Defenistrator's L33 powered '90 GXL 8.8 IRS

[martiniracing]

vtec just kicked in yo!

[Defenistrator]

My s5 came with the 9k tach anyway so what the hell. 

[Defenistrator]

Since my last update some more parts have come in thanks to some fellow forum members.  Added to my developing engine fetus is an LS1 intake, starter motor and a set of almost-new C6 corvette exhaust manifolds. 

I'm doing things a little different than some people here, a large part of it comes from my limited income and budget for my project, and another part of my stubborn tendency to make things complicated.

Right now, I'm in the middle of adapting my truck fuel rail and injectors to the LS1 intake.  I still need to fabricate some spacers for 2 of the 4 fuel rail mounting bolts (one hole on either side does not line up)  and also I need to get the plugs I will use to seal off the original crossover tube holes.
There are a couple tricky parts to modifying this stuff to work on the ls1 intake, but nothing impossible.  I'm documenting this thoroughly and am planning to make a write-up on it when it's complete.  For a mild engine and nothing more radical than a mild cam added to this engine, I just can't justify the price of grabbing ahold of another set of injectors & rails! 


I also have some more bodywork ahead of me, after discovering another imperfection beneath the driver's door, I found THIS underneath a huge heaping layer of bondo!
I've toyed with it but there's no way to pull this out, I believe I'm going to cut that section out and form a piece of sheet metal to tack into it's place.  The passenger side dent from an earlier post was already pulled out quite a bit, a thin layer of bondo and sanding should get that looking right.

[ilovemybike]

I thought about using the truck injectors and rails on my build, looks like you are well on your way to making it work.

[Defenistrator]

I can't say "success" until I get it in car, and the whole fuel system pressurized and observed VERY closely, but it is looking promising.  The caps in the end of the rails I drilled & tapped are actually 2 pieces, the inner piece is seated to the rail with an o-ring, and the outer piece of aluminum is just crimped around the rail to hold the cap in place.  in order to tap the caps and tighten the fittings to it, I had to drill a small hole through both the outer ring and into the plug, and hold a pin in the hole to keep it from turning. 
Capping the original crossover ports is turning out fun too, I should have this thing completed tomorrow, need to pick up some o-rings that will work better.

[Defenistrator]

Alright, have the fuel rails 90% sorted out. The mounting issue was solved with some simple spacers, using basic pieces of tubular steel for the 2 holes that lined up, and rectangular offset adapters for the other two.  My dad was kind enough to machine the little rectangular adaptors, being the head of maintenance at a wood flooring plant, he has to make little brackets and crap like this a lot to keep the manufacturing equipment jack-legged together.
The holes in the rail's mounting tabs had to be filed a bit oval to get the fit just right, but it worked out pretty well.  I threaded the crossover tube ports after the step-down past the o-ring seat with 1/4" NPS.  Using two pipe plugs along with the crossover's original o-rings, I threaded the plugs in permanently using epoxy on the threads, and then another bead on the top of the plugs.  I even stuck the little retainer plates back on top for good measure. 
All I have left is to find 3 more fender washers like the one in the upper left, I like using that on the rail's mounting tabs to prevent flex or possible cracking of the plastic.  I also want to make a mounting bracket to immobilize my new crossover, the end plugs that I have tapped can wiggle about, and with nothing but a single o-ring holding back the fuel pressure, I don't want vibration and movement to wear through and cause a potential disaster!






I have a few more little parts on the way, including corvette pedestal mounts and most likely an f-body pan and pickup.  Since I have a good MIG and some time at my disposal, (more time than money, for sure) I will probably try my hand at making an ugly copy of the Pez engine mounting design.

[Defenistrator]

More parts!!! 

On the way to me for the total sum of $160 shipped, I have an f-body pan, pickup, windage tray and all the associated nuts & bolts, an f-body crank pulley, MAF and a set of yellow LS6 valvesprings & retainers!

Since I got some springs far cheaper than I anticipated, I've made the decision to throw the 100% stock l33 long block plan out the window, and will be going with a hotter cam too.  A fellow forum member has offered me a good deal on a TR224 cam, though I have to wait for him to pull it from an engine & verify it's in good shape and it is what he thinks it is.  I'm excited for this, I'm wondering if it's possible to crack about 370 at the wheels with this setup?

Finding a t56 I can afford has turned out to be all but impossible right now, so I've made the decision to go ahead and hunt down a 4l60e that's in good shape.  I've seen them go for less than 1/3 of the T56's price, and that doesn't count the added expense of the clutch, flywheel, master cylinder etc.  I'll throw in a heavy duty cooler to keep the thing alive, and this plan works well with my truck harness idea as well.
I HATE the idea of a high cruising RPM, so I'll be waiting to hear word of the Ronin explorer diff cradle, or I may even try to build my own if I'm bold enough.  If I do it right the price of the tranny and 8.8 conversion could come in at less than the cost of the T56 alone. (I hope!)

[Defenistrator]

(Hope this all works I've never tried uploading & posting pics from my droid before)

So I'm most of the way through an interesting automatic shifter install from a very unusual source: a '69 Opel GT.  My dad stole my old ratchet shifter for his turbo Buick V6 powered Opel, so I stole his old shifter.  He already added an extra notch in the shifter to work with his 2004R so hopefully it should work well with a 4l60E as well.



Yeah, my spot welds look craptastic but you wouldn't believe how thin of steel I used to adapt that shifter mount cup to the trans tunnel.  I left those holes where my dad drilled that piece out of the Opel body, it will be hidden anyway and they made great spot weld attatchment points anyway.


Here's my start of the shifter cover.  It has a long way to go, more epoxy, some grinding down painting etc. before it's finished.

(Return to a real computer edit:)
Somehow the cellphone flash made those pieces on the top of the shifter cover look like sheetmetal, but it's some scrap plastic.  The shifter surround was from an s4 turbo I believe, my S5 shifter surround looks almost the same but is made of rubber. 

[digitalsolo]

Looks like you're doing your shifter somewhat like mine.   

[Defenistrator]

Yeah, I shall try.  I just went back to your build thread to check it out, your shifter cover turned out fantastic!  On mine, the hard plastic inner surround is the perfect height & near perfect shape to start with, I just had to notch a little off the front & back to clear the full range of motion.  Once I get the cover smoothed out & completed I still want to find a way to conceal the big assed gap that is left behind.  If my memory serves me correctly the original opel shifter cover had this material that reminded me of paintbrush bristles or something, which moved easily out of the way as the shifter moved but still served as a nice cover to conceal the guts underneath.

Edit: here's the only pic of shifter in it's original habitat I could find online, you can just make out the material in the middle that I'm talking about.  There's not enough room to make a nice sliding plastic cover in the middle that many modern auto shifters have, unfortunately.

[digitalsolo]

I've seen the "bristle" style covers, should look a-ok all done.   

[Defenistrator]

Alright, the shifter cover is now (mostly) done!


There are a couple areas where I'm not completely satisfied yet and may work on some more.  The finish isn't quite as even throughout as I want, and then there's the labeling...  The current labels were made with a little handheld embossed label maker, but what I really want is some black vinyl decal lettering directly on that aluminum plate.  I couldn't find any little decal sets that were small enough, so these labels went on for now.  They're easy enough to remove when I get something better looking to use.

Also since my last post I've gotten a few more parts in the mail, which includes the f-body pan, windage tray & pickup,  de-screened F-body MAF, camaro crank pulley & LS6 valvesprings.  Still waiting to hear back from a certain forum member about a cam... 

[Defenistrator]

Project's moving forward a little bit.  Since my last pictures of the engine I have coil packs, an f-body pan and an LS2 water pump installed. 


I wanted to take a moment to detail the process of putting an electric truck throttle body an an ls1/ls6 intake, because it's not quite just a bolt it on & forget it sort of thing.

The main problem is the conflict between the throttle body gasket shape and atmospheric vent port location on LS1 vs. the L33 (and I'm sure other Gen III DBW engines)



both ls1 and truck throttle bodies have the vent port by the butterfly, but the LS1's port goes to a hose fitting located in the throttle body, while the L33 unit passes through the manifold through a sealed off area in the gasket, and the fitting is in the intake manifold itself.

So what's the big problem? 
If you were to just bolt up this truck throttle body to the ls1 intake, you'd have a big vaccum leak as the 1/2 inch vent hole just sucks in air unrestricted, past the butterfly to the manifold.

My solution was just to do away with the vent altogether.  I did so by just filling the cavities in the throttle body with JB weld.


The epoxy was a little low in areas, but not anywhere where it would interfere with the gasket's sealing.


One other minor issue to address was the routing of the anti-icing coolant line in the throttle body.  I know a lot of people do away with the thing altogether, but if you really look at one the coolant path barely touches the throttle body at all, it's just enough to add a slightly warm spot where ice would want to accumulate in certain weather conditions, so I decided to keep it.  The outlet port was straight where it directly interfered with the upper radiator hose connection, so I just stuck a small allen wrench in there and bent it close to 90 degrees.


I tend to think ahead, but not always about the most important things.  I had already plugged the factory EGR hole in my ls1 intake with an expanding rubber freeze plug.  With concern to any heat fluctuations or oil mist possibly making the thing work loose, I took it a step further and modified this fender washer I had laying around to form a little hold-down plate to be sure it never comes out, even if I decide to boost it.  MF'er shouldn't go anywhere now! 

That's Jparker7's old intake manifold.  Throttle cable mounting points were already broken off, but that didn't bother me.   

[Defenistrator]

One other big update: I just became the owner of a Ford 8.8" rear end from a t-bird!  It's a 3.27 gear clutch-type posi, (which I verified to be true upon opening it up) and best of all, I got it for the best price one could imagine:  FREE!      A friend of mine has a modified t-bird that he drives in drifting events, and he threw out this perfectly good one in exchange for an aluminum cased Torsen unit with 3.73 gears.  I'm not too concerned with the extra weight on the back and 3.27 is the perfect ratio to go along with a 4L60E.
 

I'm sure to be bugging those of you with an 8.8 swap now for info and advice etc...
My first immediate question is:  How does one avoid u-joint interference & driveshaft rubbing on the subframe with the much shorter pinion shaft vs the Mazda carrier?  I don't think i have yet seen a pic of an 8.8 installed in an FC with a good view of the driveshaft connection.

[Defenistrator]

took care of a few more small steps on my project as my limited budget allows.  Got a used f-body alternator but I didn't have the bracket for it, bt upon seeing the simplicity of it's mounting, decided to just fabricate my own mounting for it which keeps it in the stock f-body location.  Anybody that's seen my earliest thread pics can see that I was able to fix that smashed top alternator mounting hole well enough to use it. 


I already decided to loop the power steering lines for now, and I think I'll use the belt routing that Berto was kind enough to show us in his build thread. Anybody have a spare belt tensioner?

I don't have anything pic-worthy yet but I picked up a stock f-body fuel rail for cheap.  That's right, after all my work trying to adapt the truck rails I probably won't be using them.  FAST sells spacers to use the short truck/ls2 style injectors with the ls1 manifolds & rails, and they're cheap enough that I might as well buy them and not worry about my jack-legged plastic rails springing a leak!

I also pulled out my dash again, I went ahead and did my own version of the heater line relocation for cleaner under-hood routing.  I still need to plug the stock holes in the firewall. 


While I was in there, I eliminated a ton more un-needed wires from the interior harness.  Took out the cruise control module and all the wires & connectors associated with it, since I'm going to be going the drive by wire route I'll have to use the GM system, which will probably mean wiring some custom switches in the dash for it.  Pulled lots of other old rotary ECU related wires I forgot about, and re-wrapped the thinner harness much more professionally than I did last time.  Finally removed the clutch pedal & switch, and stuck a spacer in it's place so my brake pedal won't walk around.