Halfcent

Ya, that's a great example. Exactly what I plan for the gauge pod.

Halfcent

Well, another weekend gone, and no time to work on the car. Makes me sad.

Anyway, I finally did find a decent set of salvage control arms. I'll get those to the shop this week to get stripped and then should be able to drop all this stuff off at the coater.

My schedule through the second week of May is booked up full. But after that, I get lots of weekdays off at home where I can bust a lot of stuff out. Bear with me, I'll get there...

Halfcent

So starting tomorrow I'm home for a week. Thank God. Anyway, the control arms were left with the shop before I left, so they should be ready for me to pick up on Friday. Monday the plan is to get the stuff dropped at the coater. I'll be doing lots of little ****. Gotta clean up a lot of the old parts and dispose of some junk. Nothing really cool. I'll post what I can.

Florida 76

your one of the OG's on this site how many miles you have on that 05 ls now?

EmperorJJ1

iTrader: (5)

800k

Halfcent

I actually just turned 100K this past week. I still have the original drum brakes and they are still serviceable believe it or not.

Anyway, I have been busy. Didn't get to post much, but I have a moment now. First, my sunroof broke some time back but still worked, so I had picked up a salvage unit with the intent of replacing it after the suspension. Well, the sunroof broke all the way a couple weeks back so it got moved to the top of the list. The left rail broke off of the regulator:



So I took it all apart and got the old frame out of the roof:



I like the litte piece of sound insulation they stick in there. You'd think they could do the whole roof for the effort they spent. You'll notice the B pillar trim molding is still in. You would normally remove that to get the headliner down. I however could not get the seat belt bolt out. I broke off my Torx T-50 bit using a 2-foot breaker bar and the damn thing still wouldn't budge. I later took it Chevy and they also broke a couple bits trying to turn it with an impact wrench. Made me a feel a little better about myself when they couldn't do it either...

Anyway, got the salvage frame all cleaned and lubed:



And then I installed the glass on the bench:



Now I would not recommend doing that. After the fact I realized the glass is really heavy, and it's a lot easier to install everything with it removed. You can still do it with the glass installed, it's just a pain in the ass. Here you can see the initial alignment of the glass fit:



This is very easy to adjust once it's installed. Ops check was good, and I'm pretty sure I fixed a small water leak in the process.

Halfcent

Then I started working on my control arms. I'm going to make a set of OTTP and set of Powell arms to compare. The first set are the OTTP arms. This is really not a job for the amateur. You can **** up a set of arms super quick if you don't know what you are doing. Again, I got a couple sets of salvage arms and stripped them down and cleaned them. Here are some arms, the OTTP leading pin, and the adjustable reamer you have to use to properly fit the pin in the arm boss:



The reamer is the key. First, it's expensive. Second, it's steel, and the arm is aluminum, so it will rip that aluminum up if you are not careful. Honestly, just don't do this unless you have some good tap and die tool experience. Once you set the reamer, oil the crap out of it and gently ream it open:



You can see the drilled and tapped hole for the future grease zert you have to use with the OTTP set in this picture. I filed the radius of the boss flat there so the zert will sit flat and get a good seal. I'll use a brass washer and lock-tite when I actually install it.

Test fit continuously until you get the proper fit:



I tried to let a local machine shop do this for me since I'm out of town a lot, but none of the local shops here could figure it out. It was a little sad actually. Give them a cylinder head that is cracked in half and they can fix that. Ream out a little hole and it's like they are scratching their heads as if they have never heard of such a thing before. So I finally just handled it myself.

EmperorJJ1

iTrader: (5)

isnt that bolt a 55?

PsychoCam

iTrader: (29)

What model 2.2 do you have? Side air bags? Damn wish I had those

Kahless

HC??? where in the hell have you been. you still flying the friendly skies?

Halfcent

It's a 2005 LS, fully loaded, with heated leather seats that the SS cars couldn't even get in that year. The side air bags are pretty nice. The seat belt bolt is definitely a T-50 torx. And yes, I am still flying the friendly skies, literally. I've been flying for United for about the past year.

Sunburst_SS

Is that how you left the sunroof glass? Looks like it's sitting up a little high.

Looks like you have alot of fun going on though, I love projects like that!

kzak104

iTrader: (1)

he said that was just the initial fit.

Halfcent

As I mentioned, that was just how it fit once I first reinstalled it. It is then easy to adjust the fit afterward. It wouldn't have made much sense to take a picture of it fitting normally.

Anyway, my pile-o-parts that I dropped off at the coater are probably close to done. I did dark metallic grey on the all the steel (subframe, axle, etc), bright silver on the aluminum (valve cover and oil pan), and candy red on the brakes. I had them clear anodize the GM racing knuckles and depending on how they turn out will probably do the control arms as well now that I'm done cleaning and machining them.

I'm thinking I will probably polish headlights this week, clean up the remaining salvage parts, and probably start doing some painting. Mostly common prep work of parts before installing them.

noorj

iTrader: (17)

Really cool project you got here. I'll be watching

Halfcent

Coater called me and recommended a change. He said anodizing the knuckles was a good idea, but didn't want to do the control arms. The knuckles will not necessarily be pretty. The anodizing will grey them out a bit, but be well protected from corrosion. The control arms where polished, and he didn't want to ruin that, so he suggested clear coating them instead. I agreed, so we'll see how they come out.

Halfcent

I haven't had a chance to work on anything lately. Work has been crazy busy and the coater is taking forever on getting my parts done. All I have are a couple little things. First is a worn out rear bump stop. I learned you can't buy just the insulator which is that part that's torn, you have to get a the whole thing. So I'm gonna try to fabricate a new insulator myself and save a couple bucks on this part.



Then I've got a salvage rear 5 lug hub that I've cleaned up. This one is just cleaned. I've since sprayed it with rust primer and it cleaned up really well.

Halfcent

So remember that pile of part in the first post? Here is what it looks like after yesterday...



I got most everything back from the coater. He has to redo the rear calipers because he got powder inside the cylinder, but everything else looks sharp. The picture has bad lighting, I apologize for that, but there will more close up shots in the near future. I need to paint the Brembo logo back on the front calipers using those stencils I posted about earlier, that will be next. Once I get the rear calipers I will rebuild those back together. Powell is sending me his rear axle bushing set right now. I suspect I will have the rear axle assembly completed in two weeks and will be able to get some nice pics up from it.

The front will be a bigger job ofcouse as that involves dropping out the powertrain. I have a P&P'd head that I'm gonna swap onto the engine while it's out along with replacing the oil pan pictured above and trouble shooting a trans fluid leak. As you can imagine, that will all take probably the rest of the summer and into the fall a bit.

LS6Rally

iTrader: (14)

Very nice, keep up the good work!

EmperorJJ1

iTrader: (5)

is that an upgraded axle? or just coated?

BoostedBeaner

Doing work! Subd

Halfcent

Its a stock FE5 axle that I had stripped clean and coated. My Powell bushings should be at home waiting for me. Nothing else special yet except for the Eibach springs I will use.

Halfcent

Worked on the Brembo's and the rear axle today. The Brembo's are powder coated and I just needed to restore the logo that got covered over. Here are the stencils from earlier in the thread:









Gotta let them dry before I can show you the end result.

Then the axle bushing from Powell:



Still working on those too.

FryLoch

iTrader: (5)

Good build, these are some real upgrades and I'll be doing most of these myself at some point as well.

IonNinja

I thought this car was long gone...good to see the mod bug is still alive