LT1FUN’s 1993 Pontiac Firebird

Auguest 18th, 2004Not too long after my engine blew, plans for a major overhaul began stirring around in my head. I wanted to build a motor that made more power N/A then what my old motor made using Nitrous. This is it. This is my chance to build the motor I've always wanted to. A stroker LT1 with enough power to DESTROY a Viper (or any other production car for that matter) down the 1/4 mile without even breaking a sweat.To accomplish this, I've decided I want to build up a 396 stroker. With the amount of power that I plan on making, and the fact I'll also be running a 250 shot of Nitrous, an all forged rotating assembly is the only way to go. There's only one set-back. I'm completely and totaly broke. I have literally no money and I'm basically living from paycheck to paycheck. What little I have left, will never be enough to put together a new motor. Not within the next 10 years anyway !!Summer is slowly coming to an end and I'm really getting frustrated at the fact that I haven't made any progress with the car. I've taken out the motor and tranny but my lack of funding has brought my project to a complete stop. Without having any money, i've done about as much as I can do.I know that if I ever want to get this car back on the road, I'm gonna have to swallow my pride, and move back home. That's the only way I'll ever make up the money I need to build this motor.-------------------------------------------October 28th, 2004Well, i finally did it ! I moved back home a few weeks ago and I already miss my apartment. It was a really sweet place but living expenses are just so high these days. Especially if your on your own and living in a 2 bedroom apartment.It's been a while now that I've been back home and it feels as if I never left. It's good to be back and the fact that I no longer have to hand over 90% of my income to rent, groceries, bills etc. feels pretty dam good. I'm already saving up for "Project 396"-------------------------------------------November 12th, 2004All Forged 396 Rotating AssemblyYES !! My project has finally begun !! I ordered up the rotating assembly I've had my eye on for month's now. I searched around and listened to what a lot of different mechanics/engine builders had to say and ended up going with an all forged stroker assembly. Here is a basic rundown of the main parts.- Eagle 4340 Forged Steel Crankshaft - Eagle 6" 3D Steel H Beam Connecting Rods- JE/SRP Forged Aluminum Pistons and PinsI also ordered up a set of Billet Steel 4 bolt splayed caps. Now this is what they call a bullit proof bottom end !!When I brought it home, I felt like a kid again tearing open all the boxes. It felt like Christmas. I haven't felt this good or been this happy in years. God, I can't wait to get this thing together. I only wish I made more money at work, so I wouldn't have to wait so long to buy more parts.���������� ��������� ����--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------����Here are some side by side picture's I took of the stock Piston/Connecting Rod and the new Forged pieces. As you can see, the new connecting rods have a lot more meat on them, but suprisingly, weigh less than the stock ones ! The new piston is a -7cc flat top which will make 12.1 compression with a 58cc cylinder head. These also weigh less than the stock piece.��Oh, and incase you didn't notice, the stock piston in the bottom picture, is the one that let go in the motor. Ther's a huge chunk missing which I never was able to find. I guess it was just chewed up into nothing. -------------------------------------------���December 14th, 2004Canton Road Racing oil panI picked up a new oil pan today. It's a Canton "T" fbody road racing pan. I did a lot of research before I made my decision and decided that the Canton was the best piece for my application.As you can see from the pictures below, The Canton is a sweet lookin piece. It's a 7 1/2" deep fully baffled oil pan with a 5 Qt. capacity for a system capacity of 6 Qts. It also features 3 Trap Door Baffles, a removeable one way screen windage tray and a built-in crankscraper.Overall, a very high quality piece. ��������������������-------------------------------------------February 18th, 2005The Short Block Assembly:It's been a while, but I finally managed to scrounge up enough money to assemble the short block.I've learned that the 396 requires a lot more clearancing to the block and oil pan than a typical (and much more common) 383 would and therfor cost me a lot more money aswell. Oh well.What you see below are pic's of how the motor sits as of 02/18/05.The block was sent out to be clearanced and everything was machined and blue-printed. Pistons and rods were assembled installed.The only things that remain is the timing cover (which still has to be painted) and a little more clearancing to the Canton oil pan. The block will also be painted a BRIGHT RED colour later on this week.By the way, that's an Edelbrock Double roller timing chain I'm now using. Since I'm no longer running the optispark and am switching to an electic water pump, my choices for a timing opened up. I went with the Edelbrock 'cause that's what my mechanic reccomended. He says he has customers running upwards of 900 HP with this chain and have never had a problem, That's good enough for me !������������������������������The bottom end is now over with and I can move on to the next step of the build up. The cylinder heads.I'm going with a set of AFR LT4 210cc heads with 58cc chambers and their "competion" port job. I will also have them drilled for a standard small block intake, since I'll be using either a Victor Jr. or similar manifold.Stay tuned for more pic's of the new heads, when I finally save up the money to get them...

It's been a while since I've updated the site so I've decided to post a few pic's of the car's current condition. Not too much longer after I removed the motor, I started to think of ways I was going to reduce weight.I made the decision that the heating and A/C were not going to be re-installed due to the fact that I almost never used either one of them anyways.The ABS was also deleted and I removed the air bags aswell. After that, I decided to try and remove the front and rear bumper supports to reduce weight even further. Some people have claimed that the front bumper will "droop" if the support is removed. I'll only find out if this is true after I re-assemble everything. It's the support itself that weighs alot so worse case scenario, I'll ditch the heavy support and make up a lightweight support bracket to hold the bumper up.We'll see what happens.���������������������

My interiorI always thought the Firebird had one of the nicest interiors. Everythings well laid out and exactly where it shoud be. There aren't a million and one buttons, lights, knobs and gauges all over the place like most of todays cars do. Since I love the interior on these cars so much, there wasn't much to do in the way of cosmetics. The gauges are only the ones I need. A Nitrous gauge. Fuel pressure gauge, and a tranny temp gauge. WhenI first purchased them about 5 years back, I really had no idea where I was going to put them untill one day, as I was sitting at a stop light, I happened to look at the 3 vent openings in the centre of the dash. That's when the idea hit me. I thought to myself "man it would be so cool if I could install a trio of gauges in there". The moment I got home I tried putting in my Nitrous gauge and it fit like a glove. The other two gauges wen on shortly afterwords. I don't know if I was the first to do it, but I didn't see anyone else do the same untill about 2 years later in n issue of GM High Tech Performance. Oh well, whether I was the first or not, I still haven't seen anyone else with the same at all the car shows I've been to.The gauge on the A-piller is an Air/Fuel gauge. My future plans involve re-apolstering the seats a dark grey colour with a red centre section on each. The loth material on the doors would be of the same red colour ad the seats.Oh, and I see another gauge in my future. Could it be a Boost gauge? Hmmm......

Tail Lights:Just received my 98-02 style rear tail lights. These are just about the only part on the LS1 fbody's I actually like. I had a very tiny scratch on my right side tail light and even though it went virtually un-noticed by every one else, it stood out like a soar thumb to me 'cause I knew where to look. I figured if I was going to replace them, I'd may aswell upgrade to the "honeycomb" style. I got to say though that finding a place to order these from turned out to be a total pain in the ass. I didn't want to get a used pair. They HAD to be brand new. I finally ordered them last Wednesday and like I said, they arrived today. 4 work days later, and I live in Canada ! Not too shabby. I'm really happy with them. They look AWESOME. Can't wait to put them on my car.-------------------------------------------I finally got around to installing my new tail lights. It only took around 20minutes and that was with me stopping to take photo's. If only every mod were as easy at this one.I really think that these "HoneyComb" style tail Lights really clean up the look of the back end. That and the Stainless steel "PONTIAC" inserts really add to the look. ****************************************************Final Results:

NOOOOOOO !!!O6/20/04I was out driving around just now and some guy in one of those Neon SRT4's drove up along side of me. There was a huge stretch of road ahead of us with no car's anywhere in sight so I dropped it into second gear and nailed it for about 5 seconds or so. By that point I was about 5 car length's ahead. It was obviouse this guy didn't have much under the hood so I got off the gas. Then the car started running really rough and the tone of the exhaust was completely different. I came to a stop at the next intersection and the car stalled on me (it's an automatic). I started back up again and I got a code 33. The car felt really weird driving home afterwords. It just doesn't feel as smooth as before under acceleration. I really hope it's nothing seriouse.****************************************************UPDATE:06/23/04Turns out that code "33" was for the MAP sensor. Well, I picked up a new MAP sensor today ($85 ) I disconected the battery to erase the ECM and replaced the old sensor. Started the car up and took her for a spin. No difference. When I stomp on the gas it feels like I'm running on 4 cylinders (now I know how import driver's feel ). I got back and popped the hood and the valve cover breather is spewing oil all over my passenger side header. It's also smoking like a chimney. I take off the breather and the smoke is "puffing" out. Not a good sign) It's also coming out of the exhaust. I took it to my mechanic and described the symptom's. He right away asked if I was on the bottle at the time and when I said that I was he said I'd probably killed the motor. Anyways, not exactly the way I wanted to start off my summer but hey, atleast I had the car on the road for 2 month's this year. 2's better than none I guess. It's been one problem after the other. The very day my insurance started (April 1st) my tranny blew up. Then I messed up the suspension, now this. I can't afford to repair anything right now so I'll have to call up the insurance company tomorrow and tell them I won't be driving anymore. That's it for this summer. In all honesty though, I really don't feel as bad as I thought I would. I mean, in a way, I'm actually kind of releived. I knew that the motor would let go one day or another and always thought to myself "this is it" whenever I hit the spray. Now it's finally happened. I can stop worrying about it now. Since I have to rebuild the motor anyway, I may aswell build it with some heavy-duty parts to keep this little "accident" from happening again. Since money is an issue, (like always) I will be using what I can from my current set-up, the stock heads (they've been ported/polished with 2.02intake/1.6 exhaust valves) the ported intake and factory 2bolt block.I'm considering just "rebuilding" the motor with a set of forged pistons and connecting rods. A new crank (forged?) and a girdle to strenghten the block. I'm going to upgrade the LT4 Hot cam with a GM 847 cam aswell. ****************************************************UPDATE: 07/01/04Well, during these past few weeks I made the decision that if had to rebuild the motor ( the car felt like it lost 2 cylinders) I may as well "throw in the kitchen sink" sort of speak. I decided to go with a stroker since the cost of the parts wouldn't be very much (if any) higher than a basic 355 rebuild. I setteled on a 396 with forged piston's, H beam rods,and a STEEL crank. (That and all the other crap that comes with the rotating assembly) I'm getting it at dealer cost ($2200CAD). Labour and machine work are obviously extra.I just got off the phone with the insurance company and cancelled my policy with them. No more driving for me this summer About 3 day's ago I decided that since I'm pretty much broke at the moment, it would probably be best if I did as much of the work myself as possible in order to save myself some money. I've always done most of the work on my car myself up untill now, mainly things like maintance and installing "bolt on" parts and left all the seriouse stuff like cam changing, head porting etc. to my mechanic.Well, I decided to take apart as much of the engine as possible and have the car towed to the shop when there was nothing left other than the block in the engine compartment. I was pretty nervouse, actually pretty scared that I might be getting in over my head but at the same time, I was also real excited at the same time. What better way to learn about motor's than to tear down your own? It's not like I was able to go anywhere with the car so I pretty much had all summer to take my time with it.It's been 3 days since I started taking stuff apart a little bit at a time. I'd stop by my parent's house after work each day (that's where my car is right now) and take off a few more pieces. By this time yesterday, I had taken off the radiator, air intake, alternator, ignition, tranny cooler, air conditioner compresser and all related pieces, the intake manifold, opti, waterpump,emissions, and crank pully. Today, I manged to get off the driver side header and pull out the plugs. That's when I noticed that one of them was completely bent. (not good) I eventually pulled off the head and saw that one of the piston's was missing about a huge chunk of it's material on the outside perimeter. It completely disappeared!! Vanished !! All I could say was... Holy **** !!The head itself is scratched up, but my mechanic told me that can be fixed real easy and that at the most, I'd have to pick up a pair of new valve's (2.02/1.6)I have to say that taking apart my motor has been really cool. I've never done anything like this before. I'm getting hand's on experience and the entire experiece is getting me that much closer to learning how to build my own motor one day. ****************************************************I took a few pic's to show you the progress so far.****************************************************UPDATE: 07/18/04Thought I'd update you on what's been happening with the Formula.I managed to take remove just about the entire engine except for the block 'cause I don't have an engine hoist and I'm pretty sure the block would probably be just a little too heavy to take out by hand. **************************************************** At that point there was nothing much left to do other than to take it to the shop and have them remove what was left. The flatbed showed up at around 10:30 (an hour and a half late ) but hey, better late then never I guess. She was taken to the shop and left there for a day or two to have the block pulled. A few other things were done aswell, along with a good cleaning from a power washer to help me with painting the engine compartment later. ****************************************************Since I had removed the ABS system from the car and had no intentions of putting it back in, I had Andy (my mechanic) bend some new brake lines for me. The final set-up is A LOT cleaner than with that huge ugly ABS unit in ther taking up space. It look's even better that I had hoped. **************************************************** Here's some of the stuff I took off the car that I'm NOT putting back in. All emissions equiptment, The ABS unit, Heating core, AC and all related hardware, and finally, the front end bracing. Combined weight of all parts is just over 67lbs. More importantly, that's 67lbs off the FRONT end of the car. ****************************************************Here's what the car looks like as of today 07/17/04. The motor's out and the engine compartment's been washed down and is ready for me to start sanding it for priming and painting later. Since ther's a lot of crap I won't be putting back on the car like the AC for example, the holes along the firewall and so on that were used to hold these pieces on with brackets will all have to be filled in and sanded down so that the final look woll be SUPER clean. No holes or lines anywhere!! ****************************************************Next thing to come off the car will be the rear bumper support. From what I've been told, that's another 35lbs I'll be able to shave off. I'll take more pic's when I actually get around to doing it.Money is still a HUGE problem for me at the moment. How big a problem is it?? Well, let's just say I might not even have enough $$ to pay my rent at the end of the month I'm not really worried though 'cause I always manage to find a way I got a bunch of parts I'm selling (like my NOS kit) and will be getting some money off them which I'll use to put towards the new 396 rotating assembly. The goal is to have the parts before the end of the summer. Have everthing assembled over the winter, and have the car ready by spring. Having money for car insurance to be able to drive it.... well... that's another story. I'll continue to keep you guys posted on anything new that happens. Stay tuned. Let me know any suggestions you might have about mods I might want to do before everthing goes back in...07/24/04Since I've now taken out the entire engine and all accessories, there are only a few minor things here and there in the engine compartment that I have to remove before I can prep everything for paint. I wasn't able to get at the rest of the heater assembly from the out side so I had no other choice but to tear apart the dash to get to the rest of it.Let me just start off by saying that this was by far the biggest pain in the ass project I've ever had to do. I never thought it would end up taking me an entire day to get the dash off the car but it did. There must be 1,000,000 srews holding everything in place and if that easn't enough, the are another 1,000,000 of those "clips" that hold the wires secure to whatever part they tied to. I was forced to cut all these clips to be able to take everything apart. What a freak'n nightmare. When I finall got the dash off I couldn't believe just how many wires and connections there were. It looked as if my car was built by NASA. Funny thing is these Fbody's aren't at all "high-tech". I can only imagine how many wires and crap are in the BMW's, Cadallic's etc. I don't even want to imagine.When that was done, I had a huge gapeing hole in my firewall that had to be covered up. I managed to find a piece of... well, honestly I have no idea what it was, in my garage that I used to cover up the opening. I took the measurements and cut out an appropriate sized piece. Did a little more "tweaking" to get it to fit right, then marked all the holes. Drilled them, then painted the panel an "aluminum silver" It turned out pretty darn good if you ask me.Anyways, the next day Sunday, I decided that it would be the best time to also remove the passenger side air bag since I really had no use for it. That, combined with all the duct work, heater fan and brackets shaved of another 37 pounds from the car. Total weight removed so far is just over 100 pounds including the front bumper support. Next week I'll take out the rear bumper support as well. Should be somewhere along the lines of another 30-35 punds. When everthing's back together, the total weight should be in the area of 3000-3050 pounds (the car weighed exactly 3200 before I started taking stuff off)I haven't gotton around to putting the dash back on since I made the decision of switching over to a carburator set-up. After seeing all those wires and sensors and and such I just wanted to get rid of everything and have nothing but an engine under the hood. The decision isn't final just yet, but if that's the route I take I'll leave the dash off so that I can take out ALL the wrireing behind it first.���������****************************************************��������

SUSPENSION: - SPOHN Rear Sway Bar - SPOHN Panhard Bar - SPOHN Panhard Bar Mounting Kit The quality of the spohn panhard rod and stabilizer bar are amazing. I'm very impressed with them. Heavy Duty Stuff...... **************************************************** - Spohn Front Stabilizer Bar **************************************************** - BMR Boxed Steel Control Arms This was my first time buying from BMR. I heard a lot of good things about there products. There website was very well laid out and professional looking. They (BMR) obviously knew what they were doing judging by all the information on there site so I thought I'd give them a try. Any worries I had about there products flew right out the window when they arrived at the door and I pulled them out of the box. These are VERY nice pieces. VERY well constructed and even the powder coating was excellent (I asked for silver). Highly recomended. This is an amazing product. **************************************************** - Spohn Torque Arm This is by far the coolest looking piece I've picked up for my suspension. Unlike the factory arm which bolts on the transmission, Spohn's version bolts into the supplied cross-member. This is a an amazing set-up and is why I decided to by the Spohn arm. Well, that and the fact that I was so impressed with both the front and rear sway bars made by them. One thing I did notice though is that this is a very "HEAVY DUTY " piece. The downside is that it's also HEAVY. Oh well. I'm willing to add some weight in exchange for better traction -which I know this arm will provide. Higly recomended. **************************************************** - BMR Upper A-arms - BMR Lower A-arms - BMR LT1 K member **************************************************** Here's everything I have so far. This will pretty much finish off my suspension as well as my bank account. If I calculated correctly, I'll have just enough at the end of the month to pay my rent. Food, well, that's another story. I'll find away. I always do. No regrets.... Control Arm/Panhard Rod/ R. Stabilizer Bar install" **************************************************** **************************************************** **************************************************** I dropped off my car at my mechanic this morning to have them install my kmember and upper/lower A arms. I also asked him to throw on the Spohn Torque Arm while he was at it. He phoned me on my ell at 2 this afternoon to tell me the car was ready. I picked it up after work and snapped off a few pics before I drove it home. The bill was WAAAYY more than I thought ($999.35) but that included a few things I never considered. -Upper Ball Joints $192 -Polyurathane trans mount $52 -lignment $65 That added to $560 in labour taxes and needless to say that really caught me off guard. Thankfully I was able to divide the bill with two credit cards. Great. Now I'm even further in dept. Oh well. On the bright side, there's a night and day difference in handeling. The car is 100 times better than before. Steering response is a lot faster. The car feels as if it's riding on rails. I was making turns at speeds twice as fast as I would have before and it just feels so much more stable. The car just feels......"SOLID" That's the best way I can describe it. Traction? Well, let's put it this way. After launching my car at every RPM from just off idle to 3000, I COULD NOT SPIN THE TIRES !!! Absolutely awesome. The ride quality is firmer but not bad like I thought it would be with all the polyurathane. In the end. I'm REALLY REALLY happy with the final result. All I need to do now is install my Jet Hot LT's and Ypipe and I'm set. P.s. The suspension is now complete except for one last thing. I plan on picking up the HAL adjustable shocks with front springs in the near future. Stay tuned.

EXHAUST:Jet Hot LT's for a 1993 LT1 Iordered with emIssions fitting so that I could still pass the smog test I have to take every two years. They looked so good I actually felt bad I couldn't see all of them under the hood. They're absolute works of art. Gaskets, and bolts were included though I picked up a better set of copper gaskets instead. I re-used the stage 8 ARP bolts I was running with the Edelbrock shorties. ****************************************************After nearly a month of waiting, my Jet Hot Ypipe has finally arrived. Yeah !!! Actually, it's a hooker ypipe with Jet Hot's coating but everyone calls the Jet Hot's Y pipe. Once again, another amazing quality piece from Jet Hot. Every bit ass good looking as the Long Tubes. I couldn't be happier. I also ordered a set of copper header and collector gaskets the other day aswell.That about does it for my exhaust. All I need to do now is install it. Hopefully some time before the first of April 'cause that's when I plan to bring the car out. Odd's are I'll probably sell the coated Edelbrock headers and y-pipe since I won't be needing them anymore. They're in pretty much mint condition.I'll keep you posted. ****************************************************Here are some pic's of the final exhaust set-up. I really had no idea just how small the shorties were compared to the long tubes. Only after they were installed, did I realize that they were literally twice as long. Because the tranny was removed to be rebuilt (I blew it up first day back on the road this year), they slipped in easily without a hitch. The BMR Kmember didn't hurt either :) Plug access is so much easier now, it's not even funny. LT's are worth the price for that reason alone. etting at those plugs with the shorties was a nightmare.Unfortunately, not everything went according to plan. The y-pipe wouldn't line up with one of the hedder-flanges no matter how hard we tried. We wound up just cutting a section of the ypipe and welding in a stainless piece with just the right amout of "bend" to it so it would lign up perfectly. No biggie.I was expecting a big difference in the tone of the exhaust but in all honesty, there's wasn't much of a difference in sound at idle. In all honesty, i couldn't hear any diifference at all. Once I took it outr on the road though, there was no mistaking the fact that I had LT's!! From 2500 and up the car sounds totally different. It's definetely more "high pitched". Sounds just like a NASCAR !! There's a lot of drone now, but I couldn't care less. If I wanted a quite car I'd buy a Buick.There's been a lot of debate as to whether or not long tubes are worth the money over shorties. Both fans of shorties and LT's claim their style is best. I heard a lot of opinions, as well as people who swore up and down that one style was "so much better" than the other. I was a little nevous as to whether I got my money's worth.The moment I got on the gas all my worries were put to rest. LT's are DEFINETELY an improvment over shorties (atleast they were with my engine set-up). At lower RPM's there's not that much of a difference, but from 3000 and up there a HUGE increase in power. You can really tell on the highway when you want to overtake somebody. You no longer have to give it as much gas for it to start to pick up. And as far as top end goes, let's just say that my old Edelbrocks had nothing on these Jet hots's. That's probably the biggest improvement I got was on the top end. I'd be willing to bet I picked up (at least) another 20 horses at the top.All in all, I'm very pleased with the performance gains of the LT's. Money well spent.

I was really beginning to lose hope. But then one day one of my dad's friends called and told us that they had just received a 93 firebird. It was in mint condition and had only 22,000km on the odometer. ( I had always known that the Firebird was basically a camaro with a different shape, but never really had an interest in them. Probably because I had never really seen one up close before. Maybe because I had never seen any articles or advertisments in the car magazines. It was always "camaro vs. mustang", "chevy vs ford". There was almost never any mention of Pontiac or Firebird). Anyways, I decided to go and look at it (not thinking that I'd have any interest in it) and see whether a car that was (at that time) 7 years old, really did only have 22,000km.

Auguest 18th, 2004Not too long after my engine blew, plans for a major overhaul began stirring around in my head. I wanted to build a motor that made more power N/A then what my old motor made using Nitrous. This is it. This is my chance to build the motor I've always wanted to. A stroker LT1 with enough power to DESTROY a Viper (or any other production car for that matter) down the 1/4 mile without even breaking a sweat.To accomplish this, I've decided I want to build up a 396 stroker. With the amount of power that I plan on making, and the fact I'll also be running a 250 shot of Nitrous, an all forged rotating assembly is the only way to go. There's only one set-back. I'm completely and totaly broke. I have literally no money and I'm basically living from paycheck to paycheck. What little I have left, will never be enough to put together a new motor. Not within the next 10 years anyway !!Summer is slowly coming to an end and I'm really getting frustrated at the fact that I haven't made any progress with the car. I've taken out the motor and tranny but my lack of funding has brought my project to a complete stop. Without having any money, i've done about as much as I can do.I know that if I ever want to get this car back on the road, I'm gonna have to swallow my pride, and move back home. That's the only way I'll ever make up the money I need to build this motor.-------------------------------------------October 28th, 2004Well, i finally did it ! I moved back home a few weeks ago and I already miss my apartment. It was a really sweet place but living expenses are just so high these days. Especially if your on your own and living in a 2 bedroom apartment.It's been a while now that I've been back home and it feels as if I never left. It's good to be back and the fact that I no longer have to hand over 90% of my income to rent, groceries, bills etc. feels pretty dam good. I'm already saving up for "Project 396"-------------------------------------------November 12th, 2004All Forged 396 Rotating AssemblyYES !! My project has finally begun !! I ordered up the rotating assembly I've had my eye on for month's now. I searched around and listened to what a lot of different mechanics/engine builders had to say and ended up going with an all forged stroker assembly. Here is a basic rundown of the main parts.- Eagle 4340 Forged Steel Crankshaft - Eagle 6" 3D Steel H Beam Connecting Rods- JE/SRP Forged Aluminum Pistons and PinsI also ordered up a set of Billet Steel 4 bolt splayed caps. Now this is what they call a bullit proof bottom end !!When I brought it home, I felt like a kid again tearing open all the boxes. It felt like Christmas. I haven't felt this good or been this happy in years. God, I can't wait to get this thing together. I only wish I made more money at work, so I wouldn't have to wait so long to buy more parts.���������� ��������� ����--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------����Here are some side by side picture's I took of the stock Piston/Connecting Rod and the new Forged pieces. As you can see, the new connecting rods have a lot more meat on them, but suprisingly, weigh less than the stock ones ! The new piston is a -7cc flat top which will make 12.1 compression with a 58cc cylinder head. These also weigh less than the stock piece.��Oh, and incase you didn't notice, the stock piston in the bottom picture, is the one that let go in the motor. Ther's a huge chunk missing which I never was able to find. I guess it was just chewed up into nothing. -------------------------------------------���December 14th, 2004Canton Road Racing oil panI picked up a new oil pan today. It's a Canton "T" fbody road racing pan. I did a lot of research before I made my decision and decided that the Canton was the best piece for my application.As you can see from the pictures below, The Canton is a sweet lookin piece. It's a 7 1/2" deep fully baffled oil pan with a 5 Qt. capacity for a system capacity of 6 Qts. It also features 3 Trap Door Baffles, a removeable one way screen windage tray and a built-in crankscraper.Overall, a very high quality piece. ��������������������-------------------------------------------February 18th, 2005The Short Block Assembly:It's been a while, but I finally managed to scrounge up enough money to assemble the short block.I've learned that the 396 requires a lot more clearancing to the block and oil pan than a typical (and much more common) 383 would and therfor cost me a lot more money aswell. Oh well.What you see below are pic's of how the motor sits as of 02/18/05.The block was sent out to be clearanced and everything was machined and blue-printed. Pistons and rods were assembled installed.The only things that remain is the timing cover (which still has to be painted) and a little more clearancing to the Canton oil pan. The block will also be painted a BRIGHT RED colour later on this week.By the way, that's an Edelbrock Double roller timing chain I'm now using. Since I'm no longer running the optispark and am switching to an electic water pump, my choices for a timing opened up. I went with the Edelbrock 'cause that's what my mechanic reccomended. He says he has customers running upwards of 900 HP with this chain and have never had a problem, That's good enough for me !������������������������������The bottom end is now over with and I can move on to the next step of the build up. The cylinder heads.I'm going with a set of AFR LT4 210cc heads with 58cc chambers and their "competion" port job. I will also have them drilled for a standard small block intake, since I'll be using either a Victor Jr. or similar manifold.Stay tuned for more pic's of the new heads, when I finally save up the money to get them...

It's been a while since I've updated the site so I've decided to post a few pic's of the car's current condition. Not too much longer after I removed the motor, I started to think of ways I was going to reduce weight.I made the decision that the heating and A/C were not going to be re-installed due to the fact that I almost never used either one of them anyways.The ABS was also deleted and I removed the air bags aswell. After that, I decided to try and remove the front and rear bumper supports to reduce weight even further. Some people have claimed that the front bumper will "droop" if the support is removed. I'll only find out if this is true after I re-assemble everything. It's the support itself that weighs alot so worse case scenario, I'll ditch the heavy support and make up a lightweight support bracket to hold the bumper up.We'll see what happens.���������������������

NOOOOOOO !!!O6/20/04I was out driving around just now and some guy in one of those Neon SRT4's drove up along side of me. There was a huge stretch of road ahead of us with no car's anywhere in sight so I dropped it into second gear and nailed it for about 5 seconds or so. By that point I was about 5 car length's ahead. It was obviouse this guy didn't have much under the hood so I got off the gas. Then the car started running really rough and the tone of the exhaust was completely different. I came to a stop at the next intersection and the car stalled on me (it's an automatic). I started back up again and I got a code 33. The car felt really weird driving home afterwords. It just doesn't feel as smooth as before under acceleration. I really hope it's nothing seriouse.****************************************************UPDATE:06/23/04Turns out that code "33" was for the MAP sensor. Well, I picked up a new MAP sensor today ($85 ) I disconected the battery to erase the ECM and replaced the old sensor. Started the car up and took her for a spin. No difference. When I stomp on the gas it feels like I'm running on 4 cylinders (now I know how import driver's feel ). I got back and popped the hood and the valve cover breather is spewing oil all over my passenger side header. It's also smoking like a chimney. I take off the breather and the smoke is "puffing" out. Not a good sign) It's also coming out of the exhaust. I took it to my mechanic and described the symptom's. He right away asked if I was on the bottle at the time and when I said that I was he said I'd probably killed the motor. Anyways, not exactly the way I wanted to start off my summer but hey, atleast I had the car on the road for 2 month's this year. 2's better than none I guess. It's been one problem after the other. The very day my insurance started (April 1st) my tranny blew up. Then I messed up the suspension, now this. I can't afford to repair anything right now so I'll have to call up the insurance company tomorrow and tell them I won't be driving anymore. That's it for this summer. In all honesty though, I really don't feel as bad as I thought I would. I mean, in a way, I'm actually kind of releived. I knew that the motor would let go one day or another and always thought to myself "this is it" whenever I hit the spray. Now it's finally happened. I can stop worrying about it now. Since I have to rebuild the motor anyway, I may aswell build it with some heavy-duty parts to keep this little "accident" from happening again. Since money is an issue, (like always) I will be using what I can from my current set-up, the stock heads (they've been ported/polished with 2.02intake/1.6 exhaust valves) the ported intake and factory 2bolt block.I'm considering just "rebuilding" the motor with a set of forged pistons and connecting rods. A new crank (forged?) and a girdle to strenghten the block. I'm going to upgrade the LT4 Hot cam with a GM 847 cam aswell. ****************************************************UPDATE: 07/01/04Well, during these past few weeks I made the decision that if had to rebuild the motor ( the car felt like it lost 2 cylinders) I may as well "throw in the kitchen sink" sort of speak. I decided to go with a stroker since the cost of the parts wouldn't be very much (if any) higher than a basic 355 rebuild. I setteled on a 396 with forged piston's, H beam rods,and a STEEL crank. (That and all the other crap that comes with the rotating assembly) I'm getting it at dealer cost ($2200CAD). Labour and machine work are obviously extra.I just got off the phone with the insurance company and cancelled my policy with them. No more driving for me this summer About 3 day's ago I decided that since I'm pretty much broke at the moment, it would probably be best if I did as much of the work myself as possible in order to save myself some money. I've always done most of the work on my car myself up untill now, mainly things like maintance and installing "bolt on" parts and left all the seriouse stuff like cam changing, head porting etc. to my mechanic.Well, I decided to take apart as much of the engine as possible and have the car towed to the shop when there was nothing left other than the block in the engine compartment. I was pretty nervouse, actually pretty scared that I might be getting in over my head but at the same time, I was also real excited at the same time. What better way to learn about motor's than to tear down your own? It's not like I was able to go anywhere with the car so I pretty much had all summer to take my time with it.It's been 3 days since I started taking stuff apart a little bit at a time. I'd stop by my parent's house after work each day (that's where my car is right now) and take off a few more pieces. By this time yesterday, I had taken off the radiator, air intake, alternator, ignition, tranny cooler, air conditioner compresser and all related pieces, the intake manifold, opti, waterpump,emissions, and crank pully. Today, I manged to get off the driver side header and pull out the plugs. That's when I noticed that one of them was completely bent. (not good) I eventually pulled off the head and saw that one of the piston's was missing about a huge chunk of it's material on the outside perimeter. It completely disappeared!! Vanished !! All I could say was... Holy **** !!The head itself is scratched up, but my mechanic told me that can be fixed real easy and that at the most, I'd have to pick up a pair of new valve's (2.02/1.6)I have to say that taking apart my motor has been really cool. I've never done anything like this before. I'm getting hand's on experience and the entire experiece is getting me that much closer to learning how to build my own motor one day. ****************************************************I took a few pic's to show you the progress so far.****************************************************UPDATE: 07/18/04Thought I'd update you on what's been happening with the Formula.I managed to take remove just about the entire engine except for the block 'cause I don't have an engine hoist and I'm pretty sure the block would probably be just a little too heavy to take out by hand. **************************************************** At that point there was nothing much left to do other than to take it to the shop and have them remove what was left. The flatbed showed up at around 10:30 (an hour and a half late ) but hey, better late then never I guess. She was taken to the shop and left there for a day or two to have the block pulled. A few other things were done aswell, along with a good cleaning from a power washer to help me with painting the engine compartment later. ****************************************************Since I had removed the ABS system from the car and had no intentions of putting it back in, I had Andy (my mechanic) bend some new brake lines for me. The final set-up is A LOT cleaner than with that huge ugly ABS unit in ther taking up space. It look's even better that I had hoped. **************************************************** Here's some of the stuff I took off the car that I'm NOT putting back in. All emissions equiptment, The ABS unit, Heating core, AC and all related hardware, and finally, the front end bracing. Combined weight of all parts is just over 67lbs. More importantly, that's 67lbs off the FRONT end of the car. ****************************************************Here's what the car looks like as of today 07/17/04. The motor's out and the engine compartment's been washed down and is ready for me to start sanding it for priming and painting later. Since ther's a lot of crap I won't be putting back on the car like the AC for example, the holes along the firewall and so on that were used to hold these pieces on with brackets will all have to be filled in and sanded down so that the final look woll be SUPER clean. No holes or lines anywhere!! ****************************************************Next thing to come off the car will be the rear bumper support. From what I've been told, that's another 35lbs I'll be able to shave off. I'll take more pic's when I actually get around to doing it.Money is still a HUGE problem for me at the moment. How big a problem is it?? Well, let's just say I might not even have enough $$ to pay my rent at the end of the month I'm not really worried though 'cause I always manage to find a way I got a bunch of parts I'm selling (like my NOS kit) and will be getting some money off them which I'll use to put towards the new 396 rotating assembly. The goal is to have the parts before the end of the summer. Have everthing assembled over the winter, and have the car ready by spring. Having money for car insurance to be able to drive it.... well... that's another story. I'll continue to keep you guys posted on anything new that happens. Stay tuned. Let me know any suggestions you might have about mods I might want to do before everthing goes back in...07/24/04Since I've now taken out the entire engine and all accessories, there are only a few minor things here and there in the engine compartment that I have to remove before I can prep everything for paint. I wasn't able to get at the rest of the heater assembly from the out side so I had no other choice but to tear apart the dash to get to the rest of it.Let me just start off by saying that this was by far the biggest pain in the ass project I've ever had to do. I never thought it would end up taking me an entire day to get the dash off the car but it did. There must be 1,000,000 srews holding everything in place and if that easn't enough, the are another 1,000,000 of those "clips" that hold the wires secure to whatever part they tied to. I was forced to cut all these clips to be able to take everything apart. What a freak'n nightmare. When I finall got the dash off I couldn't believe just how many wires and connections there were. It looked as if my car was built by NASA. Funny thing is these Fbody's aren't at all "high-tech". I can only imagine how many wires and crap are in the BMW's, Cadallic's etc. I don't even want to imagine.When that was done, I had a huge gapeing hole in my firewall that had to be covered up. I managed to find a piece of... well, honestly I have no idea what it was, in my garage that I used to cover up the opening. I took the measurements and cut out an appropriate sized piece. Did a little more "tweaking" to get it to fit right, then marked all the holes. Drilled them, then painted the panel an "aluminum silver" It turned out pretty darn good if you ask me.Anyways, the next day Sunday, I decided that it would be the best time to also remove the passenger side air bag since I really had no use for it. That, combined with all the duct work, heater fan and brackets shaved of another 37 pounds from the car. Total weight removed so far is just over 100 pounds including the front bumper support. Next week I'll take out the rear bumper support as well. Should be somewhere along the lines of another 30-35 punds. When everthing's back together, the total weight should be in the area of 3000-3050 pounds (the car weighed exactly 3200 before I started taking stuff off)I haven't gotton around to putting the dash back on since I made the decision of switching over to a carburator set-up. After seeing all those wires and sensors and and such I just wanted to get rid of everything and have nothing but an engine under the hood. The decision isn't final just yet, but if that's the route I take I'll leave the dash off so that I can take out ALL the wrireing behind it first.���������****************************************************��������

Tail Lights:Just received my 98-02 style rear tail lights. These are just about the only part on the LS1 fbody's I actually like. I had a very tiny scratch on my right side tail light and even though it went virtually un-noticed by every one else, it stood out like a soar thumb to me 'cause I knew where to look. I figured if I was going to replace them, I'd may aswell upgrade to the "honeycomb" style. I got to say though that finding a place to order these from turned out to be a total pain in the ass. I didn't want to get a used pair. They HAD to be brand new. I finally ordered them last Wednesday and like I said, they arrived today. 4 work days later, and I live in Canada ! Not too shabby. I'm really happy with them. They look AWESOME. Can't wait to put them on my car.-------------------------------------------I finally got around to installing my new tail lights. It only took around 20minutes and that was with me stopping to take photo's. If only every mod were as easy at this one.I really think that these "HoneyComb" style tail Lights really clean up the look of the back end. That and the Stainless steel "PONTIAC" inserts really add to the look. ****************************************************Final Results:

My interiorI always thought the Firebird had one of the nicest interiors. Everythings well laid out and exactly where it shoud be. There aren't a million and one buttons, lights, knobs and gauges all over the place like most of todays cars do. Since I love the interior on these cars so much, there wasn't much to do in the way of cosmetics. The gauges are only the ones I need. A Nitrous gauge. Fuel pressure gauge, and a tranny temp gauge. WhenI first purchased them about 5 years back, I really had no idea where I was going to put them untill one day, as I was sitting at a stop light, I happened to look at the 3 vent openings in the centre of the dash. That's when the idea hit me. I thought to myself "man it would be so cool if I could install a trio of gauges in there". The moment I got home I tried putting in my Nitrous gauge and it fit like a glove. The other two gauges wen on shortly afterwords. I don't know if I was the first to do it, but I didn't see anyone else do the same untill about 2 years later in n issue of GM High Tech Performance. Oh well, whether I was the first or not, I still haven't seen anyone else with the same at all the car shows I've been to.The gauge on the A-piller is an Air/Fuel gauge. My future plans involve re-apolstering the seats a dark grey colour with a red centre section on each. The loth material on the doors would be of the same red colour ad the seats.Oh, and I see another gauge in my future. Could it be a Boost gauge? Hmmm......

EXHAUST:Jet Hot LT's for a 1993 LT1 Iordered with emIssions fitting so that I could still pass the smog test I have to take every two years. They looked so good I actually felt bad I couldn't see all of them under the hood. They're absolute works of art. Gaskets, and bolts were included though I picked up a better set of copper gaskets instead. I re-used the stage 8 ARP bolts I was running with the Edelbrock shorties. ****************************************************After nearly a month of waiting, my Jet Hot Ypipe has finally arrived. Yeah !!! Actually, it's a hooker ypipe with Jet Hot's coating but everyone calls the Jet Hot's Y pipe. Once again, another amazing quality piece from Jet Hot. Every bit ass good looking as the Long Tubes. I couldn't be happier. I also ordered a set of copper header and collector gaskets the other day aswell.That about does it for my exhaust. All I need to do now is install it. Hopefully some time before the first of April 'cause that's when I plan to bring the car out. Odd's are I'll probably sell the coated Edelbrock headers and y-pipe since I won't be needing them anymore. They're in pretty much mint condition.I'll keep you posted. ****************************************************Here are some pic's of the final exhaust set-up. I really had no idea just how small the shorties were compared to the long tubes. Only after they were installed, did I realize that they were literally twice as long. Because the tranny was removed to be rebuilt (I blew it up first day back on the road this year), they slipped in easily without a hitch. The BMR Kmember didn't hurt either :) Plug access is so much easier now, it's not even funny. LT's are worth the price for that reason alone. etting at those plugs with the shorties was a nightmare.Unfortunately, not everything went according to plan. The y-pipe wouldn't line up with one of the hedder-flanges no matter how hard we tried. We wound up just cutting a section of the ypipe and welding in a stainless piece with just the right amout of "bend" to it so it would lign up perfectly. No biggie.I was expecting a big difference in the tone of the exhaust but in all honesty, there's wasn't much of a difference in sound at idle. In all honesty, i couldn't hear any diifference at all. Once I took it outr on the road though, there was no mistaking the fact that I had LT's!! From 2500 and up the car sounds totally different. It's definetely more "high pitched". Sounds just like a NASCAR !! There's a lot of drone now, but I couldn't care less. If I wanted a quite car I'd buy a Buick.There's been a lot of debate as to whether or not long tubes are worth the money over shorties. Both fans of shorties and LT's claim their style is best. I heard a lot of opinions, as well as people who swore up and down that one style was "so much better" than the other. I was a little nevous as to whether I got my money's worth.The moment I got on the gas all my worries were put to rest. LT's are DEFINETELY an improvment over shorties (atleast they were with my engine set-up). At lower RPM's there's not that much of a difference, but from 3000 and up there a HUGE increase in power. You can really tell on the highway when you want to overtake somebody. You no longer have to give it as much gas for it to start to pick up. And as far as top end goes, let's just say that my old Edelbrocks had nothing on these Jet hots's. That's probably the biggest improvement I got was on the top end. I'd be willing to bet I picked up (at least) another 20 horses at the top.All in all, I'm very pleased with the performance gains of the LT's. Money well spent.

SUSPENSION: - SPOHN Rear Sway Bar - SPOHN Panhard Bar - SPOHN Panhard Bar Mounting Kit The quality of the spohn panhard rod and stabilizer bar are amazing. I'm very impressed with them. Heavy Duty Stuff...... **************************************************** - Spohn Front Stabilizer Bar **************************************************** - BMR Boxed Steel Control Arms This was my first time buying from BMR. I heard a lot of good things about there products. There website was very well laid out and professional looking. They (BMR) obviously knew what they were doing judging by all the information on there site so I thought I'd give them a try. Any worries I had about there products flew right out the window when they arrived at the door and I pulled them out of the box. These are VERY nice pieces. VERY well constructed and even the powder coating was excellent (I asked for silver). Highly recomended. This is an amazing product. **************************************************** - Spohn Torque Arm This is by far the coolest looking piece I've picked up for my suspension. Unlike the factory arm which bolts on the transmission, Spohn's version bolts into the supplied cross-member. This is a an amazing set-up and is why I decided to by the Spohn arm. Well, that and the fact that I was so impressed with both the front and rear sway bars made by them. One thing I did notice though is that this is a very "HEAVY DUTY " piece. The downside is that it's also HEAVY. Oh well. I'm willing to add some weight in exchange for better traction -which I know this arm will provide. Higly recomended. **************************************************** - BMR Upper A-arms - BMR Lower A-arms - BMR LT1 K member **************************************************** Here's everything I have so far. This will pretty much finish off my suspension as well as my bank account. If I calculated correctly, I'll have just enough at the end of the month to pay my rent. Food, well, that's another story. I'll find away. I always do. No regrets.... Control Arm/Panhard Rod/ R. Stabilizer Bar install" **************************************************** **************************************************** **************************************************** I dropped off my car at my mechanic this morning to have them install my kmember and upper/lower A arms. I also asked him to throw on the Spohn Torque Arm while he was at it. He phoned me on my ell at 2 this afternoon to tell me the car was ready. I picked it up after work and snapped off a few pics before I drove it home. The bill was WAAAYY more than I thought ($999.35) but that included a few things I never considered. -Upper Ball Joints $192 -Polyurathane trans mount $52 -lignment $65 That added to $560 in labour taxes and needless to say that really caught me off guard. Thankfully I was able to divide the bill with two credit cards. Great. Now I'm even further in dept. Oh well. On the bright side, there's a night and day difference in handeling. The car is 100 times better than before. Steering response is a lot faster. The car feels as if it's riding on rails. I was making turns at speeds twice as fast as I would have before and it just feels so much more stable. The car just feels......"SOLID" That's the best way I can describe it. Traction? Well, let's put it this way. After launching my car at every RPM from just off idle to 3000, I COULD NOT SPIN THE TIRES !!! Absolutely awesome. The ride quality is firmer but not bad like I thought it would be with all the polyurathane. In the end. I'm REALLY REALLY happy with the final result. All I need to do now is install my Jet Hot LT's and Ypipe and I'm set. P.s. The suspension is now complete except for one last thing. I plan on picking up the HAL adjustable shocks with front springs in the near future. Stay tuned.

When we drove past the the dealership (parking was in the rear) I saw the Firebird parked at the front along the sidewalk. I swear my heart felt like it was about to jump out of my chest. It was a feeling I'll never forget. When we parked, I ran out to go and look at it while my dad went to go and find his buddy. I swear I had never (even till this day) experienced the emotions I was feeling when I was in the presence of that car. Maybe it was the fact that this could very well be my first car. Maybe it was the thought of driving it around while my friends were stuck driving their parents mini-vans. Whatever it was, I had never been so exited in my entire life. My dad showed up with the salseman who handed me the keys and told be to "start her up".

Auguest 18th, 2004Not too long after my engine blew, plans for a major overhaul began stirring around in my head. I wanted to build a motor that made more power N/A then what my old motor made using Nitrous. This is it. This is my chance to build the motor I've always wanted to. A stroker LT1 with enough power to DESTROY a Viper (or any other production car for that matter) down the 1/4 mile without even breaking a sweat.To accomplish this, I've decided I want to build up a 396 stroker. With the amount of power that I plan on making, and the fact I'll also be running a 250 shot of Nitrous, an all forged rotating assembly is the only way to go. There's only one set-back. I'm completely and totaly broke. I have literally no money and I'm basically living from paycheck to paycheck. What little I have left, will never be enough to put together a new motor. Not within the next 10 years anyway !!Summer is slowly coming to an end and I'm really getting frustrated at the fact that I haven't made any progress with the car. I've taken out the motor and tranny but my lack of funding has brought my project to a complete stop. Without having any money, i've done about as much as I can do.I know that if I ever want to get this car back on the road, I'm gonna have to swallow my pride, and move back home. That's the only way I'll ever make up the money I need to build this motor.-------------------------------------------October 28th, 2004Well, i finally did it ! I moved back home a few weeks ago and I already miss my apartment. It was a really sweet place but living expenses are just so high these days. Especially if your on your own and living in a 2 bedroom apartment.It's been a while now that I've been back home and it feels as if I never left. It's good to be back and the fact that I no longer have to hand over 90% of my income to rent, groceries, bills etc. feels pretty dam good. I'm already saving up for "Project 396"-------------------------------------------November 12th, 2004All Forged 396 Rotating AssemblyYES !! My project has finally begun !! I ordered up the rotating assembly I've had my eye on for month's now. I searched around and listened to what a lot of different mechanics/engine builders had to say and ended up going with an all forged stroker assembly. Here is a basic rundown of the main parts.- Eagle 4340 Forged Steel Crankshaft - Eagle 6" 3D Steel H Beam Connecting Rods- JE/SRP Forged Aluminum Pistons and PinsI also ordered up a set of Billet Steel 4 bolt splayed caps. Now this is what they call a bullit proof bottom end !!When I brought it home, I felt like a kid again tearing open all the boxes. It felt like Christmas. I haven't felt this good or been this happy in years. God, I can't wait to get this thing together. I only wish I made more money at work, so I wouldn't have to wait so long to buy more parts.���������� ��������� ����--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------����Here are some side by side picture's I took of the stock Piston/Connecting Rod and the new Forged pieces. As you can see, the new connecting rods have a lot more meat on them, but suprisingly, weigh less than the stock ones ! The new piston is a -7cc flat top which will make 12.1 compression with a 58cc cylinder head. These also weigh less than the stock piece.��Oh, and incase you didn't notice, the stock piston in the bottom picture, is the one that let go in the motor. Ther's a huge chunk missing which I never was able to find. I guess it was just chewed up into nothing. -------------------------------------------���December 14th, 2004Canton Road Racing oil panI picked up a new oil pan today. It's a Canton "T" fbody road racing pan. I did a lot of research before I made my decision and decided that the Canton was the best piece for my application.As you can see from the pictures below, The Canton is a sweet lookin piece. It's a 7 1/2" deep fully baffled oil pan with a 5 Qt. capacity for a system capacity of 6 Qts. It also features 3 Trap Door Baffles, a removeable one way screen windage tray and a built-in crankscraper.Overall, a very high quality piece. ��������������������-------------------------------------------February 18th, 2005The Short Block Assembly:It's been a while, but I finally managed to scrounge up enough money to assemble the short block.I've learned that the 396 requires a lot more clearancing to the block and oil pan than a typical (and much more common) 383 would and therfor cost me a lot more money aswell. Oh well.What you see below are pic's of how the motor sits as of 02/18/05.The block was sent out to be clearanced and everything was machined and blue-printed. Pistons and rods were assembled installed.The only things that remain is the timing cover (which still has to be painted) and a little more clearancing to the Canton oil pan. The block will also be painted a BRIGHT RED colour later on this week.By the way, that's an Edelbrock Double roller timing chain I'm now using. Since I'm no longer running the optispark and am switching to an electic water pump, my choices for a timing opened up. I went with the Edelbrock 'cause that's what my mechanic reccomended. He says he has customers running upwards of 900 HP with this chain and have never had a problem, That's good enough for me !������������������������������The bottom end is now over with and I can move on to the next step of the build up. The cylinder heads.I'm going with a set of AFR LT4 210cc heads with 58cc chambers and their "competion" port job. I will also have them drilled for a standard small block intake, since I'll be using either a Victor Jr. or similar manifold.Stay tuned for more pic's of the new heads, when I finally save up the money to get them...