Was able to find time last night to get the engine and trans out. I'm leaning towards manual steering and no AC. leave myself some room for downpipe routing if I do twins. Plus without the condensor it will make it easier to sneak the intercooler in the air box behind the nose. Going to clean the frame tonight, and probably pick up a s10 steering box and jeep steering shaft this weekend. going to need a new master cylinder and booster.

the man leaning against the workbench is my buddy Ty, he owns the red duramax that has been all over the internet for pulling against the semi. We were filling out the application for Diesel Power Challenge 2015 last night, so if you get Diesel Power Mag, keep an eye out and try and vote for him.

 

Seriously clean car, almost unbelievable. Looking forward to seeing this build.

 

X2, very nice

 

Sweet!

 

What brand tail pipes and exhaust are those? Are they 3 inch diameter?

Nice clean car and good to see people keeping their rides from school, I wish I still had mine.

 

tailpipes and the rest of the tubing is 3" from TorqTech.

Well time for an update. I spent a little over a week fighting with motor mounts. Back in August I bought a set of solid LS swap motor mounts from UMI. They looked nice, except when i went to test fit the engine in the car, the mouts did not line up with the engine.

long story short, UMI said they had a problem with their JIG and thats why the tabs are both offset to the same side, instead of opposite for left anf right frame plates. They said they have redesigned their mounts since August and would send me the new design free of charge! Those showed up last monday, 10/27 and looked very different. They fit the frame, AND fit the engine but pushed the engine 3/4" further back than the first set of mounts that i had. This left me with about .100" between the back of the passenger head and the firewall WITHOUT a HVAC panel. I'm not convinced these mounts work and I think UMI is sick of hearing from me, because ive sent many detailed emails with measurments and their final response was "well these engines were never meant to go in these cars from the factory. some cutting or drilling may be required." not cool.



I knew i would work with factory holes so I altered the first set of mounts and the engine is sitting in the car, straight, with plenty of firewall room, and still using the stock LQ4 truck oil pan. Wasn't that hard, and I shouldve made my own from the start but I thought someone already had it figured out.



Now that the engine is in, I put the 4L80 in and was glad to see how well it fit in the tunnel. I will have alter the G-Force crossmember that i had in the car, but thats not a big deal.



Last friday, the turbos arrived. Two GT-45s 1.00 A/R. I know it'll be laggy but for the price i wanted to experiment and worst case, they dont light very well and i have the car ready to accept a large frame T4 charger.


Built a big sawhorse to hang the turbos from while i figured out exactly where i wanted them and how to support their weight.


I did a bunch of iterations with wood to figure out how i wanted to support the weight of the turbos. Im super anal about symmetry so I'm trying to make the two sides match as best as possible. I also used some 3 inch dryer duct to play with downpipe routing.



I settled on a bracket that i liked, so I drew it up on the computer and cut it out on a friends plasma table. I will gusset the core cupport before final assembly.






Thats as of last night. I've been driving myself crazy trying to figure out an intercooler situation. I'm hell bent on not completely removing the factory air box behind the SS nose. Any ideas or suggestions are welcome

 

Very nice.

jp

 

Looks good

 

Nice build, have to ask-why the S10 steering box? I'm looking for something different for mine, I already have the Jeep steering shaft.

 

And what year(s) of S10's?

 

What about a wta intercooler under the dash?

 

I'm doing a similar build with a Grand National. Can you post the link to the headers you bought and how do they look in person? How do they fit against the block?

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/12142074768...420747681?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT#ht_2525wt_1101

I'm pretty picky, and i think they look very nice. especially for the price. The flange is thick and straight/flat and the holes all line up well. The best part is, at least at the moment, it looks like the driver side primary tubes will clear the steering shaft. I will need to shorten the collectors a little, to move the v band flange back about an inch or so. just to allow for a nice easy sweep into the turbo.

Thought you might have built the hot side flanges into those brackets you made up?

If i did that, then the elbow from the header and the turbo bracket would be one piece. Id rather bolt it together in case i decide to change something. The way it is now, the hot side t4 flange will be sandwiched between the exhaust housing of the turbo and the bracket. Thats why the bracket has those small ears, so allow for room for the tubing plus the fillet of a weld around the OD.

 

Thought you might have built the hot side flanges into those brackets you made up?

 

Looks really nice.

 

Do I see a slight mini tub job and frame notch? Is the rear end stock width? I really like how the rear tire is tucked in so nicely at ride height.

 

"stock width" rear from Quick Performance but its actually a hair narrower than the factory 10 bolt. Factory wheel tubs, the weld you see on the frame is when i had to patch the frame when i built the car for the first time back in 2004.



Factory wheels wrapped in 275-60-15 MT and i used 5/16 spacers to push the tires outward a little. keep in mind this is also with UMI solid lower control arms, and adjustable uppers. AND 2 inch lowering springs. I only have about 100 miles on this setup but no rubs yet. I'm sure that will change when it actually hooks up and twists.

 

very nice build and a beautiful car!! keep up the great work!

 

I had to travel for work for a week, but saturday I was able to make some progress. It took a lot of work, and I really should have taken more pictures, but I was able to combine the factory GM floor shift brackets and B&M shifter guts into a pro stick that fits without cutting any factory trim. I'm super anal when it comes to stuff like this. Anybody can cut holes to make something work.






A bunch of parts have shown up while I was away, including the manual brake conversion kit from manualbrakes.com. Tubing for all the hot side piping will be here wednesday. which is why i pulled the power master cylinder off the car, so i could run the driverside down pipe where i wanted it. I am having trouble finding down pipe v band clamps that fit these cheap gt-45s, and am still very up in the air on the intercooler situation. If anybody has any intercooler pictures, for a twin set up behind an SS nose i would greatly appreciate it.

 

If memory serves me correct they are 3.25" vbands. Check the factory f 350 power stroke vband. I think they are close in size...

 

Thanksgiving and family stuff slowed me down, but I've really been just waiting for parts to show up. headstuds and head gaskets showed up. I also ordered a fuel tank from a 87 4.3 monte carlo with fuel injection so i had a baffled tank. I got that in the car temporarily so i can play with location of the sump to weld on.

I'm trying to figure out coil pack mounting as i would like to keep them down on the motor mounts because i have to run plug wires from underneath anyway.

I made a decision on an intercooler, and got it slid in the factory air box last night. I was able to drill out the factory rivets and made one cut to open up the bottom of the box and slid the intercooler in from underneath.









I wanted to mount the factory 6.0 alternator on the lower passenger side, but nobody makes a bracket that I could find that was worth buying. I made a bracket the bolts off the bosses in the block for the factory A/C compressor bracket. So i got the alternator hanging there and thought it fit pretty good, then i glanced over to the edelbrock box on the shelf and realized that i put the alternator right where the lower radiator hose would be because i bought a conventional roation water pump that puts inlet and outlet in factory SBC locations so i dont have a goofy crossover upper radiator hose or plastic idler pulleys. So i had to flip the bracket around and move the alternator up so it and the belt routing would clear the lower hose.








Still waiting for the right size v-band clamps for the down pipes. I really hope they show up before the weekend.

 

love how you did the floor shifter, looks very nice. I want to do something similar to that with my factory console on my 67.
and that duramax is pretty nasty haha, never seen a truck dump the clutch and pull the front tires like that.

 

Cool to see something a little different!

 

Wednesday night my soon to be wife gave me my christmas present, a set of black proform valve covers. She said she got them early because she wanted to make sure they cleared the headers. Thankfully they do, and look pretty sweet at the same time.








I had some time this weekend to start playing with exhaust routing. I finalized my transmission mount first so i knew the correct angle for the headers. After some debate i decided to bend the brackets supporting the turbos in towards the engine, and im glad i did because I gave myself much more room for the compressor outlet. Everything is just tacked together, and i finally got the correct v bands for the downpipes. I had to cut the v bands off the chinese headers and move them back toward the firewall some because the bend into the exhaust houing would have been impossible. The next hurdle will be altering the intercooler and finalizing its mounting and trying to find air filters that fit in the empty space behind the the headlights. This week ill order wastegates and the aluminum pipe for the cold side.

 

Looks like your going to run the exhaust through the frame and in the stock route? Looks killer and at the rate your going, if you keep the stock hood, it will be a nice sleeper.

 

anymore updates?

 

I've been spending most of my time working on the intercooler tubing. I have that all figured out but unfortunately no pictures of it. Ill have to get soem pictures of it when i put the intercooler back in the car. I changed the outlet of the intercooler from 3" straight out the bottom to 3.5" out the back (towards the engine). I will have to re test fit that in the car once its welded up. I think I have the location of the wastegates figured out, but I still need to make discharge pipes for those that run down to the ground. Ive been laying out wiring harnesses because my Holley Dominator EFI showed up last week So ive been trying to figure out the best routing for it since some stuff, like the coil packs, will not be in the factory location. My plan at the moment is to run the engine harness on the engine and secure it nicely before dropping the engine back in for the final time.





HELP! I'm struggling with valvesprings. I want to just run the PAC1218s but they're only good for .600 lift.
I want to run the Brute Speed blower cam but .595/.608 is at/past the limit of the 1218s and I really dont want to spend a fortune on something else. I've been to Brian Tooley's website but I'm still unsure which ones to run. I'm just not used to or comfortable with choosing valvesprings for a forced induction setup.

link to cam:
http://shop.brutespeed.com/Brute-Sp...om/Brute-Speed-Forced-Induction-Camshaft-FREE-SHIPPING-Brute-Speed-Camshaft.htm

 

Nice work man

It seems the Brutespeed cam page you linked also has a good spring rec there already. Any reason you don't want to run those?

It turns out the exhaust push rods get worked over pretty good on a high hp engine. Your engine uses relatively ~ short push rods though, which helps. There is still alot of pressure left in the cylinder on a high hp engine when the exh tries to crack open towards the end of the power stroke, which acts to clamp the exh valve closed. Which makes it much harder to pop the valve off it's seat, which puts alot more strain on the push rod (and they flex/bend/wobble as a result). Moral is, also consider a stronger, thicker/larger dia pushrod(s) as you start to make alot more power.

Obligatory spiel- the fab and construction work you have done is very impressive. But the reality is, these twin GT45 turbos are wayyy over sized for the application of course. It becomes tiresome pretty quickly to drive a lag master, which is what it will be. Nor does it perform very well on the street. If you plan to actually try and race it might as well have the obligatory excuses at the ready It will likely be neither quick nor particularly fast really; only in very limited spurts

http://www.airpowersystems.com/corvette/z06.htm
.

This design is much closer to reality on turbo sizing. If you look down the page they have also provided a graph of boost pressure vs rpm on the 427". You can see that even with those much smaller, much more realistic twins on a larger, windier headed engine the boost does not even reach 6 psi at ~ 3000 rpm. It it was me I'd even probably take the a/r down to the minimum available on that kit. The car would be much more responsive, much quicker in the real world and much more satisfying to drive.

Anyway, just a general observation and statement trying to be helpful, based on years of experience. Lag masters are not much fun or very effective really in the long run on the street. They do impress at the drive in though.

HELP! I'm struggling with valvesprings. I want to just run the PAC1218s but they're only good for .600 lift.
I want to run the Brute Speed blower cam but .595/.608 is at/past the limit of the 1218s and I really dont want to spend a fortune on something else. I've been to Brian Tooley's website but I'm still unsure which ones to run. I'm just not used to or comfortable with choosing valvesprings for a forced induction setup.

link to cam:
http://shop.brutespeed.com/Brute-Sp...om/Brute-Speed-Forced-Induction-Camshaft-FREE-SHIPPING-Brute-Speed-Camshaft.htm

 

Nice setup.