Figured I'd make a thread about my junk in case anyone wants to see.
It all started with a decent daily driver and all went down hill from there. Began life as a wrecked 02 flex fuel 5.3 with 68,000 miles for 3,500$. From there I fixed the bedside, cab corner, hood, and door, then of course it needed lowering shackles.
But everyone has an NBS chevy with a 5.3 that thinks it's fast, so who wants to be another one of those guys?
Some videos of the truck on youtube under my channel GordonRacing1

 

Engine Phase1: pace setter long tubes, ebay CAI, tsp 220r 112lsa, ls6 springs, and a used borla XR-1. Had to cut some of the ribs out of the steering shaft and replace with a pipe nipple from rural king, then ended up having to cut one more out eventually to fully clear the header. A result of 299hp and 316ftlb, not bad for your average work truck but there is a joe gibbs truck in town that makes that sooooo.
Also it was time to get those work truck tires off there to allow for some performance oriented better looking shoes.

 

Engine Phase2: 799 heads, ported by me, milled 030, tbss intake, ebay 92mm Tbody, x-pipe with dual 3 inch back to dumps at the axle (yeah nobody needs mufflers or cats), ls7 lifters, and trickflow pushrods. Result of 352hp and 365ftlb, now we're talking, loud enough to scare most people away and fast enough to spank a slightly worked gen 2 lightning. I was happy...for a month or two.

 

More head pics

 

The fat loss. Along the way various weight loss measures have been taken, some worth the trade off, some questionable, but hey if it means more speed why not? Haven't gotten it on a scale since her diet but it has to be 100's of pounds lighter.
An abbreviated list:
Tailgate when not hauling anything
Roll pan instead of bumper
Spare tire/tire carrier/plate on frame/jack
Heat shields under bed (no exhaust back there anymore)
Helper springs (also lowers the rear another inch)
Interior pieces (floor coated with undercoat/bedliner)
Wipers/arms/motor
AC components (never use AC anyway)
Front sway bar
Fender braces under hood
Bumper side braces
Plastic shields under hood and hood insulation
Skinned hood (left outer ring and center strip for support)
1 1/2 coil from each front spring (will discuss later)
Difference between mechanical fan and e fans (rotational weight too)
Difference in trans. weight (will talk about later)
Unnecessary random brace on frame
Large brace holding up airbox and metal airbox from CAI (replaced with super custom Lowe's sponsored insulated airbox. Quit hating on it it actually works very very well)
I'm sure I'm forgetting things but you get the idea.
Ohh and don't forget the grill and Z28 style flowtie!

 

Traction bars and getting about "that low life".
After getting tired of riding around in a 4x4 height truck after all the weight reduction I decided to lower some more as well as fix the horrid wheelhop.
Building your own flipkit......Yes it was as dumb as it sounds.
But I was able to make it plenty beefy and correct the pinion angle in the length of the legs on it rather than mess around with shims. The moral of the story.....spend 100$ and buy one.
Traction bars, my tight wad self was rather infuriated with the price of caltracs so I set about building my own long bar setup. Sourcing the tubing and rod ends/bungs from e bay turned out to be the cheapest route. 150$ got me 2 pieces of 1.5" x 4' DOM cold drawn tubing and 4 rod ends with bungs (3/4" rod ends, 2 reverse thread). The tabs for the frame and axle mount were cut from 3/8" plate (heavy duty I know). Pretty simple theory, run the bars slightly up hill so the axle can still move up and back. The best way to get the perfect angle is to use the tool of the professionals, your eyes and just estimate it and weld it. Still working on dialing in the preload on them for the best setup.
Oh yeah in case anyone is wondering about the rear end, I swapped it with one pulled from a Z71, and I got lucky when it just happened to have 4.10 gears in it!

 

More long bar build pictures.

 

E-fan conversion from big heavy permanently attached tornado maker.
First off I had to turn to a universal socket (sawzall) with a long "the torch" blade to remove the the factory clutch fan. It wouldn't budge even with PB blaster soaking, strap wrench on pulley, adding more tension to the tensioner, and beating the sh*t out of it with a long pipe wrench and dead blow hammer. After those frustrations were thoroughly taken care of, the new fans to be fit were either from a v6 taurus or a crown vic, I can't remember, anyways with a slight trimming on the sides they fit about as perfect as any fans possibly could. Two straps on the top and one on the bottom held them secure. Wiring was run through a relay which was hidden in the fuse box, and the trigger wire was pinned into pin 39 or something like that, on connector 2 on the ecm I think. You'll want to research that before randomly poking wires in strange places. The relay needs to be setup so that the trigger wire grounds the circuit and allows big power to pass through as the computer simply makes this pin ground when it turns on. I think I used 4 or 6 gauge for the fan wiring and 16 or something for the trigger wire, fan grounds were run to the alternator/block mounting point.
I also flipped my CAI over to move the tube and filter lower. Hoping this keeps it out of hot air trapped under directly the hood and moves it down enough so air through the radiator also passes over the CAI tube. Don't know if it works but it definitely didn't hurt.

 

I like it.

 

The T56 SWAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The mysterious often thought of but never carried out t56 transmission swap.
Well I'm here to tell you this was my first transmission experience ever shy of watching my dad work on drag bike transmissions years ago (the only thing the same between them is the word transmission I think). First off getting that 4l60 out is quite the MFing B**ch. Then comes the converter, which as I soon realized is sooooo much easier with the starter off.
The t56 I picked up was from an lt1 camaro and came with a b&m short throw, so I swapped in an LS input shaft and front plate, cheapest places were T... Performance and H..ks 3rd gen for the parts (I don't know the rules on naming suppliers sorry). Then I picked up a mounted but never used F-body slave, truck 5 speed master and pedal off ama..n, bellhousing from an LS page on FB, spec stage 3+ with aluminum flywheel at LS Fest for 180$, and had -an fittings welded to the master and slave and a line made at my local rubber and gasket store. Drilled out the master hard line to get full volume flow. After that just threw it all together, pretty straight forward. Theres so much more room for activities in there now with the smaller lighter t56!
Ended up welding about 3/4" of rod into the master cylinder rod to bring the pedal engagement up to the top of the stroke. I also welded in about an inch of rod into the shifter to bring the **** up and angled it back about an inch and a half.
The fun level of the truck has increased exponentially, haven't gotten back on the dyno yet but based on percentages I'm guessing somewhere around 375WHP.