....: Back on line....hot summer, delays on the electronics, out of town trips, and just plain old fashioned procrastination...

27 October 2011

Back on line....hot summer, delays on the electronics, out of town trips, and just plain old fashioned procrastination...

There have been several comments since my last post....I've had a slow down for various reasons. I've been adding new requirements on the internal electrics that VettAid has been working on. In all fairness to Jody, it has been a long wait, but the mods and retro-fits that he and I have discussed have caused him to take longer than we both anticipated...and, a lot of the interior re-assembly work depends on what holes in the firewall I'll use and which ones need to be filled. I was on the road for most of Aug and about half of Sep. I've also been gone the last couple weeks. Anyway, here's some of the small items I've been working on:

1. Mounting the fan kit to the radiator.

Fan kit mounted on radiator and radiator in mounting bracket.

Universal brackets supplied w/kit. They'll be trimmed down once the radiator is fitted and mounted.

Drilling holes for the mounting bracket bolts through the upper and lower radiator cases.

Cutting the bracket spacers from round stock.

Spacer fitted between bracket and radiator casing.

OCC with their multi-million dollar equipment ain't got nothing on me.....I hand made two more brackets to mount the fan kit since the kit only came with four and I wanted the bottom two corners firmly attached and the kit's brackets are too thick to fit in those locations.

The following pix show the radiator/fan assembly mounted temporarily w/clamps, boards, and a huge twistee.

Now that I have the ECM and harness back, I'll be ready to install all the interior firewall mounted assemblies and do a test start and run to check radiator/heater hose integrity, brakes and pwr steering, AND clutch/tranny. When VetteAid gets the modified dash harness and new gauges to me, I'll be able to test them. I might even be able to roll the car in and out of the garage and THAT will be the first time this car will have moved under its own power since before I owned it.

Anyway, here are some more pix to show that I haven't been completely idle the last several weeks

Water temp and oil temp sending units. The LS2 ECM uses the factory temp sending unit so a separate one had to be installed for the gauge - same for the oil temp and pressure.

Drilled and tapped into the oil bypass cover.

Water temp sending unit drilled and tapped into P side of water pump. The square fitting on the right is for the coolant vent line from the heads.

I did some experimenting with the the C5 seats and determined that they sit too high,

so I cut these stock risers on the C5 seat tracks off, but they still sat too high.

I then removed the factory seat tracks from the P side seat and bolted on the stock C3 seat tracks. They will fit well with some minor mods. I'll have to drill new bolt holes to mount the C3 tracks to the C5 seats and drill new mounting holes in the floor board. That works for the P seat, but the D seat is power and the motor/mechanism assemblies hit the hump in the floorboard, restricting the pwr seat movement and the seat still sits too high. So, on the D side, my options are to use the C3 tracks and not have a pwr seat (which was the whole point of buying the seats) or cut the hump in the floorboard and fabricating new seat mounts. I'll decide on that and provide more pix of the C5 seat install in a future post as I get them installed.

Now for the engine covers. The following pix show where I had to trim the C5 engine covers to clear the AC pump, AC box on the firewall, and the brake booster box on the D side of the firewall.

The pix show them rough cut for initial fitting. They are nicely trimmed now.

The custom Russell hose heater hoses and the step down/up solution where they attach to the stock 3/4" and 5/8" hoses. They are not clamped in these pix; when they are they will run along the frame and will not be close to the headers.

Comment to Clint: Sorry, I know I owe you an answer to your last comment. I haven't broken the code on how to answer comments. So, I'll try again and if it doesn't work, I'll do another post.

1 comment:

Unknown25 November, 2013 14:37
Your radiator is looking good! It's good to see you did well with the reassembling of your car. She's really fortunate to have such a dedicated owner.

Jimmy Reeder @ Radiator.com
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1973 Corvette Project

This blog will chronicle the tale of my '73 Vette project car. I've been a Corvette hobbyist since my first vette, a 1973 silver with black leather interior, L-48, 4 spd coupe. It was my first, and only new, Corvette. Subsequently, I owned a total of seven Corvettes; a '77 coupe, '68 roadster, '80 L48 4spd, '73 coupe, '94 coupe and this '73 project.

It's obvious that the '73 is a favorite of mine. I found this one in an AutoTrader in October of '06. After talking and negotiating via email, I decided to buy it. It was an original BB, 4 spd car with 52,184 miles on the O'meter.

Now this is all according to the guy I bought it from. History of the car:

The seller's uncle bought it from the original owner when it was six months old. He pulled the BB and hot rodded it with a SBC for years, garbaged out the interior by cutting holes in the door panels and rear compartment doors and back of the compartment for speakers. I shouldn't bad mouth him, though. I cut a hole in the passenger side dash panel of my first '73 to mount an eight track (yes, I'm that old!!) player so it would look factory.

Then he passed away and the seller's older brother had it for years until my seller got it. He pulled the SBC but never told me what he did with it. He installed the following: new 4-core radiator, new shocks, new calipers and rotors, new rubber bushings in the suspension (missed the trailing arm mounting and control arm bushings, though), all new heavy duty u-joints, new windshield, and pulled the gas tank and had it cleaned and sealed. It had the CenterLine wheels you see in one of the pictures and the aftermarket hood scoop.

It was located in East Mesa, AZ in a desert suburb of Phoenix and I towed to my house in Flagstaff, a distance of about 160 miles from a elevation of around 1,000' to 7,200'. The trusty old Dakota made it.

The first thing I did was buy a set of '72 stock ralleys, rings, and center caps from a guy on the corvette forum and mounted 234/15 BFG Radial TAs on them. I will eventually put a set of 17x8 Vintage Wheel copies of ARE TorqueThroust Originals on it. I found a stock '75 hood to replace the existing hood w/scoop. When they put the scoop on, they cut a hole in the stock hood for the air cleaner, making it impractical to glass back to original.

Then I towed it on a U-Haul trailer 2,500 miles to CT it with the poor old 2000 Dakota that had 184,000 miles on it.

My plans: My original intent was to put an old school SBC in it. Then I thought about a GMPP Ramjet 350. I just sold a '94 Vette with an LT1 in it that I was going to upgrade to a LT4. I have the LT4 heads, hot cam kit w/1.6 rr, and an LT4 intake that I had the top ribs polished and cleared. So I planned to build an LT4 to drop into the '73. Meanwhile, I'd been watching EBay for LT and LS motors. I've also been following a thread on the corvette forum on LS-C3 conversions.

Well, I bid on on EBay for a LS2 w/5,800 miles on it that was still in the '07 vette, won, started a dialog with the owner, Ray, and started doing more research. Ray just installed a custom built LS7 last week in his '07 and pulled my motor last week and crated it for shipping. I used some FF miles I had to fly to Seattle to see the LS2 and rode in Ray's car. I'm sure Ray will post some info and pics of his new motor and ride.

Ray has been a great guy and a source of a ton of advice on the LS2. I talked to Dan at Vetteworks, the folks at SpeedHound and SuperPowers, Josh, from the corvette forum. Josh and I have pm'd and spoken on the phone about my conversion and he has really been an absolute wealth of information.

I'd like to thank Josh and all the other gear heads who pioneered the LS-C3 conversion and who are making this project a lot less a blind drive like I thought it would be.

I'll install a T56 6 spd, upgrade the suspension and steering, redo the interior (I bought a set of '04 ZO6 black leather searts for it, too), do some minor glass work and try to paint it myself.

Okay, from here on my updates will be on posts. Jump in with comments and suggestions. Any one in the SW CT area who has some knowledge, wrenching skill, cold beer, or the need to supervise, give me a shout - an extra wrench and a torso that can bench press a t56 6 spd are always welcome.