dewrag

Finally decided it was time to quit being a lurking creep and make an actual thread of my own.

I'm a little punk kid thats been calling Burnaby British Columbia home for the last few years. I've always been a horsepower nut and when I graduated big boy school it was time to do something cool. I realllllllyyy wanted an 03-04 cobra but for financial reasons I ended up deciding on doing a boosted truck so the initial investment wasn't $25K.... and trucks are just better anyways right?

One thing that really puts a hamper on everything is that I live in a high rise apartment building, so all this goodness happened in my underground parkade.... with next to no power tools.

The day I bought it. Paid $3300 CAD for it with 301,000km on it. Had a very recently rebuilt 4.3L and a 5 speed manual, 2wd. The body was all i was after because the drivetrain was getting removed. It was in surprisingly mint shape. I really wanted a black one but they were going for ~$6k for the same thing.



The plan from the start was:

- Turbo 6L and all the goodies to go with it. eventually I want to get to 1000hp.
- keep the manual trans, my wallet heavily regrets this decision but more on that later...
-14bsf and 6 bolt swap on the front.
- keep it stock looking
- spend money where it mattered, pinch pennies harder with a 10 ton press else where.

I'm going to try to lay this all out in chronological order... See how that goes.

dewrag

So one of the first things I did was found a SF 14 bolt locally in a wrecker for $250.

It was all in good shape with the Eaton G80... or so I thought



yea, good shape until I went to remove the pin. Long story short I borrowed my boss' cutting torch and hacked apart the centre pin in the parkade. The posi ended up chewing into the pin far enough so that the spyder gears had locked the pin into the carrier. I probably spend 10 hours getting the pin out...

This is how it came out:







At this point I also need some fancy new 6 bolt rims... and a set of 22" transport wheels came up on Facebook. Im into the set of wheels for $350 CAD.



went down the road to IWE rear ends and got a new pin, those guys keep 5 guys busy full time rebuilding just rear ends. Not a clue how. Lots of this build happened in my kitchen.




I ended up going to a U-blast sandblast joint and blasted the diff, new bearings and seals at this point to. $5 of undercoat later:



Im also way to cheap to buy an eaton locker for $900, and posi is way to scary, so I went to my cousins place and he welded the spiders to the carrier for me. I cleaned it up after welding but this is the only picture I have:

dewrag

Next thing in the time line was a set of 22" tires to match the rims.

Used on craigslist for $350:







at roughly the same time I did the front rotor swap. Motor than simple.





At the same time I had my dad in Alberta on the hunt for the heartbeat.... guys in BC are wanting outrageous money for 5.3/6L motors so i let him do all the talking.

luckily my dad is a real bro and ended up pulling a motor out of a truck at a wrecker for me. $800 CAD for the full swap, engine, harness, aluminum rad, maf, harness, computer and all the fixings around it. He also decided to buy himself an L33 at the same time for I think $1200? CAD

dewrag

All good, except my motor was 1200Km away from me. My dad ended up getting some time to make it out to me for some dude time... he brought some other toys as well....





We almost ripped a 4" water main off with the engine hoist on the way into the under ground parking.... Made a hell of a noise to say the least.

He also brought out a Tremec TKO 600, quicktime bell housing, mcleod twin disk clutch, mcleod hydraulic throw out bearing and a mcleod fly wheel... Lets just say he liked shopping with my money...

The next 12 days was interesting to say the least.

dewrag

SO. With all the goods in my possession and an extra set of hands, the fast and furious swap happened. 12 days for everything in this post.

Ripping the old 4.3 out:





Not sure how all this happened in what order but I wanted to make sure the motor only went in once, so it got ARP rod bolts before it went in.






It also got a roll pan, the diff swap with disk conversion (from an 01). I made drew up the brackets for the disk conversion.

dewrag

And then it was time to drop the 6L in. Complete screw around with motor mounts going from an old v6 to a new v8... Lots of beer and time involved in a couple days around those. whole problem with the beer was my dad wanted to party, and I had to get up and go to work in the mornings. Because of the height limits in the parking lot, we both had to end up standing on the rad support to get the truck to sag enough to get the motor to drop in...











As it sat with the not running 6L, multi million dollar transmission setup, and 14 bolt rear end.

dewrag

After that it was time to get it running.

Did the ABS delete. This truck will only see dry summer roads so why not.



The AL rad out of the donor truck:



At this point I said screw it and did a half decent fuel system. Walbro 450. -8 supply, -6 return and a wix filter.







I also ended up with HP tuners pro to get rid of the VATS and tune this thing. man was that a steep learning curve. I also spent a lot of time with wiring. never again.


The truck fired up way to perfectly for my liking. It was also running straight off the manifolds so it was a night time only ordeal. People with car alarms must love me.

dewrag

This was as it sat with the stock 6L, tremec TKO 600, mcleod goodies, 14 sf, a new drive shaft, new fuel system and the VATS removed. it was quite fun.




At this point it was time to start collecting the goodies for the horsepower portion of this build. Ill give the run down of what its going to look like. The entire turbo kit was sourced from Amazon for money reasons.

- manifold flip with CT525 manifolds from my boss,paid $100 and they have O2 sensor taps in them...



- 231/239 .617/.624 comp cam. kinda regretting not going bigger.
- arp head studs
- comp cams dual valve springs
- ls2 timing chain
- LS9 head gaskets
- Ls7 lifters
- Comp cams pushrods and trunion upgrade
- Borg S475 T6 turbski. $500 USD, couldn't pass it up. off of amazon
- universal hot side from amazon
- universal cold side from amazon
- turbo smart waste gate and BOV from amazon
- cx racing W/A IC with separate radiator from amazon
- ended up with siemens deka 60# injectors off a buddy

dewrag

where its at today:

hacking the turbo hot side together:













The short term plan is 600RWHP on pump gas, next spring break 1000Hp with rods and pistons with some bigger injectors and E85. Also a 2 link with pan hard bar using the stock spring perches and diff cover bolts... hopefully that all works out.

3bar MAP Hp tuners tune by myself.

About20ninj45

Sounds awesome. Congrats to you for getting this done in such confined spaces. I'll be following this build closely. When you go to 1000 , you'll need bigger injectors and possibly dual pumps. Be sure to take lots of pics.

That wasn't a bad price for truck.