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So like most of us with these cars, this whole project started off with some pretty humble beginnings. Was just going to be a down and dirty low budget swap to have something "fun" to drive and do burnouts in. By my signature it spiraled desperately out of control somewhere along the way but we'll get to where the car sits currently, eventually. (I'll make posts on this as I have time and try to keep it in chronological order, any questions or different pictures, feel free to ask)
The start, a co-worker had this beat up 119k 95 LT1 A4 car that had blown both head gaskets and he had given up putting money into it and picked himself up a Honda. It sat around the yard for a while and he was talking about donating it, I checked it out and saw it was a legit z28 v8 car, asked him what he wanted for it and got the car for $250 and two old playboys from a collection my brothers neighbor was legit just throwing away. Sweet, I have a running driving project, can screw around with my brother with his 80 Pontiac wagon with a BBC in it. Did a bunch of burnouts in it at the shop and tossed some boxed LCA's with polly bushings in it since my brother had them from his G-body and GM is super nice and like's to use the same stuff across platforms. Contemplating what I want to do with it we decided to GENI SBC swap it because my brother and I have been in and out of projects a lot and he worked at a hot rod shop at the time so stuff was easy and cheap to come by. Yanked the lt1 4l60 out and posted it for sale, sold it to an old co-worker for like 8-850 bucks, awesome, I'm making money!! The car is purple, but the owner before my co-worker plasti-dipped it black, and did a **** job of it. Here's some pics off car as I got it and yanking out the blown engine. The car was actually relatively clean outside, passenger fender was broken from the PO hitting a pole in a parking lot. Inside, ehh it was what you'd expect from a 20 year old car that some previous owner smoked in.
Was looking for what engine I wanted to slam in, of course how my luck would go about 2 weeks before I bought the Camaro, I sold the running complete 350 out of my 71 c-10 that's getting swapped over to an LS2, I know I'm doing everything backwards, oh well. Talked to some people, my brothers co worker had a 4 bolt roller 350 short block with a lt4 hot cam he was holding on to but he always needed money. Had a double roller chain, oil and timing covers, lifters and was supposed to only have 20k on it. Picked it up and a few other odds and ends he had for $400. In the spirit of budget I decided I'd look for a set of vortec iron heads, with a few small changes, 1.6rr and that cam I should be about 400ish at the crank according to the internet so that was the plan. While I waited for the right deal on heads to pop up I decided to take apart the engine and check it all over for the hell of it. Definitly had more than 20k on it, oh well, the crank and cam looked fine, cam bearings looked good too. Ended up putting two rod bearings and one main in because it had a little scratch in it. Found a guy selling a set of heads and a vortec single plane GMPP eliminator intake. Get the heads back, find a set of LS2 take off springs, some special comp retainers and some valve seals, cleaned up the heads and lapped in the valves, sweet everything looks good. Bolt it all together and start figuring out what accessories to run, and how. I wanted to keep power steering because I was only ever going to be a street cruiser. Did some research and found my old Saginaw v-belt set up off my c-10 would work the rack just fine. use a combination of hoses from the car and truck and some brazing to make the connections. There will pics of that later on. Used a regular SBC long water pump and picked up a 100amp single wire alternator and mount to make it it all work.
Went up to Carlisle and found a set of wagon wheel for the hell of it since they would fit, and were cheap and I didn't like the 16" re-pops that were on it. As you can also see I had originally planned on using a mechanical fuel pump on it but that later changed when I scored a regulator that would knock down the stock pump enough and had the stuff to make quick connects and not die from a fiery fuel leak, hopefully.
Week or two goes by, still trying to decide what the hell I'm going to use for this or that, there was literally zero build plan for this car, just wing it and read what others had done on the forum and hope for the best. I knew it would never have AC again so I pushed the car in and decided to go about hacking out the e-vap box. Used a combination of hammers, cut off tools and grinders to get it all out. Thought it would be nice to keep defrost and I wasn't feeling froggy to pull the dash out so I left the heater core, it never got hooked up, but it was there and I modified the inner box so the fan could actually blow air through the core and the vents. A block off from BMR was like 100 bucks, **** that, I have poster board, sheet aluminum and a plasma cutter, I'll make one. Fabbed up my own and made a hole for the heater core pipes to come through. Used some of the existing holes and a bunch of self tappers and secured it.
All right were back, gonna try to get some more updates typed up tonight. So at this point in the spring/summer I'd been coming up with ideas and getting parts together for this and that. Since I'm going SBC and took the whole ECU out, the stock gauges were useless to me. I got some Stewart Warner gauges for free so I wanted to go about mounting them in the dash. Had a tach, mechanical speedo, fuel level, water temp and oil pressure. I pulled the cluster and the surround and then used a marker and then a piece of solid wire to draw out the curvature that would allow the dash to sit up straight. After that I used some poster board and markers and made me up a template. Transferred that to a piece of thin sheet metal and epoxied some small tabs to the backside so I could attach my new cluster to the bezel. Laid everything out and made my holes then wired up everything including high beam indicator and turn signals. Clipped the factory plug for most everything except the sending units for the tach, oil and water.
I mounted up an old MSD street fire box I had laying around from my C10 to my hvac delete, later on that got changed out for a NASCAR spec 6al box I picked up off the forum for a deal. This same time frame Sphon had a 4th of July sale so I said eff it and picked up an adjustable panhard bar and a short torqe arm. I also scored a set of strano springs that were new never installed, a set of koni strt fronts that were also new never installed and a set of koni yellows that were used but in good shape all from various forum members, all for great prices! Had a helluva weekend one weekend and put the lowering springs and shocks in, as well as the torque arm and panhard bar. Everything fit really really well with no issues. That weekend I had some help for my brother and he's an absolute whiz at bending up brake line so we spent a little time deleting the ABS, hooking up a manual proportioning valve, and roll control. Also went to visit my cousin in late July and my uncle is redoing his Hennry J and swapping to an overdrive trans so he had a working th350 that wasn't beat on I picked up for $100.
Now time to sort out the fuel system and such. From the reading I'd done, the stock pump with the right regulator could be knocked down to carb fuel pressure using the stock lines. I got a mallory regulator and mounted to to the drivers wheel well. I also cut and moved the bracket for the fuse box to the core support to free up room for the lines to come. I'd seen people use compression fittings and such but I knew dorman made fuel line quick connect repair kits, and my mastercool flair tool would make the correct line end, so time to tie it all together. I got some 5/16 and 3/8 brake tubing and practiced my flairs and made sure the fittings were going to work like I needed them to. I didn't have the exact tool used to push the lines onto the fittings, tried hot water, heat gun, blah blah, didn't work. Looked up the tool, didn't want to **** with waiting on and buying a tool. Used an old epoxy gun and cut a slit in it for the plastic line to come through, used a set of vise grips and a set of swedges from the flair tool to hold the line still. Then took the fitting and placed it in the line and against the head of the epoxy gun, took my time, went slow and held the lines straight, **** yea, worked like a champ, looks factoryish, and quickly hooks up.
Now that I had bojangled enough it was time to actually get this thing in and running. Tossed in a LS1 shaft a re-clocking it, also while everything was out I changed out the old rubber motor mounts for some poly ones. Also picked up a set of hooker headers for again, a steal like 275 shipped from AZ and im in VA. Any ways, I've got the headers mocked up, plug wires built, a co worker had a carb I was going to use. Time to shove this thing in, since I'd deleted this that and everything else, it was pretty damn easy to slide in through the top. It fit really easy, cleared everything well and the mount and headers both bolted up quite easy. Slid the trans in and I had already added an inch to the front of the stock A4 cross member so it went in like butter. Used a universal stock by th350 dip stick and one of the newer lisle offset funnels and I could pretty easily fill the trans. I'm not sure I have pictures but to continue the balling on a budget theme my brother and I hacked up a stock drive shaft out of some older GM car to the right length and built our own, didn't blow apart on the first run, and is still sitting in the corner of the shop. Also, I read some people said they had to drop the k member if they ever needed to change the distributor or if they got it in 180 out, not the case for me, I can remove and install it no issues with the cap off and carb out of the way.
Damn, just re found this old thread. Been a busy 2 years but I'm still messing with the car and have a butt ton more updates to throw up here. I'll try to get to some of them over the next little while.
06-27-2019, 06:45 PM
95 LT1 "LowCasharo" SBC swap 
