Formula350

iTrader: (3)

Silly silly Beaflag Now you know though, for future reference heh

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

I bought a TH350/400 PTC 3800 converter today for $250 shipped. It's a nice and tight converter so it should work well with the turbo setup. The nice thing is it's a standard SBC converter. If I ever decide to go to a more modern setup it'll work with a $40 spacer.

The thing I'm trying to figure out now is what transmission to go with. At this point it's been narrowed down to a TH350 and a TH400. They're basically the same thing and I know this discussion has been beaten to death, but I'm not sure.

The thing is I already have a TH350 from my friend's 76 van. I'm looking to spend around $500-650 to build a transmission. I want it to have a manual valve body, engine braking, and a trans brake. It's probably going to cost me a lot more than that though if I go with the TH400. On the other hand though I believe I can build the TH350 for that much money and have it live for a while with what I'm going to throw at it.

I've been doing a lot of research on parts to build these two transmissions and I'm kind of torn. I'm having problems finding parts that will make a TH350 stand up to what I'm looking at doing to it. On the other hand I can find pretty much every imaginable TH400 part out there in billet aluminum. I want to build a transmission once and be done with it.

I see a lot of guys in this section running TH350s and they seem to be working pretty well. The thing is though on the flip side the guys that are running 10-8 second setups are running 400s. At what point does a TH400 become ideal?

Does anyone have any thoughts, comments, or places they know that sell transmission parts for a good price? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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I'm going to go and work on the car tomorrow. I'm going to pull the intake manifold off to paint it and polish the fins, throttle body, and fuel rails. I'm also going to take the water pump I have out of the tub it's been sitting it, paint it black, and do the weep hole mod on it. If I get that finished I'm going to remove the power seating wires from the body harness and work on my gauge pods.

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AWESOME! I sent you a PM with my info in it. I'll pay for the shipping so it doesn't cost you anything. That helps out so much as that's the only piece (that I know of) that I'm missing for the engine. I can start putting it back together now.

Yeah, but hopefully I only have to do it once more and that method is going to be implemented.

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EDIT: OOHH, I also started a new parts for sale thread that's consolidated a bunch of random stuff from this car, my Formula, and aftermarket stuff. There's lots of random stuff in there so you should check it out:
https://ls1tech.com/forums/lsx-parts-sale/990936-nitrous-parts-loudmouth-1-titanium-valves-stock-ls1-93-interior-parts.html

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

I got quite a bit of work done yesterday and as soon as I finish this I'm heading down there to continue working. I started off by pulling the intake manifold and fuel rails off to do some painting and polishing.

Pulling the fuel rail was a major pain in the ***. I guess that's because my injector O-rings are really shot:

Here's the other one when I finally got it off the fuel rail in my garage later last night.


Once I finally got the fuel rails off heres what it looked like:


Intake manifold off:


I noticed that when I pulled the intake off the valley area and intake ports had a lot of trash in there:


Here's where I ended up having to stop at the shop yesterday because I ran out of time:

The driver's side head is completely off except for the steam tube on the back of the head. I know it's a 15mm, but I can't seem to get the damn thing off.

I threw a bunch of random parts in the trunk of my 95 to haul them home and continue working last night. I noticed when I pulled the intake manifold off of the car that oddly enough I hadn't removed the EGR valve.


The PCV valve rubber piece that the valve sits in was rather annyoing to remove, but no where near as bad as the injectors:


This is the grand total of my garage work before I finally gave up. I managed to get the throttle body removed and the intake manifold completely stripped down. I'm going to throw it in the sand blaster to get it cleaned off and prepped for painting. I also got all of the injectors out of the fuel rails.


Here's some more crap that I'm removing from the car. The EVAP and EGR stuff are going in the ever growing pile of cars parts in my garage. I plan on weighing them today though and adding their weights to my list.


I'm off to go work on my car and I'll update this again later.

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

Well, today was extremely frustrating. I got down there a little later than I planned, but that was alright. With everything taken apart the night before I decided that I'd get everything prepped for painting. My thought process was that it shouldn't take me long at all to take the fuel rails apart, tape some parts off, and sand blast everything. I was completely wrong. I was trying to take the throttle body completely apart so sand wouldn't get in the shaft. I thought all I'll have to do is unscrew these four small torx screws and slide it out. ******* WRONG!

I started by loosening all four of the screws. The first one was fine. The second one makes one and a half turns and then ******* breaks off in the shaft. I didn't get too mad, but decided to keep working. I got the other one loose with no problem and moved onto the last one which proceeds to break off completely in the shaft with out even turning.


At that point I got really mad. I decided to keep working though and finish what I started. I went to remove the other two screws that were still in there and they wouldn't come out. Some how they got stuck in there too. I ended up smashing them out of the shaft with a punch and hammer.

I figured it would be alright and decided to sand blast everything. That part went really well and as you can see everything looks great.


I moved on and thought that I could drill out the two broken screws with a smaller bit. Wrong.... I then tried to vice grip out the one that had a large amount of the threads showing. That didn't work either and in the process the damn vice grips broke on me. After that I decided to try and file the broken thread surface flush with the shaft so I could actually get the bit to stay on top of it. The filing helped a little. In the process or removing the screws I decided to move up to a larger drill bit to completely remove the bolt and I'd just use a larger screw.

That didn't work at all because I couldn't hold the drill straight at the angle I was at. The final thing I tried was to use the drill press and try to drill it out. FAIL... For some odd reason those screws are made out of some super strong material that has zero tensile strength. You can't drill through them, but if you try to turn them with a T8 torx bit they snap in half.

At that point I was really frustrated because I had just spent three and a half hours along with the hour and a half I spent last night to get this crap ready to paint and I broke it. I asked everyone at the shop what they thought I could do after that and no one had any clue. Jason told me that he had another LT1 throttle body in the room of death, but I'd have to find it. The problem I have is that I need one with a TV cable attachment so I can use my stock transmission for a while.

I said screw it and decided to dig through the whole room of death looking for it. This may not sound like a large task to anyone who has never seen this room, but it took me over an hour to search through the whole room and not find the throttle body. I'll take a picture of this room tomorrow and the rest of the shop so you guys can see what we have going on and where I work on my car.

I then decided to go up on the second story storage area and look around to see if it had been placed up there by some odd chance. It wasn't up there, but while I was searching I found a set of 15/16 gold Crane rockers. I set them on my car to see if they'd fit and sure enough they do. I asked Jason what they were and he said they're 1.5 ratio, NSA, 7/16th stud SBC rockers. I wrote down the part number that was grinded into the top of the rocker 7D87, but I can't find any info on them any where. I'm going to call Crane tomorrow and ask them what that part number is so if they work out I can get another one.

Finally, the last place to look was the storage shed in the back. Sure enough after an hour and a half of digging through everything imaginable in the shop I found it. I got really lucky too because the fuel rail was sitting in another box in the shed close to the intake manifold. Old and New:


I haven't looked at it too well, but I think I'm going to try and weld the TV cable attachment to the 94+ throttle body. I'm also going to see if I can take apart my broken 93 throttle body and maybe attach the throttle cable arm with the TV cable to the 94+ one. Anyone ever taken a throttle body completely apart and know or have an idea on how to attach the TV cable?

I also weighed the EGR valve and EVAP stuff.

Front Bumper Support = 25.375 lbs
Fog lights and brackets = 4.0625 lbs
Cruise control, cable, and throttle cable cover = 4.4375 lbs
Air pump and brass fittings = 5.9375 lbs
Stock horns = 1.875 lbs
Stupid siren and loud horn = 2.5 lbs
Stock Y pipe and single cat = 21.1875 lbs
Frame horns = 5.125 lbs
Fender metal = 1.25 lbs
Rear Seatbelts = 4.1375 lbs
Aftermarket Speaker Wiring (will be added to considering there is a ton more of it) = .25 lbs
Carpet = 29.0375 lbs
Windshield washer fluid reservoir with water = 8.0625 lbs
Heat shields beneath the car = 2.1875
Soon to be useless exhaust hangers = 2.00 lbs
Rear Seats = 22.4375 lbs
Random exhaust hangers, brackets, nuts, and bolts = 9.25 lbs
Front Speakers = 2.75 lbs
Rear Speakers = 3.25 lbs
Front Speaker Brackets = 1.25 lbs
Interior brackets including (rear seat brackets, antenna bracket, rear seat belt brackets) = 3.875 lbs
Security System Hood Lock = 2.6875 lbs
Antenna + Wire (not including the actual metal rod) = .25lbs
Stock catback = 50.1875lbs
Rear Armrests = 4.21875lbs
Extra Metal Trimmings = 1.00lbs
Emergency Brake System = 12.125lbs
Door Fiberglass = 1.90625 lbs
Door Crash Bars and Brackets = 17.5625 lbs
Window Regulator Metal = 1.8846535171744791666666666666667 lbs
Driver's Air Bag = 3.625 lbs
Passenger's Air Bag = 9.46875
Heater Core (empty) = 1.03125
AC Tube = .09375
Black Mat = 10.03125 lbs
Airbag Crash Sensors = 1.53125 lbs
Mat that is Underneath the Dash Pad = 2.34375 lbs
Heater Core Hoses = 2.0125 lbs
Front Sway Bar = 15.09375 lbs
Plastic Shrouding = 4.968749 lbs
Power - Manual seat slider = 14.4375 - 10.8125 = 3.625 lbs
EGR and EVAP parts = 1.625 lbs

Grand total to this point = 307.509699 lbs + all the stuff I still have to either cut out or weigh.

Its nice finding random things like that I can remove. The seat slider and the EGR I didn't even think of until I saw them, but there goes another 5 lbs.

Jason let me borrow his Torx bit set tonight so I'm going to put the 93 intake manifold and fuel rails apart and take apart the 94+ one to get ready to sand blast. I should be able to get it completely ready so that when I get there tomorrow I can just throw it all in the sand blaster and get everything prepped for painting. I still need to get the passenger side head off and those steam vent tubes. I'm going to try and take the valve springs out and ask my dad to bring home his dremel tool so I can get porting on the heads, intake manifold, and TB.

I need to make a list of all the random parts that I'm going to need to put this thing back together. I need to make another trip to a junkyard soon to get all the little random screws and parts that I'm missing.

SoxXpupPeT

iTrader: (34)

damn man you got pretty involved with the weights of everything. but thats pretty bad *** lol. dont do what i did when i resealed my intake when i put it together. and not tput enough silicone. and i put alot. but you really have to put ALOTTT!!!!!!

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

Yeah, I was wondering how much weight I could take out of the thing and decided to weigh everything. I noticed there was a crap ton of silicon on there when I removed it.

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All of the work that I did last night and today was pretty much the exact same as yesterday. Last night I worked on stripping down the new 94+ intake manifold and putting the 93 one back together. The only thing that was annoying was putting the 93 fuel rails back together.

93 Intake Manifold back together:


94+ Intake manifold stripped:


Today may have been a little redundant, but it was really good. When I got back from my class this morning there was a box sitting at my parent's house. I walked over there and as I'm carrying it my garage the UPS guy comes by and drops off another. I put both of those boxes in my garage and go over to my parent's to use my computer. As I'm leaving there's three more boxes sitting by the door. Everything that was being shipped to me managed to get here at the exact same time. The funny thing is I payed for some of the items two weeks ago and others two days.

I had fun unpacking everything. I'm running out of room in my garage to store things. I'm trying to sell of a bunch of the extra stuff I have sitting around.

Two of the boxes were for this car and the other three were parts for my Formula. Check the Formula link in my sig and it'll have all the details on what I'm building. I'm letting the cat out of the bag tonight, but don't want to clutter this thread up too much.

One of the boxes is my 10 inch PTC, 3800, TH spline converter:

I decided to just build the TH350 up a decent amount to hold what I plan on building. I already have it and I can not spend too much money building it up to take about 500-600 rwhp. I'll just sell it or build another transmission when it comes time to change everything out for the real engine that'll be going in.

The other box was from THE ******* MAN, SLawson86 who sent me two opti caps and rotors for free even when I offered to pay for the shipping.

I'm going to combine all of my random opti parts together tonight.

Moving all of those boxes around and opening them took a lot longer than I anticipated, so I didn't get that much done today at the shop. I also forgot my work clothes which sucked. I was wearing khakis and a soccer jersey. I was trying to stay clean, but it didn't work out too well.

I did manage to sand blast the hell out of all of the 94+ intake manifold parts and air them off.

Ever seen a PCV cover that clean before?

Get all of those parts clean took a long time and made my hearing slightly worse from the sand blaster. After I got that stuff cleaned off I loaded it back into my car so I can paint it this week end.

I then moved onto trying to finish removing the heads from my car. I managed to take the rockers off of the passenger head and remove all of the head bolts. It doesn't look like it's going to be fun getting the accessory bracket off. I still can't get those steam vent tubes off. I'm going to pull the accessory bracket off and then get someone to help me carry the other head with the lines still attached. Then, remove them on a bench and throw them in the trash. I'll be converting the tubes over to AN fittings and a -6AN line with a barb fitting on the end. I'd like to thank Ray@Nitrous Outlet for posting this.

I'm going to put my Opti back together tonight and work on taping things off for paint. The rest of the weekend I'm going to paint my intake manifold, water pump, and brake booster. I'm also going to try and polish the fins on my intake manifold, throttle body, and fuel rails. If I get that done I'm going to port my stock throttle body. I'm going to leave the stock blades in it after yesterdays fun with them, but remove the ridge right before them.

doaberetta

iTrader: (1)

Dude, isn't it so easy to work on lt1's when all that bs is removed.

Keep building!

Speed Density

iTrader: (38)

Whats the problem with your TB, Tyler?

SLawson86

iTrader: (8)

looking good man, looking good. btw, those rails are pretty damn easy to polish... i did mine last week, i didnt wet sand either. just used mothers polish and about45 mins of rubbing the living **** out of them. stepped between 4 different grits of sandpaper for the rails on the top of the intake... turned out pretty damn good.

Formula350

iTrader: (3)

Learn2Read! j/k Broke screws, pounded stuff, filled stuff...

On that note, I don't think your going to want to use your 93's throttle shaft ever again. hitting it with the hammer and punch I bet would've bent it. Why not just get a 52mm for future proofing?

While you have the intakes out and such, could you confirm that the 94+ intake has a dip on the inside of the intake for the fuel rail crossover? Danke

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

I broke the blade screws off in the shaft that turns them and they won't come out. I mean I seriously tried everything to get them out. Drill, vice grips, hammer, punch, drill press, file, etc.... I now have a 94+ throttle body, but it doesn't have the provisions for the TV cable. I want to be able to drive the car soon. Well, relatively sooner if I can avoid spending the $600-750 to build my TH350 with the RMVB versus running my stock transmission with the TV cable.

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Actually, it has been a pain in the ***. Removing the intake manifold off of my Formula took me about 10-15 minutes with absolutely everything still attached to the car and me sitting on the radiator shroud. This car with absolutely everything removed and me standing in the engine bay took me over a hour to remove the intake manifold. Then, all the crap today was annoying too (I'll get to shortly).

Don't get me wrong because I love building the car. It just gets frustrating when crap breaks. I guess that's what I get working on a 15 year old car. All of these small things breaking and consumables; gaskets, bushings, etc... are nickle and diming me to death. Now, it's either build a $600-750 transmission or buy another $25-50 throttle body as a band aid.

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Thanks for the info. I've never polished anything so that's why I said I was going to try and polish them. I'd never taken apart a whole car either and so far it's going pretty well. I don't think it's going to be that hard. I'll just take my time with it like I do everything else.

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I don't plan on using it. It's probably going to sit in my garage for all eternity unless I can figure out a way to take it apart and Frankenstein together a 93 and 94+ throttle body to use my TV cable. I'd love to buy a larger throttle body, put a cam in it, build my transmission, and finish my turbo setup, but it all cost money that I don't have.

I'm bitching about having to buy motor mounts, tie rod ends, brakes, etc... I'm just going to get it setup now and eventually swap an LS engine in there. I already have an extra eagle 4 inch crank, power bond pulley, two sets of 408 pistons, timing chain, etc... It's either going to be a 408 nitrous engine or boost engine with my Forced Inductions S95.

I confirmed the 94+ setup. You can see the crossover in quite a few of the pictures I posted.

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I'm working on posting a really long reply. I just figured I break it up for readability purposes.

SLawson86

iTrader: (8)

letme see if i can get a stock throttle body from a 93... no promises but i can make a few calls... my buddy has pretty much an f-body junk yard for personal use at his house, catch is he doesnt sell the parts. but i have a bit of pull, ill keep you posted

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

That sounds really good. I might be able to go back and check on the Caprice that I snagged the water pump splined drive off of. It was a 93 also, but that also means another hour and a half drive. I found one on here, but the guy wanted to sell the whole intake manifold with everything still attached to it. I'm going to search around on here, but definetly keep me posted.

EDIT: Still working on really long reply with progress.

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

I didn't get anything done this weekend because I had to work and was fealing a little overwhelmed. It is hard to get motivated to work on things at the house in my garage after spending 5-6 hours working on everything earlier in the day. I am tonight though because I really need to get moving on this stuff.

I did get quite a bit done on the car today though. I'm at the point where I really need to start painting / polishing everything and ordering some parts. I started today off by removing the accessory bracket from the car. From looking at it I always thought it was a nice design, but in practicality it's rather frustrating.

For some odd reason we don't have or I can't find a good pulley remover in the shop. I was trying to get the power steering pulley off because I got the ratcheting wrench I was using stuck on the screw. I found this thing...

And promptly turned the shaft into a noodle trying to break the pulley loose. I think it's actually a claw style valve spring tool. For future reference they don't work to remove PS pulleys. I already put my good remover in my car so I get this pulley off tomorrow.

I just ended up unbolting the pump and pushing it off to the side. This is the one thing that frustrated me today. I don't know if this is the way this came from the factory or not, but this is plain retarded. Why are the AC and power steering lines intertwined?



I ended up having to detach everything and move them around to untangle the hoses. When I put the accesorry bracket back on there I'm going to reroue the hoses so they don't intertwine like that. I should then be able to remove the power steering pump or AC compressor independently with out having to remove the other.

I eventually got all of the accessories off and then decided to sand blast a few parts clean.


Before:


After:


Clean and mostly ready for painting:


I hucked the intake manifold, AC canister holder, and accessory bracket in the steam cleaner, but ran into a snag. It got moved when we were cleaning everything up. It has an extension cord wrapped around it that I guess they thought was the right one when them moved it across the shop from the outlet. Turns out the plug is completely different. I actually had everything in there and ready to run until we figured it out.

WOOPS... We're going to move it tomorrow morning and clean everything off. Then, I'll start painting. If that fails I'm breaking out the toothe brush and the blue / purple degreaser.

After that slight set back I moved on with a little help from Doug and we tag teamed getting the heads off with the steam tubes still attached.

We got the bolts off the back of the heads off with an impact gun because they were plain old stuck on there. They didn't want to come off now matter what we pried on it with. I'll take some pictures of how flawed the design on these bolts is and what happens when you try to remove them tomorrow. (Yes, I know the floor is starting to rust again even though I put rust inhibiter on it. I'm going to fix that when I put the AC box back in.)

Now, I've never pulled the heads off an LT1 before so I don't know if this is suprising.

This thing is full of massive carbon deposits. I'm actually glad I tore it apart at this point to clean all of the stuff out of it.

Continuing on with a second post.

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

Here's a picture of how gunked up the coolant ports are.

That's after I poked them.

With the amount of crap in this engine I don't think it would have run long at all if I hadn't taken it apart. All of the sand in the intake ports, carbon in the cylinders, and gunked up coolant ports would have done this thing in pretty quickly.

Here's how the car is sitting now.


I have both of the heads off and sitting on the table inside. Tomorrow I'm going to pull the heads apart to get ready for some work.

The next few steps require some money, but I can at least pull this off right now. I'm going to put them in list order as it's easier for me to figure out.

- Order Poly engine and trans mounts, line lock, proportioning valve, 1/18th tap for the weep hole water pump mod, and AN fittings to convert steam tubes.
- Drop the K member, engine, and transmission out of the car.
- Paint the engine bay satin black
- Replace the motor, trans mounts, and fix the freeze plug that is under the passenger side motor mount.
- Install line lock, proportioning valve, new rotors, pads, tie rod ends, and maybe SS brake lines.
- Polish fuel rails, intake manifold fins, alternator, AC compressor, AC canister, AC lines, tensioner (I might buy a new one), and throttle body (might wait on the TB)
- Paint intake manifold, water pump (after I tap it), and accessory bracket

EDIT: I know one good thing though. I called Crane about those rockers that I found at the shop. Ends up they are NSA, 7/16th stud, 1.6 ratio rockers. The ones I actually found in the shop are from the mid 70s. The Crane guy had a hell of a time finding the part number.

This got me rather annoyed today, but I can't find the little bag that my new Opti screws and seals came in. It's not at my house, the shop or in my car. I went to put the thing back together this weeked and couldn't find them. It's annoying because when I didn't have the parts to put it back together I knew where they were and now that I have those parts I can't find the bag. **** **** **** . Does anyone know if you can buy just the screws and seals by themselves some where?

Anyone have any good tips for polishing items? I've never done it before.

What exactly is the tap size needed for the weep hole mod for the water pump? I found some where that it's 1/18th by 17. Is that a pipe tap, NPC, standard? I have no idea on taps. I've never used one before.

Thanks,
Tyler

Speed Density

iTrader: (38)

I might have my stock 93' TB laying around, ill look.

MTBSully

iTrader: (7)

keep up the good work. those coolant holes look like $hit. bust out the air compressor and vacuum for sure. Lots of carbon too.

On another note. I wouldt reuse that steam tube. In getting it off with the heads still attatched, you could have bent it. I bent mine a tiny bit, and i ended up stripping the bolt hole in the back of the head becuase it was going in crooked. Luckily i was able to salvage it.

MTBSully

iTrader: (7)

those coolant holes have seen better days for sure

SS RRR

iTrader: (2)

Man those coolant passages are in sad shape. If you aren't going to go through the block hopefully you won't have any cooling issues.

Beaflag VonRathburg

iTrader: (176)

That sounds really good.

That's the plan so far. I need to find the shop vac. With everything moved around I can't find anything.

I plan on hucking those steam tubes in the trash. I doubt they got bent during removal, but I still don't ever plan on putting them back on there. I'll take some pictures of the damn bolts today. I'll spend the extra money on AN fittings just to never have to deal with that again.

I hope not. I'm going to check out what I can do to them today. Such as if I stick the air gun in there where's all that crap going?