My first LS build

Hopefully today we did the last pre assembly and checking clearances, so far everything has checked out great. JR is extremely happy with the work Piltcher did on the block. Most all the new parts for this build have came from Brian Tooley Racing. I have spent a lot of time on the phone with Brian figuring out this and that and his listed prices will mostly beat anywhere else including Summit. Has been a good experience working with him and shipping is free. He has built a 500 plus cid. LS out of an aluminum, non tall deck block. Check the video out, if I remember right it is the latest one in the corvette .

Patooyee's handy work, seven of eight ready for rings, rings have been fitted and assigned a hole to do battle in

Installed the cam with the thrust plate, assembly lube and torque to specks, if everything clears well, it will stay in.

Installed timing chain set and torqued to specks. It too will stay in place.

Installed #1 piston without rings, placed a head on the block without a head gasket and pulled the head tight with a couple of old bolts. Modified lifers in the #1 lifter bores to make full travel the valves and Jessel rocker set up mocked up. The Jessel is way too bad ass to just show a couple of pictures right now, i'll save that for latter. We also measured for push rods while we had the Jessel mocked up. With this rocker set up you can't just pre load the lifters plus 1/4 turn. My set up is non adjustable, you have to get the push rod lengths right. We ended up ordering Texas Speeds 5/16 7.400, happens to be factory drop in lengths. We used an adjustable push rod to determine we needed a 7.334 rod with out pre load added .005 for pre load and .051 for my head gasket. Math should work out to 7.390. An iron block can have up to .0015 pre load on the short travel lifters, and aluminum block only allows .005. If we get this wrong and rods are tool long it could wipe the cam shaft out, quick.

Clay was placed in both the intake and exhaust valve reliefs on the piston, crank rotated, head removed and this is what we got. Clay is cut into so y'all can see how close the valve gets to the piston. Keep in mind this is without head gasket. We did measure it intake .072 add .051 for gasket .123 ex. .082 + .051= .133 plenty of room for this set up.

Few more

We has another uh-ho today. We wanted to get at least one piston in the block today before knocking off. Don't what happened but scraper ring got caught up in the squeezer and ruined the expander. I already ordered a new set. Piston likely got a little cocked in the bore and caused the ring to dig into the squeezer? Anyway it jacked it up.

Hope to see y'all at Morris Mt tomorrow, thanks for looking

Are you an engine builder by trade? Way too much tech here to be shade tree. Very cool.

Thanks but no, just an old shade tree farm boy with good friends. Up to this build I have always bought drop ins and the only gaps I have ever measured were spark plug gaps. New ring set has not showed up yet but hope to get seven cylinders filled tomorrow and mock up heads for port matching the intake.

Made good progress Tuesday morning. Got seven cylinders in their bore without any issues, in fact it was harder to load the piston in the squeezer than getting them into the block. I guess we were having an off day last Thursday. I should have taken a picture of the hugh scratch the ring put in the squeezer, but I did not, sorry that would have been a good one to see. Squeezer had to be repaired and so did the block. First pics are of repaired block. You will have to look close but you may see where the hatch marks are a little different toward the top of the block, this cylinder will never give us a problem because of the repair. Second pic #1 in the hole and seven of eight in bore.

Off track a little. One of my buddies tires on the way home from Morris Mountain. On the way home ended up changing three tires on three different trailers and aired one up on my tow rig. I don't recall ever seeing a blister this large and of course I wanted to poke it with a stick but Tim would have killed me.

Oil pump is up next. The reason I started this build is because a set of Trick Flow heads came up for sale on Dragcoverage, I bought the heads, Jessel rocker system, injectors, new timing set, six H beam rods, pistons and a Texas Speed ported oil pump all for the price of one new TF head. These parts came off a twin turbo 6.0 from TS. It hydrolocked due to an intercooler bursting on the inside filling a cylinder with water and destroying that piston and the cylinder. I wanted to take the pump apart for a good cleaning and inspection, good thing I did. The pump housing is heat scored, the small gear is heat scored, pitted and burred. Pictures will not do this thing justice of how bad it is but last picture will, it is in the trash. JR had a pump housing he had already ported, we compared his work to TS's work and they looked identical. We used JR's housing and gears and put the spring and shims from the TS unit in. Back together and in business.

Certainly most people probably wouldn't do this but drilling a hole in the lifter tray allows trapped oil a way out. Holes are drilled on the lower side of the try staying just above the lifter seat area. These are new LS 2 lifter trays from Brian Tooley. I used a step bit and eye balled the hole and finished with a de burring tool and pocket knife.

Pic of block with oil pump installed, sorry I missed the pic of shimming the pump gears before torquing the pump housing to the block. There is a great vid of this being done on Powerblock. Proper instillation calls for shimming the gear to gear and gears to housing eliminating pre loading before torquing bolts to the block.

LS 9 MLS head gaskets from BTR being placed on for mock up of heads and intake to see where port matching will be performed.

Leaving a couple of teaser pictures and a shot of area to be ported for smooth fuel flow. If ring pack and push rods show up today, tomorrow we will get #3 in and torque rod bolts and move on to getting the bottom end sealed up. There will be clearance issues with the windage tray and rod caps/ bolts. Thanks for stopping by.

Started out with pic. of tapered squeezer after sanding out the big scratch the ring left.

Last piston in rod bolts torqued to specs. Have I mentioned six of the rods in this build are used, yep? H beam rods are very tough and will survive many engine failures. The two that didn't in this case was due to a hydro locked twin turbo, I picked them up for $100. The six are Scat rods with ARP bolts that simply TQ to 64 ft pd. The two new ones are K1's with ARP 2000 bolts which TQ to 30lbs plus 60 degrees.

Took this picture to show how much room there is at the closest point the rod could contact the block. This is a 4.125 stroke and no work is needed to the block.

Re: Re: My first LS build

Cool thread thus far. I like seeing engine builds myself

I knew there would be clearance issues with rods to windage tray. I bought 10 thick washers and a pack of standard washers to clear 10mm stud. A total of .0150 was needed to clear the rod bolts, one thick and one thin did the trick. Windage tray had to be drilled out at three studs marked with white paint pin. Sorry I didn't get pic. of washers used but used one thick to keep from stacking three. Three would have been thicker than the two and the more upward you go the worse the pick up is thrown off.

This is the bad angle, scary ain't it?

Raising the windage tray brings the welded support bracket in contact with the tray. This is a Kevco pick up tube, I am sure others would be similar. White marks are where we are going to start trimming the tray.

The fix is in. We took a lot of time measuring and test fitting before cutting anything. JR measured the depth of the pan, the height of the pick up. Once the cutting was done everything fit well and we had around 3/8'' between floor of the pan and bottom of pick up.

Hard to tell any work has been done at all?