There's not too much that's happened but I have pictures piling up
i'll start with the pretty parts
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
There's the expensive-ass driveshaft to work with the TR6060
bigger rad - another pretty expensive piece
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.
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!
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
This is setting up the p/s bracket to mill down
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
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
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
also finally made a good cam handle cause why not - has the single and 4-hole patterns
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