So, I know its been a while, but a lot of free time was put into my friend Steve’s car.  He was diagnosed with a brain tumor so my car crew (including myself) put together his car for him while he underwent treatment.  Thankfully, the aggressive treatment has been successful and he is in full remission.  The full story on his build can be found here:

http://www.sumospeed.com/?p=1192

In the past week or so I’ve been able to focus on my car again and have been buttoning up the suspension bits – as well as finalizing the motor placement in the engine bay.  Danny at RE-Spec Garage pulled the motor back out so the transmission tunnel could be beat out more  to make room for the 1/2 inch I plan on raising the motor up – for ground clearance.  I also got the rear suspension bolted back together with the new misalignment spacers.  When I get the front spacers cut, the front control arm will be spaced down ~14mms more then the rear.  As you can see in the pictures, the front arm is flat when its up in the air and the rear arm is much more corrected then the angle of the toe rod – which is where the rear arm used to be angled to.  I also got my new bolts for my tie rod ends.  You can see them compared to the shanks I am using for the LCAs.  The new bolts are 5/8″X6″, grade 8, should be more then strong enough and offer lots of bump steer adjustment.

Huge huge HUGE thanks to Raz and his girlfriend for getting this thing in my car today while I was at work!  He said he didn’t have anything else to do…so I showed up, bolted up the transmission mount and got the car back on the ground to check out how it sat.  It settled a little more then a 1/2 inch.  It looks like I can space the motor mounts up about 1/2 of an inch, so I am going to do that and put the collars back on the top of the coilover mount and raise the car about a 1/3 of an inch, so my oil pan clearance will be a little less scary (and well above the subframe)!  I will be making a hefty skid plate as well.

While the car was up I took some shots of the suspension mods to show how the arms sit.  I am not done tweaking it all, I have to put the misalignment spacers on it still, which will give me another 12.5mms of adjustment from the flat adjustment shot (28.XXmm).  I was also pleased to see I had about 2 inches of travel before I hit my fender frame rails, even at this extreme of a height.  I just can’t wait to get this thing rolling!

Last week I was able to get some help from my friend Raz and got most of the motor assembled and ready to go.  We hit a whole lot of snags, namely getting ahold of the stupid 8mm bolts that are 5 inches long that go into the back of the oil pan and tracking down a 1/8 NPT tap so we could block off the OEM dip stick location.

The night started by getting the bottom end ready to accept the Sikky oil pan.  Raz trimmed the rear of the oil pan baffle then cut the two tabs off of the transmission while I installed the baffle and Sikky supplied oil pick up.

We then took the motor off the engine stand, moved it to an engine hoist and put the rear cover back on and the flywheel/clutch/pressure plate/pilot bearing in.

During the install of the pilot bearing I broke Raz’s thumb with a hammer…he was a trooper and continued to help me for another 2+ hours!  When the pressure plate was tightened down all of the way we decided to put the oil pan on even though I was missing the two rear 8m bolts for the oil pan – even though the instructions say you have to put those in first.  I had to wait about a few days for the bolts to come in at the dealership and ended up having to take the pan back off, clean the block and oil pan again and reinstall it the proper way.  Thanks to Chris for taking the pictures!

Fast forward a week and I finally have the pan installed properly.  I love the rear Sikky logo on the oil pan (I should have wiped it off before the picture).

I also installed the 60 some dollars worth of spark plugs this thing takes – I’m sure the extra torque and horse power will be worth it, haha.

…and the bad ass Sikky motor mounts!  They’re fully CNCed aluminum and have D and P on the bottom of them so you know what side is what.

Installed the starter too.

Which leads up to the last thing I did yesterday, which was fix that damn hole in the side of my transmission bell housing that is too thin to weld.

I ended up getting a piece of sheet metal and cutting and hammering it into a patch for the hole.  I thought it fit rather nicely, I just used JB weld to put it on – I am going to clean up my over abundance of JM weld today, haha.

I should have some more updates in the next couple of days!

I got my new wheel lips in the mail today for my second set of RSs!  A perfect birthday present to come home to after work.

OK, so I was going to go to bed early tonight but I came home and found a package sitting on the table……………………. It was my shock mount spherical bearings!!!  I happened to get my uprights back from welding yesterday, so you can bet your ass I was ready to get this crap back together and see how it fits! I had to install the sphericals by drifting it in with a 36mm socket (a 34 would have been better) and hammer, so the very edge of the bearing housing got a little dinged up but the bearing still moved smoothly. I got one in and am going to get the other one pressed in tomorrow – time is a major factor for me in the next 48 hours and I was excited so that’s why I didn’t wait to get them both pressed in.

Its a hair closer then I want on one side so I may grind down the misalignment spacer on one side about a mm so the shock mount will shift over just a tad. Overall I definitely thing was well worth the $125 bucks I spent on the welding.

I also got my Z33 inner tie rods in and was pleased to find out that they are the same length and offer more adjustability range then the S14 tien inner/outer set.

I attempted to get the car to my friend’s shop a few weeks ago but my other tie rods prevented me from doing it properly.  We got it out in the street and that was all she wrote.  I took the opportuny to take a few pictures.

I can’t wait to get the motor in and see how the front sits!

Well, I would have loved to have gotten more shit done, but I’m happy that I at least got to work on it and get some progress.

My friend came by and put my crank pulley on and showed me the proper way to install the rockers.  During the week I had been scrubbing the crap out of the motor, and you can see that in one pictures.

I also had the misfortune of discovering that my transmission bell housing had some damage on it I was unaware of when I bought it.  Apparently the pressure plate had exploded in it and put a hole in the side of the bell housing.  To top it all off, a piece of it was broken off the bottom as well.  I took it to the local LS1 place, VA Speed.  They have an excellent welder who welded this tin can of a bell housing back together and cleaned up the hole from the pressure plate explosion.  I am probably going to just put duct tape over it or something, the metal was too thin there to be welded and they said it will not matter.

I also pulled the fender on the other side of my car (where the bondo is).  It pulled like crap so hopefully  it is pulled out enough and it’ll just get cleaned up when it gets painted.

I also forgot to include my two surgery photos from when I trimmed the block for the LS6 PCV conversion on the last post.

I have wanted to do a paisley print door panel insert for a while now.  I’ve had the fabric and backing sitting in my room for a few months now and decided I wanted to get creative tonight rather then just mindlessly cut and bolt things.

It took about an hour and a half to do this one panel (and cut out both sides of fabric).  I’ve never done this before and I was surprised at how well the whole process went – I had some help from my roommate’s girlfriend.  I had to use a wire brush to get most of the yellow foam off of the door panel, and I used the original fabric to trace the outline on the new stuff.  There was a tad too much fabric in a few areas but it all fit down into the crease of the door panel for the most part.  Once it dries completely I will see if I can shove it down some more in a few areas.

The best part is there was NO BUNCHING AT ALL!  I took some pictures up close to show that off, haha.

Sorry for the lack of updates.  I went out to California to visit my sister and have been pretty slammed at work.  I went out last week and bought a die grinder, a cutting wheel conversion, 3″ cutting wheels, some quick releases, and some air hose so I could finally use the air compressor I got from my friend.

This allowed me to tackle the task of cutting off the piece of the block that impinged the oil separator on the LS6 valley cover.  I took a picture to show what the cut did.  I think the pictures speak for themselves.

Replaced the cam bearings, installed the cam, cleaned the heads and block, installed valve springs/retainers, reinstalled the lifters, LS4 oil pump, and timing chain.  It took a few days after work to accomplish this, hopefully it’ll be all together after this weekend.

I took a few pictures to show the difference between the stock valve springs and new ones, they’re MUCH beefier and even taller.  I also took some pictures to show the difference between the LS2 chain and LS1 one.  I scraped the heads and block down then did the rest by hand with scotch bright.  You can see how bad the block was in the picture of the cam being installed.  I can’t wait to get this thing running!

I finally got all of my parts in the mail, got moved in, and stopped rolling people’s fenders on my time off.

A good friend of mine who is much more familiar with these motors is helping me out quite a bit with this – and I definitely couldn’t have done this with out him.

I loaded up my accord with all of the motor parts and the engine stand (I should have taken a picture, it was nearly tucking tire out back, haha) and headed over to my friends garage so it would be easier for him to work on it.

I am replacing the main and rod bearings (clevite), the main and rod bolts (with ARP janks), putting a Lutani 224/224 cam in, dual valve springs, hot trick hardened push rods, stock valves rockers and lifters, LS6 valley cover with LS6 intake manifold, 5.3L 703 heads, and an LS4 oil pump (plus basic gaskets and what not).  I am going to install the valley cover at my place after we get the motor together w/ the heads on and what not.

I laid everything out so I could get a picture of it all before it got put together, by the time I did that he had removed most of the crap on the motor – I couldn’t believe how fast he is, it took maybe 5-10 mins for him to tear the motor down and take the old bearings out.  The old bearings and the whole interior of the motor was in very good condition, my friend kept commenting on how good it all looked.  I attempted to take a photo of how good the cylinder walls looked (it took 6 shots and a flashlight to get it!).  Enjoy the photos below – we had to stop because he needed to borrow a cam bearing removal tool and I have to pick some new cam bearings up!  Luckily I should be able to get that taken care of tomorrow, so I will HOPEFULLY have another update tomorrow.