Anyways, after messing with the LS3 sensor a lot we still couldn’t get the engine to idle right and finally I just figured to wire up the stock LS2 sensor and make it fit somehow in the larger LS3 MAP hole.  Once we wired it up everything was as smooth as silk.  The motor cranked perfectly, idled just right with a little chop, and the throttle transitions were much smoother and quicker.  This weekend hopefully with some better weather we’ll make sure topend is where it needs to be. We should get some nitrous numbers soon too with Javier’s setup!

Mods to the Corvette are: LS3 swap, 242/244 .603/.607 112 LSA Custom Cam, 1 7/8″ American Racing Headers, and Magnaflow cat-back system. Today I might get to go do some diagnostic work on the MAP sensor output so we can get the idle transition dipping to go away. Otherwise, this thing is a monster. More pics/mods soon to come!

It’s been a while since I’ve done any updates for the S10 project so here it is:

As mentioned in a previous post I decided to go a different route with my ‘06 Silverado and ‘85 S10.  The more I thought about it, having a 450rwhp daily driven 5200lb. truck isn’t as fun as having a weekend toy that’s 2000lbs. lighter and offers the same power.  It’s simple math to some, but don’t get me wrong it’s a LOT of fun to have a quick full-size truck.  The motor build post described in a nutshell what’s going to happen to the LQ4, but I’ll go ahead and go in further detail here.

The motor is a ‘07 LQ4 motor that was a pullout of a insurance fire vehicle.  I got a steal of a deal on it mostly considering the condition of the motor is mint.  There’s obviously less than 5k, if not 3k, miles on the block.  There’s no signs of any abuse and there’s barely any carbon on the piston surfaces.  Once I saw the block I knew it would be just fine to build up with a stock bottom end.  The ‘07 block has the updated LS2 rods and crank as well as a ported OEM oil pump and some other nice goodies that were late renditions to the original mesh of a LQ4 and LS2 block.  Thanks to Matt (TooTall) he picked up the motor for me while he was out of town.  So enough with the basics, what’s going in it?

After doing some research on the new L92 heads I figured that since it was such a cost-effective route I would just do that.  It was an easy decision to make after reading the Car Craft article they had written up using a stock LQ4 shortblock.  I thought about using an actual LS3 intake manifold, but I really want to see what kind of numbers I can make with the OE L92 truck manifold before I swap to something else.  Besides, I got the complete manifold with throttle body, injectors, rails, sensors, etc. for 125 dollars with less than 5k miles on it.  The manifold setup came from a LY6 hummer, and the heads are brand new never installed GM complete castings.  I will be doing a separate post that will further describe the actual part numbers you need to make the swap work as well as some compression ratio figures and all kinds of other small things that I learned in the last few months.

Well, I have a set of stock heads, a stock manifold, and a stock shortblock.  What else am I going to do?  That was pretty easy to answer once I decided to just put the motor in the S10 I’m building.  Given the weight of the S10 a pretty high-revving cam setup will go in the motor.  I spoke with some buddies over at G-Force and we came up with something in the 236/242 range with whichever lift Comp Cams recommends for use on the XER lobes.  Most likely I’ll go for a 115 LSA, but I might end up with a 112 since it’s not a daily driver and I won’t mind it being incredibly choppy.  To help out the bottom end when spinning to 7000 RPMs I opted to get ARP main and rod bolts.  These will definitely help out with the added compression from milling the heads and also the increased revs.  Besides that, I’m using relative stock parts in the motor.  I will however be using a set of nice dual springs and some hardened pushrods.  Since the motor didn’t come with lifters I decided to buy a LS7 lifter set, which happens to now be the recommended OE service number.  These new lifters have enhanced oiling characteristics which allow them to be used in higher RPM applications.  For really high RPMs, GMPP recommends using the CTS-V R lifter set which are apprently fine up to 8000 RPMs.

Compression ratio is an important question in this build.  I know that eventually I want to turbo this motor, but I also want some good N/A power.  I’ve come to a happy medium where if I get the heads milled a little bit and use stock gaskets I’ll be at or around 9.9-10.1:1 SCR.  At this compression a turbo is just fine, and it’s pretty much just like turbocharging a stock LS1 or even LQ9.  I’m hoping to achieve 550 crank horsepower, which should net me about 440rwhp given a 20% drivetrain loss through the 4L65E.

Other than the change in plans for the motor, I’ve also decided to go with a nicer fuel system.  Although it’s not for super high-horsepower applications, the fuel system I’m building is said to feed up to a 700hp application.  Basically I’ll just be using a 99-04 Corvette fuel filter/regulator, Walbro GSL392 external high-pressure pump, and all AN hard lines.  The filter/regulator is an easy solution to reduce plumbing and also increase fuel pressure reliability.  The filter regulates fuel pressure internally so all you have to do is run one feed line to the engine bay.  It’s more efficient and is inexpensive.  Otherwise, I would have run an Aeromotive regulator which costs 135 dollars compared to the ‘vette filter which is 37 dollars.  The total fuel system including all fittings, the fuel pump, fuel cell, filter, and lines comes to around 500 dollars.  Not too bad considering the potential of the system.  Note that the fuel cell price includes a sending unit and filler neck, 15 gallons all aluminum.

As for interior, I’ll have more updates on that soon.  I plan on getting the electrical done soon once I have a little more room in the garage.  That’s about it for now, and hopefully I’ll have more updates soon!

The harness comes with speaker wire already ran with other wires which is a nice touch to a complete and easy install without having to go back and run speaker wire seperately.  Also, the newer model which I ordered has a stainless backing plate that provides for a solid mounting surface.  This harness is going to be used in my ‘85 S10 project that will now be getting the 6.0/L92 setup.  I have more developments in that area that I’ll post about later, but for now I’m going to focus on getting things like the electrical and fuel system ready to roll.  Here’s another picture of the harness from Kwik Wire.

In a few weeks I’ll have a much better location to work on the S10 and other projects which will allow for disassembling the body panels to touch up some places and to primer the truck.  Once I have the harness installed I’ll likely start on the body preparations while I work on the fuel system at the same time.  More to come soon!

The Build:   The motor started out as a 6.0 LQ4 block that needed some machine work done.  It was bored over .040 and all new bearings were installed to completely overhaul the motor.  New coated flat top pistons were fitted too which raised the compression ratio up to about 12.4:1 SCR paired with the milled 243 LS6 cylinder heads that were port and polished by Castilleja Performance.

Since a beefy trans is the key to any performance truck lasting on the street Pablo did a pretty sweet overhaul on Mike’s stock 4L60E.  A shift kit, new clutches, new steels, servo’s, accumulator pistons, and a trailblazer 2600 stall really complete the build and make it “almost” bulletproof.  The only weak link that remains is the G80 rearend out back.  Who knows how long it’ll last, but it’s bound to blow up sooner or later haha.

Everything went well with the tuning and the motor runs really strong.  Idle tuning with a high compression motor and trying to retain the stock Adaptive Idle Trim system is a bit of a pain in the ass, but I’ve got it close for now.  We really need to up the idle a little bit, but other than that it shouldn’t surge or be starved for air anymore once the idle is bumped to 900 from 750.  I’m looking forward to seeing Mike take the truck to the track someday soon. Here’s an idle clip Mike posted of the truck on YouTube: Mike\’s 6.0 Idle Clip Also, here’s a video Mike took of me doing a small burnout after leaving the shop Jake\’s Burnout

I’m actually typing this on my iPhone somewhere in the middle of Alabama on our way back from Tennessee visiting some family for Thanksgiving.

I hope to make a little progress on my S10 soon too. I’ll have a project post soon describing everything, but basically the 5.3 (LM7) that’s coming out of my Silverado will go into the S10. Once it’s all operational and inspected I’ll likely make it my daily driver since it will get better gas mileage than the Silverado and I’d like to roll around in something different for a while. The S10 might actually be faster too which would be nice. Anyways, much more to come soon once I’m on winter break.

The photos are iPhone quality right now, but maybe I’ll have better ones before I start cleaning it up.  Here’s another shot of the internals.  The piston skirts look to be in excellent condition still having all the skirt material on them without any wear pattern showing.

The next picture is just a shot of the piston and crosshatch still on the cylinder wall.  Looks good to me!

The casting number from what I can read is 12551364

Well, finally we had a date set for the cam swap.  After some scheduling we finally were able to get it done at Brian’s buddy Frank’s shop over here in Friendswood.  The cam swap consisted of a Comp Custom Grind 229/236 .59x”/.60x” 110+2, Comp Magnum 7.400″ pushrods, and Comp 921 Dual Springs with Ti retainers.  Everything went as planned and thanks to TooTall for letting us borrow his spring tool and crank pulley installer we got the job done with ease.  Although it took a while because it’s a F-Body it went pretty smooth.  Here’s Brian working on getting the rear spark plug out on the passenger side…

After the cam swap was finally done we got to hear it start up for the first time.  Unfortunately I don’t have a 3GS iPhone otherwise I would have some good video on here.  It sounds pretty damn mean especially since he’s got the SLP LM1 exhaust on there now.  The next day I commenced tuning the beast and it wasn’t all that bad.  The cam idles rather easy considering the split and overlap, but don’t get me wrong it’s choppier than hell.  It’s a unique sound for sure.  The most important thing is that Brian is happy with the way everything turned out.

The only areas that are a bit difficult to tune this cam were up top especially since I don’t have a dyno to run cars on.  Using my HPTuners MPVI Pro and PLX SM-AFR it got the job done just fine.  We still need to put it on the dyno and run a full 4th gear pull to smooth some top-end stuff out, but it pulls like freight train all through way from 2500-6500 now.

Some might have seen from the cam swap picture that Brian has a pretty nice little plate kit installed on the car as well.  Once the final top-end tuning is finished on the dyno we’ll be installing and configure the new HSW MicroEdge + Nitrous Controller in conjunction with the NOS 150 plate kit that’s on the car right now.  This new controller will give us full control of pretty much everything involved with setting up a safe nitrous system.  Once the time comes I’ll do a little write-up about the controller.  I’m pretty damn excited to get to use it since I’ll likely be running one with my L92 setup some day.

For those who like cool pictures of cars, here’s another one to go along with the last image from Galveston.