Another GN Converted.

[RED LS1]

This is kind of a build thread I guess. My goal is to share my experiences in case it could be helpful to anyone else's project or ideas. What I am doing is no where near what some people do in there build threads. I'm amazed at the Money, time and resources people seem to have these days. I am just looking for a cost effective way to go 10.0 and I need it to be very reliable. This seemed like a good way to accomplish my goals.

This car has been in my family for 10 years. It belonged to my brother who didn't do much with it accept run it around the neighborhood. It's had the 11 second combo on it and than the 10 second combo but it's cracked pistons twice and wiped the Flat tappet cam on the last go around. He bought a boat and sold me the car pretty cheap.

I Pulled the motor and transmission and sold off the XFI, Trans & Converter, Champion heas, turbo and injectors and with that money I got back exactly what I put into the car. Now I am in the car for ZERO.

Here is how I got the car which sat neglected for 3 years with the wiped cam.











I got the car home and began pulling the motor and trans. After that I was left with am Aeromotive Fuel system with -8 Feed and -6 return. The car also has a heavy duty Spohn Anti Roll bar and Tubular control arms. In the front is a big Precision Front mount intercooler that I will be recycling to the new combo.


Here it is at home with the motor out. The next picture is the paint after I cleaned it up. IT was painted with straight black Pigment Standox a few years back.











I looked around for a complete 6.0 take out and they range in the $1500 window. I was fine with that but I didn't really trust a motor that was not freshened. I found a 4.8L that was fully freshened and never ran. It came with 799 LS1 style heads, LS1 intake and LS9 cam. It has a CTSV pan which is good for the swap into G-body. It also came with valve covers, coils, ARP hardware and MLS Head gaskets. The truck manifolds came with it and I will use for the turbo kit. Price on this GEM, $1000!




I was able to move the car to my friends shop who moved to Florida for the Winter and left it abandoned. Rent is only the cost of the electric bill. $27/month!





With the car in the shop I got the engine compartment stripped down and painted up the subframe with some Rostoleum. Now there's room to do an engine swap.







I did a few things to the motor to prepare it before going in. I stripped and painted the valve covers and replaced the hardware and grommets. I stripped and painted the Coil brackets and cleaned the cruddy coils up. I clear coated the intake and replaced the hardware. I purchased a Ported/polished and powder coated throttle body for it with all new sensors. I picked up a crank, cam, coolant temp sensor for it. Here's a picture of it after all that.






Than I bought the Oil feed fittings for the top of the motor and welded the Oil return into the CTSV pan. I actually did a -10 for the return. When I put the motor in the location wouldn't allowed me to get a fitting on it so I pulled the motor back out and closed up the -10 and I did a -12 in a better location. Picture shows the first -10 and also the closed up -10 and the new -12









For the motor mounts and Crossmember I decided to go with the Hooker kit. I bought the LS conversion brackets and the 4L80E X-member. Along with the LS brackets you have to buy new V-8 Clamshell mounts. I drilled those out and removed the rubber mounts. I replaced them with Energy suspension Poly mounts.









The motor has a new home.

 

[RED LS1]

I will be using a Holley Dominator ECU to control the motor and the 4L80E. I picked up the main harness, Trans Harness and injector harness while they were on sale over Christmas.





Here is a picture of the harness in place and also the addition of the LS3 Corvette Water pump and harmonic balancer.








I spoke of using the 4L80E as my trans of choice. I work for a transmission place that does all Racing stuff. I pulled this bad boy from inventory. It's built for about 1200hp. The converter is an all billet 10.5 inch Northstar Caddy unit that can handle 2000hp. It should be around 3500-3800 stall behind this combo. It has a full billet lock up plate as well.

 

[bigmandengo]

Sweet build. How well does the CTS pan fit with the new hooker mounts?

 

[RED LS1]

IT fit perfect. There were no hang ups. The Hooker mounts give perfect placement. I will have the car on the lift in the next few days so I am going to take pictures of the CTSV pan from the bottom.

 

[bigmandengo]

That's great news considering Holley's new pan is $400. Their new mounts are supposed to set the engine real low so that's great to hear. How well does the steering center link clear at full right or left turn?

 

[RED LS1]

I had to choose a turbo for this combo. I wanted something that would be a blast on the street and also meet my power goals of 650-700rwhp. I will probably run a razor meth kit with M1 like I had on my old Turbo Cobra. I was pretty overwhelmed with the choices especially since I don't know much about turbos. There are Garrets, Precisions, On3, Borg Warner and everyone swears by something different.

I was scrolling through LS1Tech and one of the forum sponsors was selling his personal turbo. IT had nothing but Dyno time on it and it fit the description of what I'm after.

Turbonetics 7575 w/ Billet wheel ball bearing.

Turbonetics Mid-frame T4 Turbocharger
-Billet 75mm Compressor Wheel
-F1-75 Turbine Wheel
- Silver Ceramic Coated 1.00 a/r 4" exit T4 Turbine Housing
-Y2k polished compressor housing with polished velocity stack (velocity stack has been drilled for hookup of PCV inlet)
-Ball Bearing CHRA






Here is a picture of it next to the CPT-66 that came off the 3.8 motor. It's a little bigger

 

[RED LS1]

 

[RED LS1]

That's great news considering Holley's new pan is $400. Their new mounts are supposed to set the engine real low so that's great to hear. How well does the steering center link clear at full right or left turn?

It definitely puts the motor very low in the car. That's why I had to redo the Oil return because in theory it would have fit fine but the motor is so low it was right on the frame. The motor also sits really close to the brake lines towards the passenger side of the car. I'm going to get a better visual once it get it in the air. I haven't paid attention to the steering link while turning. I did maneuver it pretty hard to get it between the lift posts and nothing seemed to be an issue.

 

[RED LS1]

New JW LS Flex plate with adaptor. I'm trying to get this on during the week before putting the transmission in.

 

[RED LS1]

Here's where the car sits now ready to go up in the air for the trans install.






You can see how low the motor sits here. I came in today and started looking at the taller Holley EFI intake just because it would fill some of that void. I don't feel like spending money on that right now because I still need the Dominator EFI box and a Hot side fabbed up and also a roll bar.

 

[RED LS1]

Here are some pictures of when I was messing around with the manifolds. I'm going to cut the flanges off with a port band and weld some V-bands on them. In a perfect world, I would run them in this configuration because it would allowed me to mount the turbo like the factory GN was mounted which would be cool.








One thing about the factory manifolds is that they mount and seal perfectly. It would be a benefit to run them both facing down so the dip stick and spark plug wires won't be an issue. I guess i'll just see what works when the time comes.

 

[garyk1970]

nice work subscribed...

 

[mikes86ttop]

X2 definitely subscribed...thanks Mike

 

[RED LS1]

Got the car on the lift last night. I was able to get some pictures of the underside. Typically I detail the crap out of my cars but I haven't got the chance with this yet. I'm just trying to make progress. My goal was to have the motor, trans and wiring harness in place before Spring and than take some time away from it until next Winter. I would also like to try and swing a drive shaft in that goal as well. I called PST in FL and was quoted $33x or $399 for a better one.





Pan clearance

 

[RED LS1]

Spohn Adjustable rear sway bar. Lower Tubular control arms, Airbags and Comp Engineering shocks.





Aeromotive Fuel pump A1000 with -8. I'm questionable about this. I suppose it should support 600-700 RW but you never know where your restrictions are until you put the juice to it.






Here's the intercooler that remains the same as from the V6 combo. I hope it's as easy as hooking right back up to it.

 

[larry33kc]

You may want to rethink your pump mounting.
The A1000's will not last if they are not below the fuel level. They are not siphoning pumps and will die on you.
That is the number 1 killer of these pumps and what gives them the bad name is in proper mounting.
Don't ask how I know.

Nice build also

 

[T What?]

Nice man. Once mine needs to be machined, I'm going LSX.

 

[2QUICK2B6]

hope it runs 9's unless its ints in the way in s c

back yard balk half 69 Camaro is near the 3's 1/8

 

[T What?]

No idea what you just said

 

[Boostdeznuts]

This is a nice project.