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Pop N Wood

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Posts posted by Pop N Wood

  1. Bolts might make the aluminum core corrode. Use aluminum or something plastic if possible.

     

    But like said above, a few good potholes and I am afraid the up and down rattling will wear a pinhole in that thin, pressureized aluminum core.

     

    Oh, and by the way terrific progress. Your swap is quickly becoming one of my favorites. I am looking at an LS1 swap, and from the looks of things, your entire LT1 swap will be cheaper than what I am looking to pay for an engine and tranny alone.

  2. Pop' date='

    I have a F-body torque arm that's not going to get used. You can have it if you'll pay the freight...[/quote']

     

    Thanks for the offer. I am currently searching for an LS1/T56 pullout and they often throw in the torque arm. Will keep you in mind.

     

    Thanks for the links.

  3. Anybody have a good picture of the torque arm in a late model Camaro? I want to build one but I am having a hard time visualizing what they do.

     

    Are they suppose to stop the twisting of the trans/diff around the driveshaft, or just stop the lifting of the nose of the diff? It would be easy to build something to stop the lifting, but the twisting I would think would require something like a torque tube on a vette. Maybe the twisting is not something to worry about?

     

    If I were to solidly bolt something to the side of a T56 and to the side of the R200, could I eliminate my rear trans mount and the front diff mount? Would seem like a very worthwhile thing to do.

  4. I seriously considered Colorado Springs for a period of time. Housing is still cheap (a coworker moved there and bought a house with a hanger and access to a community runway). The weather there is draw. It is remarkably good. Check it out. You can race your Z up Pike's Peak. You have mountains on one side and semi arid desert on the other. In my case finding a job proved a little iffy.

     

    I lived in upstate New York for a time, Saratoga Springs no less. Beautiful country but the winters are absolute killers. New York State also has horrendous taxes because of the tax suck of the city.

     

    Why not the California central valley? Visallia-Fresno-Bakersfield. Probably don't have to tell you how beautiful the Sierra Nevada's are.

  5. If you capped your frame rails through the engine compartment with 1/8" steel, then the down braces on the top end performance strut bar are uneeded weight. A triangulated strut bar connecting the two towers to the firewall is always good, but the bars going from the front of the towers down to the strut bar seems sensless in you case.

     

    If it were me, I would forgo the brace you drew in your picture and find some way to connect your subframe connectors to the back subframe. If I am interpreting your drawing correctly, bolting a brace in that position will help keep the car from twisting along it's axis. I would think a rear strut bar or bolt in roll bar would be much more effective than a brace placed down low like that. Plus you are trying to brace what is probably one of the strongest areas of the car.

     

    But in my opinion your bigger worry will be keeping the front and back halves from moving like an accordian. That is why connecting the subframes to the back is what I would want to do.

  6. I picked up an engine master's magazine a month or two back. They had a pretty good article with all types of engine building tips, including quotes from some of the engine builders who had won their engine building contests.

     

    The one that caught my eye concerned big bore-short stroke vs. big stroke, short bore engines. This guy believed that the big bore-short stroke engines only look better until you consider detonation. Once you factor in detonation, the longer stroke motors win.

     

    I'll have to look for the magazine.

  7. ...my only other real option I can think of is to put it in storage. That seems so pointless and such a huge waste...

     

    Got to hand you the waste part, but it is not as pointless as you might think. These cars are not getting any easier to come by. Sell it now, and 10-15 years from now you will most likely have an impossible time justifying what you will have to spend for something that you will want to cut up and modify.

     

    Got to take care of priorities and buying a house has to be #1. But if there were some way to store it cheap, say in an out of state relative's barn or unused garage...

  8. Actually I don't believe this particular question has ever been asked here before.

     

    Is it possible to hang a solid rear axle without backhalving the car?

     

    I think Scottie's Vette rear had minimal sheet metal carnage. Try searching on that. Not exactly solid, but pretty bulletproof.

     

    But by not backhalving you are missing out on one of the big advantages of a solid rear axle: huge, wide tires.

     

    BTW, 500 HP has been done time and again with the R200.

  9. I will bet money it is the master cylinder. I haved owned enough old cars that I have experience exactly what you are saying multiple times. The MC gets a little rust on the inside and/or the rubber cups become brittle, so them getting a seal becomes iffy. That is why stabbing the brakes hard usually works. It forces the cups out into hard contact with the MC walls before any fluid can leak past them, then the pressure that you built up holds them tight.

     

    You can bleed the brakes until the cows come home and it won't do you any good. Do you really think air is coming in and out of the brake lines inbetween pumps where the pedal is firm and soft?

  10. I have Simpson 4 point hooked up about like Jon said. Lap belts to the stock locations and sholder belts hooked to a strut tower bolt. Many people on this site strongly recommend against the strut tower bolt, but when I auto X 'd many years ago that was how everyone did it.

     

    I also replaced my 1970 vintage fixed lap and sholder belts with a three point retractable unit for the street. The 4 point unit is too restrictive for street use, but for auto X'ing it worked well to hold me in the seat. Safety was a secondary concern for me, hence no submarine belt.

  11. Keep in mind the tires get taller as they spin.

     

    It is a little hard to say where the deflection is taking place. Obviously the poly bushings will compress and expand, but you could also have the strut tube twisting/bending. I would think a few times about what exactly needs to be strengthened before I started welding gussets on whatever I thought was deflecting.

     

    BTW, if your quarter mile times are good and your prerace inspections show nothing is breaking, then is this really a problem?

  12. I have been using this ebay seller as kind of a market standard as far as price goes.

     

    http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/02-Trans-Am-Camaro-LS1-Engine-w-6spd-Transmission-27k_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQcategoryZ33615QQitemZ8017219294

     

    The manual tranmission pull outs add about a grand over the price of the auto, and 2000 and later engines command a slightly higher price. The LS2 pull outs seem to all run 6000+. their price also varys with mileage. Corvette engines by themselves cost as much as an entire F body engine and tranny combo.

     

    I asked the price question a month or so back and got quite a few replys that told me the price above seems fair. Of course there were quite a few quys who got complete wrecks for half of the above, but I consider those deals and not market price.

  13. OK yet one more opinion. If you are not doing much welding, stick with the MIG and pay a pro for the few times a year you really need a TIG weld done.

     

    If you are doing a lot of welding such that owning a TIG becomes cost effective, then you probably need both the MIG and the TIG.

     

    If you just have some excess $$ burning a hole in your pocket or want the bragging rights, then trade the MIG for the TIG.

  14. The harbor freight ad says right on it shipped empty. I think it becomes a hazmat if shipped full. Can get it filled at any welding supply place. You need a local place for refills anyway. The welding place will probably talk you into an Argon-CO2 mix. That is what I use for mild and stainless steel. If you are like me and don't do a lot of welding, the added cost of the mix over just straight CO2 is negligible.

  15. Hah! I was writting such a list just yesterday.

     

    John's cars is at http://www.brokenkitty.com/. Start reading there on what is required.

     

    Your second stop is Jaguars that Run, http://www.jagsthatrun.com/. Buy the swap manual from them. Not LS1 specific, but you will save a public "SEARCH SEARCH SEARCH" flaming if you ask questions you could have answered with the manual. Lots of invaluable info in that book. The brake line question is covered in there.

     

    Radiator you can get from JTR, or you can recore the stock radiator to a 3 or 4 row core and use that. Get the drive shaft from the donor car, and consider getting the Camaro fans too. You will need to figure out what you want to do with engine accesories (PS, AC) and how to delete what you don't want. Anyone know how to rig up just an alternator?

     

    Some of the other big ticket items will be the instrumentation (need to do something about the speedo and maybe tach). And you are also going to want a service manual for the engine, plus the $500 for tuning software if you plan any do it yourself.

     

    One last thing. The stock LS1-2 heads flow really well. Car mags build 500+ HP dyno engines with little more than a cam and valve spring upgrade. Don't know that new heads are such a "must have" upgrade.

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