Cosbysweater's Skunkworks 1987 Chevrolet C10

[cosbySweater]

So as some of you are a ware of by now I've had this C10 for a while and have been kicking around the idea of selling it. I originally bought it to do a powertrains swap from my gremlin however it made more sense to just throw together another Vehicle with all the parts I had. That whole thread can be found in HERE. Anyway the setup I ended up with was very fun, 6.0, s475, 80e, terminator x. It was very fun and fast on the highway I ended up trying to sell it and had no takers on it even at around 10k. Just got comments about how if it was a short bed they would buy it. Not to argue but at the price you could have paid someone to convert it and still be ahead of the game. Either way I decided to just part the damn thing out and put a stock 5.3 and 60e in it with a stock ecm. I did this and got heat and ac working and it became a very sweet truck to drive around in and go to the dump with. I decided to keep it at that point. I then had a friend of mine say he wanted the 5.3/60e setup for his car, I threw out a stupid number and he said okay. He bought it and now i had a truck with no engine and transmission in it again.... I HOPE THIS ALL MAKES SENSE. This was the last combo in the truck.

not shown was the ac and everything.

Then I found a car that had a very nice floor and i needed the floor to fix my station wagon. So I bought it and drove it home. It had title issues and wasn't as nice as it looks in pictures but it ran very very well.

So at this point I parted and cut up the car, I got a perfect floor and all was well with the world. I was about to drop the b21ft into the dumpster when I saw my engineless beige pickup in the corner of the parking lot. I had a spare th350 and I thought man I could get this all to work with a Gary/roger dee adapter kit and it would probably be not that bad. Well for some of you that may not know I'm very good friends with the guys at Sts machining and I have been borderline harassing them on a nightly basis to start making 8hp adapter specifically focused on the Jaguar variants because they are cheap and the physical size between the big and small box is negligible. So finally we came up with a scheme. We would 8hp swap 2 redblock cars and stress test the setup. Whelp now this got a whole lot more interesting. I pulled the engine out on March 18th Plan was too have everything ready for the Davis Vcoa meet. I flew up to Portland and we got the transmission swapped into his car and it went very well. Came home with some custom parts and Swapped the b21ft/8hp45 into the C10.

More Chaos is coming shortly

Yes I know this is dumb, Yes I know I'm crazy.

 

[cosbySweater]

Surprisingly or not for a truck that came factory with a big block option, the tiny Volvo engine does not fit well in it. The frame rails are very high and narrow on these things to the point where the accessories are inside the frame rails just about. I started making engine and transmission mounts for it so I could at least get the engine situated. I Bolted some 1/8th inch plates to existing holes and used 1991 Ford Ranger mounts.

I made Lower mounts that bolt onto the k member as well. I have bolts temporarily shimming up the mounts and the mounts are slotted this is basically for fine tuning the position and I have room to raise and lower the engine if need be.

Its tight but i think this is the best way to do it without sacrificing any accessories on the engine.

I decided to run injectors in the cylinder head like i did before. FAST was blowing out fuel rails for like 8 dollars for an 18 inch rail so I snagged up a bunch of them for future projects as well. This allowed me to use my favorite redblock intake, even though it doesn't fit.....

I had to beat the brake booster a bit to get it to clear. I vacuum tested it after smacking it with the sledge and found no leaks. This is also a good display of how absolutely stubborn I am. I refused to run anything other than the saginaw PS pump due to the fact all the factory c10 stuff worked on it. With the ac delete the pump hits the frame. With the factory bracket and ac compressor the ac pump hits the k member. So I spent way way longer then I really should have figuring out a solution for this and that ended up being this random Thread on the jeep forums talking about a York ac retrofit on a stock bracket. Well perfect they posted a link and with this 30 dollar bracket you van run a sanden compressor in the stock York compressor location and all is well with the world!

As far as the exhaust manifold goes I'm using what I had. I threw the old style manifold on the belt sander and flattened it out. I used some Mercedes cylinder head bolts as studs and welded plates to the back side so I can remove the turbo without the manifold. I used the trusty tbricks special 57 trim t3/t4

Threw a k cam in there because why not. (I would regret this almost immediately)

MORE COMING

 

[cosbySweater]

Now onto the transmission. Its a 8hp45 from a jaguar of some sort. We have been working and talking a lot about how to make this work properly and be low profile enough for some other cool addons. STS made a Flex plate and we are using a completely stock converter. Cool easter egg which makes this even better is the fact that the converter pilot is the same size as the back of a redblock crank, VERY NICE. A starter shim is needed to keep the profile of the adapter plate as slim as possible. A slightly thicker ring gear is used on there to compensate. As sort of a tribute to the great John V, the block needs to be clearanced around 2 of the webs. It takes less than a minute with a flap wheel to achieve this, we tried a die grinder and the flap disk and the flap disk was by far more consistent and quicker. I used the adapter plate as a guide and that worked great. I am running the factory dust shield just to see if it will fit however STS came up with a very clever way to mount the tone ring and attach a crank sensor to the inspection plate that come with the adapter.

I made a pretty nasty mount that uses a stock chevy transmission mount and a ls swap k member.

Made some pretty ghetto cooler lines, used compression fittings on the end of some stock jaguar lines. Bent them till they fit well.

Now that the transmission was secured it was time to go back up top and start with all the plumbing. Made a cool little bracket for the regulator and flex sensor that bolts up to where the carb fuel pump goes. Using a STS breather and a Yoshifab CAS.

Got the china intercooler kit and roughed it in. Made a lower IC and Rad bracket that mounts the two together. Works well and simplifies things.

 

[cosbySweater]

Things started coming together really fast at this point. I put my old ls swap radiator in it with a Lincoln mark 8 fan. This Setup works amazingly well. I used some random silicon couplers and some bulk aluminum pipe.

STS made a pretty sweet coil bracket for me, using m6 coupler nuts I'm able to mount the coil bracket and still use factory gm plug wires. It came time for the ECU and the only one that is able to control the b21 and 8hp is the Maxx ecu. I opted for a Maxx ecu mini just to see how far i could get with their cheapest offering. It does not support e throttle which would be nice. However it has been a absolute joy using this stuff, coming from Megasquirt and a little bit of holley the maxxecu is so so much better and more user friendly.

I got the car running and decided to drive it home, This was a week before Davis and I found it is completely miserable to drive on the highway. I couldn't even get the truck out of 1:1 Considering the amount of driving in the coming week I decided to regear the car. Then Everything went down hill...... First the alternator wasn't charging so I pinned it on the limiter and it started charging, great. I overnighted a yoshifab alternator bracket just incase. Due to the odd belt routing I only had one belt on the alternator and figured it would be fine. Well it wasn't. Broke down on the Monday before Davis due to a snapped belt. Insert dog emoji of everything on fire.

Throw on the yoshifab kit and still only use one belt, Take the car out and start getting it street tuned, Car overboosts like you would not believe. GREAT. Take it to the shop, tear down the rear end and amazon proceeds to loose my gear kit. FANTASTIC!

I go ahead and install my traction bars weld a WG into the turbine and address the oil leak, forgot to mention that also. This is the worst leaking redblock ive ever had. NEW RECORD

MORE TO COME!!!!!

 

[cosbySweater]

So despite dumping in both rear main seal stop leak and engine stop leak. It continued to leak, however it did make the engine Identify as a Subaru.

Needed something to do while I was waiting for gears Im comfortable tuning LS engines however have not really messed with tuning a redblock besides the ms2 setup i had years ago and 2.4. Right now this is not my primary form of transportation so i am not afraid of hurting it!

3.08 gears out 4.11 gears in!

It was time to hit the road! We drove up the coast and ended up getting about 16mpg, Not bad at all, it was running 5psi the entire time!

This was a very special trip for me, doing this whole job and getting 2 8speed swapped projects done and ready for Davis was very fun. It wasn't without its challenges and frustrations (everyone at Davis that was hanging out can probably attest to that was well). The end result ended up being a very cool conversation piece that started as a joke but I ended up falling in love with it. This is going to stay in there for a while and I'm going to keep improving on it and trying to squeeze some real power out of the stock motor!


Here are the current specs on the truck:

Engine
320k stock unopened B21ft
T cam (more on this later, to heavy for the k cam)
STS cam gear
STS breather
Yoshifab CAS
B21f intake manifold stock tb
B21ft exhaust manifold
57trim with atp housing and gate welded in the side
3 inch turboback with single muffler
Yoshifab ls alternator bracket
Saginaw ps pump
Sanden clone compressor and adapter bracket on factory york bracket
LS3 coils
Maxxmini
60lb 997 injectors mounted in the head
Fast fuel rail.
Flex fuel enabled
Pqy regulator
Walbro 525 pump
3/4 inch blip solenoid
3 inch tube and fin ic kit
Massive be cool radiator and mk8 fan

Driveline
Completely stock 8hp45 from a jaguar
STS prototype adapter
STS/cosbyfab driveshaft adapter
40k cooler
2001 extended cab driveshaft
4.11 gears
Spartan locker

Body/chassis/suspension
Stock interior with F10 shifter
Ice cold ac
Furnace hot heater
Stock otherwise
Brakes-yes
KYB gas adjusts
Moog hd springs
Suspension Engineering traction bars

 

[The Full Banana]

I feel like there's some sort of cosmic/karmic balance working itself out here, swapping a redblock into that truck after your litany of v8-swapped Volvos.

You've paid your penance and now your soul can rest

 

[Jack]

I hope you troll Chevy crowd saying how the redblock is superior

“Yeah I had an LS in it but it just wasn’t good enough”

 

[caugmented]

i had like five people send photos of this to me. I was waiting for this to show up on here this morning. This is amazing

 

[Quin]

don't forget to emphasize the part where you did the whole swap in like twelve seconds.

 

[cosbySweater]

I hope you troll Chevy crowd saying how the redblock is superior

“Yeah I had an LS in it but it just wasn’t good enough”

Hey Boomers this had an LS but I cant afford gas anymore because of you guys. (Its worse than the V8.......)

 

[fatcatbestcat]

You've heard "LS swap the world", nah that's overplayed. Redblock swap everything.

 

[Fandango]

This is awesome

 

[toms_elleck]

Dude. LOL

 

[Marvelous3]

Posting in epic thread.

The guys at cars and coffee are going to be so confused.

 

[cosbySweater]

All up to date now its a matter of making it better

 

[Volvorules]

Lol @ Brakes-yes

 

[Sam b]

This thing is way too cool.

 

[brendon_ak]

omg yes

have you thought about a na manifold and jpipe like that dude out east did some years back? I think he used a mitsubishi evo 9 turbo twin scroll something and drag raced it.

very cool work with the trans too, super creative!

 

[Sam b]

This is kinda making me want to do a Volvo engine in my ‘54 Hudson Jet…

 

[atomicdeathmonkey]

Awesome work man.

Should I whip out the 351 and put in a turbo redblock? The path to enlightenment!