I've been wanting a LT1 car for a while and recently I was given an offer I couldn't refuse. I ended up trading a LS1 shortblock with a weak #7 (I bought for $200), some diamond pistons (I bought for $300), and $400 cash for it. I got this on Saturday 2/2/08 down in Port St. Lucie which is about 4 hours one way. Getting the car was a major pain in the ass, but I'm glad we went down and got it. My friend backed out of driving two days before, Uhaul is gay and wouldn't rent us a trailer in Jacksonville after they said they would, and Home Depot is freakishly loud when you're trying to call people.
We got it unloaded eventually around 12am, but then subsequently stuck in a ditch / wedged against a tree. We didn't get home till about 2:48AM, but I'm glad we went to get it.
Onto the pictures: Here's the pictures that were in the thread I saw it in.
The car needs to be put back together. The guy I got it from gave me a great deal on this and included two huge tubs full of parts. He said he had the parts to put it back together, but included a bunch of extra stuff; like a new fuel filter, plugs, plug wires, shocks, windshield wipers, radiator hoses, and other stuff. I've got to put the radiator / condensor, opti, waterpump back on, and replace a freeze plug to get it running again.
Part tubs:
Here's what I plan on doing to the car. Most of which is weight reduction, because all that costs is time and I've got a lot of that. I'm saving everything I take out and when I'm finish I'm going to weigh it all to see what it adds up to be. I'd like to have it be around a 3200-3250ish raceweight and I weigh 155.
! Weight Under Hood / Front:
- !ABS, lines, sensors, and wiring --> Proportioning Valve and Line Lock
- !AIR / EGR and wiring: 90% Done
- Hole Saw sub fenders
- !Front Bumper support and the part of the frame it attaches to --> New support out of aluminum slats: 50% Done
- !Fog lights and wiring --> FTRA style ram air + Billet Grill
- !Cruise Control and wiring: 90% Done
! Weight in Car:
- !Speakers, wiring, and antenna
- !Rear seats, seat belts, and random brackets --> Fill holes with aluminum and use a rust stabilizer on the floor if it needs it.
- !Inner door fiberglass
- !Air bags --> GRT 1030 Grant steering wheel and GRT 5196 adapter: I'll wait on this for some $$$
Performance / Maintenence:
- Pressure wash engine without opti in there
- Finish headers + weld up some duals
- !Under car heat shields
- TR6 Plugs
- Change carpet over to Ozite
- New seats I want some of these, http://www.f1spec.com/index.html but don't have the money right now. My friend has a ton of spare parts and I'm going to see if he'll let me have his old black leather seats.
- Change Opti, waterpump, and freeze plug
- Chop radiator and condensor for LS1 lid since they are already out
- Tunercat and accesories to tune this thing when I'm done
By the time we got to check the car out it was about 7pm and really dark outside. We pretty much just loaded it up and headed back on out 4+ hour drive.
Here's what it looked like when I popped the hood for the first time in the light of day. (I'm sorry for the quality of these first few pictures. I took them on my cell phone since my dad had our camera.)
The first thing that stuck out to us where these two ridiculous horns under the hood. The guy I got it from mentioned the previous owner had put an alarm on it, but didn't mention these bad boys:
We unhooked these and hooked them up to a jump pack to test them out. The loud horn looking one is deafeningly loud. The other one sounds like an old fire truck siren. It makes a kind of whirling sound.
The first thing I did was pull the AIR pump off and remove the metal tube that connect into the headers. We then chopped the fittings off, pinched them, and welded them shut to make block off plates.
Do I have to mention to anyone in this section how much pulling the EGR tube off the back of the intake sucks ass? Especially with the trans fluid fill tube right in the way. We got it off and welded it, but the tube bent. Instead we are going to get rid of the tube and weld a plate across the whole thing. I still haven't gotten it back on their yet.
The car looks nice, but the interior . It looks like someone couldn't wait and get home to the crapper...LOL!!! What direction are you going with it? Drag car or street/strip vehicle?
Yeah, guys I did get a really good deal on it. That's pretty much why I said it basically fell in my lap. It was a ton of work to get though. We were supposed to leave Jacksonville around 9am and get there around 1. We'd then spend a few hours messing around down there, pick up the car, and get back around 7-8pm. Of course nothing went as planned.
The uhaul place I reserved a trailer at never asked me what I was towing or towing with. When we got there at 9 the guy just said drive around back and we'll load it up. The guy was hooking it up, but said, "I'm not sure on where to put the hooks let me get Mick." Mick came out and promptly told us he doesn't think we could tow a car with my dad's 99 Nissan Frontier 4X4 enteded cab. He goes back inside and says that we can't rent it because the vehicle we are towing exceeds the vehicle we are towing with weight capacity.
We then spent 3 hours calling places trying to rent a trailer. To find out that there are no car trailers available to in Jacksonville or the surrounding areas. We ended up calling a guy who checked to see if there was one in Port St. Lucie we could rent. Luckily there was 1 down there and I called the guy and reserved it. Knowing our previous problem with Uhaul I told him we were towing a 93 Honda Civic with no engine. Sure enough we were golden and got the trailer reserved. We ended up leaving Jacksonville at 12:05pm, 3+ hours after we inteded on leaving
We had to stop by Green Cove Springs were I had my parts stashed. Jason @ http://www.lsxtuning.net/http://ls1tech.com/forums/member.php?u=66972, one of our sponsors has my 98 Formula down there and all my parts for it. We left there around 12:50pm and drove down. Along the way my phone started dying because we had just spent 3 hours calling people. We also realized that my phone only holds 20 out going phone numbers at a time and deleted the phone numbers of the Uhaul place in Port St. Lucie and the guy I was suppose to get the car from. Luckily, we had his address and showed up at his house. Thankfully he was there and gave us printed directions to the Uhaul place. We arrived at the Uhaul place around 5:15 and drove back to the guy's house. We got there around 6:30 and left around 7:00.
We drove back and got back to Green Cove Springs where we were going to drop the car off around 12am. We then tried to get the car off the trailer by pushing it, but it wouldn't budge. After that we tried to back up real fast and hit the brakes, but that didn't work either. Then since the shop is right next to a school I had the genius idea of driving up on the curb on a slant and pushing it off the back. As I'm driving through the bus loop my friend says we forgot to take the parking brake off. I tell him this will work 100% and we'll just push it around.
Here's the slope and the picture is taken from where the truck was. As you can see it's a decent slope.
Well... It worked, but way too well. We just barely pushed it and off it went. Right into the drainage ditch in the middle of the bus loop and wedged against a tree. It hit the tree just right too because we couldn't push it forward because of the tree or backwards because it was way too steep.
Tree aftermath:
We tried ripping the tree down, but after breaking 1 branch we realized that wasn't going to work. We then tried to tie a rope to the trailer, then the other end of the rope to a bracket in the middle of the trunk under the carpet. It worked for about .2 seconds and then made this horendous noise. It ended up ripping the bracket it two. Ultimately, we got one of the chains unhooked from the trailer (not easy with zero tools by the way) and tied the rope to that. We then tied the rope to the driver's side of the rear axle. I pulled it out, but when it came out my friend didn't hit the brakes and it slammed into the back of the trailer leaving a decent sized scrape.
We got it out around 1:30am, then had to push it around and unload all the parts into it. We got home at 2:48am after dropping the trailer off at a Uhaul place completely across town from our houses.
The car looks nice, but the interior . It looks like someone couldn't wait and get home to the crapper...LOL!!! What direction are you going with it? Drag car or street/strip vehicle?
I agree. The interior is rough, but it'll be cheap to fix. $60 for some Ozite carpet and I'll drop another 30ish lbs and some free or really cheap seats from my friend and I'm good to go.
It'll be a street / strip car. I already have two other F bodies to mess around with. My 98 Formula is going to be about the same thing, but have about 3 times the horsepower this thing will. I've already got 8k in parts alone and need about that much more for that one to be running again so I wanted to take a break from it. Here's my thread on that one if you're interested http://ls1tech.com/forums/showthread.php?t=726009
This car hasn't really cost me much at all so far and it should run decently at the track. I'm going to throw a 150 shot on it once I get it finished seeing as how I already have about 55% of the parts to set up a direct port in my possesion and can borrow another 20%.
I got lucky and my second class was cancelled today so I got to head down to Jason's shop and work on it again.
Today I was going to try to finish removing the EGR system and the stock exhuast manifold on the passenger side. I looked at the manifold for a while and pretty much said fuck it I'm going to wait till it's on the lift to do that. Instead I started on removing the front support. There were way more bolts and screws attached to it than I thought there would be and it took a lot longer than I anticipated.
Ultimately I got it off and here's the progress:
What the engine bay looked like today when I started. No more horns / sirens and !AIR pump.
Front bumper removal progress:
I found a coolant temp sensor wedged in the back of this thing...
!Fog lights. I was suprised how much those weigh. I don't know an exact number, but they feal decently heavy.
I also removed the cruise control box and cable, but didn't get any pictures of that. I managed to skewer my hand on the throttle cable trying to pry the throttle body open.
I'll be heading down there tomorrow to mess around with it too. Then, I have to work this weekend so after that I'll be back down there on Tuesday. Tomorrow I plan on making a new bumper support, trimming the frame rails, amd putting the front bumper back on.
QUESTIONS:
- I know I can look up the color code, but can anyone tell me what color the car is? I'm blue / purple color blind amongst other things so I can't tell. If anyone could tell me the GM color name I'd greatly appreciate it.
- Can anyone tell me what color the carpet is? It looks tan, but again I'm no good at this color thing. I'll be getting new carpet. Should I go stock color or black? Keep in mind I'll be chaning the front seats to black and getting rid of the rear ones. I also have this color rear panels, but am missing one so I might switch them out.
- Anyone ever redo a head liner? Have any quick tips? What material did you use?
- Anyone have any pictures of new front bumper supports they made? I'm going to use aluminum slats, but would like to see where you mounted them.
- I'm going to trim the frame horns down also. How far did you trim yours? I plan on cutting them off right behind the mounts.
- I need new hatch struts. If you've ever replaced them where did you get them from cheaply?
Thanks and I'll be keeping this thread updated with my progress.
Dude, are the fog lights in good shape??? I need a set.
-Rick
They look fine. I can test them out tomorrow and see if they work by hooking them up to my other camaro or one at the shop. I'll let you know. If anyone else needs anything that I show I'm taking off let me know and I'll more than likely sell them to you rather cheaply.
I don't care if they work, as long as they look clean inside, I can replace a bulb if I need to. Mine are planted into an embankment in east texas.
-Rick
I would literally be your slave for a day for those.
I'll look and see how clean they are tomorrow. I don't remember a whole lot about them because basically they were just in the way. I took them off and set them inside the car.
I don't care if they work, as long as they look clean inside, I can replace a bulb if I need to. Mine are planted into an embankment in east texas.
-Rick
I would literally be your slave for a day for those.
I also have a set that are laying around if that deal falls through..I removed them so i could install my billet grill
__________________ 1995 Z28-355 Stalled, Cammed, and Slammed w/GMMG-13.03@103mph-FOR SALE
2006 BMW 330I-Daily Driver-14.4@96mph-Being Traded for the New Hotness www.GAFBA.com
Just Ordered- 2010 1SS/RS M6-Black on Black with Orange Stripes!!!
make sure when you rip out the carpet and insulation to weigh it! I've read that its worth 20 lbs, some say 40 lbs. would be nice to get a definite answer.
make sure when you rip out the carpet and insulation to weigh it! I've read that its worth 20 lbs, some say 40 lbs. would be nice to get a definite answer.
From what I've seen on here. I've heard the stock carpet is 38lbs with the backing. I'll weigh it though and see what I come up with.
My New 1993 Z28 Project 
. It looks like someone couldn't wait and get home to the crapper...LOL!!! What direction are you going with it? Drag car or street/strip vehicle?
