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Evil Penguin Wagon

babbit bearings

New member
Joined
Jan 24, 2014
Location
Spring, Texas
I had a thread on LS1 tech about my car, but I think I am going to delete it and make one here instead, mostly because I am interested in getting advice on volvo rear suspension, and this group may be more amused (or disappointed) by the project.

A couple years ago I sold my wife's GTO to a guy in AZ. He seemed really happy with the deal I gave him on the GTO, so sort of as a joke I asked him to find me a 100% rust free wagon preferably an 84 or older model. Somewhat to my surprise he found one right away...It was way overpriced, and really not that nice, but I hate rust, so I bought it.



My brother hauled it to his house south of Tuscon I flew out a few weeks later... The tires, belts, and coolant tank, hoses, etc.. were all pretty sketchy.. but I drove it back to Houston without any issues other than the heater not working.



The engine actually ran pretty good across west texas, and made almost 20 mpg on the trip.

 
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When I got home I bought an L33 (5.3L Aluminum Block) that came with an new LS6 intake & throttle body. but still had the really deep truck oil pan.



I pulled the 4 banger and sold it to a local Volvo hoarder.



 
None of my toys have ever had A/C and living in Houston without A/C really isn't much fun. My other car has the engine set back about 7 inches, resulting in a horrible position for the gas pedal? On this one I am really going to try hard to make it fairly fast, but still have A/C, overdrive, lockup torque converter, and a cooling system that doesn't make me worry the entire time I am stuck in traffic.

So I pulled off the oil pan and looked around inside my used L33, everything looked ok.


But the truck oil pan was never going to work, it is way too deep, I am not going to put a hole in the hood on this car, and even with the LS6 intake it was going to hang way too low.



So I purchase the H3 hummer pan and installed it on the engine (later on that turned out to be not such a good decision?.)

I also got a set of poly motor mounts from a 4x4 fab place, welded them up and installed them.

 
And bought a 4L80e. A TH700R4 would have been simpler to install, but they suck, above about 400 hp they break all the time.



Because I wanted to push the engine back as far as possible without cutting out the firewall, the 4l80e wasn't even going to come close to fitting in the tunnel, so I marked out what looked like a fairly good spot and cut most of it out.






It fits, but getting the top bolt is still going to be difficult.

 
Even with the tunnel cut out the transmission still hangs down lower than I would like, but I don't plan on lowering this car, so it should be ok as long as I am careful.

Hopefully if I get a good set of adjustable struts I can prevent it from hitting the ground.



So then I installed a Vette water pump & crank pulley, and started test fitting the engine.

My plan to use truck manifolds with the standard flange didn't work out, I had to remove the drives side just to get the engine in.



.


The map sensor is about ?" away from the firewall.. That may end up getting removed and relocated somewhere in front.

 
So I chopped off the end, the GM manifolds are supposed to be pretty easy to weld, but I have never done it.



But even so, the back of the manifold is pretty close to the brake booster…

 
So with the engine basically where I wanted it, I made a set of motor mounts.



I didn't really like how tall they are with such a small base, so I added a set of straps going forward to the body, this should prevent the back of the intake from hitting.



Probably overkill and extra weight for nothing, but they make me feel good…

 
And then I decided to ditch the truck manifolds and burn a bunch of the budget on new accessory kit from GM… ouch.



I found some 2010 camaro manifolds, unfortunately they won't allow the A/C compressor to be in the standard location when turned forward, but dirty dingo and a few other people have alternate locations, so that should be fixed later.

 
With the engine & transmission in place, I filled in the area I cut out of the tunnel.



I didn't really want to hammer the tunnel to fit the transmission, because most of the time things just barely fit and cause headaches later, but one area did end up getting beat out that way a bit… :(

 
I managed to make it all fit without messing up the heater box or the gas pedal location, so hopefully that stuff will all work again at some point in the future.



 
So with the engine pretty well in position, I decide to try to get the transmission setup. I plan on running megasquirt for the engine and adding a Jakes D1 brake for the transmission. One thing I don't like about the other 80e I have with a brake is that the line pressure in reverse is very high, so I decided to delete the reverse boost function in the pump.

Edit: I use to do this type of work on the floor or with the transmission mounted backwards on an engine stand… I decided to make this little transmission mount out of about $15 worth of angle iron & plate… I wish I had done this 20 years ago… it is way safer & easier than any other setup I have ever used.


.

Drill & tap this port part way with ⅜ fine threads and plug the hole with a cut off fine bolt & red loctite.


And then grind a groove in the boost spool so any leakage past the plug just gets vented.



Delete the accumulators with this plate.


drill a .050" dia. hole here so that the torque converter clutch doesn't drag/engage at idle


 
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My other toy melted a piston in its 496 big block when I turned the boost up to high at the ⅛ mile track?





And I was sort of tired of 5 mpg, almost always overheating, impossible to drive in traffic. surging idle when the blower was overdriven?

So I pulled out the motor and sold it, and put in a stock 5.3 LM7 I got from LKQ for $239 and installed a carb & single plane intake?.

And it totally sucked. Going from 702 whp to about 200 whp made the car boring.

Plus the house I had was right next to a very busy 4 lane road, and I hated hearing the harley's at 2:00 AM? so I convinced my wife to sell the place and move to a house with a bigger garage.

And to be totally honest? the inside of my volvo stinks like a dead animal, the previous owner must have smoked pot in it for 30 years and left a dead rabbit under the seat? so I sort of lost interest in the project for about 18 months.
 
And then?

And about 2 weeks ago, my wife said: "Get it running or get rid of it" ...

So after sitting for more than a year collecting dust, I am working on it again.

The lower radiator support / crossmember limits the radiator to about 16" tall x 28" wide. Since I wanted to run a/c and not have overheating issues, I cut it out and replaced it with a 1x2 square tube under the a/c condenser.



Also made more room in front of the condenser. Later I am going to have to add some bracing somewhere because it is fairly flexible with the hood latch brace removed.

 
The original plan was for a Borg Warner S400-75mm inducer, but with some of the economic outlook stuff I have seen lately, I decided to just get it running. So I am using a 67mm HX55 Holset I got for free instead, it may be on the small side for this engine, but it is actually physically pretty big, so the borg should fit fairly well if I decide to change later.

I really wanted to position it on the right front, but the A/C compressor is going to need that room, and the large compressor cover had to go towards the outside to clear the 3" thick radiator, so after playing around with it for about a week, I finally gave up and put it over on the drivers side.



 
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