1996 Camaro Z28 LT1 Project

[nascarnate326]

Personally I would keep your stock injectors, get TR55 plugs, and get duralast plugs.

My car was pretty much legit with all the above equipment.

Does your car have a decent opti and water pump? Nows the time for those..

[alone_and_insane]

I have a brand new opti and I replaced the water pump in 2010, so it only has a couple years and a couple thousand miles on it.

[alone_and_insane]

So I'm looking at stuff about installing the timing cover...are there any special tools that I need to install the seals without damaging or rolling them?

[alone_and_insane]

Installed the timing cover tonight. Next step: opti and water pump.

[alone_and_insane]

Is there a difference between NGK TR55 V-power vs regular NGK TR55?

[alone_and_insane]

Is there a difference between NGK TR55 V-power vs regular NGK TR55?

Anybody?

[nascarnate326]

I dont know the answer to that one.

I used regular TR55's in my black car.

[JoeliusZ28]

I also used regular. Not sure the difference either.

[birdie2000]

Pretty sure I used the regular ones too for my current motor.

[alone_and_insane]

Things are coming together slowly but surely. Did some work on the accessory bracket.


As it looked coming off the car:



After cleaning it up a bit (sorry for crappy pic, but you get the idea):



Painted up:



It will be going on the new engine on Monday.

[birdie2000]

Looks good Peter. I don't know if this will be an issue or not, but might not be a bad idea to sand down the paint to the bare metal on the surfaces that make contact with the block/heads and with the alternator case to make sure there aren't issues with the grounding of your alternator. It'll still look fine because obviously you won't see it when everything is installed.

[alone_and_insane]

Getting there....





Looking at October 19 for the drop-in date

[alone_and_insane]

Getting closer and closer! My dad made the trip from Wisconsin this weekend to help me out, and we made some nice progress.

Got the trans installed, swapped over the wiring harness, and a couple other things. Pretty much all that's left is to coat and install the longtubes and to put on the balancer/pulley (didn't get the threaded rod from McMaster-Carr in time).



Found this hole melted into the wiring harness. Must've been touching the headers. Miraculously, it didn't melt through any of the wires.



We also installed a 1LE sway bar. Here's why:



We were also going to install an LS1 steering shaft, but I didn't know about the fact that it's oriented slightly differently than the stock steering shaft. I didn't have time to pound it out and separate it and reindex it, and I didn't have access to a welder. This and the fact that there was zero play in my rag joint, so I put the old one back in. Still on the fence if I'm going to install the LS1 one yet or not.

So pretty much everything's ready for the engine to go back into the car. My next free Saturday is the 19th, so I'd like to do the install that day.

[nascarnate326]

making good progress!

[meissen]

Looks good Peter. I don't know if this will be an issue or not, but might not be a bad idea to sand down the paint to the bare metal on the surfaces that make contact with the block/heads and with the alternator case to make sure there aren't issues with the grounding of your alternator. It'll still look fine because obviously you won't see it when everything is installed.

Peter definitely heed Jim's comment on this one -- if you didn't already, definitely sand down the paint on the bolting surfaces or else you will have issues.