Rally Pat

Yeah, F body alt with Corvette spacing. Yes I am, but I need to trim the stock PS bracket because the new alternator bracket takes the place of the idler on the bottom of the PS bracket.

Back to actual progress. The bracket kit for the alternator says that sometimes you have to clearance the block a little bit depending on your application in order for the alternator to hug the block correctly, and this looks like the case with mine. So that means I need to go get an angle grinder and some death wheels - another tool I suprsingly haven't needed until just now. Thats fine, since I need to order the cheaper alternator anyway, but I still bolted up what I could to see if everything lines up and it looks like the F body alternator lines up perfectly with the Corvette accessories. The tape measure shows where I need to grind away some of the block. I also need to trim the bracket for the power steering pump since parts of it are in the way now. We are getting really close to being able to drop the engine in! I'm hoping by the end of next weekend, I will have the engine basically ready to go. I still don't have a harness solution, but honestly I don't think that is going to slow us down much. The harness is the easy part on an LS swap.

Monday at lunch, Sean came to the rescue and let me borrow Northend Wrench's tap extractor set, which itself was already pretty beat up. It has fingers you slide in around the gaps in the tap and lets you get leverage on the tap to hopefully pull it out. I wasn't having a ton of luck and ended up taking parts from several of the extractors to make a custom one that ended up helping me get the tap out. I had to run to AutoZone to return the loan a tool, so while I was there I picked up a $10 tap set with handle, and proceeded to very carefully continue tapping the hole. I managed to finish tapping the hole without losing another tap. Hell yeah! Even though there is a chunk missing, the hole has lots of threads and I think I am just going to send it. It should be just fine, I was able to smoothly run a bolt in and out of it.

Here is where I hit a major speed bump and my first real fuck up of the whole project. The drill and tap kit doesnt come with a tap handle, and I had never had a use for one before so I just did what I always do and improvise using an adjustable wrench. This was a mistake. So. The idea is take the relocation bracket, and insert the spacers that come with the tap kit that help guide you to drilling the hole in the block. Easy peasy. Bolt the lower in, make sure the top one is flush with the radius of the spot on your block that you are drilling, then make sure the lower is tight to keep it in place. I drilled the hole no problem. You are then supposed to tap through the same hole using the same guide you drilled through to keep the tap straight, and after you get a few threads in, you can remove the bracket and guides and continue to tap the hole like normal. I was being very careful, or so I thought. I was going slow, backing the tap out regularly to make sure I wasn't stressing it too much and I had oilied both the drill and the tap. Apparently my wrench was giving it too much torque or something because the inevitable happened, and I broke the tap. It was sunday evening, so my options were limited on stores with extractor tools, so I tried improvising using stuff I had like my collection of Subaru timing tensioner pins and punches. Then I broke a chunk of the hole off. FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

I've learned the past couple of years to lean pretty heavily on the AutoZone Loan-a-tool service for the weird speciality tools that I only need to use once in a while. Its free, you just pay a desposit on the value of the tool. They had the long reach balancer install tool that made quick work of putting the Corvette balancer on.

I also picked up this Monkey Fab Garage 3D printed tool for centering the timing cover. Yes you can use the balancer, but I've heard that leaks are pretty common using that method and this is only $10. If you have your own 3D Printer, the file for this is available for free on the Sloppy Mechanics facebook group. The guy that runs Monkey Fab has a sense of humor, so it has a dick drawn on the side of it because of course it does. I hammered out the old crank seal and put in a fresh one that came with the gasket set I got and bolted down the timing cover for the last time, using the alignment tool to keep everything perfect. Like the back side of the oil pan, a little dab of gray RTV where the oil pan and timing cover gaskets meet.

Its a good thing I decided to act on my own instincts rather than only trust the richbois in the 944 V8 community. I kept getting told over and over and over again that the Corvette accessories dont fit because the alternator hits the hood in the stock location, despite the fact that the company that makes the bracket they (Texas Performance) sell that relocates the F body spacing alternator to underneath the PS pump also sells one that does the same for Corvette spacing. But, I still had to verify my gut feeling first. So the Corvette spacing bracket I bought from LSX Innovations still requires that you use an F body alternator, which I didn't have any alternators on either engine I bought but a truck one probably would have worked. I wanted to get this test run knocked out quickly, so I went to AutoZone and bought a $200 98 Camaro alternator just for test fitting. I am going to return it when I am done so I can buy the $70 cheap chinesium one from RockAuto . While I was there, I purchased a timing cover gasket set and I rented the tool to press on the Corvette balancer. Talking about the LSX Innovations bracket for a second, its actually 2 kits. One is the bracket itself, and if you have an engine that has both mounting holes underneath the PS Pump then you are good. I have a truck block that only has one hole, so I had to purchase the additional drill and tap kit to make a new hole.

Harbor freight, but get a steel one, it will last longer.

Hell yeah! Nice Scott!

He needs an Accusump or equivalent product or for his oil starvation, or if he has infinite money a full dry sump setup. An Accusump is cheap (relatively) and easy to install though. IDK what his budget is like, I can only provide poverty LS advice, but if I bought a blown up LS track car I would buy a $1000ish aluminum 5.3 short block, put in an accusump, and send.

Northend Wrench is an expert shop in aircooled VW and Porsche products, may want to reach out to Sean/Crossle.

No room for the factory brake booster. They did not give me a dip stick, so idk what to do about that for now but ill figure something out.

Laid the pan on, and ran the bolts down with the electric impact. Use a wrench on the areas near the sump - 13 mm and 10 for the back small ones. I left the front two that go in the timing cover kind of loose since I haven't done that gasket yet and I need a balancer to center the timing cover.

Time to put on the oil pan! This is pretty straight forward. The kit comes with a decent Mahle oil pan gasket and new hardware. The only problem I ran in to was the bolts that go through the ICT Billet Oil Filter Block were too short, I just ended up robbing two bolts off of the old pan. I took a clean rag and cleaned all the surfaces for the gasket that were dirty, put a dab of RTV where the rear main seal meets the block, and put the shorter pickup tube on. Just for comparison, the stock truck pickup tube next to the new one.

The Torque tube adapter is really the star of the show here. In basically any junkyard LS swap, the most expensive part is almost always the transmission if you want manual and not automatic. Luckily, this adapter lets us keep the stock 944 transaxle, which gives us several upgrade paths down the road that can be quickly and easily swapped in the driveway (944 Turbo Transaxle, 968 6 speed, Audi 01E, etc). Like so many other things in this build, I got the bellhousing from Scott. I went ahead and attached it to the adapter so that its ready to go on.

Custom Headers with space on the driver side for the steering shaft, Felpro Header Gaskets (probably wont run these), new manifold bolts Hydroboost brake booster, fittings, hoeses, and mounting plate to attach to 944 firewall Engine Mount Uprights Porsche Torque tube to Corvette Bellhousing adapter with F body hydraulic throwout bearing assembly and remote bleeder

Generic Heater Control Valve (Presumably a Ford style one?) Vehicle Speed Sensor Kit Universal 36in Throttle Cable with Cable Stops Corvette Size Clutch disc with Porsche torque tube splines

I picked up the boxes containing the various parts of the kit from Sean's shop in order to see what I could attach to the engine or assemble ahead of time. Here is a look at the stuff that comes in the kit (some of it im not going to unwrap until its time to keep it all together): Pilot Bearing Adapter and Pilot Bearing Champ Pans JR106 Oil Pan with baffles, Pickup Tube, Wix 57060 Filter, ICT Billet Filter Block, Mahle Oil Pan Gasket Premade Adapter Fuel Lines with inline Corvette Fuel Filter/Regulator

Retails new for $280, it was purchased on launch day and works excellent, I am just focusing on car stuff right now. for another $200 I'll give you the whole PC it was in - Core i7 3770 overclocked to 4.3ghz, 16gb ram (4x4), 512gb SSD CR Price $200 or trade for F body accessories lol

Bump, CR Price lowered. I really need an F body accessory setup to continue the engine I am putting together, so if you have a full set this engine is yours.

FBM

Thanks! I still haven't completely solved the accessory problem yet nor do I have a nailed down solution for the harness, but hopefully in the next few weeks we can get together to drop the engine in. It practically justifies the engine covers on it's own

There are apparently a bunch of broken pictures in this thread, I am sorry, I will work to clean them up. If I don't link pictures directly from my 944 Project Album on Google Photos apparently only I can see them. Good news for you guys is that you'll have some new-to-you pictures to look at Edit: Ok, I think I have everything fixed now - Posts 36, 37, 38, and 50 all had broken photos but should be fixed now.

Can you check out my for sale post and tell me if you can see those?

Can you guys tell me if you are seeing the pictures? I don't quite understand why some people are having problems seeing them.