Progress Thread Slow Boat To China

hoopty5.0

mechanicus terribilis
15 Year Member
Dec 14, 2010
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SW Houston
Oh yeah baby. Extra saucy, too. Picked up an 87 LX roller for $1k. Has full UPR front and rear suspension, Flaming River manual rack and shaft, and an 8 pt cage tied in to the subframe connectors. Selling the wheels and tires, K member, and a few other things.

Now for the fun part. Since I have a nice DD 99 GT with all the power it'll ever need, I can make this into a track beater. I've been following a guy with an '86 LX. He has a bone stock LQ9 truck motor. He studded the mains and put in monster injectors. With a BW S480, he's very close to an 8 second pass and he drives it to and from the track. Say what you will, but that's the direction this is going to go.

Here's the car:

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And I REALLY goofed this weekend and had an oil spill disaster to rival the Macando well:

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I did an oil change in the '99. When I took off the old filter, I failed to see that the O ring on the old filter stuck to the block. I lubed the new filter, screwed it on, and filled the engine with oil. I started it and after about 10 seconds off idling with no pressure, I shut it down to find that the oil shot out of the filter area towards the P/S pump area that slung 5 quarts of oil EVERYYYWHEREEEEE.

F-M-L.
 
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That sucks, i watched a friend do that like 7 years ago and to this day everytime i change my oil i think of that and double check that the gasket isnt still there
 
I really can't knock people anymore for LS swaps. By today's standards, roller 302s might as well be made out of glass, and roller 351s are hard to find in junkyards, and even then their stock top ends suck. If you're truly not afraid of being a little hack, you've got fab skills, and you're damn determined to run stock parts, the LS stuff aint a bad choice. I would still prefer a Windsor, but that's just me. :D
 
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I really can't knock people anymore for LS swaps. By today's standards, roller 302s might as well be made out of glass, and roller 351s are hard to find in junkyards, and even then their stock top ends suck. If you're truly not afraid of being a little hack, you've got fab skills, and you're damn determined to run stock parts, the LS stuff aint a bad choice. I would still prefer a Windsor, but that's just me. :D

My last 408 build left a really bad taste in my mouth. And I have a good friend with a salvage license, so he can go to auctions and buy wrecked vehicles for dirt cheap. Got all the fab skillz, and it's gonna be a stock motor besides some bigger injectors.

There are no goals for E.T. or Hp. It's just gonna be a "lets see what we can get away with for cheap" project. Hopefully it'll surprise me in a good way.
 
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I was a busy beaver today. Managed to clear out room to store both cars inside for when Im offshore

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Got the front clip off by the hardest. All the nuts that hold the fenders to the front bumper covers were rusted to hell and back. So it all came off in one piece and will under go surgical separation tomorrow

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Got the inside cleaned out to see the hack job "floor pans"

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Im not upset though. For $1000, it came with a cage and full front and rear suspension. More surgery will be done this week, just gotta wait til X-mas when I buy myself a welder and can start to work on it at my house instead of dragging it to a friends shop like the Hoopty (It's doing very well with the bew owner, BTW.)
 
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Oh, and there will be another project going on beside this one. Im getting a golf cart frame/body soon and a friend has donated an old 750 kawasaki crotch rocket that needs some electrical work. Gonna put the kawi motor in the cart and do a 4 wheeler suspension swap. Screw paying $15k for a Polaris Razr. Ill build one myself for a grand.
 
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I did an oil change in the '99. When I took off the old filter, I failed to see that the O ring on the old filter stuck to the block. I lubed the new filter, screwed it on, and filled the engine with oil. I started it and after about 10 seconds off idling with no pressure, I shut it down to find that the oil shot out of the filter area towards the P/S pump area that slung 5 quarts of oil EVERYYYWHEREEEEE.


F-M-L.


Been there done that. FML is right.
 
Oh, and there will be another project going on beside this one. Im getting a golf cart frame/body soon and a friend has donated an old 750 kawasaki crotch rocket that needs some electrical work. Gonna put the kawi motor in the cart and do a 4 wheeler suspension swap. Screw paying $15k for a Polaris Razr. Ill build one myself for a grand.
Just don't flip it over lmao
 
The machine shop. nothing went right. Im in the frame of mind right now to just buy something and drop it in versus going back and forth with all that mess. Wont be using them again for anything.
I hear that. I travel 175 miles one way to use the machine shop that I trust. I live in the Seattle area and you would think I could find something closer that will do things the right way and then actually stand behind it.
 
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Hahaha :lol: As long as there is no mix-breed trashing, anything is welcome.

Ive been in the garage all evening stripping more stuff off. I'm really excited to have a blank slate. Im going to the hardware store tomorrow to load up on sawzall blades and cutoff wheels. X-mas needs to hurry so I can get a welder and get to work on the body fabrication.

gonna mini-tub, coilover rears, 31 or 33 spline axles and a spool and put in an ARB. There is a LOT of trash welding to fix. Whoever worked on this car before me needs to spend a few hours learning how to weld the right way. Geeeeeez.

I feel like I should also add that this body is already a hack job, so the purists need not cringe. It's only gonna get better after I get done with it.
 
I really can't knock people anymore for LS swaps. By today's standards, roller 302s might as well be made out of glass, and roller 351s are hard to find in junkyards, and even then their stock top ends suck. If you're truly not afraid of being a little hack, you've got fab skills, and you're damn determined to run stock parts, the LS stuff aint a bad choice. I would still prefer a Windsor, but that's just me. :D

The stuff they are doing with STOCK LS based motors these days is nuts. This years trip to atco there was a guy from PA with a stock 6.0 lq4 or lq9. The thing was stock, stock head gaskets, stock head bolts, stock rod bolts, stock heads, stock truck intake manifold. The only modificatons done were a custom cam, valvesprings, and a s480 turbo. The turbo kit was made painfully simple, flipped truck manifolds and a big air to air intercooler. The combo was so simple it was hard to grasp.

Well, we get to talking, and he tells us that he is shooting for an 8 second pass. Been a best of 9.1x at around 150mph. Insane.

Heres a buddies truck i did a video for. He didnt have a license, ran the truck to the eighth mile, i cant say what the time was, but the vid speaks for itself. This is a stock 5.3 bottom end with some good stuff on the topend and a chassis that works.



Edit, just noticed on your first post you are talking about jace's 86 that i saw at atco. LOL
 
The stuff they are doing with STOCK LS based motors these days is nuts. This years trip to atco there was a guy from PA with a stock 6.0 lq4 or lq9. The thing was stock, stock head gaskets, stock head bolts, stock rod bolts, stock heads, stock truck intake manifold. The only modificatons done were a custom cam, valvesprings, and a s480 turbo. The turbo kit was made painfully simple, flipped truck manifolds and a big air to air intercooler. The combo was so simple it was hard to grasp.

Well, we get to talking, and he tells us that he is shooting for an 8 second pass. Been a best of 9.1x at around 150mph. Insane.

Heres a buddies truck i did a video for. He didnt have a license, ran the truck to the eighth mile, i cant say what the time was, but the vid speaks for itself. This is a stock 5.3 bottom end with some good stuff on the topend and a chassis that works.



Edit, just noticed on your first post you are talking about jace's 86 that i saw at atco. LOL


Haha that truck is pretty freaking sweet. Is that NA?

A lot of the really fast, mostly stock LS stuff is turbo, which I think says something for stock LS stuff, but it also says a lot about turbos, too. Turbos are the way of the future, haha.
 
I'm all for things that "work" whatever the combination might be. ;) I've seen a couple of "Monster Miatas" with both 5.0 engines and various LSx engines in them. Crazy stuff, and it's surprising how well those motors fit in those little cars!
 
Im in the process of selling off all the parts I don't need today. buying parts is on hold for this car. The '99 needs some new tires and an A/C compressor. For all you northerners, I had to turn on the A/C in my house last night!
 
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