/img]

 

Very cool. I'm in for this one.

 

I got some pics from the chassis shop, so here goes nothing





























And some pics of the carbon parts I picked up last week