Pop N Wood

You will pay a pretty heavy premimum for the LT4. Corvette guys want those motors so they are pretty pricey. You can probably pick up a set of AFT heads and hot cam kit for the difference in price you are going to pay for the "LT4" Late last year LT1/t56 combos were going unsold on ebay for $1800. Guess fparts rasied their prices Here is a complete motor (no trans) for less than your local long block. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/95-Camaro-Z28-Trans-Am-LT1-5-7-Liter-Engine-Complete-80_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQcategoryZ33615QQitemZ8034311206 You can get a complete iron head LT1 with auto trans out of a caprice for less than the $1500 long block. Then bolt up the aluminum AFR heads with hot cam and be way ahead power wise for less money.

But everything must cost more in Alaska. Just use your oil check

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.

Windshields age, too. All the dust and dirt hitting them at speed really cuts the visibility over the years. Hard to believe can still get new ones for $120.

Colorado Springs averages more days of sunshine a year than So Cal http://www.springsgov.com/Page.asp?NavID=194

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.

I think if I could own any car that would be it.

I had a neighbor who must have owned 6 of those at one point, one a turbo model. He finally got so fed up with the oil leaks he sold them all off in one weekend. Those flat 6's were the hot swap into Volkswagen Bettles.

Says the kit above has 4 collars, springs and flanges. The coleman site lists the coil over kit alone (with no springs) at $40 each. And if I read things correctly, the hypercoil springs are $64 each? What am I missing??

Bench bleed. I just bleed my clutch MC this evening. Disconnect the line at the MC and held my finger over the hole while pumping the pedal. When it squirts, stop pumping and reconnect the line. Works every time.

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.

try rotating your tires and see if the thump moves

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.

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.

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...

Man. Drive that thing past Jay Leno's house and you could retire a wealthy man. In a perfect world I would have the skills and tools to build something like that myself.

I can't believe he didn't stop and render first aid

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.