57 Buick Special GMT900 AWD Frame swap

[freeskier7791]

Make sure you route drains well.  My buddy with a turbo LS camaro is burning oil because the drain sucks.  Ideally put the drain above the oil level in the pan

[etizz]

Will do. I put the drains on the very front of the pan its above the oil level and its all downhill draining back , made kind of a mistake with that but itll work out. pans back in, front diff however is not lol what a bitch, don't recommend doing this on the ground by your self. its somewhat close to getting up there but I looked like I came out of a coal mine after fighting with it for awhile so I took a break from it yesterday. may try again tonight or just move on to something else . speaking of which so I think I'm going to relocate my turbos again haha. Ive been thinking that I could lower the suspension a good ways to potentially get a better look overall out of the car instead of it looking completely like a cartoon. but if I do that I wouldn't want a hot turbo melting my tires so I'm thinking that I'm going to flip my manifolds and run them close in the engine bay and maybe dump the downpipes into the fenderwell area . a lot less hotside piping, about the same amount of down pipe to side pipe and might give me room to run a muffler before the side pipe which will be nice and no extra cost to me lol. so wish me luck there but I think itll be good. still need to figure out cold side stuff but money got tight cuz I had to insulate my house since It had none this whole time and install a bathroom fan/light since I didn't want to get back up in the attic after they did the insulation. got kind of a promotion at work so that may help with finishing things up but I wont be seeing that money until September. so my hopes of going to ls fest this year is probably out the window again lol. guess by next ls fest ill probably be ready with both my cars so that's the goal.

[etizz]

Heres some more nasty pics that I wonder why I bother taking any at all lol. so I couldn't flip my manifolds cuz my steering shaft is pretty close to the ds manifold so flipping it would probably hit. so I moved the piping some more to locate the turbo more into the "engine bay" area and ill sheet metal to fill the giant holes again so that way I don't have hot exhaust all over the place near my tire and oil lines near my tires/brakes if they fail lol.  so driver side is mocked up just need to weld the million joints I have together and add a few exhaust hangers.  exhaust isn't exactly what id hoped but I wanted mufflers so it wasn't loud af and I'm tight on money so this is what I got.  everything will be either wrapped black or painted black so it wont be as noticeable anyway once that's done.  so I added a flex pipe and a turbo brace and the wastegates/piping for those so now I get to do the same thing on the other side then I can start it up again after plumbing my oil lines and putting oil back in it. 

[digitalsolo]

I think it's about the appropriate amount of ghetto. 

[etizz]

I'm so offended that you called my stuff ghetto.  at that very least its ghetto fabulous or even sloppy in honor of sloppy mechanics haha.  so another busy week out of the garage again, plus got some major poison ivy rashes so that was cool. I did make my passenger side hotside and downpipe to muffler/tail pipe though.  and I finished welded the down pipe. threw the new oil filter on and some oil back in the engine too. I found a few pinholes on my ps downpipe ill probably fix tonight. then I may finish the hotside part of the passenger side so I can paint everything and let it setup overnight to bolt back on the next day so I can have 1 side completed. then do it on the other side and then I can start it back up again I'm hoping this week. wish me luck.

[etizz]

OK so I welded up ps hotside, welded up the pin holes that I could find on everything. painted ps side. had a snafu with the wastegate I thought lining everything back up but I just had to be smarter than it lol. ran my oil drain line, installed my oil feed, gasketed the down pipe with some high temp rtv and bolted everything together on the passenger side yay! now to finish weld the drivers side and paint it and I hopefully can hear my engine run again with turbos. still need to do cold side and blah blah blah but I'll be glad to hear it fire up again, might be even quieter with the turbos and my quiet muffler with a decent length of pipe too. we'll see I guess.

[digitalsolo]

That’s a lot of progress!

[etizz]

I was able to weld everything up and paint it and put it together Saturday night.  sunday morning I fired it up and I didn't have any oil leaks which was good. turbos were spinning, exhaust was pretty quiet, I did noticed a lot more pinhole "pulses" at certain joints which was odd cuz I didn't see them before with a led light thru the pipe in the dark. so I got myself a paint pen so I can mark where its coming out of to patch it up I also wanted to due said patchwork around the car a little easier so I had to get the car movable again which meant getting the front diff installed back into the car.  so last time I tried for like 3 hours to get this thing reinstalled to no avail with my floor jack and some jackstands.  this time I made a plate out of wood that bolted to my jack in place of the normal cup and drilled a few holes in it for some bungee cords to hold it on there pretty well.  took me about 10 min to make the piece.  then I jacked the car up so I could set the front diff on the jack and roll it underneath.  about 10-15 min later I was pretty much bolting it in place. I was so mad and so thrilled at the same time lol I couldn't believe it. for those who want to know the trick is you angle the pinion upwards above the cross brace part of the frame as your jacking upwards.  once the pinion is above that you level it out as you jack it up and its pretty much into position no problem. I used the axle flange bolts to help hold it upwards until I could position the whole thing start the bigger bolts/nuts . again the diff is about 80 lbs so you want to have a plate or something like I made able to secure that amount of weight as you're rotating it to position it correctly.  so I bolted and torqued everything together with that so its ready to move under its own power again. so I guess next on my list is to add hangers to the tail pipes and then another long list of things that are random all over the car.

its bad picture taking time! lol