🔧 BUILD suicide solstice

turtleman

Addict
Sep 6, 2009
822
796
Villa Park, IL
Real Name
covid
the spiritual replacement for el tortuga (I will be slowly dismantling that car now - the failed head gasket at the track day makes it official)

p6xRJz.jpg

suicide hood! suicide trunk!

PxC9VE.jpg

the sweet mark IV supra knockoff dash and hella bent antenna

tGg9q7.jpg

will james fit??

XbopTs.jpg

like a glove!

Q6eXWs.jpg

and when you pull the door handle, it springs open like the cabin was full of water and james pours right out onto the ground




sSfy3j.jpg

then there's this thing
FGvQUD.jpg
 

turtleman

Addict
Sep 6, 2009
822
796
Villa Park, IL
Real Name
covid
Always wanted to do but am too tall to fit comfortably in the convertibles, the coupes are a bit better. Can’t wait to see the progress picks!!
just take away "comfortably" and the problem is gone. My saab 9-2x seems like an escalade after driving this green clown shoe for a couple days.


I still need to gather some bits for the drivetrain swap and get a handle on el tortuga first. Black friday might actually make a difference to something of mine this year, who knows. In the meantime I'm trying to kinda go through the car and figure it out a little bit and fix things. I bought it totally sight-unseen from phoenix AZ.


AKtNzV.jpg

stock engine compartment (complete with a bucket of dealership detailing grease all over everything in sight)
It doesn't look like a v8 should fit in this thing at all

tKP6Eu.jpg

but you start pulling just the unnecessary stuff off and you can see frame rails and pretty much anything in there can be moved quite easily

h4fLyn.jpg

There was an enormous growth coming off the intake that needed to go

9hTEiM.jpg

which means I need to plug the hole with something

jSwKHD.jpg

and I did leave enough meat in the center to drill and tap in a fogger nozzle just in case
it'll hopefully find its way to another 2.4L ecotec owner in the future

AoeMEA.jpg

just stuff I've pulled out of the car so far. Had a factory xm tuner and an aftermarket sirius tuner which needs two modules for some reason?
grams and grams of weight reduction!
 

Jfrost

TCG Elite Member
Dec 19, 2011
2,189
440
Brookfield
So what’s your plan drivetrain wise? I remember the Hot Rod article documenting there LS swap on one of these. If I recall correct, they used the rear diff out of a CTSV, same with the axles, and LS7 exhaust manifolds to fit in the frame rails. You planning to make your own motor mounts?
 

turtleman

Addict
Sep 6, 2009
822
796
Villa Park, IL
Real Name
covid
So what’s your plan drivetrain wise? I remember the Hot Rod article documenting there LS swap on one of these. If I recall correct, they used the rear diff out of a CTSV, same with the axles, and LS7 exhaust manifolds to fit in the frame rails. You planning to make your own motor mounts?

:LOL: plan

The rear end assembly does swap with the cts-v but i'm gonna keep the stock one as long as it survives. It's a 3.91 LSD.
I know somebody sells some bracing that I assume helps with keeping them together with extra power. I'll probably get carried away and forget about that
I've got mounts already to bolt the LS3 and TR6060 right in supposedly
X0iSiD.jpg

I still need to get a driveshaft for the tremec gearbox
The LS3 camaro exhaust manifolds I have should fit in there fine. I'm gonna have to make something up for the exhaust.
I'm just gonna have to kinda play it by ear with accessories and stuff. I already know that any a/c is a bunch of custom shit to do so that's gonna have to wait till the future if ever.
Cts-v stuff is what people say has the best clearance for things. It doesn't seem that much different than the camaro ls3 parts other than the remote p/s bottle. I'm gonna try to make/mod what I have to work if possible.
I might need a C6 vette oil pan - hard to say until i'm fitting the motor in the car.
definitely want to get a stock c6 ls7 intake box
vS68PM.jpg

I believe I've got all the info here I need to wire it.
 

turtleman

Addict
Sep 6, 2009
822
796
Villa Park, IL
Real Name
covid
scored a C6 Z06 intake cheap (because it's had the corvette mounting ears cut off that doesn't fit my shit anyway)
qaq9Xx.jpg


BL7ctn.jpg

Don't tell me wtf to do

Cgo4XE.jpg


z5T1kU.jpg

that's better

LDfWvs.jpg

:cautious: there's one on the other side too
god my fingers hurt after this procedure
I miss that



Moving on, what cam should i smash into this? I'm not used to having too many choices
The texas speed BFD sorta makes sense since I don't really care too much about absolute performance - just sensory pleasure.
I plan to do basically nothing else to the motor - keeping stock intake, exhaust manifolds, etc. at least that's what i'm saying now
 
  • Like
Reactions: IDAFC21 and m_dogg

turtleman

Addict
Sep 6, 2009
822
796
Villa Park, IL
Real Name
covid
There's not too much that's happened but I have pictures piling up
i'll start with the pretty parts

ncZwBO.jpg

Got the important braces for the car except still waiting on the diff brace from PAW
This is the rear end brace that goes between the control arm mount points and then the beefy belly brace so the torque doesn't twist the windshield out the car one day

HPnTL4.jpg

There's the expensive-ass driveshaft to work with the TR6060

6UTVsu.jpg

bigger rad - another pretty expensive piece

8auaMU.jpg

GPI stage 3 cam setup - way more than this needs but f*it - might as well go full stupid if its all the same
I am debating on getting the BTR shaft mount setup for the rockers or just leaving the trunions stock and sending it - I guess i'll look more closely at the perceived problem when I get the cam and stuff in there and decide.


*The rest of this is all the geeky stuff*


I figured some things out with the accessory setup that should save me a shit ton. The 5th gen camaro accessories I have has the really far forward belt placement and isn't deemed to work on this swap so you're supposed to get the setup off a CTSV. I got a crank pulley from somebody in town and got a good used oem water pump on ebay. Then I started having some fun.

PgC68D.jpg

I spent some time taking good depth measurements to compare the camaro and ctsv crank pulleys especially with there being some dissenting info out there about the difference in offset.
My results, for those interested, are 1.567" (1 9/16") for the main ribs and 1.625" (1 5/8") for the a/c ribs. Also note a slight difference in diameters. I need my alternator and power steering pump to somehow move towards the engine 1 9/16" basically. Let's start machining shit!

HHslWs.jpg

There's the a/c + idler bracket getting 1 9/16 sliced right off. The spark in the picture is where the EDM wire is cutting. The tricky thing about doing this that the only good reference surface to make sure you're square with is what is being cut off so you can't just go saw-cut it and then go machine it in a mill or whatever unless you don't care about precision at all.

XWMcCo.jpg

There's the two pieces after WEDM cutting. I left that big step on the end so as not to cut off any of the holding threads for the alternator that has no clearance issue with the engine. The other bonus to this way of cutting is that it's basically reversible - I could keep the cut-off piece and put it back on with the original depth just missing about .009"

zYZbRZ.jpg

Full disclosure there was a little bit of milling required to add clearance where the bracket passes over the front cover like the back of the bracket originally had.

2sjwWK.jpg

a better view of how that clearance is done


As for the power steering pump, there's another bucket of worms to making that work out. Firstly the built-in style reservoir doesn't work out so I removed that first.

3BTKhm.jpg

Then I drilled and tapped a bolt pattern into the pump so I can mount a simple o-ring-sealed flange with a hose barb to run to whatever remote reservoir I end up with. I'll figure that out after the motor is in the car.

Z3PKY7.jpg

This is setting up the p/s bracket to mill down

EMq11i.jpg

The way the ribbing is cast, it really is like they just took a shallower version and stretched it for the longer camaro/truck depth - There is no perceivable loss of structure at all after machining it down.

The complication to the power steering bracket is that I can't just machine the whole 1 9/16 off the back and call it done because the pump mounts between this bracket and the engine so I can only take off as much as the gap between the pump and the engine to start with. The body of the pump doesn't have much to give up so I had to find another ~11/32" of offset somewhere else - the pulley

11Cpxx.jpg

I snagged a corvette p/s pulley and then machined .080" off the back, and pressed it on .080" past the end of the pump shaft which resolves the offset perfectly.
A bit of precision work but I got it to work out with buying only a $20 pulley instead of several hundred worth of accessory parts basically


some other random tidbits relating to the car

Ko1l8O.jpg


MdQfye.jpg


4yyMR2.jpg


getting a head start on shifter details
the original shifter is ridiculously over-complicated with layers of dampening and weighting. but I knew i'd be changing it all anyway, when i swap gearboxes, so I wanted to get into it a little bit. So now I have a good blueprint to make whatever shifter parts i need (after massacring the original shift knob) and keep the oem boot as it should be

DcFosu.jpg

8akgWQ.jpg

also finally made a good cam handle cause why not - has the single and 4-hole patterns

ERf18F.jpg

oh and my setup for braking loose the crank bolt without an impact. I ended up needing another hand to hold the exhaust pipe (holding stick) down while I turned the 5ft cheater bar
 

Thread Info