good point. missed that about the pistons.

 

yup. This was an option I considered early on. I still read about people doing this, and that's exactly what they run into.. they mill the L92s to get compression up, then run into PTV issues.

The L92s flow great for the price as it is my understanding, but unless you're running an LQ9 or something, I think there's other routes to go.

the ls3 intake also outflows the ls6 replacement, so that would also make the rectangle port a good setup IF we didn't have those issues.

I'm looking to keep the chambers around 59cc. With the proper gasket that should give me about an 11:1 compression, and I don't think it'll be small enough at that level that I'll have PTV issues, since any cam I'll be going with will undoubtedly have less than .650" lift.

 

There's always the option to swap in a set of LS2/LQ9 rods/pistons then throw the LS3 heads/intake on.

 

I decided enough was enough and tony's top end, while awesome, is out of my "first round" build budget.

As such.. I pulled the trigger yesterday on some stage 2.5 ls6 heads milled .030 from TSP and a 228r cam.

if it makes 370-399.. that's good enough for now. If I don't like it, I'll save up and buy tony's setup after the fact. It will cost more in the long run this way if I don't like what I'm buying now, but less if I do like it.

I saw a build on youtube in an 80s malibu, lq4, "prc 243s" (didn't say stage what..) 224 cam, ls6 intake put down 370whp through a built 60e and a 10 bolt.

I figure.. 2.5 ls6 heads, 228, fast 102, and milled .030.. should get me closer to the 400 mark. The money i'm saving going this route over tony's route may cost me 40-80whp, but the savings financially almost lets me buy the entire top end for just the price of heads here.

AND.. if I don't like this stuff, I'm sure there's plenty of people here that wouldn't mind taking slightly used components off my hands at a discounted price later. (I say that.. and yet no one wants my ls6 valve springs... I'll give it a week and then they're going into the dumpster.)

TSP included a set of pushrods. Jon had a ballpark length they SHOULD be, but said if I measure and they aren't right, we can RMA and get the correct ones sent out. So no worries there. I won't touch these until this thing is ready to go together.

I'm a LITTLE concerned about ptv, simply for the fact that the heads are milled so much. I'm trying to get to 59cc chambers, and trying to get to an 11:1 compression, so I'll still want to measure the quench and determine my head gaskets from there. TSP recommended the stock 6.0 gaskets, I'd also looked at LSA head gaskets, both of which are either .054 or .051. (I've read both.)

The guys at TSP didn't think a 228 cam (it has .588" lift) would cause any issues, even with the mill work, but its better safe than sorry. So I'll either have to learn how to measure ptv (I am trying to learn on this project ya know..) or pay someone to check it for me. Flycutting I'll still pay someone to do.. simply because screwing up my bottom end is gonna cost loads.

I'm also debating if I should try to assemble this myself. I've never done it before. I have a torque wrench, but its in foot pounds and not inch pounds, and i know some of the intake bolts etc. use inch pounds. I understand how all the components go together, tbh it doesn't seem like it'd be that hard, I just want to make sure I use assembly lube in all the right places, put my head gaskets on correctly, and torque everything exactly how it should be torqued.

I have a set of 2003 GM FSM for the trucks this motor came out of, which as luck would have it is exactly where this motor came from, so I'm sure it covers all the torque specs and all, but there's probably some better literature for this. Anyone have any recommendations?

 

as long as you documented everything and put it back together in the order you took it apart then you should be fine...I've heard of people having trouble with timing the cam but that was with heads on it so you can at least see when cylinder 1 is at TDC. Re-assembling an engine is like putting together a puzzle, in my opinion. I had the joy of rebuilding my yamaha motocross bike and this gave me more problems than my SBC in my old Trans AM...All I have to say is **** DOHC lol!

 

Gettin closer!

These heads are beautiful and the valves are huge. Maybe when I get the 317s off I can show you a comparison.

Next up.. head gaskets, head bolts, intake, TB, fuel rails injectors intake gaskets rockers water pump and other misc. loose ends.

also, I know about the pushrods.. its too early to have them now. TSP said to go ahead and get them.. measure once irts all together.. and then if these are wrong, I can RMA them for the correct ones.

I was looking at a .041 gasket. Like a felpro or something. The stock GM gasket is .054 or something. I'm trying to get an 11:1 compression.

this cam has .588" lift (tsp 228r) I'm wondering if milled .03 heads and .041 gaskets is gonna give me ptv issues.

 

So close but so far away.

I was tallying up whats left to buy toady and I'm STILL short a good $3-5k in parts for just the engine to make this happen.

I'm gonna have close to $10,000 in just this motor. It's exhausting.

I've considered cutting my losses, selling all these parts, the car, buying a used c6 with a hefty DP that I get from selling stuff.. but I hate to go into debt for something like this.

Hard to fathom 400whp is so pricey.

Fast 102/102 combo runs about $1400
Headers/Y pipe about $900
injectors about $750
new a/c (that I need anyway) $800
new oil pan etc. ~$400
paying someone to do PTV work and flycutting $350
head gaskets ~$200
bolt kit since I'm missing a lot of them now $300

not to mention the new transmission, crossmember, stall, wire harness etc that this requires as well.

It's something to chew on. I like my car but damn am I tired of spending every penny I make on this old car.

In order to move forward, I still have to come up with a deck bridge and a depth gauge, I also need to measure my piston dish and verify that TSP did the milling correctly on theheads before I can continue.

To do this, I've been recommended to buy some lexan and drill a hole in it, get some lithium grease and a thin oil or alcohol liquid and a pipette or syringe and measure the CC of the chambers that way.

Any ideas where to find the pipette? This is the only part of that I can't locate.

 

haha I was thinking of doing this to my camaro but after reading your build, especially your last post it sounds like something i dont want to get into lmao
good luck though and can't wait to see the finished product!

 

I'm sure there's ways to do it cheaper??

I just can't seem to find them.


Those prices I listed above come up to $5100 alone.

I spent about $2k on heads and cam already, $650 for the bottom end

Ya gotta figure there's at LEAST another $1000 in misc. little pieces parts that you have to round up to drop this in.

Also, since i can't swap it myself (my garage ceiling is too low and my driveway is like the side of a fricken mountain) I have to fork out $1500-2500 to do the swap.

Also, there's a delimma I'm facing as to when it can actually be done. Since the 60E and 80E use different converters, and this 228r cam requires a stall over stock, I am faced with buying 2 converters, or in waiting to drop this motor in AFTER I get my 80e, something which will cost upwards of $4k depending on how you do it. ($4k would be a kit from jakes. I may be able to cut it closer to $2k by going with a salvage yard tranny and having it rebuilt tho.)

I guess there's no such thing as a "budget build" in this market unless you mean ~$10k by the word "budget."

You can cut corners to save cost, but I think you get what you pay for.

 

So I'm out today measuring on my engine. Uh.. ok.. I must have measured wrong.. or thjis motor has a -9.5CC dish??

uuh.. I'll measure again..

ok, I measured again, I have a leak that keeps occurring that's throwing off my numbers. I've tried 4 times now and the've varied from 6-12cc. Huge variation (the leak was pretty big )

I'll post a photo in a bit of how I was trying to do this.

Unfortunately.. with this range, I can't accurately determine my dish.

I'm also using a caliper to average how high above the deck the piston sticks up. I took 5 measurements and then averaged them, finding that the piston sticks up 0.0127" above the deck. Another piston is showing 0.016"

the used gaskets on the motor now are showing ~.059-.054" thickness with the same caliper, which sounds about like a stock gasket thickness.

 

Iirc piston volume is +6.54 cc.

 

yea, I was getting a LOT of leakage despite my attempts to fix it.



That's what i was doing. I had a piece of plexi with a hole drilled in it, and some lithium grease. I was using a syringe I got from Tractor supply in the equestrian section to fill the dish. The problem seemed to be no matter how much lithium grease I used, the seal wasn't tight enough, so I kept having leakage. This is partly because the engine sits on a good 1-2" incline because of the engine stand, it kept running back (I used the tape to cover the water jacket holes. I was using denatured alcohol. I think the cooling system should be flushed in this just to be on the safe side before it goes in.) I also found some in the cylinder behind it.

While I was here I went ahead and did some other work today.



I started by taking the stock crank off. This is as far as I got with the stock bolt. If you look at this picture you can see there's actually intendations in the crank pulley where a puller can grab. They worked perfectly.



When I ran out of bolt I went to napa and got the bronze bolt you see here. It's an M16 2.0 pitch 120mm long bolt. They had it in stock, cost about $6. You can see it here next to the stock pulley bolt to show you how much longer it is.



With the pulley out of the way, I dove into the timing cover. This isn't a GM oil pump I don't think. It looks quite small and the part number on the back starts with an M. Is it a melling perhaps?



Off it goes.



And out comes the cam. This went pretty easy actually, but then again it is sitting on an engine stand. I used the water pump bolts as ls1howto suggests to get a good grip on the cam and keep it from dragging in the back.



Comparison between the stock LQ4 truck cam and the TSP 228R. They're rotated the same way so you can see the difference in shape. Do you see what looks like white paint on the new one? That kinda worried me. I hope this isn't a problem.



New cam is in, along with the ls2 timing chain I got from TSP. This was a bit tricky to line up, it took several tries to get it to work. I hope I got this right. This part has worried me since I bought this engine. It certainly LOOKS right to me..



And the oil pump is on.



I don't know if you notice from this pic, but my new ls7 lifters and lifter trays are in, as well as my new crank seal on the front, timing chain cover seal, and ls6 valley cover. The Lq4 block doesn't have the bulge that the ls1 casting has in the valley, so I didn't have to modify a thing, it bolted right in.

I used Napa's assembly lube "grease" on the cam bearings, lobes, the lifter rollers, lifters themselves, timing chain and gears. It's a white grease like substance that quickly and easily sticks to engine parts (and your hands..) it's difficult to get off your hands and makes using latex gloves like I do when doing this work nearly impossible.

So that's it for now. I put the 317s back on it for now to keep the cylinders closed off.

I decided to cheapen out a little more and go with an ls6 intake. A friend of mine convinced me that since it's the very top of the top end, that it will be the easiest to change if I'm not happy, and I can recoup almost all of the cost for it in the classifieds.

As such, this engine may not make even 400whp, but.. if it's fun to drive.. I probably won't care for a while. And when I do.. I can go with a fast, and/or go with mamo's top end, and that should give it a healthy bump with the existing bottom end.

 

After getting everything together I loaded the engine up and all the parts, and took it down to Hunters performance in Dallas. They're going to check it out, make sure everything's solid, put in new bearings, clean it up, measure PTV, flycut if needed, measure for compression, order and install head gaskets, head studs, check for pushrod length, and pretty much get this thing assembled to a long block.



It may be a while before I see it again, but when I do it should be almost done. Just a few (thousand dollars worth of) odds and ends.

 

Hey that's me! They were ported to stage 2.5 just like yours. You should have no problem hitting 400rwhp. Wish I had the money for the fast intake and tb.

 

Ah, cool. Nice car!

Yea, I decided to ditch the fast 102 for now as well. Saved me $1000. Again, if it doesn't meet my goals I can pretty easily swap it out later. The top end intake/injectors/TB is probably some of the easiest stuff to get to on a build like this. I decided not to sweat the top end so much the first go round.

 

Yeah you're definately right there. You can use the injectors for a while before needing to upgrade. I put down 378 on red tops but I switched to greens Even without the fast 400rwhp shouldn't be too hard. Can't wait to see it in the car running

 

Teardown in the shop.

The crank looks pretty good to me, but the pistons have what seems like a lot of wear on them below the rings. (I don't have a pic of those.) Chris says there's what looks like dirt in the oil pan. and it doesn't look like a 2 month old engine with the wear it has on it.

Either way, we're going to have it cleaned up, crank polished, and new bearings put in.

 

be sure to check the cam bearings, if you weren't already planning on replacing them.

With the block upside-down, use a small mirror to check the lower side of the cam bearings, this is where the vast majority of the wear will be.

The #3 cam bearing on my 145k LM7 was worn down to the copper.

 

Getting all new cam and rod bearings. He said it should be ready for re-assembly early next week. I'll probably drop by Monday for an update.

 

Nice. Good luck with the build!