Made quite a bit of progress over the last several days. With the frame horn fixed, I was able to get the sway bar installed. The bushings sat nice and flat on the bottom of the frame rails, so that made me happy.
My C6 balancer came in. Was a new takeoff piece from a crate motor. I have the puller, flywheel locking tool and installation tools already so this was a pretty quick swap. Pull the truck balancer and install the C6 unit.
After researching a bunch of different options for the alternator/PS brackets, I decided on the unit made by Holley that replicates the stock C6 bracket. The big difference is the alternator spacing, which allows you to use the more common truck units. Since I already had a good alternator, it made sense to pay a little more for this one so I didn't also need to buy a new alternator. And it will likely be easier/cheaper to replace if this one fails at some point. I ordered it through Summit, and while I placed the order I also grabbed the rest of the fittings to install my Mighty Mouse catch can.
The Holley bracket is a really nicely cast piece. It's incredibly smooth out of the box and looks to be very well made.
I had a mix match of parts, and decided to paint all of the brackets and accessories satan black. I've seen a lot of motors with that combo and I wanted to clean up the looks of the engine bay while I'm in this deep.
For some reason they were still tacky the next day so I set them out in the sun for about 4 hours to cure.
Once they were all painted up, it was finally time to see how they looked on my motor with the new intake. Very pleased with how they turned out. I've always liked the way the alternators looked painted all black.
Then another issue popped up. I went to test fit a belt I have and quickly realized that the tensioner is very close to the throttlebody plug. After researching many different options, I realized that it must be because this intake was designed to work with LS1 accessories. I tried flipping the TB, but the motor hits the water pump.
After a few degrees of rotation it contacted the connector, so that will not work.
After thinking on it a while, I got the idea to try and rotate the tensioner on the lower mount. BINGO!
It rotated it enough to allow for full articulation of the tensioner. I cut the boss off of an old truck tensioner that I had laying around and will weld it to the original tensioner so that it won't move around. The good news is the tensioner is pulling towards the stud rather than away from it, so there will always be a force in the right direction.
I used an old truck water pump I had to bolt it all in place so that I could TIG weld it into place. I'm a beginner, but the weld will definitely hold it in place. Then I milled the reverse side flat so allow the bolt head to sit flush.
Touched up the paint, and I think it looks great!
Before the final installation of the accessories, I drilled and tapped the water pump for the steam port lines. When I first put the engine together I realized that I had some block off plates in the front, so it wasn't ever fully bleeding the air from the system. This will be a good piece of mind update.
In order to install the LS3 style 1000cc injectors into this intake, I had to make some new brackets for the fuel rails I bought. They are generic Amazon rails, but do look to be well built. I used some aluminum angle bulk from Lowe's and it ended up being the perfect height for these injectors. Just trimmed them down and rounded off the edges. Then painted.
Once the brackets dried, I installed them onto the fuel rails and installed on the car. I'm really happy with how this update turned out. I figured while I'm swapping intakes I might as well get the new injectors installed so that I'll be that much closer when I add the turbo. It will take a bit of time to get my new base VE table updated, but I think the existing table will give me a great base to start from.
I also received my 9" third member from Speedway a few days ago. It was packaged up really well, and I only pulled the cover off to take a picture but for now it's staying in the case for safe keeping. It's a Nodular Iron third member with 35 spline Helical Posi differential and 3.25 gears. I'm really excited about putting together the rear end, but for now I want to focus on getting the engine bay back together. I have a complete LS1 rear disk brake setup for it as well. Just needs to be cleaned up and painted since the backing plates need to be installed before the bearings can be installed. I opted for the GM bolt pattern flush mount ends which are designed to work with these brakes.
Over the next week or so I'm hoping to get the flex fuel sensor mounted and installed, reinstall the battery and re-route some cables, loom all the wires in the engine bay, install the fuel pump controller (requires installing 8 ga wire to the rear of the car and tapping into the MAP sensor), and modifying the CTS-V fuel pump assembly so that I can swap that into my tank. I was going to just run the car as is, but if I do that, I'll end up needing to modify my VE table twice. With the fuel pump controller it will ramp up based on boost pressure and because of this, I like to run the pumps at a starting pressure of 43psi. Going from a base pressure of 58psi to 43psi will change the fueling required in my VE Table.
Cheers,
Ryan
