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The *NEW* LS swap project

WOW!!! It's been since May since I last updated....what happened to my summer? Well, a few things got me sidetracked and the car sat untouched till about 2 weeks ago.I never stopped thinking about stuff for it and collecting stuff for it, but I haven't touched it. Somewhere in late June my wife decided we needed to move, so we did. Not far from where we lived, but to a very large Dutch colonial with more than ample attached garage space. that whole move was just wrapped up about 3 weeks ago.
In the meantime the 408 forged stroker is done, the T.E.A. stage 2, 317's are just in.The ECS Paxton Novi 1500 is here. The 4L80e and 3400 single disc convertor are here....I've got just about everything except the nickel-dime stuff and of course the time to install it all.
I haven't even had time to take or post any pictures...but I will because all this is worthless without pictures....stay tuned!!!!
 
Sorry folks, I went AWOL for a bit.
So here's some pictures. None of the garage yet, I'm still using the old shop to get this project to the running stage.
First is the shortblock, had to modify the windage tray to clear the longer stroke and also the F body oil pan needed notched out to clear the swing of #1.
So, it's an iron block 6.0 stroked to 408 (6.7L) 4340 crank, forged rods and pistons all ARP hardware, studded top and bottom TEA stage 2 LS6 CNC port work on a pair of 317 truck castings, including trunnion upgrade of the rockers. 72cc chambers should bring my compression ratio in at 9.6:1
C6 front accessory drive and the belle of the ball, the ECS Paxton Novi 1500 with 3.48 pulley, built for the C6 LS2.
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and here's where it sits today...
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Gosh it's been awhile.....I guess I need to post some more pictures! Well it went together on the stand well
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Dropped it in...

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And did a bunch of fab work and here it is about 2 weeks ago.

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I used a Treadstone I/C with a center top discharge, corvette style if you will,.... that required losing the hood latch, cutting the core support,sectioning it and lowering the radiator 2 5/8".

I'm currently stuck plumbing the SC discharge to the lower IC inlet....my well laid out plan didn't survive the installation of the dual Derale fans and 3 core radiator. The only other problem I have is that my hastly engineered crossmember's front torque arm mount id about .060 from the driveshaft and in fact contacts a balance weight, so something needs done with that.

Other than that it's ready to light up !! Fuel system works, PCM wakes up and acknowledges everything , rolls over and makes oil pressure too, but I want to solve the IC plumbing and driveshaft interference before the first break in run so I can take it down the road.

But I'm down to my last 20 hours of work or so....fingers crossed.....
 
And as nod to my TTA brethren, that is an upper TTA radiator hose, sectioned to accommodate the LS steam vent.

I think that is one of the last one's out there....at least that what Rock auto claims.
 
Much respect dude! That's looking magazine quality. I love the 3rd gen TA in black & gold. Especially with a manual transmission and bad ass motor! I'd love to own that ride!
 
Thanks everybody for the compliments. It's been a long journey, but I think I'm down to the last bit of work.
 
So, I got the discharge pipe figured out and welded together and that was the last to do before fire up....so Saturday I checked everything and hit the key and roared to life with barely 1/2 second of cranking. It sounds really good with that 4" single and spintech muffler system. I broke it in for about 20 minutes and topped everything off.
All in all I'm happy but I've got the 4L80 trapped in limp home mode or better described as always in second gear, so I need to track that down and fix it. A fistful of codes were thrown but mostly stuff that wasn't disabled in the start up tune except a low maf code, don't know about that yet and I need to do crank position re-learn yet too.
 
So, some progress and some setbacks, the tranny problem turned out to be the start up tune was lacking the 4L80e segment swap, meaning the PCM thought it was a 4L60e back there and wasn't communicating properly. That's fixed with the PCM being sent off to another place to have a new start up tune and segment swap loaded. The MAF codes were because the boosted tune is actually a speed density tune and ignores MAF data. So a quick 25 miles "easy on it" ride yielded some early 1-2 shifting and late 3-4 shifting and I'm not too happy with the torque convertor. seems to be stalled too high, but all of this might be torque management issues with the PCM tune, just don't know yet.
And the super charger was about to throw the belt and it seems the pulley bolt decided to take a hike along with the keyway causing the pulley to almost walk off the shaft.
And the exhaust system is way too low, so I'm gonna have to re-do the Y-pipe portion, maybe in some oval tubing this time.
All in all I'm happy though.
 
Great Job, I will have to read this thread a few times. Would love to do this to my GTA some day. Any goals for this build?
 
So, six months in ,and 4-5 passes down the track and 600 miles of street driving has yielded me a pretty nice little set up, car is reliable as can be. Hits almost 12 psi of boost and has gone 10.78 @128 on pump gas with a 1.7x 60'. It's on it's first dyno tune still and put down 618 H.P. at the rear tires on a mustang dyno.
It's been a busy summer for me outside of racing but I did manage to put 600 miles on it so far and other than the high stall convertor it has pretty good street manners, haven't been to the track but a couple times and I really don't like racing in the high humidity of late July and august, hopefully I'll get to the track in September, get the 60 ft's down and get to my target 10.5x @130 goal. I still haven't learned how this setup likes to be launched, I have no transbrake, so it's off the foot brake for now at 0-1 psi.
 
10.78 so far, haven't really dialed it in yet and my 60' are dismal at 1.7x. I'm going to take the front sway bar of to see if it'll leave a little harder. Some small exhaust issues yet to resolve,collectors loosening up, rear hanger the same. But outside of little stuff the car's been a solid performer. It'll be anyone's Huckleberry
 
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I'm also thinking about pulley-ing down, right now I have the 3.43 pulley on the supercharger and in good air it'll huff 11-12 PSI. there's a 3" pulley for it that should run me up to 15-16 PSI. I've put an alky kit on in preparation, but currently the car is not tuned for methanol and it lays down at the big end if I use it. With only 763 miles on it since the swap I really haven't tweaked it. I've probably only made 15 or so passes on it. It feels like it's barely making any effort at this power level so I'm pretty confident it'll go up to a half to 3/10's faster, hell if I can get the 60' down to 1.55-1.60 that'll translate too.

I also need to get serious and cage the car, I want to run at bigger tracks and I'll never get it through tech at them.
 
Are you launching off the e-brake ? Seems like i seen somewhere if those engines nose over on the big end it has something to do with the size of the up-pipe, or if you have a turbo lag like response... BTW post some pic of the process when you cage it.
 
I launch off the foot brake, at 0-1 psi. As far as up pipe sizing it's 3" to the 4" TB bore size, I never had it nose over last year before the Alky kit, and shutting it off on the next run netted me 4/10s, so it's definitely skewing the fueling in the PCM.
I dread the cage install because it changes the usefulness of the car on the street side of driving. But it needs done.
 
I got a BGC stock loc. ic that i have been hell-bent on installing w/o removing the sway bar ( never understood the logic), yeah a cage is a pinta but so is waking up dead i guess, be different if it was a street car only, you already run good #'s for that. Btw why a 3" to a 4" ? I didn't reread the whole thread so i assume you are using Fast ecm ?
 
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