2 potential LS swaps

[woody90gtz]

I did my underbody, trunk and engine bay in Raptor Liner. Good stuff. Keep plugging away, slow progress is better than no progress (like my car lately) Yikes

[Godlike]

Agreed, Raptor is a nice hard coating. The spray gun setup is awkward but it got it done. I can't get it to chip off my test piece by smoking it with a hammer.
Ya, Im already at the point where I just want my car back on the road and I have a mound of other projects in the way now

[snowblindburd]

We love the Bonneville. Any progress since April? I wanna drive that thing again!

[Godlike]

Ok, you asked for it...  Are you ready?  
Your not ready
Well tree planting ate up over a month of my time this spring.  The larger size Norway Spruce i ordered was a no go (bad crop) so they sent me 360 of the size 1 (8" trees) instead of 120 of the size 3 (18" trees).  I had also ordered 100 White pine plugs and 50 Quaking Aspen.  And before they showed up we were getting drowned in rain so the farmer that formerly rented our field couldn't get into it till the last minute.  But he was able to disk all the high ground he could get to so I could spread field grass seed before trees came.  Too much stress, followed by an ass kicking week of planting with my dad.  But its done and the Norways are lovin life with 6" of new growth on them so far! 

Original 4 acre plot White pine, Tamarack, Norway spruce, Scotch pine, Red pine, and Dawn Redwood
We planted 380 White Pine in 2018
Untitled by GodlikeMotorsports, on Flickr

New plot spring 8 acres
Untitled by GodlikeMotorsports, on Flickr

[Godlike]

Untitled by GodlikeMotorsports, on Flickr
In other news...
I started working on interior wiring last winter. I pulled the rear speaker wires back to the front and rerouted them to the drivers side wireway. all of the noisy high power stuff is on the passenger side now. Rear speaker wires will be accompanied by Aux speaker wires I am adding to each door. Ill mount an amp in the trunk someday to drive them.
Im also running trigger wires to the trunk to turn on the amp I don't have, fire an Nos trunk latch solenoid I bought on ebay, and to pull in a fuel pump relay, or two . I installed a tilt switch to wire in some trunk lights eventually.
Untitled by GodlikeMotorsports, on Flickr

My steering column had loose bolts "as they do"  So I ordered a couple pullers and rebuilt it.  It also had a broken turn signal cancel spring and needed a new stalk.  My stalk was an oddball.  Chrome with cruise and non intermittent wipers.  It is the most expensive version. So I ordered one with intermittent wipers for a 3rd of the price from Original Parts Group along with a pair of Buick GNX fender vents.

[Godlike]

Cleaned up my HVAC control.  The fan switch lever was broke off which is pretty standard. Painted the backing plate.  I used a Summit sticker for the blend indicator. Buffed the lens and added chrome tape to the base plate at the light surround.
Untitled by GodlikeMotorsports, on Flickr

 Tail lights
It took 3 Bonnevilles to build this...
I can usually find around 5 right side tail lights on Ebay but a mint left side tail is a unicorn.  Why that is Ill never know.  I bought a pair of tails recently just for the mint left lens.  Buffed it and the chrome trim I got from another car years ago.  Then cleaned up the original housing off my 86 and repainted the silver bezel.
Untitled by GodlikeMotorsports, on Flickr 

[Godlike]

I installed power vents in the rear doors replacing the original manual ones. I bought them about 11 years ago. Got them tinted and started building a full power window harness.

Ive been messing with gauge wiring.  For a few years now Ive been running a New Vintage Usa Grand Prix gauge set. I ordered a custom boost/vac gauge from them in the same Eurosport font to replace the volt gauge. I had to cut and mod the left side Hvac duct to get the wiring to fit behind them. While I was in there I replaced the dash speakers with some JBLs. I have lots of warning lights built into the gauges.  Along with a regular CEL I want to setup a warning light for high temp conditions monitoring coolant, trans and oil.  And a separate light for low pressure conditions of oil, fuel and maybe trans line pressure.  Old photo from when it was sbc powered VV I had them temporarily wired in using nothing but Wago lever nuts
Nvu by GodlikeMotorsports, on Flickr

[Rettax3]

Fantastic work on the car. I love how you used the Summit sticker, ingenious!
Sometimes I feel like some of us focus so intently on the infrastructure, that we rarely make progress towards completion on our projects, but man, when the project is finally finished, it sure comes out right. Maybe that is part of what makes a craftsman different from anyone else that works on cars?

We don't have fields like you do, but we try to plant at least one or two trees a year. We've had a tradition for the last (wow, umm, let's just say many years, ) of buying living trees for the Holiday, and planting them on the property. Unfortunately, I don't have much of a green thumb, and we have lost a few of them over the years. Nice that you are putting so many back in -I forget, are your trees 'working' stock, or are you re-foresting?

[woody90gtz]

Haha that Summit sticker is great. Details can chew up so much time, but it's really satisfying when completed. And there's something about wiring that's like meditative. Looking good! I really gotta get back on my hot rod. My house garage is storing so much crap that's not mine right now. Drives me crazy

[Godlike]

We've had a tradition for the last (wow, umm, let's just say many years, ) of buying living trees for the Holiday, and planting them on the property. Unfortunately, I don't have much of a green thumb, and we have lost a few of them over the years. Nice that you are putting so many back in -I forget, are your trees 'working' stock, or are you re-foresting?

Ive been pretty successful planting evergreens but it can be a struggle. For a few years I had to spray my scotch pines to kill these tent worm looking things every spring. They love scotch pine needles but they hate dish soap. They haven't come back this year. My new enemy is the white pine weevil. Ive seen them kill up to 8' tall trees so far. I will loose around 15 trees this year. Ive planted over 400 but still, pisses me off.
But planting trees or anything really is so rewarding. I got the bug from my dad. He planted spruce and white pine in his yard when I was little. He's got a picture of me watering foot tall pines wearing nothing but a diaper. Those trees are 70' giants now. I hope when I'm 90 "and probably back in a diaper" ill still be planting every chance I get.
My ultimate goal is for our house to disappear into the woods some day. And Im trying to sort of recreate all of my favorite places in Wisconsin.
-White pine, Red pine, Oaks and Jack pine from the Hayward area and all over the north woods.
-balsam and aspen from Minocqua
-Tamarack from the chequamegon national forest
-and eventually Northern white cedar from Door County
We probably have 10 types of grass now and Ive planted ferns, cat tails and bamboo as well.

[Godlike]

Haha that Summit sticker is great. Details can chew up so much time, but it's really satisfying when completed. And there's something about wiring that's like meditative. Looking good! I really gotta get back on my hot rod. My house garage is storing so much crap that's not mine right now. Drives me crazy

Ya, Summit uses vibrant colors so it worked well. Ya I love wiring. I just gotta document and label everything because I end up coming back to a project months later going "ok, what was my plan again?"
I finally have time to burn on the car again though and something has finally switched on in my head to stay concentrated on the endless "next step". My normal process on a saturday is to fart around in the shop on little projects and hopefully work my way over to the Bonneville before the day is over.

[woody90gtz]

Yeah, I get distracted with a million things at once, but that's part of the reason I document stuff on YouTube...kind of a live journal and I can go back and remember what's up
That Burb wiring I started in the winter and just dove back into it this week

[Godlike]

Ya, working on the Bonneville means blowing off everything else I'm supposed to be doing.

I got my power vent windows working. First attempt only one window would open but would not close. I ended up replacing both rear switches and they came to life, but the master switch didn't work. My spare didn't work either and I only measured 11v at the master switch but 13v at the rear switches. Turns out some idiot didn't put a fuse in for the power wire to the master switch. Im the only one working on this so that narrows it down. With a fuse installed the master switch worked perfectly twice then broke. Lol it was old.

[Rettax3]

Ya, working on the Bonneville means blowing off everything else I'm supposed to be doing.

Turns out some idiot didn't put a fuse in for the power wire to the master switch. Im the only one working on this so that narrows it down.

I love/hate when that happens. I remind myself how nice it is that I can't blame anyone else, then I glower a bit and *hope* the jackass that is I learned a lesson, and will not screw it up again... Either way, I have full closure on the issue -which is what I love about it.

But, I also get the 'blowing everything else off' problem. After I've been working on something and start feeling good about the progress, it usually slaps me in the face that the work was just for me, and I always feel guilty over that... Like I should be making money, helping someone else, or just taking care of stuff around the house... But frankly, we are entitled to fix our stuff too (I hate that word, 'entitled'). We earned the right by virtue of our knowledge, which we use for other purposes and to help others as well. And it isn't as though anyone else is going to come in and fix it for us... I guess we just can't "make a career over it" though...

Yeah, I get distracted with a million things at once, but that's part of the reason I document stuff on YouTube...kind of a live journal and I can go back and remember what's up

That was one of the reasons I did some of my write-ups on bstuff back in the day... Then the site $#!t-canned, and was lost around the same time our computer was stolen, so bye-bye... I've never gotten back into it as much on this forum, unfortunately, but I also feel like most of it here would just be archiving, if you get my drift...

[Godlike]

Ya, Documenting projects has definitely helped me in the past.

sooo, backtracking a bit
I had accumulated Holley motor mounts, trans mount, cross member and a Sniper Efi fuel tank w/ pump a year ahead of time. I liked the idea that all the front end parts were designed to work with each other. Thats how they get ya. I keep getting sucked into Holleys web.
Holley Problems
Summer of 23' I cleaned up the Lq4 and removed all the broken exhaust bolts. That fall I test fit a Holley 302-3 oil pan and did the necessary windage tray trimming.
-I bought the Holley 302-15 dipstick which broke off instantly on install (as they do.) And they still sell these. wtf? I wasn't allowed to leave a negative review so they still have a 5 star rating for this part. Strike 1
-I wanted to get an Improved Racing oil pan baffle. That became a nightmare. I bought it through Holley who sells it under their own part number. When it came I tried installing it but had fitment issues. The lower edge of the baffle bottomed out in the pan a 1/4" before the top mounting flange did. I emailed Holley and got a robo-response. 2 weeks later I got an email from a real human asking me to hang tight while they decide what to do. Many emails later I sent it back for their inspection, and quite a while after that I finally got a reimbursement in the spring of 24’. Strike 2
I then tried ordering it directly from Improved Racing and had no issues this time around.
I don't blame Holley for sending me a defective part but the way they handled this and how long it took pissed me off. I tried leaving a review for that part on Holley's website but their review algorithm wont even accept a low star rating. So I tried leaving a 5 star review with the same comments and it stayed "pending" until someone reviewed and deleted it.
Before this I was planning on going with a Dominator ECU. After this I just can't imagine having to deal with Holley customer service if I'm having software/hardware problems. Especially if I'm on the road on a Power tour or something. I do realize forums are a much better resource for tuning help.
But Ive decided to go with a Haltech. I plan to run Haltech on my 88 Supra as well. My Integra has Hondata and my Beretta has an obd0 re-flashed prom so I was on track to have 4 different programs to run all my crap and Ill be lucky if I can remember how to navigate through 1.

 So I bought a Haltech R5 vcu.  I ordered it with a terminated LSx harness and their Ti4L trans controller for the 60s/80s. I made a list of all the I/O I could ever think of needing and did a lot of comparisons between the R5, R3 and Rebel.     
Im learning this as I go.  Ive found any would work, even Haltechs older Elite platform.  Its a matter of how much external relay control you have to use. With a vcu I have High Current Outputs with adjustable trip current.  With the R5 you could potentially have enough I/O to run everything on a street car without any external relays or fuses.
The R3 pretty much just has less I/O and a few other differences.  The Rebel is packaged in an R3 shell for manufacturing reasons but its not an R3.  It will run a Gen 3/4 LS with a turbo and it will integrate with the same trans controller and PD16 expansion module.  But from what I am seeing its more of a cookie cutter Ls computer with software that will guide you through typical sensor and other selections for your specific motor combo.  That doesn't sound like a bad thing but there is a lot less user definable I/O.  I prefer a more fully unlocked style computer.  Who knows I might blow up 3 LS motors and want to swap in a VK56 or what ever the new hot swap engine is... I have to overthink things or ill die

Installed behind the glove box
G by GodlikeMotorsports, on Flickr

I drilled holes through the cold side of the HVAC.  I wrapped the harness with vinyl where it passes through so I could caulk it in without making anything permanent.  I would like to go with a vintage air setup in the future which would eliminate everything on the engine bay side of the firewall.