Are you going to pull the heads to install new lifters or use the original lifters? If you're not pulling the heads you'll need two 5/16 dowels to hold up the lifters. I bought two oak dowels from lowes and sanded rounding the install end for easier movement. Rotate the cam with a couple water pump bolts installed four or five time as fast as you can to hold the lifters in their trays before inserting the dowels.

Replace the cam retainer plate with a new one as the orange gasket gets mashed flat over the years. Oil pressure can dump from the oils galleys with the old plate. Most just throw in a new LS2 timing chain on the stock gears. If you replace the complete timing set you'll have to drop the oil pan to remove the oil pump to be able to pull the cranks timing gear. You'll need a few tools like a balancer puller, flywheel holder, torque wrench, RTV sealant, water pump gaskets, new crank bolt (recommend the 12 pt ARP crank bolt)

 

+1 on the ARP. Torque spec is high AF, so have a torque multiplier or a big wrench. I think it's 190-250lb spec

 

190-250ftlb converts to 7dugga-duggas from a Milwaukee Impact.

 

225ftlb iirc, but yeah. Its torque to yield anyway. Lookin forward to reaching torque spec on that. Ill have to borrow a torque wrench, pretty sure none of mine go that high.

I was planning to use the dowel technique, not sure exactly how long they need to be, I was going to go off the length of the cam plus a few inches. You say the whole cam retainer plate should be replaced, or can you just RTV a new gasket up? Also whats the flywheel holder for? Never seen anyone use one in an LS cam swap that I can recall

 

Yeah you can see the sharpie marks on my dowels that were measured next to the camshaft. The marks tell you that the dowels are indeed all the way in. You'll find that the dowels have to be cut at a certain length and if to long the a/c condenser will interfere with placement. Yeah the plate need to be replaced it's like $18 on Amazon. The flywheel tool is to hold the engine from turning when loosening/tightening the crank bolt. It mounts at the starter bolt holes with the starter removed. On my setup I have to remove the passenger header to remove the starter so I did the impact instead... but the flywheel tool is the correct way as an impact is said to be hard on the main thrust bearing. It's the tool on the left side of my second photo with the two bolts.

 

The ARP bolt is not torque to yield, only the OE is

 

Correct that is the main reason I went with ARP.

I actually broke an Impact socket on a 1/2" pull bar with a jack handle cheater getting the yield degrees on an OEM crank bolt. You can see my sharpie yield mark on the bolt.

When the socket broke... I thought at first I'd broken the bolt off inside the crank





Flywheel holding tool (left) Balancer install tool (center)

 

I know you know, silly

I was saying it for the OP