These guys worked pretty damn fast today. Couple of little spots I should have prepped better, but I am picky. They laid down some nice paint and baked it in the oven today. Great turn around. Color is a little different, but what do you match it to? The repainted ****ty front fenders or the ****ty chalky body color.

I am very happy with my welding, prep and bodywork on the engine bay, not perfect, but it looks great for an engine bay.

So, here we go!!!

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With the good always comes the bad.

Fed Ex has lost the 2 packages that contain all of my LSA Parts, supercharger, injectors, fuel rails, tensioners and the list goes on and on. I am crossing my fingers that it turns up in the next few days. The good news is that it is insured by the shipper and he has been great so far.

I have gathered up a pretty nice pile of parts ready to go in the car.

Should have the engine out of the donor van tomorrow afternoon, will be able to tear down and begin the conversion and get it ready to drop in.

Good fun coming in the next few weeks.

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It took a couple of tries to get a decent match to the beige for my engine bay, went through variations of too pink and too yellow. I brought my gas door in and he tinted it to match the inside.

Yours looks like a good match. What brand of paint did they use?

Yeah, its a little more tan than the body is, the body has a little more salmon color to it but I knew it wouldnt be an exact match with 3 some year old paint on the car. I am not 100% sure what then ended up shooting. Its single stage. They have the paint still as they forgot to shoot the hinges, hope to have those this week.

Ill report back on the brand.

Got up the crack of dawn yesterday and ended up taking the day off of work.

Had a plan for the day and it started off pulling the interior apart, it was complete before I started today. What I really needed to do was to get the firewall panels out so they could get out to the powdercoaters. Success!!

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Dropped those and some small brackets off at the powdercoaters, then hit the road to head a couple hours north to Portland. Loaded up as many tools as I could think of and my car trailer and hit the road.

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We had gotten our use out of this van and when it was going to go away from our work fleet I purchased it for the drivetrain. It had been well maintained from a drivetrain point of view, new waterpump, recent tune up, plugs wires, oil changes every 5,000 miles and we are the original owners. The body however did not have a straight panel on it, interior was pretty well trashed. Its been a construction van for 10 years and looked 30 years old.

So, I drove it in to our warehouse at about 2 pm complete running and driving van and then this ensued.

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Purple power and a little time with the pressure washer and I am blown away at how clean this engine has stayed. Good Start for the little volvo.

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Having a little fun.

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I had a couple of buddies come and help me, it made way more sense for the body to jsut come off. Had the forklift there to make it easy. We had the body off within an hour of turning the first bolt. Wiring was all disconnected and pulled the entire engine harness. We also split the transmission, pulled the wire harness off of the engine, pulled the fan, motor mounts, oil cooler and got the engine and transmission loaded up on pallets. Set the body back on the frame and bolted it all down. Disposed of all fluids loaded everything up and hit the road not 5 hours after we started. Pretty awesome day.

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Home right at 10. Beyond exhausted but got a ton of work done thanks to some friends.

Going to hopefully round up some missing packages this morning at FedEx.

Hope to start getting the engine put together this weekend.

Sean

holy fuke

Epic van disassembly day was epic. I love days like that where friends all come together and sh*t gets done fast! Engine bay looks just about as perfect as any beige 240 bay has the right to. It's great to see you kept the original color in the bay. To me, a black or contrasting color engine bay takes away from a build and makes a car seem cheaper or thrown together.

Thanks man. It was faster than expected for me and I usually get stuff done pretty quick. I am hoping that the Tan pops with a bunch of black in the engine bay.

Got things unloaded here at the headquarters yesterday, got the engine and parts all unloaded with the use of the neighbors forklift and got it bolted up to an engine stand.

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Let the teardown begin.

Not really sure why anyone would use paper gaskets where it should be an O-ring factory gasket here.

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Part of the reason I picked this up is that I know the history of it from day one. This is a testament of top notch maintenance. I am blown away at how clean this engine is inside and out. Its the cleanest of any LS engines I have started with.

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So all torn down and mostly cleaned up I had 2 broken exhaust bolts to deal with. One of them I got out without much issue. The other one though, It fought me for several hours. Started with the normal drill it out and use an easy out. Broke the easy out down in the hole so, on with the other methods and frustrations. Ended up using a small grinding stone on the Dremel to grind out the broken ez out.....out. Then was finally able to get the broken bolt out.

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I was finally able to bolt on some new parts early this morning cause we were well past midnight at this point.

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Holley oil pan and pickup and ICT Billet Power Steering pump bracket installed with pump, killer little bracket that holds the pump tight to the head.

Apparently I need to get a new alternator as it needs a 1998 to 2002 camaro alternator.....would be nice if they told you that anywhere in the instructions. Oh on those. The worst instructions ever, good looking and fitting parts.

Hope to pickup some parts this am and keep trucking. Wont be able to get it in the car but would be cool to see it mostly assembled and ready to drop in.

Sean

You going to cam this?

**** yeah dude

Not at this time. I was going to try and keep the VVT setup but some reading last night has led me to delete it as it doesnt work with a manual. Guys are making plenty of power with this setup for what I want to do with the car. Reliability is big on my list of things to do with this car. Not that a cam would change that much.

Thanks dude, your car is looking killer, good to see you working on it again.

Sean

VVT delete if you can especially with a manual. Just my opinion, but it is one less thing to worry about.

Since you have a front mount cam sensor look for LS2,LS7, or LS9 (debatable by some) cams. They are cheap and should last a really long time with Blue springs. Plenty of aftermarket choices as well, I just like factory parts for the same reason you do.

Yeah, that is what I have read, they really dont like the manual transmissions.

I am going to see what it makes in this configuration first and go from there. I am deleting the VVT, parts are on order now after figuring this out.

Made some pretty good progress on the engine yesterday.

Got the rest of the accessories figured out and mounted up. Got the crank pulley hole drilled and pinned. figured out the belt routing and tensioners and got those installed as well. Mounted the adapters, supercharger, fuel injectors, rails and a few other things.

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For some reason I thought I could keep the VVT and had proceeded to this point until last night as the wire harness guy brought up a couple of questions and I did a little more research. So while this is great and I know it goes together, it all gets to come back apart now so I can do a VVT Delete.

I am missing more than a few parts so we are going to go into wait mode. I have parts ordered but probably wont see them for a week or so.

Exhaust manifold bolts, clutch, flywheel, new slave cylinder with remote bleeder, VVT Delete, Reverse Lockout Solenoid delete.

All that needs to happen before I can get it in the car, so maybe in a few weeks I can get it set in the chassis.

Should have some brackets and firewall panels back from powder by the end of the week too.

Sean

Damn that is the sex!

Good call on pinning the pulley.

LS9 cam is new for like $110 and is built for a blower... Just sayin ;)

I think I'm most impressed by the unseen planning and calendar-clearing which allows for such rapid progress.

Im going to cam mine. I received my adapter plates in this weekend. Doing some research, the 5.3 stock bottom end and LSA makes around 450hp. If I can get the power band higher up I'll be happy happy happy.

It is, but it really needs heavier valve springs and other work to run it. I know its not terribly hard but with the amount of work that is going to go into the rest of the car I would like to get it buttoned up and back together ready to drop in. I think 500 should be a good number to shoot for.

The planning I totally take as a compliment. It was a lot of work getting all the parts and pieces that were going to work well together, coordinated, ordered and arrived on the right days. Some of that was just dumb luck.

The Calendar thing happened by accident. My wife decided she was going to visit family so I got all my house chores done that week after work so I could work on car stuff all weekend. Worked good. This week has been all work all week though so probably no appreciable progress on the car until sometime late next week.

Nice, yeah a buddy of mine just put his 5.3 on the rollers, made 454 HP with a cam and double valve springs. For some reason he is only making 6 lbs of boost. I think he has a leaking bypass valve, he things its because of the non restrictive intake, cam, exhaust he has on it. He is going to try and do a pulley and see what it makes. That was with a single walbro 340 pump and new longblock.

Due to my lack of research I find that the VVT needs to come out. So back down we go.

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You can see the VVT **** on the floor in this pic.

I still have to button up the front end of the motor tonight and reseal things, new timing cover, rehang the oil pan, new water pump gaskets you know, the stuff I already did once.

The transmission is at the transmission shop getting looked at before it goes in, had too many of those go sideways on me once they are in the car.

Clutch, pressure plate, flywheel, new slave cylinder and throwout bearing have arrived so I should be able to get some of that back in this weekend. Maybe get the firewall panels back in as they are bakc from blasting and powder coat.

Placed the order with Ben for all the suspension yesterday, ouch that was spendy. Hope to see that stuff show up in the next few weeks so I can keep moving forward.

Sean

What’d you get from Ben?

Your buddy's hypothesis sounded fishy to me but positive displacement superchargers are quite a bit different from radial compressors in operation, so I just ran this by one of my coworkers, who used to work for Eaton. Eaton makes the 1.9L Roots-type rotors in the LSA supercharger. TL:DR your buddy might be right about his low boost reading...

Some math to explain:

• LSA supercharger is 1.9L displacement per revolution of the rotors
• Assuming a 2:1 pulley ratio, it will displace 3.8L per engine revolution
• If the 5.3L engine has 100% volumetric efficiency, it ingests 2.65L of air per engine revolution (it's a 4-stroke of course)
• 3.8/2.65 = 1.43. This is the pressure ratio if the 5.3 has 100%VE, which is very good and likely optimistic, but just for illustrative purposes
• 1.43 x 14.7psi atmospheric pressure = 21.0psi absolute pressure in the intake tract, minus 14.7 = 6.3psi boost pressure
• Now assume that your engine's intake tract has more restriction (smaller cam, ports, valves, etc). Say 90% VE. Take the air volume ingested by the engine and adjust for that. 2.65L x 0.90 = 2.385L. Supercharger displacement and pulley ratio stay the same.
• 3.8L / 2.385L = 1.59 pressure ratio
• 1.59 x 14.7psi = 23.4psi --> 23.4 - 14.7 = 8.7psi boost pressure

Again I'm almost never thinking about positive displacement superchargers so this is interesting. By reducing VE you get higher boost pressure. However, this is not a good thing, because you're increasing the supercharger's pressure ratio but decreasing mass flow...meaning you will be moving up and to the left on the compressor map, away from peak efficiency. Charge air temps will increase and so will parasitic power losses, therefore engine power should go down at the flywheel. For turbos or superchargers, any day you can make more power with less boost pressure is a good day. In your buddy's case, of course increasing the pulley ratio will indeed give him higher boost and power, but it doesn't seem like anything's currently wrong with the system after going through the numbers.

Realy nice project you have here! :)

Adjustable Strut Mounts, Strut Brace, Master Cylinder reinforcement bracket, JRZ Rsone Coilovers front, Hybrid adjustable torque rods, Adjustable panhard bar, adjustable swaybar end links, Spherical rear axle bearings, 5x114.3 drilled front hubs with ARP studs, Luxe Steer bearings.

He doesnt have the lower rear arms or rear coilovers so not sure what will happen with that situation yet.



Precisely!!! Funny how these things work, but its not the first I have heard of it happening. Turbo cars its much easier as you just adjust the boost up a little more with a knob, these you have to re pulley. Ill see what it makes stock and go from there. Lets be honest though. Even at 500 hp, this thing should be fast. My F100 is fast at 445 hp at the crank and 3,550 lbs with the COG significantly higher. This thing should be in a whole different playing field for track days on low boost.

Thanks!!! Appreciate the kind words, hopefully more goodness to come soon.

Sean

Your views on this car are very similar to what I'm thinking for my twin-turbo 4.6L 3V wagon. At low boost (<10psi) I know that thing will make 500whp. Totally stock internals, just adding turbos, tuning, and fuel system upgrades. It will be a blast since the 245 is a good ~700lb lighter than an S197 Mustang. Low stress, fast, and fun.

thanks for that breakdown. I miss doing engine math calculations

I think you'll be happy with the mid 400hp range in this car. The 5.3 is all low end power. Its going to roast tires left and right when you're done.

Should be closer to 500, this is a 6.0 gen IV L96, they generally make a bit more power.

I hope it has a tough time spinning tires with 200 treadwear 315's on it :)

Either way it should be a hoot.

Sean

You tubbing?

Flares on all 4 corners. I dont think I could get 315's on it any other way to be honest and I want a square tire setup so 315's front and rear.

Had a little time after work last week and a few hours this weekend to work on it.

Home built pulley installer tool worked like a champ!!!

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Going back together, new Timing cover without the VVT bull****.

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Accessory drive all back on and torqued this time.

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Got going on putting some stuff back on the car and quickly realized I need to finish some parts. So some body work on the brake booster and paint before it all goes back together. This was supposed to be close to the firewall panels 20% gloss and it dried a little more glossy than anticipated. Its a catalyzed single stage paint though and is supposed to hold up really well.

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Wanted to re route the heater hoses for a cleaner look so I cobbled this together. Everything clears the firewall and it will be tucked pretty far in there....not beautiful but should work.

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Got new gasket materials for the firewall panels and picked them up from blasting/powder late last week so got them installed with all new plated hardware and mounted up the booster.

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Looks pretty good compared to a month ago.

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Its a big waiting game at this point. I need a bunch of parts to show up before I progress any farther. I need a tranny, brake master cylinder, suspension parts.....all have been ordered but nothing is here yet. Once that stuff shows up I should be able to proceed. Going to have to do some clearance work on the trans tunnel one of these nights too before the engine and tranny go in.

Hope to make a dent on it again next weekend......yardwork took most of my time this weekend.

Sean