Caprice space heater and LT1 adventures

[kevm14]

I don't think Mulligan knows this story. I told Ed. 10 years and 7 months ago!

Giant tarp, ahoy!

DSC01814.JPG

The heat source:

DSC01815.JPG

I wish I got more out of hanging around with these guys. I guess I was too busy putting miles on my uber-reliable L05 car to want to do any of this stuff.

I forgot exactly what we were doing to Mike O'D's car...LT4 hotcam?

How it started:

DSC01748.JPG

A sense of humor is not required but it helps:

DSC01751.JPG

The clean-room work area:

DSC01754.JPG

Aside from the phallic humor, check out the rags stuffed into the intake ports. That was a thing later.

DSC01755.JPG

No screwing around, just pull the hood and go. Ok, a little screwing around. That's Mike dancing on his car.

DSC01762.JPG

Like I said, get to business.

DSC01764.JPG

The heart of the beast. He already had a T56 on this car, of course.

DSC01769.JPG

Just kidding, this is how you replace the EGR valve. Check out how clean my car was!

DSC01778.JPG

Yup, outside, tools everywhere. Now that's funny...that 76 pc Craftsman tool set and toolbox look suspiciously like my stuff. That is my stuff!!

DSC01780.JPG

My car provided support...the heat shown above, and the light. I had already been running the modified headlight harness with relays, and also included the diode to run high and low beams simultaneously. Except that builds more heat than GM ever intended so this happened.

DSC01786.JPG

Yeah I guess it was a cam. New valve springs.

DSC01789.JPG

Remember the shop rags? Yup. Sucks. Literally.

DSC01793.JPG

I guess after the rags got sucked in he decided to R&R the cam? My memory is shaky on that.

DSC01798.JPG

According to the EXIF, this was a 4 day ordeal. The heat shots above were on day 4. On the last day, my last pic is from 1:31am, so technically stretched into a 5th day. Wow. Those were the days. 1 month to graduate WPI (which I failed at) and here I was, up in Leominster. You can see I had my priorities straight.

[Adam]

I had not heard that story. That probably happened around the same time I was attempting to get everything together for the 454 install into the Monte Carlo.

[kevm14]

My memory is slowly coming back. I think he bought a junkyard LT1 and PCM for $500. His 9C1 was a 96 so I bet he bought a 95 engine and PCM. He must have done the cam swap on a stand in the junkyard engine. That explains why there's an engine in the car AND an engine on the stand in two adjacent pics.

It was after he swapped the engine and tried to start it that the rags got sucked into the intake ports and it had no compression. My memory is once again hazy on exactly what was done after that. Certainly that's why this job stretched so many days. I should send this thread to Mike.

[kevm14]

Also that last pic may be interesting to Ed. Small block cam swap! Also, check out the water pump driveshaft and gear. It runs off the cam gear (which itself has a gear on the back of it for the WP), which is driven on a short chain by the crank gear.

LT1 timing chain.jpg

[Fast_Ed]

I still don't get how the cam can just come out of the front of the engine... I always thought the bearings were bigger than the lobes so they would fit through the journal.. but that's clearly not the case. Why dont the lobes hit the journals when the cam is pulled out?

*Edit.. looks like the bearings *are* bigger than the lobes.

[kevm14]

Now marvel at how beautifully compact the SBC is! The lightness of the LSx engines makes sense too when you realize a lot of that block volume is not metal, since the internal cylinder displacement is rather large. Plus aluminum blocks.

[Adam]

I'm glad we have the SC400 now. I was starting to feel like my V8s were too small and compact for their displacement.

[kevm14]

Is that thing as big as the Ford 32V modular 4.6L?

[Adam]

Its pretty close.