We finally get to start
assembling our LQ9 6.0 motor that we got from
AAA Auto Salvage. We
started by stripping everything off that we were going to paint.
We then masked all of these area's off and with the use of our
Felpro gaskets, we
marked their locations and trimmed off any extra tape. Using
Duplicolors whips we
cleaned all of our surfaces and started spraying the engine
block, valley plate, timing cover and oil pan with
Duplicolors ceramic
engine paint grey primer. After this was cured we painted the
motor in the same Duplicolor
satin black engine paint.
Once the paint cured we
started installing our senders that were supplied to us by
Parts Highway. They
sent us new knock, water temp, oil pressure and O2 Sensors. We
also installed the senders for our
Autometer gauges as well.
We used ARP thread
sealers on all of our senders and secured them with
Totally Stainless
fasteners and ARP Fastener
Assembly Lubricant. We then had to install our front timing
cover and valley cover. Now most people would just install these
and eye ball them up but we have worked enough with LS motors
that we have the same assembly tools that GM uses when putting
these motors together. The oil pan is actually part of the
mounting for both the timing cover, rear cover and the
transmission, so if one of these is off by the slightest bit it
can be really expensive. Using
Royal Purple assembly
lube and Break In Oil we started installing our
Moroso oil pump along with
the new oil pan, windage tray and pick up tube from BRP Hot Rods (part of
their LS conversion kit) along with all new
Felpro gaskets. Again
we used ARP assembly
lube along with ARP
fasteners.
We took out
PRW Industries waterpump
and took our die grinders to it to remove some of the casting
marks that were on it. We then drilled out the heater in and
outlets so that we could tap them and install Aeroquip -10 AN fittings for our
heater
hoses. We used a Moroso oil
filter adapter to mount our oil pressure and oil temperature
senders from Autometer.
We drilled the pipe threads and taped them deeper so the senders
would sit flush (something you will never see but....). Next up
was our Professional Products LS instake manifold. We also took our
die grinder to this and removed some unwanted casting marks from
it and repainted it and our waterpump with Duplicolors "As Cast"
aluminum ceramic engine paint. With the intake and everything
else in place we started wiring our
Painless
Performance Gen III engine harness up. All of the wires were
wrapped in their Power Braid wrapping. Last thing up was our
PRW Industries harmonic
balancer. While GM has done an awesome job with Gen III motors,
the one fatal flow they have is then didn't key the balancer on
them so under high torque then can actually spin the bolt out
and "throw" off the balancer. We took our LS jig and "pinned"
the crank/balancer. Using the proper drill bit we drilled
through part of both the crank and the balancer and slid in two
.250 steel pins then torqued our PRW Industries crank bolt
overtop keeping the balancer nice and tight.
We then started to
assemble our fuel lines with our
Aeroquip line, fittings, lube and wrenches. Once we had the
motor mounted into the frame using our motor mounts from
BRP Hotrods we started
bolting on the jewelry. We started with our bracket kits from Kwik Performance.
The first one mounts our PSC Motorsports power steering pump and our
Tuff
Stuff chrome alternator in place. We left the billet spacer natural to match our "As
Cast" painted products. We used all ARP bolts to mount our
Kwik Performance
brackets and components together. Several of these they made
special for us so that everything would match. From there we
installed our Holley fuel
injectors, Professional Products fuel rails and our Delco DBW throttle
body we got from Spalding Autoparts.
Spalding also
provided us with Coil Packs/brackets, ECM, Throttle Pedal and a
Throttle Pedal TAC module. We then installed our Jet Performance MAF sensor
and our K&N
Filter. All of the lines and cables were mounted with our
Made4You clamps. We
then installed our PRW
fabricated valve covers using
Felpro gaskets but we
had some fitment issues with some other components so we swapped
those our for a set of low profile valve covers from
Moroso with their integrated
tilt up coil brackets (very SWEET pieces) along with our coils and coil
wires. Everything on the motor is mounted with 12 point
stainless fasteners from ARP and
Totally
Stainless