Brian's City Goblin-06/Crate MotorTC #61

[Brian74]

Cute how the Lil one is doing the strong arm. Like it was all done by the Lil one. Getting her hooked early on kit cars?

She turns into my shadow every time I step out in the garage. She loves helping no matter what project I’m doing.

 

[Brian74]

Got the LSJ block up on an engine stand. Had my kiddo start pulling the oil pan while I began pulling the dash. I’ll pull any needed brackets from this engine for my new engine and see if it is salvageable to resell.

Got the dash out and segregated most of the parts. I will remove the rest of the body harness and fuel tank/pump assembly tomorrow so I can get that eyesore donor out of here.

Everything was pretty straight forward, as I’ve pulled several dashes before. Clutch pedal spring was broken and rod clip broke coming out so I’ll need to hit the jy for a new pedal.

Only issue I have left is the vaccuum brake booster. It appears to be literally glued to the firewall?

My next task will be thinning the harness and converting it to work properly with the LDK engine’s PCM & BCM.

 

[Brian74]

Well, I met my goal of having my donor completely stripped by the end of the weekend. I will get the donor shell off to the jy this week and enjoy the additional room in my garage. Not looking forward to going through the wiring harness.

 

[Briann1177]

I'll echo what others have said, but the wiring harness is really no big deal. It looks more intimidating than it really is.

 

[PHerder]

Remember to grab the wiring harness out of the bottom of, I believe, the passenger seat. It is used to wire up buttons to control things like cruise control among other things.

Mine went to the jy.

 

[RichRich]

Yea it is the harness under the passenger seat. I think others have sent it off to the junk yard as well. Easy thing to miss if you're following the videos because it doesn't mention it till way later in the build vids

 

[ctuinstra]

I actually enjoyed the doing the harness, only after cleaning it from all of the goo. I was more worried about cutting out more than I was supposed to since there are some differences between the SS/SC and the base model. But I kept 90% of everything that I cut out just in case.

Now all the cleaning, prep, and painting. That stuff took forever for me. But it was easy and many small projects that could be worked on in the evenings here and there.

 

[Briann1177]

And don't cut your wires off flush to the connector. Leave an inch or so to solder in case you cut something you're not supposed to or decide to repurpose old circuits.

 

[Brian74]

The body harness I’m building is converting an LSJ to an LNF, so I will be facing a few additional challenges as well as building my own ECM connector. I will be going through connector diagrams and labeling all the required connectors with a hand labeler prior to thinning the harness. Electrical was always my specialty, so hopefully it wont be too bad.

I didn’t know there was any additional harness in the passenger seat. The seats were already long gone when I bought the donor.

 

[PHerder]

Someone (can't remember who) stated that that harness wasn't required, that the switches could be wired without a disconnect (or a different set of connector could be used instead...).

 

[Brian74]

I’m going to be adding a few custom touches (interior foot lighting, air force gauge, switch panel) so I will be doing a bit of extra splicing.

 

[ctuinstra]

I didn’t know there was any additional harness in the passenger seat. The seats were already long gone when I bought the donor.

If I remember correctly, they just used the connector from the passenger seat out of convenience, it's not absolutely necessary to use that specific one. You can wire it up with any left over available connector.

 

[Brian74]

Still not much going on yet. I put the donor up on the trailer last week and took it to the scrap yard. I have an awesome video of the excavator claw taking it off the trailer and droppng it about 20 ft. but it wont upload here. Made $69 for the scrap.

I tore apart the LSJ engine from the donor today out of curiosity. #4 rod bearing was spun (badly) but otherwise block looks fine. Glad I bought the LNF crate engine instead.

I am driving to TX next week to pick up stage 1. My next step after that will be fitting and welding up the seat rails and other tabs that I’ll need before painting. I plan to get the Fidanza aluminum flywheel and stage 4 clutch, and new throwout bearing before I connect the engine to the trans.

With my Christmas time off I’m also in the middle of much-needed upgrades to my boat oil injection system and doing some front- end fab/ upgrades on my sandrail. These projects never seem to end.

Does anybody have a recommended way of removing oil stains from cement? This crap I bought doesn’t work very well.

 

[Briann1177]

Have you tried hydrochloric acid?

 

[ctuinstra]

I haven't read back through your posts, was anything that prompted you not to use the engine and buy a block other than just to build a higher HP motor? In other words, did you suspect there was something wrong with the LSJ, especially to tear it down?

 

[Brian74]

I haven't read back through your posts, was anything that prompted you not to use the engine and buy a block other than just to build a higher HP motor? In other words, did you suspect there was something wrong with the LSJ, especially to tear it down?

After much research I decided I wanted to do a direct injected turbo car. Finding a turbo donor in my state is extremely difficult. I ended up finding my donor for $300 which was an SC but had the LSD transmission. The PO had already parted out the wheels, seats and SC and told me the engine had a knock.

I ended up just buying a brand new turbo longblock from zzp because the prices on them are so reasonable; much cheaper than building and closer to 300 hp stock using 91 octane pump gas.

 

[SliderR1]

which ECM are you planning to use?

 

[Brian74]

which ECM are you planning to use?

Factory Bosch E69 and BCM that I bought from a 2009 SS.

 

[KJP]

Factory Bosch E69 and BCM that I bought from a 2009 SS.

Is there alot that will have to be done to get this to work with the SS SC body harness?

 

[Brian74]

Is there alot that will have to be done to get this to work with the SS SC body harness?

It will certainly be a challenge. Mostly re-splicing / repinning the old ECM connector wires into the new ECM connector, adding in a few B+ wires from the power distribution box to ECM, and some terminal swaps on a few of the body harness connectors.

The only real potential headache I forsee so far is doing the security module relearn on VATS, which will either work right away or turn into a huge pain in the ass, depending on what options hptuners gives me with that particular ECM.