Where at in Arkansas are you located?

 

Thanks abc. I'm in Little Rock.

 

Will you be road racing this beast? If so you will need a dry sump setup because the LS3's have oiling issues when used on a road course.

 

Sweet build man !! Always nice to see other 7s in Ar.

 

awesome build! cant wait to see the finished product

 

It's not just LS3's. The LS oiling system shows weaknesses on the road course. I don't really have any plans to road race it. But I've got an Improved Racing oil pan baffle with trap doors that's going in and I'm going to try and squeeze in one of the small accusumps. That should protect me from anything I'd see. Problem is finding room for the accusump in the engine bay... I will be running one 19 row oil cooler in the driver's vent. I've already got the Mocal LS thermostat block adapter. Most LS guys don't even run oil coolers.

 

oh cool i'm in memphis...my LS1 FD is in Indiana tho

 

Bought a spinning rotor keychain from Mavila. Pretty cool.

 

............................Quit wasting your money on that keychain **** and get to work on your car!!!

 

I'm about to buy the turbo and accompanying items to build the manifolds, crossovers, downpipe, and IC piping. What sucks is how much stuff I have to buy before I can start mocking anything up. haha.

I can, however, put the motor and tranny into the car now that I've got a tranny. It's just making time to do it.

 

Got the motor and tranny in for mocking everything up. It'll be coming out later to get built with forged internals.

My friend Greg came over and we knocked it out.

 

Bought the Ford 8.8 diff housing, inner 31 spline Cobra axles, and AC evaporator from Fritz.

 

tag!, keep updating please

But for real, if you could somehow put it detail, engine mounts, other parts, wiring or whatever come to mind to show the steps on what it takes to put the ls in the car.....

I have a ls 240sx but i would just like to see if the steps or if there was anything different between the swaps. Thanks, nice build so far.

 

You should just go over to norotors.com That's the v8 swap site. Everything you want to know and more is there. It's criminally easy to put these in the car. 6 bolts will remove the tranny and engine combo from the car. No cutting on anything is necessary except for about 1/2" at the front of the shifter hole and removing the radiator support bar from between the frame rails.

Updates will be coming shortly. The next step to mock up the turbo stuff requires me to buy about 3k worth of parts so it's not a little baby step.

 

Bought an ATI damper, ARP crank pulley bolt, and an Earls 19 row oil cooler and mounting bracket.

 

Kinda hope you end up with yellow wheels in the end. Looks insane.

 

Haha Me and SummitHeart would be twins kinda. I thought about the loud wheels/ bronze or something but I'm leaning towards a classier choice. I'd really like some other options for custom size/offset wheels other than CCW classics but all the others are way more than $2300. 6 months ago I would have told you you were insane to think I'd pay that much for wheels, but it seems like it's really the best option for sizing that will fit 285's at all corners inside stock (rolled), unpulled fenders.

 

Bought some boring but much needed stuff. New Dorman Taurus fan from rockauto. Katech manual belt tensioner, Sanden 4665 AC compressor from ACparts.com , Kwik Performance High mount AC bracket, and Speedway motors high mount Alternator bracket. There goes $850 on the most boring pieces of the whole car. I'm going to get the 160 Escalade alternator a la Blake from Autozone with their lifetime replacement deal just in case something goes wrong with it.

 

Going to be a sweet ride when its done. Can't wait to start on mine

 

lmfao @ "criminally easy" yeah, thanks to the guys who make the mounting equipment and support the swap it is not too bad. hardest part is getting your wiring setup and bullet-proof. although you can get harnesses made for you and all of that, when you make your connections, you have to pay very close attention to how you do them (shielding/insulation, solder/shrink wrap/crimps, etc.).

other than that... piece of cake it's the way to go with FDs, they are so much more fun to drive with the v8. now, with an ls3 and a turbo? holy **** it's gonna be scary. sick build dude, can't wait to see it running.

 

Thanks dude.

Wiring is the one thing on the car that I haven't wrapped my mind around yet. One thing that will decrease a decent amount of wiring is the fact that I'll be using the Racepak Haltech IQ3 display for all the gauges. So that will delete all sorts of stuff behind the dash as it only uses 3 pre wired connectors. I'll be running a Haltech Sport 2000 EMS so I'll be building the engine and front harnesses from scratch which was my plan all along. Not too much should change on the body harness I don't think.

I just made a mock up radiator out of some 3/8" plywood so when the turbo gets here, I can have it in place for assembly. Fitting a 4" downpipe on the passenger side with AC is going to be tricky.

 

awesome! thats a sick build.

Everything is soo clean and tedious. I cant wait to see the final look.

I was wondering why you didnt just use an LS2 and stroked it?

Unless you got a good deal on the other engine?

Really really wish i had an indoor garage to do these types of projects in.

 

The long block cost me $1100.... Go check what LS2/3 long blocks go for. You'll see that price is stupid low. It's what the core charge is from Chevrolet. I bought it from a tech. I'd rather have 6.2 than 6 liters any day. haha. Also, I'd rather have more bore than stroke for longevity since it will make all the torque I want anyway.

Turbo will be ordered this week. Then the fun begins.

 

Looking forward to the turbo piping coming together. Beautiful car, keep up the good work.

 

Brief update. As you can imagine, packaging the manifolds, crossover, turbo, wastegates, radiator, water pump, fan AND AC compressor is going to be tough. I spent a few hours looking at the bay and working with my wooden mock up radiator and found it was just too tall. After talking to How Racing and a friend of mine with a turbo LS FC, they both recommended a shorter radiator. I guess I was overdoing it. The new size fits MUCH better. I cut down my mockup to size and it all works. I'm going to rigidly mount it in the car for mock up purposes soon and replace it with the real thingafter I know where the turbos going to be sitting since I'll need the AN fittings welded on in the right lcoations.

I also ordered the turbo last week. Precision Billet 7675GTS, ported compressor, t4 .96 AR turbine housing. Also got the downpipe vband assembly and some gaskets. That should be shipping tomorrow and then I'll be able to build a jig to fixture it in the bay and then it's just connecting the dots with all 8 runners. hahaha.