<Project> 1998 Trans Am Upgrades

[nascarnate326]

lots of choices for LS clutches. I have a LS7 and love it.

[MP81]

Manual swap, sweet!

Let me know if you need a hand, considering I'm not very far away, and don't really have any vehicle projects for this summer.

[Atrus]

I like my LS7 too...I am at stock power levels, and haven't experienced any "lock out" issues or anything. I have about 5k miles on it thus far, so not too many miles.

[QuickTop]

T56 swaps are neat. Im so glad I did it.

[Schuby87]

&lt;Project&gt; 1998 Trans Am Upgrades

Had no idea you had plans of doing that, but thats awesome!

I want to have a manual car in the household. The plan was to pick up a manual scat pack Challenger this summer but my wife refuses to learn how to drive a stick and I'm not going to have her not able to drive one of our main cars. I looked locally for a week or so for a T56 swap but couldn't find anything so I took a road trip to Dayton, OH to pick it up.

lots of choices for LS clutches. I have a LS7 and love it.

I like my LS7 too...I am at stock power levels, and haven't experienced any "lock out" issues or anything. I have about 5k miles on it thus far, so not too many miles.

The LS7 clutch has my attention. There is a great deal on the clutch and LS2 flywheel.

Manual swap, sweet!

Let me know if you need a hand, considering I'm not very far away, and don't really have any vehicle projects for this summer.

I might have to take you up on that. I haven't done any work on a manual trans before. The plan is to start in a week or so after the SAE world congress and final exams are finished.

[Schuby87]

&lt;Project&gt; 1998 Trans Am Upgrades

Most of the past few weeks have been filled with yard work and ordering parts. I went with the LS7 clutch with all new hydraulics and a speed bleeder. Some of the odds and ends such as pedal covers, master cylinder u bolt, and brake & clutch pedal clips were tough to track down. I have been able to do a few things like clean off the trans and crossmember and get the interior torn apart. I have to pull out the auto pedals and I will be ready to drill the holes for the master cylinder.

[Schuby87]

I finished up this project the week of the Dreamcruise. I didn’t take it to the Dreamcruise because I wanted to break in the clutch and tune it before sitting in all that traffic. I ran into a few problem but none of them were major: 1) Poly motor mounts made getting the bellhousing bolts on and off a real chore. 2) I had trouble getting initial pressure in the clutch but a mityvac helped with that issue and combined with the speedbleeder, bleeding the clutch was simple. 3) After removing the aftermarket remote start & alarm I was having a VATS issue but I remedied this by grounding the BCM side of the starter relay. I have been driving the car to work 2-3 times a week and really enjoying the decision to do the swap. I like the LS7 clutch and LS2 flywheel combo but the stock shifter leaves something to be desired so I picked up a Hurst shifter (thanks again @birdie2000) and will install it with a short stick next year.

[Atrus]

Very nice! I couldn't imagine driving my car as an auto...just something about rowing a few gears and hearing that LS1 exhaust note that an auto can't satisfy.

[Schuby87]

I had my y pipe modified recently. This should be a lot better for flow and sound. Hopefully I can get it installed this week.

Before:


After:



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[meissen]

That's exactly what I need to do. Where'd you have that done and how much did it cost if you don't mind me asking?

[birdie2000]

That's a nice looking merge. What brand?

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[MP81]

That looks great for flow.

[Schuby87]

I had an industry friend do it for me so what I paid wouldn't be representative of waking into a shop.

I had him replicate a Flowmaster merge using 304 stainless since it is only available in steel.

[Schuby87]

Now that the weather is nice enough to work in the garage I tackled the LS6 PCV conversion. It took about 2 hours and the only part that was difficult was eyeballing the cut so I had to do that twice.