Thread: I shall call it......

Lazarus

Well a few weeks back a buddy asked me if I wanted a free Camaro. He had said it was an LT1 car (I love the look of the LT1 body style over the LS catfish), well I saw one picture of it and it was only missing the front passenger side fender. All in all for a car that I only had to rent a trailer for, is not bad.

Plans are for now to get some seat time in it is an S475 on a gen 4 5.3 and a 4l80e, I am going to fab my own 9" housing, and I am gutting it and running the Holley Dominator EFI system on it. It will be a slow build as my priorities are to finish saving for the adoption process we are in right now, then this thing will be finished.


I chose Lazarus as the name since she was my buddies father-in-laws daily driver for a couple years then he parked it and decided to use it as a parts car for his other Camaro's, he had 6 total. Honestly this thing isn't missing much though so i am not too concerned, and I have a buyer for the motor already.

My end goal is bottom 7's in the 1/4. I will not be able to do that effectively with with a factory harness/pcm. Gen4 isn't too much more expensive, I am also thinking of using a gen3 5.3, but the plan is gen 4 for now.

The Holley is only $1500 with my team tick discount, and the whole system with harness, trans harness, main power wire, and lcd screen is about $2200. I will be swapping in a turbo 6.0 later on, probably doing a 402 ci woth a 9x/10x mm turbo.

I was originally going to do the gm harness and pcm, but with my end goal, I would rather start off with supporting items, then when it comes to the motor I can drop it in. I may swap from the 4l80e in the future as well and go pg, but I might just stick with the 80e and build it to the limit.

Really it is not about saving money, it is about doing most of it right the first time, If I need to swap the rear out later for a stronger fab 9 unit, I will. I just want to fab my own for now to say I did it, also the s475 and 5.3 are more for getting me some seat time instead of building a 1000hp car and since I haven't driven a quick car now for almost 2 years, I need seat time in something slower to get the feel for her and how the car is in certain situations.

Already looked into it, plus I have a buddy who builds 1000 rwhp plus vehicles and tunes them, he even had the record for highest mph standing 1/2 mile NA vehicle, he recommended the Holley. The issue with the gold box is you still need to run the microsquirt box to control the trans, and the harness for the bump box.

At first I am shooting for 9 second range to get back in the swing of things, then I will be building a turbo lq motor, it should put down a little over 1000 rwhp. I am even thinking of going further than that, but I will be happy if I reach that goal. The Holley is a bit more user friendly than the MS gold, and support is better with Holley. Now I know some folks (a buddy who has a nice orange blazer and did a sick wheel stand at LSFest) who use the MS pro setup and they have almost as much into that as the Holley system costs.

I like the fact that I will be using the LCD screen for my gauges, and I can even tune the car with it or use a laptop.

Well I decided to spend about an hour on it the other day. I got the front bumper, front bumper support, radiator, ac condenser, and a few little hoses here and there off. It was about 32 degrees and it was getting cold so I figured I had pulled enough off of her for now. I now know I will be using a Midwest Chassis front bumper support up front instead of using the stock one. The stock one has some damage to it plus I would need to remove the plastic that support the bumper in order to cut the support to put an intercooler there and it's only $180 for the nice MWC support. Next I will be taking the ABS out and going with and ABS delete, also need to disconnect the wiring inside the car, and start working on removing the exhaust, then motor and trans.



A small pile of parts, but hey only wasted an hour.

Well to update.

I spent about 4 hours on Saturday taking my time and removing little things here and there, finding out how many bolts there are that are seized on or needing the big cheater bar to remove. Then another 2 hours on Sunday to remove the motor, trans, harness, and pcm for the buyer of that whole deal. I spent about 3 hours a couple weeks back removing the dash and unplugging everything to get ready to remove the seats and carpeting to get everything out and ready for the roll cage. I just called on a 6.0 lq motor so I might end up with that instead of a 5.3, so a 6.0 with a Borg Warner S480 t6 flanged turbo, at first i'll be running low boost as I am just trying to get seat time and only want about 650-700 to the wheels.

Damn, gotta love free. Don't miss dealing with those Opti-spark systems at all. Looks like a great project. Keep posting.

The issue is the rod bolts with the rods the bolts aren't that great and only become an issue when you start going past 6900 rpms, and I am going with a gen 3 5.3 for now, I won't be running it past 6900rpms so i should be fine. Once I step up to the 6.0 I will be getting it bored 30 over and going 4" stroke as well, so the rods won't be an issue at that point.

I got a deal on a complete 5.3 for $450 delivered. Also the 6.0 with the better design are 04 and up, the gen 4 5.3 and 6.0 are definitely better to use, but for now I am sticking with a gen 3 5.3 to get seat time.

Originally Posted by Fivefingerdeathpunch

Perhaps RPM can play a role in the rod bolts but power isn't a issue for the stock ones that's for sure.

I don't know if you follow matt hapel (denmah) aka sloppy mechanics on youtube but I do find what he does with stock stuff very funny. Just shoves it in the faces of people that think they gotta spend money on certain things. Though this doesnt totally related to rpm but he grenaded this motor and the stock rod bolts are mint lol.

Yeah actually his girlfriends 240sx was just for sale around TN here. I remember when he was a new guy LS1tech as well, and yeah the stock rod bolts are pretty much fine unless you are running a cam that is taking the motor above 6700/6800 rpms.

Originally Posted by Fivefingerdeathpunch

I think he married that chick recently but yeah I heard he was selling/sold the 240sx and she bought a red single cab NNBS silverado that they are going to turbo.

Yeah I love how he does it on the cheap.