Project: 1994 Trans Am

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Originally Posted by harner

I guess I can provide some substance to this thread.

Quick recap: The car was sitting for 10 years due to issues that prompted me to start investing in the car, but sadly like many projects, the car was pushed to the side. It's been through two shops and left incomplete. I "rescued" the car late last year and brought it home. Finally now that we thawed out and the pandemic keeping me planted at the house about 100% of the time, it was time to tear into this thing. The car doesn't run, but currently is sitting with a big cam 5.3, LS1 intake, 243 heads, LS1 99-02 harness, LS k member, and CPT 4L60E Pro Race with a 3400 ProTorque. Oh, and a QP 9". Basically full suspension, and a bunch of stuff I totally forgot about haha. Hurst line lock, fuel line relo, Lingenfelter LNC2000, Griffin rad with spal fans, and a bunch of other goodies.

I needed to essentially start with a clean slate, so the first order of business was clean out the car. The interior was the worst with spare parts, boxes of hardware, and of course some critter debris. Everything that wasn't bolted or welded was removed. The carpet was given a quick vacuum and floor mats were also removed. I plan on replacing the mats and carpeting down the road, as well as the seats. I had removed the rear seats a few years ago. I'm torn if I want aftermarket seats or have the stock seats redone. Minor, I have a lot of other work to do!

Next was to get the car in the air. I have two steel ramps that were put to work and shoved some wood and a piece of I beam under the rear tires. I don't have a garage at my house, unfortunately, so this will do. Like old times lol.

I started making a list prior to even moving the car of all of the things to make sure are secure, greased, or topped off with fluid. Brake system, cooling, diff, trans, engine, power steering, PCV, etc. - everything is getting touched and gone over.

Now that the car was in the air, it was time to determine what is missing or needed for the basics - starting the car. The harness has quite a few plugs available with nothing to plug into them, so I started there and that is when frustration set in. There is a lot of wiring under the car that is not factory and equipped with either a loose end or weather pack connectors. This will take some digging to figure out where and why. Since the battery was relocated to the rear of the car, it has made it a little "easier" to wrap my head around. I do need to clean up some of the connections in the engine bay for sure. There's a car audio distribution block behind the CAI tube for some reason and the main power stud in the bay that connects the battery makes me nervous. A small piece of plastic is all that stands in between a large battery cable and ground. That will absolutely be addressed in the near-term. The only critter-chewed wiring was the group of wires between the PCM and firewall. I need to pull that out and resolder some new wires on.

I taped off any openings to the engine and used an air nozzle to clear out foliage and acorns (thanks critters), then started writing down things that are needed. I also have boxes of parts from buy outs, general hoarding, etc. The list includes but is not limited to:
- Green air filter GRE-2114 (retaining the old K&N FIPK2, but the filter was a Spectre and trashed. 2114 is a little small, but should work just fine)
- AC Delco belt tensioner 38195
- AC Delco oil fillter cap FC207
- AC Delco tb gasket 2173352 (217-3352)
- AC Delco starter bolts (2x - long style) 11610633
- Dorman oil fillter tube 917413 (917-413)
- Motorad 160* tstat and tstat housing 379160 (379-160)
- NGK TR5 (8x) 2238
- Starter (reman "Pure Energy) 6492SN
- UMP spark plug wires 7828
- Wix 51042xp oil filter
- Used power steering setup off my buddy
- ICT Billet hardware kits for WP, tstat, coil/bracket, and TB
- Dorman 02602 plug for LS1 intake

I already picked up a new water pump last year, so everything should be good from a serpentine setup in a few days. I didn't want anything squeaking or rattling with some of the old accessories I had, so now is the time to do it up. I decided to buy hardware kits because running to Lowe's every time I need something is an hour affair and I'm avoiding going out as much as possible right now. Expensive, but worth it to me. Some of the old bolts I have are rough anyway.

So after I did the initial assessment and threw a few hundred bucks at parts, now I sit and wait for them. If the rain holds off today, I may continue to operate.




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Get er done!

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On your back in the gravel is tough. But at least it's spring and the weather is decent. Sounds like you've got a bunch of good parts. Pound on it little by little and when you run out of parts it will be alive again. Best of luck, it's a nice car.
Nolan

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Originally Posted by JOATMON

On your back in the gravel is tough. But at least it's spring and the weather is decent. Sounds like you've got a bunch of good parts. Pound on it little by little and when you run out of parts it will be alive again. Best of luck, it's a nice car.
Nolan

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He cant cry much. i changed an opti in his stone driveway in the rain. lol @harner @Ltconvert @kitt8090 that was a day

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Yes you definitely did. Hahaha

Most of my parts have arrived, but time has been limited between work and house projects since I've been home every day for the last few weeks lol.

Anyway, today I had an hour between work-related phone calls to dig into this power steering setup on the car. So I had recently acquired a used LS1 fbody pump, reservoir, pulley, and what's left of the lines. I quickly found out that the "cooling" solution on 98-02 fbodies is on this crazy coolant hose adapter. No thanks! I have heard horror stories of this "cooler" letting go and contaminating the cooling system.

So, another $130 just went down the drain. CBR Performance braided line kit on the way and a new Dorman pulley (updated metal design with holes to access bolts). The OE plastic pulley is chipped all over (it is in rough shape) and that's no bueno.

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Maybe I can take some pics soon of some real work being done now that my basement has been mostly cleaned out and reorganized.

This post needed some more pictures and a real update. I had a couple hours today in between work calls and was able to get to work on the car. Learned some things a long the way, too!

First, the coil packs and coil brackets were off the car, so I quickly cleaned the bulk of the dirt/grime off of them. I wish I had my detail brushes at the house, but sadly I did not, so a quick wipe-down and removal of heavy grime and dirt was the real goal. Since I didn't have a starter core for this LM7, I bought one on RockAuto that did not require a core and was well priced. It looks great, not just the run-of-the-mill refurb from Advance or AutoZone. I did not have the factory solenoid heat shield, so I wrapped the whole thing in heat wrap and secured it with steel wire. Not the prettiest, but it'll do. I needed two long bolts for this starter which is a slightly different configuration than the original LS1's.

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Now outside, I popped off both valve covers and checked torque (most head bolts and rocker bolts) with my new digital Kobalt and everything checked out okay. I put the valve covers back on and then installed the new TR5's followed by the coil brackets and coils. New OEM-style plug wires were installed next and everything cleared the headers beautifully. Normally I'd go with Taylors or some other performance-spec wires, but I wanted those OE style metal boots and these will be fine. I also added the oil fill tube and cap. I'm not sure what exactly the cap was for, but it says 10w30 on it lol. I should swap caps with my truck (2006 L33, 240k+ with a fresh baby cam swap) since I run 10w30 in that almost exclusively. Anyway, I digress. I also installed a Dorman expander plug on top of the intake, right behind where the TB is installed. Some kind of emissions setup goes in there on the original LS1 intakes before they switched to using the LS6 intakes. I found a guy on Youtube using this and decided to follow suit, and for $3 on Amazon, I couldn't be happier.

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Starter installed with new hardware and I starter tucking all of the wires around it into some thick loom wrapped in heat shield tape.

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I wrapped up my time by slapping on the LS1 TB with new gasket and hardware.

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I probably should have added this to the last post, but both the last and this post are from the same timeframe. Anyway, one cool thing I learned today was what is needed to run truck coils. If you noticed, my coil packs have heat sinks and have always been deemed more desirable in the LS world as a result. The heat sinks signify they came off a truck and are the original coils to the LM7 5.3 that is in the car. Well, the inlet on the fuel rail (passenger side) hits the plug on #5 coil. I never encountered this or even knew about it until today. I slipped on a deep 13mm socket with extension and used the leverage to slowly bend the inlet out of the way. Easy and DONE...for today. I took a couple measurements to figure out how my throttle body will use my K&N CAI and now need to buy couplers.

I'm unsure yet what is next, but it is probably the power steering setup, water pump, tensioner and idler. Once the serpentine setup is done, time to move through the rest of the car and chip away at it.

Critter carnage to the wires around the PCM connectors. Good times. I was going to dig into it today, but the high winds and frigid air persuaded me otherwise.
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The car has a mash up of different "cans" (catch can, coolant overflow, power steering reservoir) in the passenger side front end where the battery would normally sit. I'm not sure what I'll be doing yet for this, and honestly it's so low priority that I haven't give it any thought. The LT1 PS pump, lines, and aftermarket reservoir were removed today as well.

Since the last post, I spent a lot of time thinking and planning about all kinds of things and ended up buying:
- Spectre 4" Aluminum 90* elbow (CAI)
- Spectre 4" coupler
- Michigan Motorsports 3-wire to 5-wire MAF adapter (going to use my old TBSS 5 wire MAF since it has built-in IAT as well.
- LS1 AC Delco throttle cable
- LS1 AC Delco throttle linkage bracket

Probably a few more things coming as well. Next week I should be making some more progress.

Happy Easter! I spent most of the day working through misc little projects on the car. First, the trans cooler lines. I really like this CBR Performance kit. It is designed for front mount turbo setups and gives you a ton of slack, but it's also designed to use the bottom alternator bolt hole for the adel clamps. It's not going to work since I'm using the alt in the stock location. I mocked it up on that hold temporarily, then loosened up the fittings and moved the lines around. I found a bolt on the driver side frame rail, put the adel clamps on it, and found a nut to secure them in place. Of course it's not as pretty, but still slick looking.

I also did some surface rust removal where the water pump gaskets sit and installed the WP, alternator, tensioner, and idler pulley. I also installed the 160* tstat and new housing. It is starting to look like an engine again.

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I then spent the afternoon repairing most of the harness that was chewed apart. There were about 10 damages wires x2 soldered connections per wire. The old solder iron got a workout tonight. Luckily, I had plenty of slack since I pulled the wires through the firewall and draped it over the fender. It was a beautiful day out today, so sipping on beer in my camping chair and music playing made this pretty relaxing. It started getting dark as I looking into fixing the two wires on the PCM connector. Not going to happen today since I'll need to repin those two wires to fix it right.

For anyone wondering, I'm not a crimp connector guy. I prefer twisting the wires and making sure they are soldered properly to the point where you can hang yourself with it and not worry about the solder joint failing. I've seen those stupid crimp connectors fail too many times.

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The next round of orders included:
- LS1 serpentine belt
- Oil filter (if using the GM fbody oil pan kit, a standard LS1 PF46 oil filter won't work. Have to get a PF48(-style) filter. I knew that but totally forgot and got the wrong filter anyway.
- Grommet kit - the power wire desperately needs a grommet and I have a feeling I'll need a few more elsewhere
- Rad hoses - upper and lower.
- I picked up a bench tuner for LS gen 3 PCM's on ebay so I can make sure the PCM I have works and load an initial tune
- wiper blades

Still waiting on some of my other stuff! I think the next operation will include repinning the two wires in the PCM connector and if my parts arrive, I really want to get the pulley on the power steering pump and finish mocking up the CAI to see if I need to buy anymore couplers.

Nice work. Solder is the way to go though I admittedly like using a small 18-22ga uninsulated butt crimp connector on the tiny OEM wiring stuff because I'm sucky at soldering and am afraid of overheating the wires.