Heres a bit more update...

Iv'e got some good progress on the rear cradle. The tollerances are near perfect, with less than 1mm asymmetry in any direction. Other than battling with mild air contamination in a few spots, the welding went well. A bit of clean-up and some final welding on the body, and it will be time to pull out the pipe bender and get started on the roll-cage.

The tops of the pillars were plasma cut and leveled with one another, and another 4X2 channel was welded to tie the two of them together. This was the most difficult spot to get squared. I also had to cut and re-position one set of the trailing arm brackets since it was 1.25cm off.




Afterwards, I used the cross-bar to mount the two legs of the rear chassis 35inches back. (I still have too much sheet metal to cut out of the way for me to have fully extended them to the rear bulkhead.) The square cuts were done by free-hand. Im getting better with the plasma torch.




Like a glove...




The near final result is looking pretty good so far. The next step is cutting out the remaining sheet-metal thats left in the rear of the car and tying it in to the cradle chassis.

THAT I will start tomorrow.

 

amazing build!!!!!!!!!

 

Ugh... Well, I got rained out today, but at least I got a chance to mock fit the Banski Trailing arms and toe bar.

Im having some fitment issues with the spacers that came with the Camber bar, so Ill have to make some slight modifications later.

 

Excellent job so far, really excellent.

 

Huge kudos for doing this on your back in the driveway.

 

↑You have no idea how acknowledging it felt to read this↑

LOL! Thanks

 

No problem man. I did an engine pull/ install and alot of other stuff in my dad's driveway when I was in high school on my lt1 build, now I have my own place/ garage and I can't imaging going back to those days. It was fun, but so much more of a pain in the ***. His driveway was cracking in several areas where I had access to put the car, and that made it even more difficult. So thankful to have a garage now. Keep up the awesome work! A project like this really puts a perspective on fbody love. It would be so much easier to buy a vette. Lol

 

Well, that would apply for anyone else... Unfortunately, I cant really fit into a Corvette. Not without some serious interior modifications. (AKA chop, slice and fabricate to squeeze myself in).

I stand 6'ft 10 inches tall, and most cars of my taste are tailored for midgets. (Vipers, vetts, so-on and so-forth). Its aggravating as hell. >

 

Pretty awesome project!!

Whats the cost so far?

 

Well... the rear-end swap alone was around $2650, but it could have been approx $1300 cheaper had I decided to use the stock control-arm brakets, stock cast aluminum trailing arms, toe bars and camber bars.

The complete Banski racing adjustable arms and bars were around $1150 or something, and the 3-position trailing arm brackets were something like 150 bucks.

The cost of this project overall is actually a bit embarrassing, but its the last project that I will be bankrolling for a while (trying to buy a house and some acreage for a new bigger shop) so I might as well get the "car modding" bug out of my system.

(Mind you... this is just everything thats going into the final build, not stuff that I bought and didnt use)

GM 3.5l 60 degree v6
*Custom Weisco forged pistons $550
*Comp "street/strip" turbo cam $350
*Eagle 327 H-beam rods $450
*ARP 2000 rod-bolts $60
*Childs&Alberts sbc main bearings (Bought two sets for upper bearings) $100
*Coated cam bearings $80
*Manley LS stainless valves w/ Dodge 318 valve-stems $150
*Manley valve keepers and retainers $90
*Head machining and assembly, valve-job and porting $450
*NTR Dry-sump oil-pump, cog-wheel and mandrel $500
*Fidanza aluminum Flywheel $250
*custom oil tank (Aluminum was freebie... welded it myself)
*Crankshaft knife-edging & machining, Custom trigger ring install. Con-rod modification and machining, Block prep and machining, rotation Balance, casting flash removal, Piston coating, block coatings, flywheel balance (etc) $3000

Boost goodies
*Comp Turbo CT3682 "Billet-wheel" Compressor w/ 1.05 AR T3 & P-trim turbine and water-cooled cast aluminum housing $1350
*Dual MV-R watercooled wastegates $500
*Synchronic BOV $250
*Turbo headers (Home made) about $400 worth of 304 stainless mandrel bends, clamps and expansion joints
*Cheap turbo blanket (probably Chinese made) $75
*Frozenboost performance Heat exchanger, w-2-air intercooler and water pump (used) $200

Engine management
*MS3-pro ECU + harness $1200
*6' Delphi 850cc (85lbs) Low-impedence, Fuel injectors $370
*PLX wideband O2 controller $200
*AEM Peak-n-hold driver $250 (ebay)
*misc harness stuff $150

Transmission, Brakes and Suspension
*92 ZR1, dana44 complete rear suspension $1500
*UMI front, Road-race, lower control arms with roto-joints $600 something
*UMI Road-race LS1 K-members $500 something
*BMR trans-cross member (freebie)
*Banski racing fully adjustable toe, camber and trailing arms $1200
*TKO600GM 5-speed tranny $1800
*Lakewood Bellhousing (metric) $100
*Home-made shifter handle (Truck-chrome) $100
*Tremec shifter-ball $40
*CTS-V 6-pot calipers $750
*2010 Camaro SS 2-part, "aluminum hat" brake rotors $500 (got lucky as hell)
2005 ZO6 ABS brake-module $650
misc junk $300

Body control, wheels tires and whatever else comes to mind
*C5 magnesium wheels and "cheapy" tires with meat on em. $800
*ISIS can control system $1500
*Vis Carbonfiber hood (Thats got baked in the f@#king sun while I was away) $750
*Woodward collapsing steer column, detachable hub, Momo steer-wheel $725
*Homemade dash with equess-gauges $250 and some TLC
*Adhesive aluminized reflective heat barrier $150


Total... To lazy to count it all up, but Im sure its too damned much for a project car.

 

I'll leave it up to you if you really want to know, but I took your list (didn't include numbers in the paragraph above) and pasted it into Excel to have it tabulate a total. You can see the attachment if you are curious.

 

Holy ****! I shouldn't have looked. I had no idea Im sure that the turbo LS6 3rd gen Im building cant be any better.

I was thinking closer to 15k. Ha ha! Well... If it makes any difference, I make a touch over 80k a year in the offshore industry, have no kids, have no wife...

So life is good

 

Now I actually wonder how much this car would have cost if I had someone else do the work?

BTW... I forgot a few small items
*Retro-fit AC system $450
*ARP head studs $100
*ARP main-studs $100
*adjustable upper control arms (freebie)
*Comp LS 26986 valve-springs $165
*Custom length push-rods $150
*Cometic MLS head gaskets $200

Just got a few things left on my "to-buy" list

*good factory-fit style rear lexan window (Im taking recommendations),
*inline fuel filters, fittings and other odds and ends
*someone who can do custom anodizing (for factory fuel rail to make it alcohol resistant)
*under coating for the car. (which I will do myself once I figure out a way not to make a mess on my driveway.
*roll cage (only paying for metal tubing. Ill do the fabrication work myself)
*another set of wheels... one set for street/ weather driving and another for swapping to sticky tires on the track.

 

wow, awesome and radical build thread. you should post up a new thread on here pretending to be a newb and ask if its possible to do a V6 turbo with a IRS from a C4 and when the nay sayers chime in, link to this thread haha.

im thinking about getting into a 3rd gen project and i think ill just be going with a watts link (if anyone makes one) instead of IRS since i cannot weld, and have no access to a welder.

awesome build, definitely worth the read! cant wait to see some more updates, but youve got the money "mod" already done (no wife and kids) so i be this is just a blast to be doing. definitely hard work though.

what part of texas are you located?

 

Very impressive!

 

Im in the Houston Area.

BTW... Ill will be trying my hand at building a watts link for the third-gen project car that Im building. Ill be sure and start a separate thread on that... Possibly even as soon as late october.

 

i thought you were close to houston you mentioned picking up some parts in houston, i just thought i saw the Mississippi plates on the back IIRC.

your skills. youre doing what ive only dreamed of doing on these cars.

 

Those plates are on my old truck. They are horribly out of registration. (Ill be getting around to registering it in texas later this week) The truck was given to me after sitting sitting in a field for 2 years.

The stipulation was "if I can fix it, I can have it". So I drove to Louisiana with my roommate, spent the day getting it roughly drivable, and making it back to Houston 8 hours later with no muffler, shitty gasoline, out of date tags, a bad misfire and the same set of dry-rotted tires.

A bit of welding, a tune-up, tire change and an oil-change later and it ran like a champ.

 

Decided to shift my attention to some smaller details. (been hot as f@#K and I didnt feel like working outside).

I went ahead and modified a set of 3400 fuel rails to keep up with the extra fuel demands of E85. Originally, I used a set of WOTTECH an-6 fuel stainless fittings with a single an-6 fuel line.

A single an-6 will starve the 6, 85lb injectors at full hump, so I got to work. I went ahead and dissembled the fuel rails and cut off the cross-over tube and shrader fitting.







After the crimped lip that holds the cross-over lube and shrader on are carefully cut off, the remainder is simply o-ringed and pulls out cleanly.



Afterward, a set of an-6 male fittings are welded on and a plug is cut and welded into the cross-over port to seal it off.







This will allow me to use dual pumps and a "through rail", recirculating, fuel regulator. The last step will be to run down to the local metal coating shop and get the rails cleaned and anodized to protect them from alcohol corrosion (that will happen on monday).

 

Been quite busy for the last couple of days trying to get the structural work completed. The rear structure of the IRS cradle needed further reinforcement to completely tie it into the body of the car.

The roll-bar and rear cage had to be designed with the primary purpose of tying the new rear suspension cradle and stiffening the unibody of the car as a whole. It also had to be far enough out of the way not to make possible contact with my "very" larger head, and also provide enough clearance for normal seat recline positions while using a cross-bar.

Hell of a stout order... I started first my making a good anchoring point to attach the roll-bar to the rear cradle frame. The ears that would mount the bar had to have sufficient strength, so I cut a hole through the middle with the intent of channeling the roll-bar through it. this would strengthen the anchor point quite a bit.



Afterwards, I made my first attempt at building the rollbar. It was a two piece design that was simply butt-welded together to get the width correct and welded into the perch. This (as I was reprimanded about later) would not pass inspection at any track of any sort.



Cut failed roll bar and toss it...
(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻

Started building new one...
┬──┬ ノ( ゜-゜ノ)

(leg angles are 42.5*, corners 45*, and 5* at the very top)