Re: The Purple Car. Turned into a GXP and then a clean Regal
Well the GTO has been together and I've been driving it the past 3 weeks or so.
Here's some mockup pics. The car has an LS2 with an LS1 intake/rail setup. Using an ICT billet adapter to run the 4bolt DBW throttle body on a 3 bolt intake. Has GTO coil brackets with junkyard truck coils. Injectors are 04+ L32 injectors from the junkyard. They're the correct length and connector for the stock harness and very close in flow rate. Trans is from a Trans Am. Headers are Speed Engineering headers/x pipe. Fitment is decent for a $450 set of headers. Before staring this I made a set of wheel lifts to get the car up off the ground. I think that helped out a ton being able to roll around under the car with ease. Okay onto the pics
The GTO has a different neutral safety switch on the trans compared to the Trans Am. I got a switch from an Envoy at the yard. Nothing special about it. Somewhere around 04ish the 4L60/65 changed over to this. What I did run into was the shift selector shaft is longer on the newer ones to compensate for this. Luckily changing it was super easy and was actually super cheap at 10 bucks for a brand new shaft.
Side by side comparison
New one in
Onto more exciting things. Driverside header laid in. On these cars most set of headers have the steering shaft run through the primaries and as far as I know every set requires dropping the rack. I ALMOST had to do this even with the engine out. The header barely fit. That red wire is an official header installing tool
Wasn't able to find OEM trans cooler lines so I went with a Trucool 40K cooler like I had in the GXP. The two upper mounts go to the headlight bolts and the lower mounts are bolted to the core support. Didn't need to drill any holes. Made -6 AN lines and ran them by the factory p/s cooler lines and then followed the starter cables. Only pic I have is of the cooler mounted. I don't have any of the lines ran.
First pic I have of the engine/trans in the car. Was not a bad job at all. The rad/condenser come out super easy and there's 4' between the firewall and the front support. I put the motor/trans in together.
Accessories on. I got lucky and found an entire accessory set on eBay. Had to replace one idler pulley and was good to go there. Can also see where one of the trans cooler supports are on the headlight.
Pretty much back together in this pic other than a starter. I had bought a brand new Delco starter and I somehow managed to break the solenoid when installing. I was less than pleased. I thought maybe a truck solenoid fit but was not the case. Ended up finding that a 5.4 Triton starter has the same style solenoid and that was good enough to get me by for a few days while I waited for another starter.
This pic you can see my wheel lifts. It was definitely worth the time making these
And a video of course. This is headers/xpipe. I did have one issue getting the car to run. It didn't want to crank at all. Had some body controller codes for theft system. I ended up finding a fuse in the underhood box labeled as "engine sensors" was blown and was keeping it from starting. Then I had a dead battery issue which caused a couple issues until I figured that out. But once that was sorted the thing banged right off. It probably didn't make half a revolution before it fired and I was rather shocked.
Flickr
First drive went fine. Discovered the suspension was garbage. Little baby burnout
So along came some suspension stuff. For now just stock replacement Delco stuff. I did go with Pedder's mounts and bearings. I think later I'll get some Pedders or Koni stuff.
Old bearing on driverside
Old bearing on passenger side. The metal sleeve actually separated from the rubber. The driver strut was junk. All the fluid leaked out and it had nothing left. The passenger side seemed to be stuck. Haven't done the rear shocks yet. I'm waiting for my Pedders springs to fix the rear end sag before I do the shocks. I don't seem to have any pictures but I also replaced the sway links and radius arm bushings. I just went with cheap replacements for now. Later on I plan on doing poly radius bushings but for now this will do
Got a rear spoiler. I think these things look funky without the rear spoilers on them
Nice floor mats since the car didn't have any when I bought it
During my cleaning I found a pack of rolling papers. They had a cat or dog or something in the car and there was hair everywhere. I had the seats out and probably spent 3 hours with a vacuum total.
Random pic
I think the only issue I've had with the car other than the suspension is the number 7 primary hits the steering shaft sometimes. I noticed when I did the struts that the pan sits about an 1/8" under the subframe. Assumed maybe worn mounts but didn't think much of it. After doing some reading this is probably causing my header issue so new solid rubber mounts are on the way. I opted against poly to avoid vibration issues since I've been driving this car almost daily. Other than that I've had 0 issues that I can think of. It's been a joy to drive and is so much better than a Wbody and world's better to drive than the iroc haha.
Couple random things. I wasn't able to find an OEM GTO trans dipstick tube or shift linkage. I found a universal dipstick that works pretty good. I wish the brackets were a little beefier but it works fine. The shift linkage is a collaboration between the OEM Envoy linkage, a linkage from a Camry, and a piece of 1/4" steel rod from Lowe's. It works okay but it's a chore to get the car in 2nd and especially 1st and requires holding the shifter to keep it there. I did find an OEM linkage and that showed up today so that will be going in soon. But for the 5 dollars I had invested in my homeade one it definitely works and would probably work fine for all gears if I spent some more time with it and made it better. I'll keep it around incase something happens to the correct linkage.
I don't have any pics but I also resealed the entire engine except for headgaskets. It got front and rear mains, front and rear covers, water pump gaskets, valve cover gaskets, valley cover gasket. The OPSU was leaking so replaced that. The coolant temp sensor that came on the engine was broke so got a new one of those. Replaced the tq converter seal and output shaft seal on the trans as well.
