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November 22nd As you can tell I'm excited. I dropped the car off with Mark at Andy's Auto on Monday (the 18th) and it was out the next day. I went by yesterday to clean and paint the cross member and the parts of the frame that I could not reach with the motor in place. I brought the motor mounts home to clean them up also. The junk rubber part has been replaced with polyurethane. I reinstalled the motor mounts today and did just a little more clean up of the engine bay. Mark feels he will have the new motor and tranny in next Tuesday or Wednesday. The headers and rest of the exhaust and rest of the fuel system should arrive by then. If the headers fit they are going to be taken to a local powder coating place to get ceramic coated inside and out. This will help to keep heat down in the engine bay and keep the headers from rusting. |
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January 25th 2003 Finally got the motor into the car temporarily to make sure that the new Hooker headers would fit. They then had the Oxygen bungs for the sensors welded in. Also the 3 inch cutouts were welded to the reducers. Next they go to a powder coating place I've used in the past to get Ceramic coated.
January 30th I got the header and reducers/cutouts back from the powder coaters today. They look great. Hopefully they will be installed soon. |
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February 12th The new fuel system is installed with the exception of the power wire for the electric fuel pump. But that's only about 5 or 10 minutes worth of work. Believe it or not it's been raining here in sunny Southern California. And unfortunately it's really screwed up the project. With not being able to get the Elky onto a lift it's been hard to get things done. Maybe next week. I also need to get some pictures of the fuel system taken and posted. Just remember that the undercarriage has not been detailed yet. And I made a few changes to the site. I noticed I was getting too many thumbnail pictures on the motor page and it would take a while for any dial up users that may look at the site. So I broke the page up into 3 sections: Motor, Exhaust and the engine bay. Hopefully it will be easier to navigate the site. I guess I could just take less pictures....naw. : ) One major change (to me anyway) is that the original wheels that I wanted to use on the Elky (Z06) are not going to happen now. I called to order them and I was told that they were no longer available for the El Camino or Malibu. Not sure what happened but I guess that's what happens with a project taking so long to get back on the road. After a few days of intense searching I found a new wheel. They are from Boze Alloys (pronounced BOW-ZEE). They are called Stixx. They are costing me what I thought I was originally going to pay for both the wheels and the tires together. Oh well. The Boze are going to take about 3 to 3.5 weeks to get. They are made on order and mine are getting a Millennium Chrome finish that will have a 5 year guarantee. I was told that I'm going to be able to get the center cap from the Stixx Euro wheel with my wheels. I like it better then the one that comes with the Stixx, it doesn't stick out as much and I think looks better. Look at the lower left of the picture for the caps. If for some reason they don't give me them to me, instead I'll have some custom ones made later on like the ones on the Camaro. One bad thing about having to wait for the wheels is that even if the Elky gets running within the next week or so I'll have to wait for the wheels before I can start driving it. The current wheels are dry rotted and not safe to use.
February 13th Mark pulled the motor back out of the of the Elky and was painting the motor when I stopped by. I didn't get a chance to talk to Mark to find out the new completion date for it. I'll stop by on Saturday (15th) and see what's up. And the fun continues. |
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February 23rd The motor and transmission were reinstalled a few days ago. Mark gave me the measurements for the new driveshaft and I ordered it from Inland Empire Drive Line on Friday (21st) and picked it up yesterday (22nd). It's a 3.5 inch diameter and 60.5 inch long aluminum unit. I also got the u-joints in the larger 1350 diameter instead of the normal 1310 diameter. It's about 17 pounds in weight. When I picked it up they told that should be able to handle 1000hp! Way more then this car will ever see. The driver's side header, and the Corvette power accessory bracket were installed yesterday. The engine wiring harness was laid in the engine bay in it's approximate location. Not much but a little more done. |
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March 1st - April 12th After work and on weekends I've going to Andy's Auto and working on the plumbing for the engine oil and transmission cooler. Also working on the wiring and anything else to try and get Frankenstein back on the road. Unfortunatly I'm only getting so much done. |
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April 14th Well after having the motor & tranny for 1 year and the Elky for just short of 5 months, I took the El Camino away from Andy's Auto on a trailer. It' now at a place call Don Lee Auto Service. Tim the owner is looking over Frankenstein to determine what's needed to finish the motor and tranny and trying to get it to run. The work just was not getting done I think mostly because Mark is just too busy with other cars to finish the Elky. I'm hoping Tim can get it done in time to for me to take it to Super Chevy at Pomona in May. I'll just have to wait and see, hopefully Tim and his shop will come through in time. |
April 18th
I spent much of today at Don Lee Auto (DLA). Talk about disheartening. Frankenstein is not in the best of shape for having been worked on for a year (yeah right). No knock sensors, no engine temp sensor, the wrong flexplate, wrong Torque Converter, and who knows what else. I was told by the other shop that the motor is internally balanced. This is completely different then the normal LT1 motor that is externally balanced. So now I can't just buy a flexplate to work with the motor. I'm guess I'm going to have to buy one that is for an externally balanced motor, take the weight off. I guess now I know why no work was being done to get the Elky completed. Wrong parts, missing parts, no wonder.
But just to show the kind of shop that Don Lee is, they are still doing what they can. They started working on a bracket for the power steering reservoir and they started work on setting up for the new shifter. Also we looked at wiring so that we can fire it up when ready. They ordered a new flexplate, knock sensors, and engine temp sensor. Also they removed the engine oil/tranny cooler from the car. They did not like the idea of a simple worm hose clamp holding the hoses on. They sending it to a place to get AN fitting welded on. This will be a much better system. I also ordered a new B&M Torque Converter.
May 10th
I haven't done an update in a while because of a big case of frustration. The problems with the motor stated above were only the beginning. On April 25th Don Lee Auto tried to start Frankenstein for the first time. There was a tink, tink, tink then after oil pressure built up a bang, bang, bang. So began the rebuild of the motor. After pulling the intake and heads off they found that all of the intake valves were bent. So they pulled the timing cover to try and find out what happened. They found that the cam had been installed 120º out from where it should have been. This caused the intake valves to be fully opened when the pistons were at top-dead-center. This is what caused the valves to bend. Looking at the valley under the intake was sludge on the parts from the old motor. We looked closer at the heads and they were stock. No porting done at all them. After looking at all of this I told Tim at Don Lee Auto to pull the block back out of the car and go through it since I felt I could no longer trust it. Boy was I right on that account.
After pulling the block we found that cylinder #2 had a score in it that would never have allowed the rings to seat so the motor would have been puffing blue smoke all of the time. To say I was upset is putting it very mildly. So now we were where the heads needed to be rebuilt and ported, the block needs to be re-machined and the whole thing needed to be rebuilt. So new pistons were ordered for the 30 thousands over that the block was going to be bored out (it was already at 20). New rings, gaskets, valves etc. you get the idea.
One thing that was found out when the rotating assembly was sent out to get balanced was that it was NOT internally balanced. I am just so surprised at that (I hope you can hear the sarcasm).
Well the parts have come in, the heads have been ported and the motor has been reassembled and installed back into the Elky. That was Friday. Monday DLA will finish up the rest of the motor and start it up. DLA has done in 2 weeks what AAP could not in a year. Once again Don Lee Auto has impressed me with their abilities.
If things go right the motor should be done and running Monday, the exhaust will be done Monday or Tuesday and it should get a front end alignment. Then Tuesday or Wednesday I should get to bring it home. That I can't wait for. There will still be things to do on the motor like finish up the wiring for the 2 harnesses, install and verify gauges. But it will be drivable and that is just what I'm going to do.