Project Greyscale 1971 Trans Am

[bsharpe]

The 6l90 is huge and has awful ground clearance. I want to be able to comfortably drive this car. I raised the trans 3" to allow plenty of clearance. I might need to raise the entire driveshaft tunnel but i wont know until I get the rear 4link setup.


Unfortunately, I found my fully welded trans tunnel interfered with the vintage air unit. I moved everything to the passenger side as far as possible and hammered the cowl area allow more room.


Since I am using vintage air, I shaved the firewall. the firewall on the 2nd gens arent flat. The gas pedal area is recessed more and sticks out farther into the engine bay. I think it turned out alright.



You can also see I relocated the wiper motor to under the drivers fender. I used a motor from a 4th gen i picked up for free.

[bsharpe]

I really like the c5 Z06 wheels, I plan on using them on this car as well. I found a set on craigslist for 450 and they came with a decent set of tires. The tires are old but they aren’t dry rotted. I will use the 18x10.5’s on the Trans Am and the 17x9.5’s on the chevelle. I plan on running 295/35/18 on all 4 corners for now but I might end up buying new tires and going with 315’s for the rear.



I want black wheels on the Trans Am but I don’t want to devalue the wheels so I decided to plasti-dip them. This was the first time using plasti-dip and it worked out really well. Hopefully they will hold up to the abuse but again this is not a show car.

[bsharpe]

Scott verified that his subframe had a similar fit on Grendel's Mullet Camaro. The half height body mounts can not be used at the firewall. I can now move forward with confidence in my setup.

I might keep the subframe wedged as i have it now with the small body mounts in the rear and full height at the firewall. I did the math and the suspension angles will only change by 1.2 degrees.

I am going to move the motor mounts again but I am waiting on my new headers to show up first. You can see how i already lowered the mounts in the pictures below.



I will also add Scotts new extended shock mount to allow a lower ride height.

[fleetus macmullitz]

Great effort on the 'Bird.

[grendel]

Glad I could help in your build

[preston]

Its not the best photo but those wheels look nice in plasti-dip. I might have to try that. Due to my brakes I have to use race pads which leaves everything horrible and its corroding the aluminum so I have to at least paint them but that looks kind of cool. Thanks for the tip, and good luck getting your stuff put together. When I run into problems like that I break out the sawzall !

[bsharpe]

Originally Posted by Cosmo mentis

Great effort on the 'Bird.

Thanks

Originally Posted by grendel

Glad I could help in your build

Your build helps but it also makes me want to spend more than I need to, like a lot of the builds on here. Anvil CF, IRS its addicting

Originally Posted by preston

Its not the best photo but those wheels look nice in plasti-dip. I might have to try that. Due to my brakes I have to use race pads which leaves everything horrible and its corroding the aluminum so I have to at least paint them but that looks kind of cool. Thanks for the tip, and good luck getting your stuff put together. When I run into problems like that I break out the sawzall !

Its cheap and easy to try plasti-dip. I would recommend it. They look great but I don't know how they are going to hold up.

[waynieZ]

The wheels look great in black, the plasti-dip looks like it works good.

[OLDFLM]

I don't know why, but everytime I look at this thread I think of this rendering:

[bsharpe]

I got the 2010 L92 engine from craigslist. It came from a escalade that had bad lifter noise. The dealership replaced the engine under warranty and i ended up getting the engine for a good deal.

I know the AFM/DOD lifters have had some issues so i wanted to upgrade the top end. The L92 has VVT as well and i wanted to keep it. VVT gives you the best of both worlds, low end torque and top end HP.

After doing some research i decided to go with a Cam from Gwatney Performance. They seem to have more knowledge on the VVT 6l80/90 setups.



This last picture shows the bad lifter which almost completely wiped out the cam lobe.

I installed the new cam, comp vvt phaser, new lifters, pushrods and brian tooley springs. The install was pretty simple. The only hard part was lining up the cam phaser and gear while getting the chain on.

I took my time but somehow messed it up once. I noticed the timing was off when i went to torque down the rockers but i got it setup.