Summer might not be here, but it might as well be. lots of stuff going on.
Gt500’s start to break drive shafts at 600+rwhp if they run any kind of tire at the track. To get ahead of that problem, a new aluminum 4″ shaft is the ticket, also eliminating the carrier bearing cuts down on the number of drive shaft loops you need and the number of places a broken shaft can pole vault you. This shaft from Stage3 is a nice piece. It uses the factory rear flange and a machined steel locate/adapter for the rear of the shaft.
New TVS blower for the buggy showed up. ready to start mocking up on the engine. Really cool unit. Stock rods and pistons on the ls6 though, so were gonna run it pretty low boost till we get the rest of the rig sorted. I suspect a fully built 6.0 will be in the future, so we spec’d the blower we can grow with.
Starting a new LQ4 swap in a 69 Camaro. Got the engine stripped down for a new set of lq9 rods and pistons for the engine. Also purchased is a set of ls9 head gaskets, arp bolts, LQ9 camshaft and Microsquirt engine management. One of the cool parts of the swap is the simplicity of the motor mounts. Edelbrock supplied the ones we are going to use so we can use the factory style SBC mounts. We are also going to be running a carb style single plane manifold for the cathedral port 317 heads.
This engine will end up turbo charged when its installed, so the final compression with the thicker gaskets puts us at about 9.6 with the 317 heads. Pretty good for a turbo LS motor.
Another side project for the summer is a BBQ trailer. Mark had an old trailer chassis laying around and it was decided that we need to stack a few BBQ’s on it and give it a new life. So the old body was stripped, and the work got started on the frame. Figure it will be great for the car show season. Now we need something cool to tow it with!
Marks truck FINALLY got an exhaust last week. The neighbors can sleep easier now. We used a left over magnaflow muff and some 3″ tube we had left over. Added welder and BAM, we got a truck that only looks nasty now. Sure does run great. Mark has been using it to commute from washougal lately with no hiccups to speak of. At least new ones. I’m pretty sure the rear main fell out years ago, but aside from the leaks, runs hard. We ordered the parts and pieces to inter-cool it this week as well. Spent a whopping 125$. At the rate we are going, this 125$ needs to return 45HP or the HP per dollar is gonna start to slip a bit. I figure 14PSI will get us there. At some point our fuel system is definitely going to need addressing.
We dumped the exhaust before the axle to keep it quick and simple. And we ran out of 3″ pipe and don’t feel like buying any more. So this is were it stops. With the exhaust on the truck, the turbo wistle is super promenant. This truck really shouldn’t sound this good.
