Figure I’ll start a thread on this one, now that I’m actually getting a chance to start building the thing. Right now this thing is nothing but a polished turd (Well, that’s all it’ll ever be, but oh well.) Anyways, the plan is this:
Completely rebuild the suspension with UMI / Spohn parts.
Beef up the structure of the car. SFC’s, possible Roll Bar (Just to tie front and back subframes together.)
Bigger brakes all around. C5 Vette up front. Unsure of back.
New coat of Paint. Nothing special, just new. This car is going to be driven not shown.
Get an LS1 / T56 dropout from Brian, and all the associated swap pieces.
With JJ’s help, swap the fucker in.
Drive it 'till it breaks or rusts apart.
So, we’ll see how it goes. I bet this takes longer than Kurt’s Talon.
I decided to tackle the rear of the car first, suspension wise. Got a good deal on an LS1 rear end, and figured, I’ll work around that. Ordered UMI LCA’s and Panhard rod. Picked up a set of rear LS1 brakes from Brian and went from there.
Took everything apart, rebuilt and painted it all. She’s ready to swap in now, just need to pick up a few things.
Torque Arm
Rear Sway Bar
Springs
New wheels / tires, because my 15’s won’t clear the LS1 disks.
Now, as far as the torque arm, I definitely want to go with one that’s NOT mounted to the tranny. I think that was retarded from GM to do in the beginning. I was looking at the Spohn ones, however on the piece where they arm would mount to the crossmember, and overall the Spohn ones look much less beefy than the UMI ones. Any input on either? What do you guys run? There’s only about a $10.00 difference between the Spohn and UMI one I’m looking at.
Rear sway; I’m definitely going to want to Auto-Cross this car. From what I’ve read, for that, you only want to go in the 22 to 23mm range, and that 24mm is almost too stiff. Any input on this? I can’t see it making that much of a difference either way.
For wheels, I’m going with 18" matte black C6 Z06s. 10.5" wide in the back and 8.5" wide in the front. Thanks again Orr for you help with sizing. I’ll be ordering these sometime this week.
I think that’s all for now. Here’s some crappy cell phone pics of the rear.
looks good man. as far as rear brakes, LS1 disks are nice you really cant do much else unless you swap C5 fronts to the rear as well but that will require some custom brackets and such. 18’s dont mind a 12inch disk out back. my 19’s wants a bigger disk to look better but then i wont beable to use my 15 welds for the strip so i’m not gonna swap that out yet
everything else looks great. good to see this car coming along!
oh and i’m running spohn crossmember and torque arm setup. For t56 swap you could go with spohn stuff or Skulte’s crossmember. youcould adapt bmr or spohn torque arms to the skulte crossmember by welding shackle mounts to it. not too hard.
I like the skulte longtube crossmember since it has great design for exhaust clearance where as the other spohn members are beefy and take up alot of room. If you run shorty headers no big deal but longtubes are a different story
Well, being that LS1 swap headers are an upwards of $700+, I’ll probably at first stick with just the manifolds, so exhaust clearance won’t be that big of an issue for me for quite some time.
Ordered the wheels today. Should be here sometime next week.
Just need the following:
-Prop Valve for the rear disks.
-Bolt to hold the brakeline down on the rear
-Clips that bolt to the pumpkin to help route e-brake cables.
-New hardware for shocks, LCA’s and Panhard.
I love the styling of that car. I followed ya this morning across the Tarentum bridge into parnassus. Didnt realize it was your car until I saw the JJs sticker at the light by McDonalds. Good luck with the project.
