ENGINE/TRANSMISSION
So initially i built the car with the intention of doing track days and autocross events, i had no intentions of turocharging it. I bought a complete Lm7 off craigslist for 400 bucks and slapped a holley oil pan on it and using sts mounts, behind the trans i threw on a american powertrains t56 magnum close ratio gearbox and stuffed it in.
<a href="http://imgur.com/HuiH9Ng"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/HuiH9Ng.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
at this point i was over the moon, except i ran into a few issues with the install, first, the engine mounts did not clear the brand new zf rack i had in the car after trying to shift it over and mess around with it i decided to buy a junkyard trw/can/whatever leaky pos the 240s come with. Also i could not for the life of me get the recommended hooker engine swap headers to clear the steering shaft. i ground the **** out of the header, tried shifting the column over and nothing would work. so i ended up buying a solid steering shaft from coleman racing and threw it in there and it was a super tight fit still but it cleared. Luckily the t56 cleared the tunnel with no issues which was cool..... Then came the debacle, as some of you on here know and can see in my signature, i bought a 1995 C4 corvette from the junkyard with a "bad clutch". I got the car for around 1500 bucks after it was all said and done, it was a lt1 300hp/340tq 6 speed car. So now i have 2 cars that can be used on the track that are v8 stick shift cars and the corvette will always out handle the volvo in every way and its running and driving already. Even though the ls in the volvo is a newer engine, it still does not make the power and torque in n/a form like the vette does. So i ripped the t56 out and sold it and bought a 4l80e from the junkyard for 100 bucks, slapped in a hd2 kit and started over. I flipped the hooker swap headers around and built this.
<a href="http://imgur.com/q774hEv"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/q774hEv.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
<a href="http://imgur.com/gWzPlwT"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/gWzPlwT.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
<a href="http://imgur.com/hxFQH8H"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/hxFQH8H.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
for the turbo i decided to go with a borg warner s366 clone from vs racing. now its a small single turbo for the 5.3 but it will compliment the small zo6 cam. I mounted the turbo as close as i could to the passenger side cylinder head just so i could have a tight setup. i see so many build where people do turbo ls cars and there is piping and **** all over the engine bay and its just so damn ugly and unneccesary. Also with the turbo in this location the intercooler piping is a piece of cake, for the inter cooler i went wiith a fairly small ebay unit, i trimmed a little bit out of the core support and used a piece of angle iron and mounted it to the front bumper shock supports, i took the upper to lower core support/horn bracket brace out and cut it and supported the upper core support to the top of the ic. I located the inter cooler as far forward as i could to prevent heat soak and it works good, even on hot days i never see iats go above 130 degrees. For the radiator i used a 85-87 c4 corvette radiator and cut the rad support straight across, the radiator is huge and works great, also its only about 100 bucks shipped on ebay.
<a href="http://imgur.com/cHaaaVN"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/cHaaaVN.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
<a href="http://imgur.com/71ySlgP"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/71ySlgP.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
<a href="http://imgur.com/YX2JFUj"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/YX2JFUj.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
<a href="http://imgur.com/ffNsxjs"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/ffNsxjs.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
i put a water meth kit in there for extra insurance, for the fuel system i ran new -6 feed and return lines to a vac referenced regulator in the engine bay so i could have consistent fuel pressure, i installed a walbro 450lph pump in the tank and ran new wiring to it to prevent fuel starvation. at this point the car was all ready to go!!!!!
<a href="http://imgur.com/UULe5vA"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/UULe5vA.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
<a href="http://imgur.com/KL0Chze"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/KL0Chze.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
It was at this point i suffered a major setback, i fired the car up and i was excited, i let it run and idle and warm up to temp, at this point i checked my gauges and everything was looking spot on, i reved it up a few times and just lissened to the turbo scream, i let it go back to idle and went into the house to grab a celebration beer. On the way back out to my garage i here a noise that sounds a awful lot like the engine is about to blow up, i ran into the garage and shut the car off. i sat and stared at it for like ten seconds wondering what happened then i fired it up again, and its go a nasty knock and no oil pressure. i go into the engine bay and unhook the injectors and crank it off the battery and i watch the balancer spin and it is all over the place, now when i bought the engine it did not have a balancer on it so i used one i had laying around in my bin of lsextras. i removed the balancer and cranked it again and the damn crank snout is walking back and fourth. As soon as i saw that i jumped on craigslist and ebay to find another engine. It must have been in a nasty front end crash or something. I ripped the engine and transmission out as soon as i as soon as that happened and was scouring the interwebs for leads. the next day at work i saw a customer drive up with a 2006 Chevrolet express 3500 and i thought he was coming in for a service, well turns out he was buying a brand new truck and was trading the express van in, so i went to the sales manaer and asked him about the van, he told me that he was going to send it to the auction, i asked if i could drive it, it had a very low 193k on it and it ran and shifted great and it had the mighty lq4 and 4l80e. so i told him my situation and he sold it to me with a junk slip for 1500 bucks, enter
swamp monster 1.0!
<a href="http://imgur.com/vRB9Umi"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/vRB9Umi.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
i steam cleaned the engine and started stripping it down
<a href="http://imgur.com/Ut5pkQa"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/Ut5pkQa.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
i was working so fast i really didnt have time to do much as far as documenting goes, i threw in a ls6 cam and springs ls9 headgaskets and swapped on the holley oil pan. i decided to use this 4l80e instead because i knew it worked, so i did another hd 2 kit in it. and fitting this transmission inside the 240 chassis is a mission. i had to hammer the trans tunnel in about 2 inches on each side. Swedish sheet metal 0 Swedish man with a sledgehammer 1. So i lugged the engine and trans home and threw it in the car and fired it up all in about 6 hours. i decided that i did not want to use the trans cooler in the chingchong radiator that i had bought so i installed a hayden trans cooler with a temp switch in it to automatically control the fan.
<a href="http://imgur.com/ec49Ui3"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/ec49Ui3.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
i didnt get very far with this engine either, i had the car towed over to my dads shop where he built this bitchen 3 inch turbo back exhaust with a single 3 inch magnaflow out back.
<a href="http://imgur.com/i3UCAyR"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/i3UCAyR.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
I lowered the car down ready for burnouts! drove the car around and it was a blast, the rear suspension was so bad it would just shred the tires on any real throttle input but it was great. Then the car lost oil pressure...... i limped the car back home and put a mechanical gauge on it and verified that yep no oil pressure. So i bought a new melling oil pump, high pressure/stock volume. I changed the oil pump in the car and got it back together andddddd 30 psi cold pressure
and it would drop to 5 when the oil temp hit 120. Great so out we go again!
<a href="http://imgur.com/P51GCoJ"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/P51GCoJ.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
<a href="http://imgur.com/MBCTYpT"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/MBCTYpT.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
<a href="http://imgur.com/ULFhJkF"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/ULFhJkF.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
<a href="http://imgur.com/2KXwsY4"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/2KXwsY4.jpg?1" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
what i found was the 2 rear most cam bearings had spun as well as the rear cover gasket being blown out..... great, thats what i get for slamming things together in a hurry, so i had new cam bearings thrown in and had the engine hot tanked and reused everything, this was also less then a week before the davis volvo show which i had to make it too. i opened up the ring gaps a little and honed the cylinders and slammed it back together
<a href="http://imgur.com/PnNiRc0"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/PnNiRc0.jpg?1" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
<a href="http://imgur.com/Z9XdI7S"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/Z9XdI7S.jpg?1" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
<a href="http://imgur.com/h7HptpH"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/h7HptpH.jpg?1" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
got the car all back together and had my dad build a wastegate dump pipe, i decided to have the wastegate welded into the housing to simplify everything
<a href="http://imgur.com/RPqJNSN"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/RPqJNSN.jpg" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
here it is now in its current form, i just finished switching the car over to ms3x and i absolutely love it, also i changed to a ls3 style fuel rail because my old fuel rail was completely rusted out. so for now that is the entire engine/trans saga fiasco. I have close to 6k on it and i absolutely love driving the car, its a great cruiser and it can do some wicked burnout.
<a href="http://imgur.com/n0fGTYB"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/n0fGTYB.jpg?1" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
<a href="http://imgur.com/8OS9duy"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/8OS9duy.jpg?1" title="source: imgur.com" /></a>
