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[mestizo]

For sure the SR was a gifted motor and gave some very well built high horsepower cars a run for their money.

Indeed!

Well on to the V8 swap.

I started stock piling parts as soon as my SR was sold, almost every night after work or weekends I spent reading and searching on the internet about anything that had to do with this swap, which motorset i should go with and making it reliable.

Despite everything we did to make things go smooth, there is just so much info that is not on the internet about the swap that we had to find out the hard way about. I would love to tell you that this swap was easy and cheap... it was neither. After having done this swap I now know what it takes and how much it should cost to put an LS V8 into an s chassis.

We decided to try and buy a wrecked car from an auto auction and then part out the chassis after we were done pulling the motorset and all the necessary parts to go along with it. After several months of waiting on different wrecked cars without being able to buy one we decided we couldn't wait any longer to get a motorset. Luckily I found a good low mileage motorset from a wrecking yard and swooped it up.

February 7, 2013 the LS2 GTO motorset arrives, we have literally 43 days until March 22nd when the car has to be done and on the trailer headed to TopDrift Round 1!

Ill start the pics in order, basically this how everything came together.


Since the stock Nissan clutch master cylinder is too weak to push the T56 clutch so you have to switch it out. Wilwood clutch master cylinder, fittings and a Rigid Racing mster cylinder adapter.




To make things a bit simpler in the fuel department I opted to go with the 98-2004 Corvette fuel filter/pressure regulator. GM uses "push on" style hoses so i also bought earls AN adapter fittings, also pictured is the clutch remote bleeder line since GM put the slave cylinder inside the tranny housing.




Jon picked up a set of Hooker swap headers and Spin Tech oval piping and muffler.




Another sweet part Jon picked up for the swap is this Improved Racing oil pan baffle.




More improved racing parts, this is their oil pan cooler adapter and also a sweet shirt they gave me for free with it!




Since the GTO T56 has a different shifter than the Camaro/Firebird T56 you have to change it out for a Camaro shifter and also the offset lever in order to work in an S Chassis. I opted to go with the Pro 5.0 shifter.




Jon and I decided we would need a new clutch for the setup so Jon picked up this ACT clutch, rated to 750hp according to ACT.

[mestizo]

We started with tubing the front end, or at least the part that Formula Drift allows you to tube.

[mestizo]

Swapped out the Nissan MC for this Wilwood MC since the stock nissan unit doesn't make enough pressure to push the T56 slave cylinder.



Next we changed out the stock oil baffle for this Improved Racing oil baffle, this thing has quad trap door to help with oil starvation during cornering/acceleration/deceleration.





Starting to notch the crossmember for oil pan clearance.


Now that all that is out of the way we started to check for fitment.





Once we got the motorset where we wanted it, we installed the Hooker swap headers and started to make the motor mounts.









Now that the mounts were all done we moved on to the exhaust... we knew that ground clearance would be an issue so we opted to go with Spin Tech Mufflers 4 oval tubing and their 4 inch oval muffler. This is the dual 3 inch round to single 4 inch oval tube adapter that Jon made. This thing is sick!







Once the main part of the exhaust was done we went back to assembling the front end components and then checking for fitment.



Custom tubes for the new Griffin radiator.





After closing the hood it became apparent that it would be easier to just take the inner skeleton out.

[mestizo]

At a certian point I stopped taking pics and just focused on getting the swap done before the first event.

Not many people know how much longer it takes to stop what your doing and take pics to document the entire process. Unless you have a dedicated photographer its pretty time consuming.

So sorry for the lack of pics...

On March 16th 2013 I finally got the motor turned over for the first time, the first event is TopDrift Pro AM on the March 23-24 and my car had to be ready to go on the 22nd for the long trip to Willow Springs. So at this point you can see the time cruch I was under to get the car done. I knew even if the car got done in time it would be a serious learning curve to drive the car at my first event with zero track/shake down time.

First start up 3/16/2013, lol you can hear how relived i am in the video.



First test drive, half throttle and short shifting.



Third test drive on the same day and I already blew an axle lol

[mestizo]

March 16-22...

This last few days was basically a blur of going to sleep late and getting up early to work on the car while still going to my day job.

Getting it started was just a relief that it ran, there were still so many little things that needed to be done before it was track ready.

lol to say it nicely I was was grouchy and not in any mood to do anything but finish the car.

Friday March 22 11am I was getting the car aligned when I realized that it had a water and oil leak, at this point I only had a couple hours before I needed to be on the road. I went to back the car off the alignment rack and let the clutch out slowly when I hear a pop and the car takes off even tho I push the clutch back in. I am hauling ass in reverse heading towards a parked car when I reach up and hit the ignition switch and the car dies. I get out and look under the dash to see that the pin that holds the clutch the master cylinder had popped out and bent the bracket on the master cylinder so I could not put it back in to get it moving again. I went into the alignment shop and asked a small nut and bolt to use to get it going again.





I got the car home and worked on it until we pulled it on the trailer... this was it, the car was literally all done with no time to spare. We loaded her up and make the trek to Lancaster to the hotel.

March 23rd, we get up at the ass crack of dawn to get track in time for the drivers meeting and its the same scene as last year... a packed house of 60 pro am drifters from all across the country with a mixture of pro's as well. Normally I would feel kind of intimidated... but not this time, we worked so hard and so many hours to get this car ready that I couldn't feel anything except that I was ready to drift!

I head out in practice and try to take it easy since I wasn't sure the axles would hold the power since I already blew out one axle during my test drives. Funny thing was the LS2 has so much torque that all I had to do was flick the car and hit the gas to get it to slide! City Tire is the place where I get my tires and they were running late to the event, so I was running on the 225's that I ran when I had the SR. I knew these tires would not be wide enough with the LS2 but there was nothing I could do until city tire got to the track which happened to be later in the day. So I did my best on the skinny/slippery 225's, lol it was kind of like sliding in the rain but it was dry. At the mid point of the day I realized that my decision to go to the V8 was the right one, it was amazing to have instant torque to spin the tires at any time. In spots where I would need to do multiple techniques to keep the car sideways with the SR, I now only had use the throttle with the LS2!

By the time City tire showed up with my 245's I only had one practice session left, so I had to make this one count. I tried several different initiations with the wider tires and finally settled on a clutch kick. Again I was trying to take it easy on clutch kicks but it seemed to working ok and the 245's seemed like were just about enough tire to do the job. With no other size tires to run these would have to work for now.


Some of the full lock action!



Some full throttle smoke!



Tandems with some of the CenCal people.





Running the K wall, I would become a lil too acquainted with this wall later.



Last session of the day, finally on 245 wide tires.



During the day I got to hang out with a few of the NorCal refugees Lex King and Joe McGuigan, unfortunately we were all in different run groups so we didn't get to practice with each other at all.


I would have more footage from the event but due to circumstances beyond my control this is all I have.













At the end of the day all I could do was breathe a sigh of relief that the car ran great all day and didn't give me any issues. I knew that I needed more track time and possibly wider tires but time and money were not on our side for that lol. It was all worth it at this point, all the work my team and family put in on this to get here was finally paying off! All I could do now was hope that tomorrows qualifying would go well.


Parked next to Lex Kings (Mr Fusion DeLorean) FC for the night.

[mestizo]

March 24th Competition day...

Same drill as the day before up early to get to the drivers meeting.

We head out on track for the only practice session of the day, again I concentrate on trying to find the perfect initiation to be easy on the axles. Once again I settle on a clutch kick... this would come back to bite me in the ass later by trying so many different techniques.

Qualifying begins and I wait for my turn to go. As I pull up the line to make my pass I feel confident and ready to go... lol maybe too confident.

I start out, hit 1st gear, 2nd gear and then bang it into 3rd. I get to the point where I need to initiate and just blank out on what type of initiation I want to do... by the time I snap back to reality I was almost to the first clipping point. So I just threw the car sideways and tried to salvage the run, in a matter of seconds all i can think of is how disappointed I am in myself for messing up this run. I slam the gas and head toward the "keyhole" where the k wall is and decide that in order to make any sort of score for this run I would need to scrape my rear bumper against the wall.


I see the wall coming and give it just a bit more gas than I usually do, lol which ended up being a bit too much. As you can see by the pics below I got really acquainted with the wall.










At this point I'm beyond pissed off... I roll back to the line for my second pass and decide to just throw it out there and see what happens. Luckily there is an actual video for my second pass and I don't think I did too bad. I know if I could have gotten more
track time and had wider tires the result would have been different but again time and money was not on my side.

As they announce I our scores from qualifying Charlie announces that they will not be running a Top 32 format as we hoped they would be. Due to time constraints they were running the standard Top 16 format. At this point all I could do was hope my score was high enough to make the Top 16... they make the announcement and I end up just outside the Top 16. I was a bit disappointed but still felt good about my performance given the circumstances. At this point I felt that all I needed was more track time to learn the car and wider tires to make it stick.


Only footage I have of my qualyfying runs, this is the 2nd pass. Credit goes to PhotoJUNKIE for the vid all I did was cut out my part.

[mestizo]

Well its been a long time since I updated this build... lots of things happened in all of that time, but really the only major update that really affects the outcome of this build is the fact the car was sold a week ago.

 

If I can find the last pics I took of the build I will upload them and at least finish out the remainder of what was documented.

 

There are only a few things in my life that were as rewarding as this car and dream of earning my Formula Drift pro license. But unfortunately the pro license will not be achieved, the amount of fun that was had with it was well worth the time, pain and money.

 

I honestly cannot thank everyone who helped along the way enough!

[mestizo]

This set of mods was done April 2013.

 

With all the hits to the rear of the car as of the last year, Jon and I decided that a tube rear with a semi removable structure and body panels would be the best bet for the future.

 

We cut off everything that the FD rule book would allow us to and then built from there. I will let the pics speak for themselves.