I thought I would bring this thread up to date for any one that might be still following this thread, I have posted on a few other sites my progress, or the lack of, what has taken place with the LS2 swap. While I was working through several bugs, I noticed that my oil pressure was half what it normally was, from 50 down to 25 at 2000 RPM. I changed the oil and found it to have a silver tint to it, OH Boy. After I changed the oil, I had great oil pressure once again, so I thought??? Latter that evening I took the car for a ride and noticed a noise in the bottom end at and above 3200 rpm, I thought it might be piston slap. I did a series of test to narrow it down and was trying to convince myself that it wasn't a bearing.

Well, after dropping the pan off the bottom of the motor, I found the problem, #3 rod bearing had spun, OUCH, and #1&5 showed damage as well. I pulled the motor in hopes of pulling the crank and having it turned, well not a chance, the crank is beyond repair.

My guess is that the vehicle that the motor was sourced from, the SS Trail Blazer from a salvage yard, had been possibly running while upside down or on it's side for a period long enough to run the bearing dry of oil. Now what sucks is this, I had the pan off when I was swapping the heads, cam, timing chain and oil pan , I looked at the bearing caps and thought to myself, I should pull the caps off and have a look at the bearings, but thought, a motor with only 6800 miles on it should not have any issues with the bearings, so I closed up the motor with the new pan and continued on with getting it ready to drop into the car. Hind site, what a foolish move, I should have checked the bearings, and not base my decision on the mileage and over all condition. Live and learn.

At this point the block is at the machine shop being checked out and cleaned. The direction of the LS block is heading into a forged 402. I am looking to order the rotating assembly soon, as I work with the machinist on details about the cylinder wall measurements, I should have that info by the end of the week.


I could be pissed about this mishap, but the way I see it, I will have a motor with a bottom end that should take a lot of abuse when I am done, and I should be seeing around 500 HP at the wheel when I am completed and tuned. It should be a fun car to drive at that point??


Riggs

 

Way to turn lemons into lemonade. That 402 is going to be sweet when it's done. I'll look forward to hearing your thoughts on it when it's finished.

 

Ok I just bought all my new bolts, gaskets, lifters, and oil pump through http://www.gmpartsdirect.com/

What a great place to buy GM parts, I have bought from them a few times and each time they save me a ton of money over the other top rated vender's. I just spent $500 there for the rebirth of the LS, over all they saved me a little over $150 on the parts I ordered tonight. Great place to deal with.



A few days ago I ordered my Callie's compstar 4'' crank and 6.125'' rods along with Wisco -8cc flat top 4.005 pistons, This should give me a compression ratio of around 11.1 with the Trick Flow 65cc heads. I also decided to go with Clevite coated bearings to give a little extra added protection against any oil starvation in high speed cornering.

My machinist will be honing the cylinders out for the new pistons and balancing the rotating assembly once the crank comes in, it was said to be in 7 to 10 days, hopefully I will have this motor back to me by the 4th, hopefully, then I can get it back into the car and start to enjoy the LS.


Riggs

 

Still following, take pics of all those shiney new parts when you assemble.
btw, are you planning on doing your own tune?

 

I am working with Steve Williams from tuning by frost, I will be street tuning the car with
HP tuner and working with Steve through Emails, having him make the adjustments needed.

I don't know the aspects of tuning well enough to take on the tune with this build by
myself. As I do my next swap into my pick up project, I will do the tuning for that one.

Riggs

 

The machinist called today and said the short block is ready to be picked up, bad news is I have to go to a wedding today and will not be able to pick it up until Monday, that Sucks.


Riggs

 

when do you plan on working on it again? damn weddings.

 

I am hoping to have it back in the car this weekend if all goes well, but it may not be ready to run because I will be reworking the exhaust and will have to wait on some parts.

Who knows, maybe I'll run the car with the old headers so I can take it for a drive.


Riggs

 

What's the plan for the new exhaust?

 

Quil, still working on it. I am looking at dynatech 2nd gen f body 1 7/8 headers, or Kooks 98 f body 1 7/8 or 2'' headers. I will make that decision very shortly, still this week and hopefully I can come up with a great setup.

Riggs

 

I have the motor back from the machinist, here are some details and how it looks at this point.

I went with the following,

Callies compstar 4'' forged crank
Callies compstar 6.125 h beam forged rods
Wisco 4.05 -8cc dish pistons with coated skirts
Clevite coated cam, rod and main bearings










Machinist did a great job on the machining and Assembly, turns out he is good friends with a friend of mine and I believe I have found a great friend, he has been very helpful and very enthused about the motor and car.


I hope to have the motor back in the car by the end of the weekend and maybe running by next week after the exhaust is finished if all goes as planed.


Riggs

 

Just a little update, I have been cleaning and painting parts to go back onto the motor, I hope to button up the short block and drop it back into the car Saturday. I will fit the headers and see how well they fit, hopefully they work out, if not I want to get them shipped back quickly so I can get a return credit.

I received these today from Kooks, I hope that they fit because they are a very nice quality set of headers.








I was going to use the pace setter F body headers, but with the motor now running at a suspected 600 HP level, I didn't want to restrict the Exhaust, I wounder if I should have went with the 2'' primaries instead of the 1 7/8'', I though the 2'' was possibly to big???


Next I received some engine jewelry, I went with the unpolished set because I am not going to send all my time constantly polishing the engine, I am going to keep things clean in the engine bay, after all, it's not a show car, it's a Fun car.


These should look great on the motor, covering the coil packs.



I'll keep you all posted on the headers.

Riggs

 

Riggs... its gunna be sweet.. im looking forward to see your out come. the "fun car" is a beast.

 

Those coil covers are going to be nice. First time I have seen a set of those. I am guessing those will attach to the studs that hold the coil packs to the valve covers?

 

Yes Eddie, That is right, They should be easy to take on and off the car for cleaning and polishing the covers. I have the Unpolished set, I am going to try to seal them before I install them on the motor to guard against dirt sticking to the rough aluminum, but if I have to remove them for a quick cleaning, it won't be a difficult job to do.

They sell those covers in three finishes, Polished, unpolished and I believe black. I thought they were a great way to finish off the top of the motor, plus it make people do a double take as to what motor is in the car, the coil covers look like big block valve covers and first glance.


Riggs

 

The 1 7/8 headers will be plenty. I know of a LS7 running 600 rwhp with 1 7/8 headers. Makes plenty of power

 

Gordon, Thats what I thought as well, but it was tempting to go for the 2'' for future power upgrades.

Also I found that the A body headers were probably not going to fit from all the research and pictures of different manufactures I looked at. Knowing the Pacesetters F-body headers fit, I took a chance on the stainless Kooks F-body headers.


On a side note, I think the 62-67 nova stainless works headers will also work, but not to sure how low they would hang.


Riggs

 

The Kooks 1 7/8'' F-body headers fit great, much better than the C3 Melrose crap that hang to low and leave no room for a steering stem for the rack and pinion.


Here are some quick photo's of them trial fitted,








I did have to push the heat shield up to have the clearance I wanted, it worked out well.







The driver side does a little kick out, but I think it will work out with no need to have to mod the header.










Riggs

 

Those headers look really nice. i like the thick header flange. clearance looks as good as it can;.

 

Well I have made some progress on getting the motor back in the car, I'm pretty close to being able to start it and take it for a spin.


I'm going to have to say again that the Kooks Camaro headers work fantastic.
I ended up wrapping the headers only in spots to guard against heat for the routing of the Trans lines, starter, and oil filter, I used Clear High temp header paint to seal the header wrap from absorbing any oils that may fall on to them and to help keep them wrapped.

Here are a few photo's of the headers installed.









Nice Clarance on the steering stem for the rack








I still need to refab the Exhaust pipes into the headers, then I can fire it up.


Riggs