It has definitely been a while since I made an update here. During that time, my daily driver Ford broke, twice, and that took me quite a bit of time to deal with. I also moved to another house, where I should have fewer problems with an HOA regarding working on my cars. There has been incremental progress, however, so here are some pictures of that.
Here you can see the block prepared to have one of the heads put on it. Before I got this far I realized I had head studs from a Gen III LS block and had to get some for a Gen IV block like mine. This has the lifters installed in the valley, settled in place with the lifter trays, and the head gasket is resting on the studs.
In this picture, both heads are bolted down and torqued to spec on the block. Still missing the valley cover, rocker arms, pushrods, and valve covers, but it looks mostly like an engine at this point.
At this point the pushrods are in, rocker arms are bolted down, and the engine is ready for the valve covers to be bolted in place.
Skipping ahead a couple of days, and the valve covers are attached, along with the valley cover, intake manifold, and the fancy red anodized fuel rails and fuel injectors. This is mostly temporary, in this car that black plastic intake manifold and the red rails will be facing towards the back of the engine, but first I need to make some modifications to the valley cover that they sit on. That work will be happening tomorrow.
I also spent one day about 3 weeks ago at the shop where the frame is sitting, to test fit the suspension after the frame modifications. Here you can see the mocked up passenger’s side rear suspension, still missing a toe link to prevent the aluminum spindle in the center of the frame from rotating side to side.
Here is a shot of the front passenger’s side suspension mocked up, also without steering at this point. Everything is loosely attached at best still, since it will all be coming back apart soon to be powder coated.
This picture brings us to today. Here you can see the front and rear suspension in place, this time with steering and adjustable toe link. You can also make out some minor progress on mounting brake and clutch pedals at this point.
And here is a blurry picture of the front suspension with a brake caliper mounted. Again, everything will be coming back off the car to be powder coated before final assembly.
Now we’re all caught up, and I will be back out at the shop tomorrow, so there should be more to come soon.
James Builds A Car 