You can’t even put POINTS on an LS3 - pffffffffftttt!


Why would you want to go 60k miles between spark plug changes with more power and less weight when you can be stuck on the side of the road with a spare set of points and a match book?

 

Congratulations Ricky!! Its running and you just passed me up on my build!!!
John

 

You got to love these engines, they either run or they don’t. This engine is an amalgamation of different parts assembled to be a LS2 and is such a mutt I was concerned that I might have a problem with the tune, but my tuner seems to have nailed it.

That’s funny. I don’t know about soul, but it will have plenty of (for me) horsepower and torque. I am prepared with the naysayers with the “so ugly” comment-it may be ugly but it runs like a scaulded dog-or put another way, I have a hunting dog, not a show dog.

Thanks for the comment-it is always a huge motivator when the engine starts the first time.

Amen.
I left “old school” behind almost 15 years ago when I built my first LS powered ride-a1966 GTO. I’ll never go back.

Thanks for the comment. I need to really hit it on this project (like it was a job!). I have three big road trips that I want to make in the car this summer-the last one being to Denver, Durango, Moab, Santa Fe, and then Carlsbad, NM. My wife is riding with me one this trip so the car has to be finished (AC working) (her definition of finished!)

 

Your heater delete has me thinking I may do the same thing. Did you buy a simple ebay type of one or more of the OEM style which I don't need because I'm far from stock on my build?

 

The heater block off cover came from Dynamic Corvette in Michigan. It is a lot cleaner looking than the steel plate Vintage Air supplies with their kit. It is a High quality part that really cleaned up the firewall.

 

It is hard to believe that it has been 4 1/2 months since I last updated this thread. We did take our trips, just not in the Corvette-Lord willing we will do other out west trips in the corvette next year. Shortly after the last post my 92 year old mom began having very serious health problems. Mom is stabilized for now. We were involved in another major health scare with my sister, but she is on the (long) road to a complete recovery. Life is good (even when bad things happen). Hold your love ones close because none of us know what tomorrow brings.

For the last two weeks I have been able to start work (two or three days a week) on the rewire of the car. The next post, hopefully tomorrow, i will post pictures of my progress.
As always, there is more to come. Ricky

 

Glad to hear they are both doing better. Having gone through a very similar situation myself the last several months, I’ve decided the car will get done when the car gets done.

 

First stop on the car rewire is to clean up the engine harness. The harness builder states the computer and fuse block are to be located in the cab of the car-which will not work in a corvette dash as there is no room. I spent a fair amount of time reworking the engine management harness to both tidy the harness by removing a lot of excess wire and so the computer and the engine management fuse block are on the back side of the driver’s inner fender. The first picture shows the harness out of the box when I got the car running in March.



The next picture shows the fuse block (not weather resistant) that I cut out and replaced with the Bussman weather tight fuse block.




I also added wiring to the engine management harness so a GM cruse control would work as well as having the Computer control the AC Compressor and electric fans. While I have done it before it has been a while and it took longer than it should have. The following picture shows the 15 or so wires necessary to accomplish that. The second shows my wiring diagrams i made or printed off when I wired the GTO almost 15 years ago.



Those with a keen eye (and who have done it before) will also notice the Lectric limited wiring diagrams in the picture. I am also modifying it to integrate the other harnesses. I now have enough done where I can crank the engine using the key switch in the cab. I have started wiring the electric fans to work like a 2000 Camaro, the next two pictures show (sort of) the location of the computer and new fuse block as well as some of the wiring for the lights and relays I am locating on the core support.

My wife and I will be out of town for most of the next 30 days so I don’t expect to accomplish much before October 15. I will leave all with a few pictures of a 2014 GMC Sierra I bought that was to good of a deal to pass up-only problem was the Active Fuel management lifters were shot and engine needed to be fixed. I spent 43 hours of my life taking it down and putting it back in June and since then I have put over 10,000 trouble free miles on it!





AS always, there is more to come. Ricky

 

Made it home for a few days and made more headway on the wiring. The first picture is my rear fuse block assembly. It has the fuel pump relay, sequential blinkers, and small fuse block for the relay and the power seats and seat heaters.

This installed behind the drivers wheel well where the wires enter the cab. It also let me terminate all the grounds inside to hopefully avoid the bad ground issues that can sometimes happen


I need to make the main power line and the heavy ground (that bolts to the center lug of the grounds) to finish the rear of the car. I put a temporary power wire and ground to verify the lights and fuel pump relay (which is controlled by the Powertrain Control Module) are working. I also managed to get the headlight relays wired in- I just need to roll the headlights over to finish the wiring. We leave early next week again and it will probably be mid October before I finish up the headlight and electric fans.



as always, there is more to come.
Ricky

 

Mercy, another 90 days has gone by! My sister has progressed to the point she is living independently and getting better every day. Mom is also hanging in there and looking forward to her 93 birthday next month. The upshot of this is since early December I have been working on the corvette and have made a lot of progress with the wiring. The 3 relays on the radiator surround are wired like a 2000 Camaro/corvette so the computer controls fans in all circumstances.


I still need to wire up the headlights but first need to rebuild one of the buckets as it binds in part of its rotation. The next picture shows the completed wiring around the main electrical distribution area. I need to wrap these wires in loom material to complete.



For the last couple of weeks I have been working to fiberglass the holes I cut behind each seat so the later model frame (with its diagonal braces) would clear the 64 body. The next pictures show the fiberglassing/bodywork.





After finishing the fiberglass I sanded/filled/primed both sides. I plan to glue (not rivet) the steel cross brace behind the seats but didn’t have enough glue.


Tomorrow I plan to sandblast/paint the rear cross race so it will be ready to glue in when the new year gets here.
Finally I have finished up the reglue of the top of the tranny tunnel and moving the shifter location in the tunnel to correspond with the Six speed tranny.


I finished that part today, but don’t have a final picture.
Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!
As always, there is more to come. Ricky

 

Thank You for posting your work....It gives us all motivation to work on our own projects large and small. As many of us are hobbyist it's easy to get overwhelmed at times! What I do is break the big picture into smaller doable chunks of work and focused on getting it finished and complete. I try to have my next chunk pre planned and have procured and parts and materials needed if the project I'm working on gets delayed I can move to the next one while waiting. I really enjoy reading all the long going restoration of these cars that are always in process her on the blog. Thanks all Big-K in Ohio

 

It is hard to believe it has been over 2 years since I last posted! We have been riding the roller coaster of life and hanging on through the good and the Bad. I am officially out of the home rebuilding stage with my kids, my Mom died and I did all the legal work to close her estate, a kitchen gut/enlargement for my wife (the absolute kitchen of her dreams), and a big health scare for me. Through it all God has been so good to me. I have no other protects (other than my cars) on the horizon and have been working on the 64 with the intent to finally finish, and start enjoying, this car. I left this project two years ago working on the area around the shifter. I did the fiberglass sometime during the last 2 years, but just finished the fitting and bolting this in.


I used the 64 mounting brackets and rubber boot to seal the tranny shifter from the interior. Anyone with a keen eye will recognize that I reversed the brackets to get it all to fit-which it does.

I have several updates to get me caught up (work that I since my last update-and the part time work I have done during the last two weeks). As always, there is more to come.
Ricky

 

God is good 👍 Nice work.

 

Over the last 4 weeks I pulled the Vintage Air Evaporator Box and then had my brother in Law help me get the hoses attached to the Evaporator and routed to the engine compartment-about the hardest part of the VA install. We reinstalled the Evaporator for what I hope is the final time! I hope to make the final crimps and install the lines in about 2 weeks.




I also spent a lot of time cleaning up the wiring in the engine compartment. I can’t remember what the covering is called but I like it so much better than the standard plastic split loom.

As always, there is more to come. Ricky

 

Looking good, glad to hear the tough life issues are mostly behind you. Be strong!

 

Missed this build along the way. Glad your doing better and back on it.

I always wondered how the body would need to be modified to add the C3 kick-up braces. That looks minimally intrusive.
Looking forward to seeing how that all turns out.

 

Welcome back, Ricky. It's good to hear you're in the clear now, and back to work on this project. It sounds as though you've been through a challenging couple of years. Congrats for getting through it successfully.

I rebuilt your old headlight motors that you sold me, and they've been working great in my car.

Keep the updates coming.

Live well,

SJW

 

It wasn’t that intrusive, but carpet could be a problem!

 

I’m glad the motors worked out. I am real pleased with the Detroit Speed headlight setup so it is a win/win.

 

Somewhere a long time ago someone showed me how to do a redneck (Bubba??) rear end rough alignment so the car could be driven to the alignment shop instead of trailered. For anyone interested, read on. First I used my floor jack to try to “preload” the rear wheel


Next I put a couple of wheel spacers and used a couple of lug nuts to bolt them snugly to rear axel stub and used a straight 4 foot board to measure at 2 points along the frame rail.




When the measurement from the tape marker at the front of board and back of board read the same the axel is basically Parallel to the frame (Zero Toe). Next use a level to adjust the camber to Zero.


If you look at the bubble you can see it needed several turns of the ridetech side control arm to bring it to center. Sorry I didn’t take a final picture of the bubble in the middle, but you get the idea. My son and I set the front toe to as close to zero as possible so it its ready to head to the alignment shop. I will post up how close we were when I get the initial numbers from the alignment shop.