403 LS2 FD - LS7 Build for 2020!

[MPbdy]

Hey everyone. 

Time to join the party I guess.  I will likely jump around chronologically just to make things flow a little better between posts.

My name is Daniel.  I am 20 years old and live in the Inland Empire of Southern California.  I am currently a junior in college earning a mechanical engineering bachelors.  Obviously I love cars and racing, or else I certainly wouldn't be here.  I grew up with my dad wrenching on cars in the garage.  I also spent a large amount of time at the drag strip watching my dad race.  At 11 years old I got a racing go kart and raced for five years.  After I got my license it was on to drag racing.  Recently I've been mixing in autocrossing when I can.

I'm far from the typical drag racer that is happy just going fast in a straight line.  Drag racing is all about the competition.  The cars are like tools and the speed is just part of the race.  Its all about managing every aspect of your car's performance, as well as your own.   

I got tainted by road racing when I was a kid and have been missing it ever since.  Because of this...I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what kind of car I could have that would be in the low 11 to high 10 second range, and still handle like a serious road race machine...all while being a reasonable street car. 


Background

I was very picky about the car I would start this project with.  Before I knew anything about fd's I knew my car had to be white, and I wanted the touring model.  I also wanted it to be in excellent shape minus an engine.  I did not want to do any paint, body, or interior work.  It is hard to find rollers in this condition, but thankfully for us the rotary engine likes to blow chunks early and often.

Well, after a couple days of searching and never seeing a white car I found that only 276 were made in 94, and significantly less in 95.  As most of you know, the cars were not painted white for the 93 year.  I almost gave up then and there, but I wasn't really in much of a rush to get started.  I was in for the long haul.

I found a perfect car in Arizona.  It was a roller with low mileage and had been garaged for a couple years.  The owner had modified the rotary a little and after his n-th engine let go he just let it sit for a while with plans to do something later.  Those plans turned into selling it.  Unfortunately that car was sold about a month before I contacted him.

(car in Arizona)


I had WTB ads up for quite a while and casually searched.  In my WTB ad I always linked to the car from Arizona.  A member of v8rx7forum contacted me...the one who bought the Arizona car.  I never thought the deal would go through...he flaked on me so many times.  Long story short, last May, about a 3/4  a year after I started searching, my dad and I drove to San Francisco and back (Inland Empire) one weekend and I finally had my white FD. 

(car at my house)

(Samberg subframe and other swap stuff I got from him too.)



As always when buying a used car there have been some surprises, but all in all I've been very happy.  Most of the surprises are minuscule things that most people will never see.  That first wash and wax reveals a lot.

Not coming off 

[BAD-LSX-7]

i still love the sticker..

[MPbdy]

GTO

I pretty much had two big reasons for wanting to build this car.  I already mentioned the first...its fast as hell and will rip asphalt from the earth.  Second, I wanted to build a car around an LS2.  My planning stage was right around the time when everyone was swapping the l92 heads and l76 intake onto ls2's and making 500 horsepower with stock parts.  This fascinated me.  It really reminded me of the old days when people would build seriously fast cars using parts they could get from GM and frankenstein them together.

I figured by the time I had a car and was actually ready to buy an LS2 pullout the prices would have dropped significantly.  Well, a year passed and prices were rock solid at way too much on ebay motors.  Basically I wanted an ls2/t56 takeout shipped for 5k.  They were going for lotsssss more than that.

Luckily we know a guy with access to the insurance auto auctions.  He runs a junkyard, but also will bid for people and usually asks for a %'age of the sale price.  Thankfully he owed a favor and I got a freebie.  A day later I was on the road to pick up my totaled 2006 GTO for $6350 after auction fees. 







It went pretty smooth at the pickup.  It was pretty hilarious...no one would tell me anything.  They expect everyone to be seasoned pros.  It took a couple trips back and forth to the front office to get the right paperwork and to pay a couple extra fees and such.  They didn't care to tell me beforehand that there is a $20 fee to have them actually put the car on the trailer    The forklift sets it down behind the trailer and drives away the first time 

[MPbdy]

Part Out

So the gto was really in pretty good shape.  I sold most of the bodywork to one guy, and just whittled away at the rest.  I picked the car up beginning of August last year and it was on its way to the junk yard at the end of the month.  All said and done I sold around $2500 worth of parts back.  Sometimes I look at the ls2/t56 and think how far I could be in the green if I offed it too...

I definitely want to do this again sometime, even if it is to just make some cash.  I basically lived on my email for those few months.  It took quite a bit of work dealing with people...mostly flakes, but its worth it to find the good ones.  The biggest bitch is that the primary GTO forum will not let you post to classifieds unless you have 100 posts.  100 posts!  They will also ban you if you just spam to get there lol.




The car sat for a good while with not much action.  I was getting a lot of interest, but mainly flakes.  I was slowly stripping it down when I had people to buy parts.  I didn't want to figure out how to store all the good bodywork and other parts.  Once the majority of the big stuff had been sold however, it was time to get rid of this thing.  It took one solid weekend to strip out the rest of the interior, get the wiring, take the LS2 out, and dump the shell at pick and pull.  Pretty sure I got a cool $20 from them 

[MPbdy]

Alright lets get this wrapped up.  I'm just going to rattle off pictures from now on, so if there are any questions feel free to ask and I'll make stuff up as I go along.

This is kind of a greatest hits of my photo folder from the beginning til now.  All pictures replaced with gallery uploads.

Current Progress

[FadedFD]

Looking good bro. GMPP sells a CARB Legal setup now but I don't know how the cats would fit under our rides. You can see the manifold and the 4 cats it comes with

http://www.streetlegaltv.com/photos/data/686/IMG_2612.JPG

[MPbdy]

Wow that is pretty sweet.  I wonder if those manifolds would fit.  I'm not sure if the outlet can go straight down like that.  They look similar to corvette manifolds, and they don't fit.

I have the cats from the GTO and some L92 manifolds to test fit.  Greg says trail blazer ss manifolds fit..maybe the truck manifolds are similar. 

[V8-rx7]

Looks good I followed your thread on the other forum. I just picked up am FD myself, but it's going to be a while till it gets swapped.

Anthony

[MPbdy]

Engine Plans

Alright so I have my ls2.  Remember how I said I first decided I wanted an ls2, then figured out a car to put it in.  Well, the plan for the ls2 was the l92/l76 intake setup.  As time went on new parts came out and I now have lsa heads and an ls3 intake manifold. 

The lsa heads are off the 6.2L supercharged caddy engine.  These heads have a swirl vein in the intake port which will likely kill a little flow, but will pay dividends in regards to timing.  LS engines do not like spark timing.  The combustion chamber is very efficient.  This is a double edged sword...the intake charge is very volatile, but it is prone to detonation.  People have found the l92 heads in general to very sensitive to rattling and do not like much timing at all.  The conclusion I take from it is that the intake port is very big, but sloppy. 

The theory behind the lsa heads is that hopefully the engine will shift from being spark limited to being compression limited, and hopefully make more power on shitty 91 octane gasoline we've got here in California.

I am shooting for a smog legal 450 horsepower at the crank.  That will be right around 400 rwhp and a great place to start.  The car, I imagine, should be comfortable to get on it from a roll in 2nd gear and up, and will have no issues hauling ass.

The cam is a custom grind my dad decided on.  We had the unique opportunity to get the original GM cam lobe profiles.  A real good friend of my dads is an ex-very high level GM engineer.  They did a lot of engine development work in the LT1/LT4 and the beginning of the LS1 era.  My dad worked at Flowmaster when they had a partnership with GM.  They made a lot of cool parts together!  If anyone remembers the hotcam from GM that was my dad's.

Anyways, my camshaft is an ls7 intake lobe, an ls6 exhaust lobe, 116 separation angle, and installed at 109.  The duration is 210/218 @ .050.  The ls7 cam gets its massive lift from 1.8 rockers.  I will be using 1.7's and the good stock yellow springs at 550 lift.

We keep going back and forth about it.  Some days it seems stupid small and a waste of money.  Other days I think it may lean more towards 500 horse.  The big heads do like smaller camshafts, but I don't think anyone has done one with this low of duration.  It is a big step up from stock with the lobe separation and intake center line though.

My biggest worry is in the exhaust.  California will be requiring me to run exhaust manifolds.  If worst comes to worst I know that 2001 camaro manifolds fit.  It will be very difficult(read: impossible) to shove 500 horsepower worth of air through tiny ls1 manifolds   

Needless to say, I will be very interested to see where I wind up power wise.  At the moment I think I will see 450-460 at the crank, and would see 475 easily with some good headers.  In any configuration...the car is going to be an absolute blast to drive and I cannot wait!

Parts Pile

[Oliver]

WOW.  You seem to really have your shit together and I hope you see and end to all your hard work. That part out looked to be a job and a half in itself!
Love the idea of a 6L with L92s and a fast. 500whp n/a is extremely acheiveable. Good luck.

[MPbdy]

WOW.  You seem to really have your shit together and I hope you see and end to all your hard work. That part out looked to be a job and a half in itself!
Love the idea of a 6L with L92s and a fast. 500whp n/a is extremely acheiveable. Good luck.

Hahaha well I have at least one person fooled

The worst part about the GTO was the choice of month.  My first summer back in socal and I'm parting out a black car on the sunny side of the house.  I tried working on it in the afternoon a couple times and lasted about 20 minutes lol!  Give me 65 degrees and overcast anytime!

[inspector gadget]

what are you doing for an intake?

im in the process of trying to get my ls1 BAR approved and all i need is a CARB legal intake


any suggestions?

have you found n e thing to use on ur ls2?

great looking build BTW

cant wait to see it done

[MPbdy]

Thanks

I have the airbox from the GTO I parted out.  I've read about people going to the ref without a hood on so you can fit a stock airbox.

The biggest issue is that there really just isn't much information about getting the bar sticker that I can find.  On the old forum there was a little bit here and there...but nothing too valuable. 

I'm building the car with smog in mind, and will cross the inspection bridge when I get there.  I'm just hoping it goes smoothly!

[inspector gadget]

mine went pretty smooth cept for the intake...

i cant even find a place that has a factory ls1 intake... no one has them >_<

[MPbdy]

What did you do as far as your fuel tank setup with the purge solenoid and all that?

Look on ls1tech for partouts.  I'm sure people there have stock airboxes lying around.