69 Camaro Conv. - LS3 Transplant

[Jon69RagTop]

The crossmember is #3601 Competition Engineering from Summit.
First step to the crossmember installation was to relocate the emergency brake pull cable from inboard side of drivers side subframe to outboard side. Used a Lokar Universal emergency brake cable that originally was purchased for the Kore 3 C5 brakes, but now I rerouted for crossmember clearance. Worked out so nicely I realized it should have been done this way from the beginning.

Area cut from

Outboard relocation


Now for the crossmember. I welded some plates which extend from the frame up to just below the floor. My decision for this was for two reason, 1st being this put the crossmember high enough for a direct exhaust shot rearward from the headers. Should keep the pipes tucked up neatly to the bottom of the car.
2nd, having it up this high gave me access to drilling holes and using 1/2 bolts from the inboard size and while able to access the nuts on the backside of the plates. Should make future installations and removals easier leaving this main part as a bolt in. I'm very happy with how this turned out, especailly for the price.

[Jon69RagTop]

YES this is going on Power Tour 2010. One of the reasons I took it off the road so early this Fall was to insure she'd be road-worthy early Spring.

As most of you know, LS motors have an electronic output from the harness to pulse an electronic speedometer and tach. I wanted to keep the original dash though and try to make it look as original as possible. I'm very satisfied with the outcome.

First picture represents the removal of the bezels which hold the gauges in and house the blinkers/idiot lights. Stripped these down and used my dremel to carefully remove just the clear portion of the lens without cutting into the black portion. I also used the dremel to cut out the awkward shapes on the back side of the dash which mirrored the back side of my factory fuel gauge and speedo. I needed to create smooth places for new mounting plates.

Backside

Once this was done, I took my gauges to a buddy with a machine shop and had him trace and duplicate the flat portion of each gauge from aluminum to create new mounting plates.

Once these were painted flat black and I resprayed the bezels, walla!!!! I'm really happy with the stealth look.

[70rs]

Nice work on the dash. Ok, the rest of the car too!!

[Nine Ball]

Nice progress Jon! I'm also planning on doing another Long Haul in 2010, probably in the Chevelle this time. I bought the 502 out of Rick's 69, along with the 6-spd. Going to convert it to EFI and add some more power.

Tony

[69MyWay]

Dash idea....CHECK ENGINE LIGHT

Here is an idea that we did with our car. I had a donor 1996 Caprice that I was taking all kinds of parts out of - but any late model GM will work. I took the Caprice I/P apart and removed the ICON for the check engine. I then cut it down and put it in the STOCK camaro dash on the right side of the cluster in the stock black out lense location.

I wired the LS check light wire to the 69 I/P. So...when I turn on the key I get the engine ICON in orange/yellow glowing - and when something goes wrong...it glows too.

[69MyWay]

This might work better - I took out one of the idiot light glow through covers and replaced it with the check engine ICON that I took from the caprice dash. However, any late model GM car has the same symbol. This is one of those mods you can do that costs very little - but is very cool. Nothing worse than one of those ugly aftermarket amber lights to let you know the computer is functioning...or having a code stored.

[Jon69RagTop]

Looks very familiar.

Thanks for taking the picture and posting. Consider yourself "copied".

[69MyWay]

Originally Posted by Jon69RagTop

Looks very familiar.

Thanks for taking the picture and posting. Consider yourself "copied".

Copied is a good thing - and I also hope you can improve on it. While on that subject...I have another suggestion from the "copy me" files. It drives me nuts that guys go through so much trouble to smooth the firewall, then turn around and leave some things out there without much other thought or consideration.

Making a close out panel for the front fender to inner fender is easy. And, there is enough room to hide a perfect cone K&N filter behind the panel to encourage cold air from behind the headlamp and reduce breathing hot air off the radiator...and having to look at the filter. So...we stuffed ours in there.



Finally - on the fuel tank, there is no reason to get a $1,000 stainless piece back there...or suffer with minimal fuel capacity on a custom cell. Unless you do the mini-tub, you can (with some creativity) get a early/mid 90's Caprice/Impala tank to fit. This gives you 22 gal of capacity - quiet and smooth built in pump with factory built in tank baffles (makes cornering on a low tank not a problem)....and the black just blends.

[Jon69RagTop]

The mock-up of motor and trans position clarified a few things, both requiring the use of my buddies new Miller Plasma Cutter. Can't remember the model number of the machine, but it's super small and can run on 110 or 220. That is one cool too and if I did this kind of stuff more regularly, I'd have one in my garage for sure.

The convertible has a brace in the floor which directly interferes with the the tail housing of the t-56. I probably could have cut less out, but figured if I ever wished to service the shifter location or upgrade, cutting and notching would be more appropriate. Here is a couple of photos showing the work taking place and the final box-in of the brace after removal of material.



The next item which had to be addressed was a small notch in the frame where the alternator was coming into contact. Initial mock-up revealed a slight bit of contact between the alternator housing and crossmember, where maybe some grinding and cutting of the housing would have eliminated the problem. But that darn plasma cutter though, just sitting there looking at me- I knew what I had to do.

I cut a square pocket from the frame, and then proceeded to find a nice piece of curved steel to weld back into it's place. Once this area is painted (see last picture of completed firewall), you can hardly notice the alteration.
Couldn't resist the a few photos my wife took of me in action. Sorry....




Once the frame was finished and repainted, moved on to finishing up the firewall. Added seam sealer, cut the hole for the wiring harness, and wet sanded. As mentioned before, I will be using the round plate with four holes which comes with the kit to finish off this spot of the firewall. Hope you like!!!

[TreySmith]

Looks great! You will love the LS3/T56! It's a blast with my 99 WS6.. 27mpg with gears is great also haha..

Did you use POR-15 to paint the firewall also?