61 Bel Air

[syborg tt]

I was able to clear the brake booster in a 70 Camaro with The Edlebrock Covers so you shouldn't have a problem.

Originally Posted by Jon69RagTop

I'm hoping the brake booster interference isn't too severe but I'm anticipating some issues here. Choices I guess would be , switching to manual, hydro boost, or moving the booster further to the drivers side. Option 3 will be a last resort but will tackle if necessary.




Sure I will have some questions for you all.

[Jon69RagTop]

Last weekend we pulled the motor.

Thanks to Craigslist I sold off the motor and Chevy Rally wheels, nice to get that stuff out of the garage quickly.

Some of you might say priming the motor before turning the key isn't necessary, but I'm of the belief it can't hurt and doesn't really cost that much to accomplish. I bought a small bucket and drilled it for fittings both bottom and top. Bottom was the oil feed and top line was compressed air, used air pressure to punch oil in through the oil pressure fitting.


Installed the Lokar gas pedal, bought the floor mount version. That's gonna work out sweet, action shot my wife snapped because she thought it was funny looking with me sitting in the engine compartment.

Installed the fuel tank today with plumbing to corvette regulator.

Will finish up the plumbing this week, taking Thursday and Friday off for the install. Good buddy is coming in from Houston to help, going to be a fun time for sure.

[WSSix]

Neat way to prime the motor Good luck finishing the install

[Jon69RagTop]

After some solid attempts to get the motor to sit low enough, I knew it was time to notch the cross member. The LS oil pan is much wider than the small flat area gm designed into the very bottom of this crossmember. I'm running the MAST oil pan, even if I chose the autograft pan I believe it still would have required the same cut.

Initial cuts are across the frame parallel to the base of the motor mount then proceeded down the edge towards the flat base of the crossmember. Score/cut two small relief triangles front and back and bent those inward prior to hammering the area flat to widen the flat base area.



Little fresh black paint and she is good as new.

[Jon69RagTop]

Had the drive shaft altered, installed an upgraded bearing assembly and had the rear portion of the drive shaft converted to a slip yoke. The bearing is cased in polyurethane so it's less forgiving for suspension travel but able to handle the horsepower. The slip yoke in essence reduces the stresses on the bearing.

Bought the radiator and wiring harness from Entropy, nice piece for sure and very comparable to the Ron Davis radiator in the Camaro. Has the transmission
cooler built into it .

Also want to give a shout-out for John Leonard over at Modern Vintage Systems for the wiring harness and flash tune. Very helpful guy, always takes my questions.

[Jon69RagTop]

What a week, lots done and so many high points. Sounds mean with open headers and the asa cam. Made a video on the iPad of the start up but for some reason it's not uploading to photobucket. Any ideas on what it takes to get that loaded let me know.

Got the intake dabbed up, probably will paint it all black with dei sound deadener, like the Kringle finish on that stuff. The engine bay will get some major attention to detail, I just started throwing wires and hose on so it could be started. The only thing that kept me from taking a quick spin was the computer was still sitting in the front of the engine compartment loosely on a beach towel.

Bought some PVC to help me route the first part of the exhaust. X-frame low riders can be a little tricky to get from inside the frame rail to the outside of the frame, but this really kept the waste to zero by playing with PVC first.

Still have lots to do, but now that it's running I will work at a much slower pace and enjoy the journey.

By the way, LSXRT's will not fit, that was my screw up. Need to put that on ebay, had to fed ex the Lsxr into the house for Saturday delivery. Whoops!!

[ChuckDriver]

Nice upgrades!!

[RussMurco]

Looking really good and I like the very clever PVC pipe idea!

[Jon69RagTop]

http://youtu.be/lRGTlZJrtUY

This was the initial start-up, follow along for the rest of the story. Will add new video later next week of the new tune.

The initial tune was "way -off". It had trouble idling, and if I put it into gear the motor died instantly. I was getting worried I had a torque converter lock-up issue it died so suddenly in gear. Found someone in St. Louis that opened up the tune and made major adjustments. Came home today and figured within 15 minutes I could throw the computer back in and try to fire it up. Heading out of town with the family, figured I would be either depressed or elated based on the results.

The tune was my issue, the motor now has no trouble idling, sounds very crisp on the throttle, and doesn't stall when put into gear. Time to move on to the exhaust next week and finish wiring up the dual fans.

Plan on going back to the tuner for a full Dino session sometime later in December.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

[fleetus macmullitz]

Jon,

From the youtube link, put the characters in between the = signs, in this case

lRGTlZJrtUY&feature

in between the bracketed text (it will show 'youtube' inside both brackets) that show up when you click on this icon that you'll see when you open up a new post.