Team Camaro Tech banner
Cancel
Create thread New Garage Forums

67 Firebird Convertable LSX Touring Project

Jump to Latest
41 - 60 of 65 Posts
Discussion starter · #41 ·
\o/ op success !!

I got the first coat of clear cut down , spent A little time practicing with my gun and the clear , got some better lighting.Came out quite nice.









Just got to do this for the hood/fenders/bumpers and this chapter will be over.
 
Discussion starter · #43 ·
Thanks... Another weekend , Another step closer. Got the rest of the parts painted , just going to do the clear this AM , Then I need to do a garage restoration , this painting is a messy business









 
Discussion starter · #46 ·
Well , Been six months since I looked at this car , I think in the rush to get it painted before winter I burned myself out , working on the car just didn't appeal to me and there was quite a bit of stuff I wasn't happy with.

I didn't like the idea of running that engine without going through it , so its out at the builders now.

Removed the subframe ,cleaned up the factory welds , did some clearance work for the ridetech stuff , moved the engine back a bit so it wouldn't hit the truturn.

Got the fuel system for it , the holley terminator is on its way, so we are well underway again.


Here is how the tru-turn hits the holley 302-2 oil pan , moving the plates back 5/8 solved this problem



Here is the pass tie-rod end hitting the header. Moving the engine back helped a lot but is still going to need a little tweaking.




Subframe looks better , the first paint I used was too shiney , this is spi black epoxy reduced about 25%. I welded the holley plates right to subframe , moving it back wouldn't catch the two rearmost bolts



I went with the tanks inc PA-4 and ls fuel line kit. it uses the 99+ corvette regulator , 58 PSI fixed pressure . The Holley kit calls for 43 PSI , so I was a little worried as I didn't realize till I had everything on order. A little reading in the holley forums indicates this is not an issue ,so should be nice clean install.

I also discovered as I ordered the terminator with trans control , I actually get the dominator ECU , so It should be interesting to see what that thing can do.

I got some new rods , pistons ,ARP bottem end studs and head bolts.Engine is at best engine in Edmonton getting redone

- .30 overbore , 370 CI , decked , line bored. Crank is staying stock lq4 but ground .10 on mains on throws , also getting it balanced and assembled there

I went with Wiseco K398X3 pistons and texas speed TSP6125SHB rods. These guys know there stuff... with the block decking , .040 head gaskets compression should be right around 10 - 10.5.




The PA-4 getting installed



I had to do a little pounding , looks pretty fugly here but once it was all assembled it looked ok







And finally , todays job , painting the suspension parts I want red , am posting this as I wait for the epoxy set up

 
Discussion starter · #47 ·
Well , Seems I am in engine builder jail , I am stuck in the "Be ready in few days" perpetual time loop. Oh well , Gives me time to tie up some loose ends before I go pay him a visit with my wooden "LS".

Got the front suspension reassembled, learned a few things about wilwood brakes

1 - The rotors and calipers have arrows on them
2- Wilwood hides parts inside the MS when they ship , this is good to know after your parts have been sitting for a year and you spend two hours trying to find them.







Also got the hydroboost mounted up. I used the chevy 2500 HD truck one , not a bunch of info about useing this one either way , so only will time will if its will work properly. It fits nicely , rod seems to be the close. I am not sure how much free play should be in the pedal????


I used the mounting plate that comes with the truck , It sits level with the firewall and puts the rod at a gross angle , so I made a simple mod , I cut around the hole ,mounted it on the firewall and just bent it up till it lined up






My new mig is waiting for parts already , so i had to stick weld it. Not real pretty but it will hold








Todays job... Mount the tank and regulator. Should be fun!!
 
Discussion starter · #48 ·
I got the tank in , I ended up having to hack a hole in the trunk where the lines go. I came up with a sweet idea for a cover/access door for this , unfortunately I forgot what it was now but I am sure it will come back to me :confused:





The good news , short block finally got done and coincided with a trip to the city for me so no freight bill. Ended up getting line bored,decked,bored .30 over and the crank reground. Looks like they did a fine job on the engine.



The theme of the car is ending up looking to be red,black,or shiny , so my original chevy orange engine color was changed to something a little more in tune







A few more bolts and dodads to install and I can put the subframe back in and fire this thing up!!!
 
Discussion starter · #49 ·
Doh , had a some issues yesterday. Was having a hard time getting my trans crossmember in , then my engine seemed to sieze up. Turns out I had my swaybar in backwards/flipped and was jamming the balancer and the swaybar together when the engine tilted up



Easy fix ONCE a guy figured it out lol

Still having a few issues , I didn't put anything in the oil pump like a dummy, I wanted to see some oil pressure before I fired it up , so am still undecided on trying to rig up some kinda priming system vs just starting it. Seconds seem like hours when you are waiting for the oil pressure gauge to move on a fresh engine

Also am undecided on where I want to mount the coils , might put them on the wheel tubs if it looks ok , I have seen pics of guys that did and it just didn't look like a natural place for them , ditto for the firewall. I will decide one I get the wheel tubs mounted again and can visualize it better.

So , time for a little garage clean up and then I can start on the ECU mounting , which I haven't decided on where to put yet either.





Firewall clearance with the modified setback on the plates ... Trans dipstick not going to fit from the looks of it.



Its a little tight on the PS box now too , might bump it when the engine flexes back a little bit. I can grind a little of that bolt would get me 1/2 clearance or so

 
Discussion starter · #51 ·
\o/ Major milestone this week ... Its runnning !!!

First thing I decided to tackle was the oil pressure issue. There is abundance of stupid ways to prime a LS on the internet(Including lots of guys like me who dont pack the oil pump). I made a simple system with a 15.00 drill pump and 1/4 line.

I just stuck the line down the dipstick oil hole in the block and pumped out of there into the cooling line port.Was able to get 10 psi on the guage with my dewalt cordless drill



The next thing to tackle was some wiring.

The original plan was to repurpose a chevy truck relay center , but it was a brain teaser to figure out all the pinouts on it , so I went with a Bussmann 15401-2-0-1-0A

It has 10 relays , 40 fuses and 2 seperate bus bars. Each bus bar powers the row of 20 fuses seperatly , so I ran a 4 gage wire from the battery to the first bus. The second bus is wired to one of the relays which is powered by the acc switch on the ignition.

Mounted in the glove box



Here is where I ended up mounting the ecu. 99% of the wires for it are outside of the cab , so I didnt see much point in making a rats nest under the dash



I also got a bulk roll of 10 gage wire SXL wire , I am going to run that to everthing that runs of a relay(conv top ,cooling fan,headlights,fuel pump etc etc. I found this nifty way to mark the lines on the internet.





The box uses metri pack 280 connectors , so i also got these from wayteck , these are the ones with tangs

Metri-Pack 280 Series Female 12-10GA 12077413
METRI-PACK 280 SERIES FEMALE 14-12GA 12129493
and some delphi 56 connectors to repin the orginal firebird connectors

Delphi 56 Series Female 12GA Loose Terminal # 2989877




And here is another rookie mistake , After painting the engine and starter ,clean off the damn mounting pads , electricity wont go through paint very well.



I used a 89 v8 firebird radiator (mostly because I had one) . The third gen guys are doing ls swaps all the time with no cooling problems ,so its plenty big and fits nice. I cut about 4" out of the pass side
of the rad support to get all the airflow,also skipped the rad transmission cooler and went straight to an aftermarket external cooler.



The rad hold down/fan fits like a glove



I used a truck bottom hose , fit pretty good. I think the top one will fit also but no one local has one in stock , and my wife wont let me take the one off her tahoe , so I am just rigging one up for now so I can play with the engine tune and at least run it long enough to warm up.

First start up


Running for a min or so. Still no coolant or trans fluid , thats todays job , so didnt want to run for too long

 
#52 ·
I follow your build thread closely. I never posted anything because there is nothing that I could write that would contribute to your project.

But now I have some questions. One of your posts you mentioned your are wiring with SXL wire. I was wondering why did you chose that type over TXL or GXL? The only difference that I can find is SXL has thicker insulation compared to TXL or GXL. Therefore, it is more abrasion resistant. Did you pick SXL because it has thicker insulation or is there another reason?
 
Discussion starter · #54 ·
tp_smith said:
I follow your build thread closely. I never posted anything because there is nothing that I could write that would contribute to your project.

But now I have some questions. One of your posts you mentioned your are wiring with SXL wire. I was wondering why did you chose that type over TXL or GXL? The only difference that I can find is SXL has thicker insulation compared to TXL or GXL. Therefore, it is more abrasion resistant. Did you pick SXL because it has thicker insulation or is there another reason?
Click to expand...
Honestly , I went with SXL Because it is know as "Standard Wire" , and the other ones are thinner based off that(according to what I researched). Since I really don't know what I am doing I thought that would be the safe bet lol . If I had samples to compare I would have prob gone to a little less insulation , due to the fact this stuff OD is huge and going to take up lots of room
 
Discussion starter · #56 ·
Hey guys , hope everyone had an awesome summer..

I didn't get a whole bunch done on the firebird the last few months ,I pretty much sat on the couch, eating Doritos and playing eve online since June, But I will post what I did manage to get finished.

I was having some issues getting the car to idle nice , turns out open headers don't give the o2 sensor a good reading , once I got that figured out and the exhaust system installed it smoothed right out.

I went with aeroflow mufflers and a summit x pipe. I also got some 3" pipe , turns out , by the time you get the xpipe setup that is pretty much an exhaust system , didn't need any pipe at all.



I had too make a little zig , the headers missed the crossmember hump by a few inches.



I tacked it up on the car, then welded it all up on stands. I duct taped the ends closed and pressured it up with a shop vac to find any little pinholes



Decided to try some epoxy on it , I will let you know in a few years how that holds up.



I havnt decided on my rear end yet , and once that is in and the rear swaybar is on , I might be able to get some tailpipes on , so just turndowns for now.




I modified whatever was in there for a crossmember, was a 4spd , was a lot of trial and error but it worked out well.I welded some angle iron brackets on the frame, quite a ways back from the stock location. It does interfere with the parking brake cable brackets , I will be using a console hand brake anyway so not a big deal. I think holley has one for this swap with the 4l80 now , not sure if I want to revisit that or not






I got the coils mounted up , the GMPP Valve covers don't have mounting bosses for them , so welded some readyrod couplings onto a cple of the cover bolts , then just drilled new holes in the coil brackets to match




Also got the body panels all back on.

I was having a hard time figuring how I was ever going to get the hood to close without hitting the air cleaner. If you follow the body line by eye on the center of the cowl , there is no way in hell its going to close..





Well turns out the solution to this one was simple ...( maybe the astute among us have noticed the problem lol)

The trick here is too use a f%^$king firebird cowl panel , not a Camaro one , cant believe that one slipped through the cracks :|
 
Discussion starter · #57 ·
Capital Duh. I guess we now know the firebird hood line is quite a bit higher that the Camaro , explains why I could get my stock LQ4 alt bracket on there.



Oh well , I still needed to paint the column and instrument shroud red anyway , hope I have enough paint left. New cowl on the way from classic industries along with the weather stripping and emblems.

All the body panels are on now , still a little tweaking to do to. Also tried my hand on cutting and buffing , next post I will go into some detail on that , I fretted most of last winter how that would go , turns out its not that bad

Here a cpls shots of where its at now.







 
Discussion starter · #58 ·
Hey guys

So the car is pretty much a collection of unfinished loose ends , I spent the winter just tinkering with whatever suited me at the time , I will try to make a organized post but this is going to
most likely a bunch of random pics and comments


I didn't like the white , so I painted the inside of the emblems red , I think they are supposed to sit right on the body line but I put them a touch above as they wouldn't sit right



I had to do a little work to get the hood latch too work , this is the repop 400 hood with a 68 latch.

There is two ways to make this work , the problem is the way the latch meets the receiver on the hood , it pushes the passenger side of the latch too early and makes it hit on the other side , so the two ways I could see are

1 - Bend or cut off the lip inside the hood on the drivers side
2 - cut of the part of the latch that's gets pushed out too early - I did this , it has no bearing on how the hood latches or anything

Here is the part that sticks out on the left ,and after I cut it off





I Didn't have a release handle , so I just made one out of flat iron




I made a mount for the ebrake , shifter and console. The console and ebrake are out of a 2006 G6 (as well as the seats I will be using).
The cables that came with the wildwood were kit were just long enough to reach the hand brake cable

The shifter is a B&M hammer shifter



I got some weird steering column in this car , its actually a tilt&telescopic , its what was in here when I got it , no idea how I am going to get
the horn to work



Here is where I had to cut the lower rear armrests for the mini tub



I got a roll of thin foam from out local candian tire , It was in the camping section , and glued it on to make it nice and smooth before I put on the vinyl




I need to jam all this in somewhere, not going to win any stereo competitions but it should be ok . also plan to put a sub in somewhere ,either a powered underseat sub or a traditional setup
in the trunk , once I get the top on I can envision that better.



I decided to put all 4 speakers close to the driver , research on the car audio forums points to the best results are by ignoring the old school 2 in the front,2 in back setup I would have put in ,so there will be 2 in the kicks and 2 in doors

My old kicks where junk anyway , so I decided to try my hand at modifying those. car will have a vintage air so the ducts are not needed any longer



I filled the holes and fiberglassed in the tweeter mounts









I had to trim out the headlight buckets a bit to fit the xenon headlights from classic industries, I just used tin ships then cleaned up the edges with a grinder





these wire up a little different than the old system , all 4 lights are on in low or high beam position. I put in two relays that are controlled by the old switch/dimmer.These things get HOT



Repo grills , not overly happy with the way they fit the bumper , but too late to do anything with it now



Got a few other things done over the winter , put in an eaton posi , some 30 spline Dutchman axles, got all the rear brakes mounted ,brake system is kinda working

So the next major things I need to get on done before june 10 , get the conv top figured out , get the vintage air installed , get the wiring all loomed and clamped in ,seats installed, door panels...omg making my head spin just thinking about it all .
 
Discussion starter · #59 ·
well , photobucket has gone form being a horrible site to an utterly useless horrible site , all the cool kids are using imgur now , so time to switch , photobucket was making it a major pain to keep this thread updated

To keep the theme going , all the chrome is getting matte blacked , windows will be blacked out also , hopefully it turns out looking ok

I sanded all the chrome and did any repairs needed , gave it two coats of epoxy ,sanded again with 400 and painted


Image



Then came time to assemble the vent windows

Image




I didn't have the little strip things to hold the glass in , so I taped up the glass and framework and laid a bead of windshield urethane in

Image


The glass will probably never be successfully parted form the frames again.

Image


The easiest way to get them together was to put the new rubber into the bottom part of the frame first , that's the only parts that's a little difficult to assembly , then fit the up down part , then install the glass and join the frames together

Image


at first look one would think you slide the window glass channel up into the frame. yeah,nope , just push it in is much easier

Image


I spent pretty much all last week getting the windows and top aligned , basically the steps I took were
1- Get the top sitting flat where you want, temporally install weather strip
2- Get the vent window aligned
3 - align the door glass
4 - the hardest part , get the quarter windows aligned
5 - adjust the top frame to the quarter windows

The best advice I can offer here is to make sure your quarter windows are going up and down freely , my drivers side was not rolling properly , it would go up and down but the motor would labour on the last 1/4 of they way up, its final position was never consistant ,so I had to remove it all and tweak the spread of the metal framing

Image



Now ,never one too cherry pick my posts , we have another little disaster stemming from me forgetting to test fit my Camaro cowl panel. Better too post them and hope someone learns from my
mistakes


Image


there are not really any words too describe my dismay when I put on the cowl panel , however this sums it up nicely

Image
 
Discussion starter · #60 ·
If this was in primer it would be about a 5 minute fix , but now grrrr. there is only really three options here

Leave it as it is(not really an option for me)

rework that area of the fender and respray it

try to fix as best one can

My logic was to pick option three , did I mention I need this on the road for my kids grad on june 9 ? So I figured best thing was to try and bend it back to shape carefully as possible , if something broke I would be back to option 2 anyway.

I noticed it was a straight shot from the inside of the fender to the ground ,soooooo

Image


Image


there was a lot of creaking sounds, but it tweaked into place pretty good. I can still pull the molding/cowl down a bit , but I will leave that till my wiper squirters are here and I can permanently install the cowl. \0/

Image


I decided to try the dreaded pinchweld molding install last night , I usally read up on things as much as possible before doing them , which is where I got the dreaded image of this job from , honestly I don't see why its a problem , mine popped right on with no fuss.

I prob over did the prep for this one in anticipation of how difficult I thought it would be

Image


I filled the seam with windshield urethane , I love this stuff. Also made sure the clips go all the way on

Image


Small issue with the repop trim , it too darn long !! maybe that's why guys have problems with it???

Image


Image


I dug out my 1 remaing half and layed it on the new molding ... the other half is also to long, so I cut out almost an inch off

Image


I laid the molding on like this without trying to snap into place , made sure it was sitting where I wanted

Image


And it went on with a satisfying little click sound. Easy peasy

Image



Now for the todays challenge ... my finely tuned high performance quarter windows are not working.Again. yesterday morning my drivers would zoom up and down like a race car , no weird sounds , no binding. Now it wont even go up half way without jamming.

I suspect something ... the only difference between then and now is my convertible top is in the down position . Could this be what those kidney brackets are for?? or some deeper mystery...Stay tuned !!
 
41 - 60 of 65 Posts
About this Discussion
64 Replies
19 Participants
Last post:
Nelson71
Team Camaro Tech
posts
2.4M
members
90K
Since
1998
A forum community dedicated to 1st generation Chevy Camaros owners and enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about performance, builds, restoration, modifications, classifieds, troubleshooting, reviews, and more!
Full Forum Listing
Explore Our Forums
Bench Racing Engine Body Shop Performance Brakes, Suspension & Steering