Project Snow White (LM4 Swap)

[sgtskid]

Four point cage is DONE!

[sgtskid]

That's an awesome solution, I wonder if others would be interested in buying those from you? Do most people doing GM V8 swaps use the same pan?

Garagistic more or less sells the Canton pan right? Maybe they would be interested in your design.

Decided to take a risk and have a few made.

https://www.rdefab.com/product-page/ls-oil-pan-remote-filter-adapter-great-for-swaps

[Q8y_drifter]

Nice work!
Wish I had the space and tools to fab. Can't wait to see the finished product :)

[sgtskid]

Worked on the cage some more.

Very useful website for bending tubing --> www.benditonline.com


My chop saw wont do any angles past 45 so ever miter had to be done by hand. My sawzall worked great until the battery died which left me with a hack saw and angle grinder.

The pieces are not welded together yet so pay no attention to the offset of the belt bars, they rolled.

[sgtskid]

Worked on the 4 point a bit last night. Got the plinth boxes cut out and bent up. Still need to clean the areas for welding. I also took measurements for the cage and cut my first length of tubing.

I'll be using 1.5"x.120 DOM.

[sgtskid]

Don't know. Might go deaf. ��

[wspellmann]

I wonder how an air chisel with a scraper bit would work on that sound deadening material.

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[sgtskid]

Made a mount for the ECU, painted the fire wall, installed the dash, and mounted the gauges.

[sgtskid]

I stripped all the sound deadening the other night. 5.5 hours of back breaking, hand smashing (gave myself two blood blisters with hammer and chisel) work. I started off using a mixture of dry ice and rubbing alcohol to get the deadening super cool. It worked great but the mess of the rubbing alcohol wasn't worth it. I went back to using straight dry ice. I've removed deadening from lots of cars and it normally comes up in nice sheets or it breaks easily if hit with a hammer. Not this stuff. I used a hammer and a chisel and it broke apart into a million little pieces.







The deadening on the blower cover actually came off really easy with just the wire brush. No dry ice needed. If you do this, do it outside because it makes a HUGE mess and there is lots of dust.



All in all, I'd guess there was 50-60lbs of sound deadening? The stuff in the trunk was super thick and weighs a ton.

[sgtskid]

Life has been hectic so progress has been slow again.

I managed to find a few hours last night to get the seat positioned and mounted.



Next step will to be install a 4 point.

[Nick_08]

Nice work, I really like what you did with the cluster. Can't believe I've missed this thread... Just wait til you drive it, so sick.


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[sgtskid]

Awesome skills dude....can't wait to see that rolling down the highway.

man that motor looks so good in there!

Thanks guys! Two years in the making....and so close...

I wanted to post up about an awesome little tool I found to fix damaged spark plug threads.

My buddy from RM Motorwerks came over and flashed the ECU for me. He couldn't stick around for the start up but I spent the rest of the evening installing plugs, wires, coolant, intake...etc. All the little stuff needed for her to start.

I had installed 7 of the 8 plugs and when I went to install the #1 wire, I noticed the plug was sticking out further than what it should be. I removed the plug and re-installed it with the same result. The plug easily threaded by hand but would only thread about half way into the hole. The LS plug threads are 14x1.25 which is a bastard of a tap to find locally. I wasn't to fond of using a tap anyway because they cut new threads and if the tap started crooked all the threads would be damaged. Since the first few threads were the issue, having the tap start off wrong was a real possibility. There are thread chasers but again, they rely on good threads to start the chaser and are mostly for cleaning corrosion or junk out of the threads.

Then I found this little guy


It collapses, goes into the cylinder head and then backs out straightening the threads as it comes out. Since I knew the threads on the inside were good I figured I'd give it a shot. I was able to thread the tool into the good threads and use them as a guide to straighten out the bad ones. This little guy is worth it's weight in gold! Took probably 20-30 minutes of careful use but it straightened the threads! I coated it in grease before each use and cleaned it after each run. By the time I was finished I was able to screw the plug all the way down by hand before snugging it with the ratchet.

As for how the threads were damaged...I don't know. After I assembled the engine I loosely (by hand) screwed the plugs back into the holes just to keep junk out. The plugs all screwed in fine but I didn't go very far with them. My guess is the threads were jacked up originally (engine had over 200k) and the machine shop missed checking the threads or did the same thing I did and screw a plug in it a little ways to see how it felt.
Either way... no harm no foul - she's all fixed.

Hopefully someone finds the above tool as useful as I did and it saves them from having to put an insert in.

[Q8y_drifter]

man that motor looks so good in there!

[Seawolf]

Awesome skills dude....can't wait to see that rolling down the highway.

[sgtskid]

https://youtu.be/cPsJyYm5o18