Barn raising

[slick copper]

Good to hear things are still going good. Throw us a pic of it at a car show or just a cool spot off the side of the road sometime. Keep on truckin!

[nuke82]

Hey Mike, what stroke do you have on your coil-overs and what's the free length of your coils? Oh, and how much did it squat with 1000 lbs? I'm curious how smooth/rough it rides without a load.

[Mike Bradbury]

The shocks are Bilstein 16" coil overs. The springs are 12" 300#. I believe it ia around a 3" travel to the bump.
It rode really nice with the load in the back. If you notice from the pictures of my rear suspension, the coil overs are quite a bit further outboard from the standard spring location. This has a lot to do with the stability of the ride.

[nuke82]

Thanks! I'm currently looking into the Fatbar 4 link and it has the coil overs in a similar setup and was concerned about the coil-overs either being too soft and reducing the payload or being too stiff and killing the ride. Glad I found your build thread, I was about to just go with leaf springs.

[Mike Bradbury]

Here is the best shot I have of it with the lathe loaded in the back. It still rode pretty level

[Mike Bradbury]

To be honest with the updated rear suspension with 300# springs and the updated front suspension with the 1.125" sway bar, it handles like a slot car. My next improvement is going to be a rear sway bar.

[mcbassin]

Very nice load you have in the picture! congrats

[poor_mans72]

just found this, awesome job, truck looks great

[Mr-Jack]

Originally Posted by Mike Bradbury

Good year did research with camera and human eye reaction times and found that the strobe of the camera and the sensitivity of the human eye, yellow was far superior to being able to read the Good Year logo while the car was moving. It is all about marketing I guess.

I have never seen a set of raised yellow lettered tires. They would have to be constructed with a yellow rubber layer of rubber throughout the tire.

I have switched to paint also, there was too much flex in the tires at freeway speed and it really became frustrating to have to try to re glue the edges when they would delaminate. The raised white letters do look better up close but from more than 6 feet it is mostly unnoticeable. I just use the negative side of the rubber letters as a stencil.

I did have to modify my looms to work with the ram horn headers slightly. I got a piece of stainless and bent it in a "Z" shape to lift the loom about an inch up.
The wires are still close to the headers that I make sure they stay away from the surface and I used the kevlar heat sleaves on the boots.

where did you get those wire standoffs? and did you have to build your own wires?

[Mike Bradbury]

Hi Jack,
The looms are either Summit or Jegs, I cannot remember now. But they are a standard internet item. As far as the wires go, I used a 1/4" rope and mocked up the length and then spent a lot of time at NAPA finding just the right fit. I cannot remember which application it ended up being but they were not custom they were form sealed on each end.

[Mike Bradbury]

I have been driving the truck a lot lately and last week there was a horrible rubbing noise that I thought must be one of my side pipes loosening. Drove it home and checked every connection and all were tight. Checked my lug nuts, checked my hood hinges, checked my E-brake cable and pedal. nothing was to blame for the high pitched rubbing sound. I eventually found my lower front fender bolt where it connects to the front portion of the rocker pannel was hand tight.
Sometime the easiest fixes take the longest to find.

[Mike Bradbury]

Have not posted in this thread for a while because my truck has been down for a while now. Around the beginning of 2016 the motor just shut off like the key was turned off. I spent some time trying to diagnose the issue. The issue turned out to be a slowly dicentigrating distributor gear. The motor only had 5000 on the clock since the rebuild and I was done rebuilding the small block. I picked up a low mileage LS1 and tranny thanks to C10 club member Jayson Pang. I just got it installed yesterday. I had to remake the top half of my custom motor mounts but it all fit in an bolted up without many issues.

[Palf70Step]

Very Nice!

[crakarjax]

Do you have your fuel system and electrical planned out? I'd love to see how you're approaching this. My install is pretty far off but I like to be prepared -- I've got my fuel system put together ($300 all-in) and will probably re-work my harness but I'd like to flash my own ECU... and that doesn't really seem feasible without dropping several hundred dollars. I want to be able to tune my engine but maybe that's just because I've been tweaking carbs and distributors for 15 years :\

[bs46488]

Looking good.

That LS dropped right in there.

[Mike Bradbury]

Originally Posted by crakarjax

Do you have your fuel system and electrical planned out? I'd love to see how you're approaching this. My install is pretty far off but I like to be prepared -- I've got my fuel system put together ($300 all-in) and will probably re-work my harness but I'd like to flash my own ECU... and that doesn't really seem feasible without dropping several hundred dollars. I want to be able to tune my engine but maybe that's just because I've been tweaking carbs and distributors for 15 years :\

Jayson is the man when it comes to computer stuff, not that he does the flashing but he has the knowledge and the contacts to make this swap painless. About 30% of the computer functions go away (mostly smog stuff). As far as the fuel system goes I am going with an external pump and filter. JEGS has one with a regulator and AN fittings already installed.

[mcbassin]

Bummer to read about your engine taking a crap. On the bright side, welcome to the LS dark side. You will love the start and go of this drivetrain. I have a little over 2700 miles on mine and it's still a blast to drive. Pretty good on gas too, even though I can't seem to keep my foot out of it...

[Mike Bradbury]

What is your gas mileage? I have heard mid 20's I got the 4L60E tranny and I have a 350 rear gear.

[mcbassin]

Originally Posted by Mike Bradbury

What is your gas mileage? I have heard mid 20's I got the 4L60E tranny and I have a 350 rear gear.

The best I've gotten was 20 mpg. But that was on a short road trip. Mine has 3:73 gears, so it runs higher rpm at 75 mph. I think I could get better mileage but it's so hard to stay out of the pedal when I drive it....
My son has the 5.3/4L60 with the stock 2:72 gears in his 86. It's turd on take off but it will get 22-24 mpg consistently.

[Mike Bradbury]

It is official. I am now in the LS conversion crowd. I don't have any pictures of it yet because it I literally just got it done. I drove it to work to shake out the kinks and it really drives nice. The old 350/700R4 had a corvette shift kit in it and it really shifted hard. it was nice when you really wanted to nail it but just around town it was pretty jarring. This 5.3/4L60E combo is super smooth. I have driven about ten miles and I am very impressed. I learned a ton on this install and I am looking to get a WIFI enabled OBD2 scanner with an iPhone app so I can read all the vitals on the fly. I also converted my stock gauges to run with the new computer based platform so I have the best of both. Dialing in the tune is next, I hear that can make quite a difference.

[mcbassin]

Originally Posted by Mike Bradbury

It is official. I am now in the LS conversion crowd. I don't have any pictures of it yet because it I literally just got it done. I drove it to work to shake out the kinks and it really drives nice. The old 350/700R4 had a corvette shift kit in it and it really shifted hard. it was nice when you really wanted to nail it but just around town it was pretty jarring. This 5.3/4L60E combo is super smooth. I have driven about ten miles and I am very impressed. I learned a ton on this install and I am looking to get a WIFI enabled OBD2 scanner with an iPhone app so I can read all the vitals on the fly. I also converted my stock gauges to run with the new computer based platform so I have the best of both. Dialing in the tune is next, I hear that can make quite a difference.

[crakarjax]

Originally Posted by Mike Bradbury

It is official. I am now in the LS conversion crowd. I don't have any pictures of it yet because it I literally just got it done. I drove it to work to shake out the kinks and it really drives nice. The old 350/700R4 had a corvette shift kit in it and it really shifted hard. it was nice when you really wanted to nail it but just around town it was pretty jarring. This 5.3/4L60E combo is super smooth. I have driven about ten miles and I am very impressed. I learned a ton on this install and I am looking to get a WIFI enabled OBD2 scanner with an iPhone app so I can read all the vitals on the fly. I also converted my stock gauges to run with the new computer based platform so I have the best of both. Dialing in the tune is next, I hear that can make quite a difference.

That's on my list of to-do's; did you find any single good howto for the conversion? I've seen about a million different installs and each seems pretty unique.

[Mike Bradbury]

Yeah every vehicle is a bit different. It depends on transmission length of drive shaft, what gas tank, what pan, and intake is on the motor. Alt & PS pump are vastly different from LS to LS. The good news is that there are also millions of after market parts to help you out toward the swap.

[Mike Bradbury]

Well since Photo Bucket decided to be all kinds of lame, here is a quick synopsis of my build without the lame Photo Buckets help. I am not going to chronicle the entire build again but if you have read this far here are the pictures to support it.

[Mike Bradbury]

Some more of the build