700hp, 40s, bypasses, tube chassis rock buggy build

I couldn't get over the fact the blowby seemed super bad, so did a compression check and cylinders 1-2-3 were all dead. Did a leak down test and it pointed to the rings, so my girlfriend and I tore it down on Monday and this is what we found!









Some numbers:

3 of 8 pistons measured extremely low compression, and even less in the leak down.
6 of 8 pistons are cracked, 5 of which you can literally remove inches of the ring lands.
2 of 8 pistons had the bottom oil ring (5 rings total, three oil rings) get ejected, not sure if this was an assembly error on my part (seems unlikely) or the ring got spit out when everything above it collapsed.
2 of 8 cylinders have the smallest scratch, could probably reassemble without honing it and be fine.

Just wanted to post it here, it's a wild failure and really cool I think. These were stock pistons (250k on them) and new rings. The ring to groove clearance was on the looser end of spec, the end ring gap was on the loose side and spec'd for the blower. There is no sign of detonation, though the timing from my last datalog seems like it's on the high side (going up to 38deg of advance during throttle blips, but from what I've read that isn't necessarily crazy so i dont know). I had a lot of blowby initially, and then a ton after I did the last trip around the neighborhood and got into boost once (70% TPS and 8psi), so I suspect some pistons were already cracked and then the boost obliterated them after that. But it's hard to say. Could be all those factors, old pistons, boost, too much timing/poor tune. No idea. Everything else is totally fine is the crazy part too

So now I have a dilemma, bare minimum is forged pistons and rods. Though at that point may as well get a forged crank and may as well stroke it. Well at that point, a short block stroker is only a couple grand more and I can swap over all my other parts. A Texas Speed forged rotating assembly is like $2500, a TSP balanced stroker short block is $5700. So I'd "save" $3000, but the short block comes with everything ready to rock and built by guys who do that all day every day, and I need to add the cost of machining my block and measuring everything and assembling it so not really saving anything at the end of the day. Though that's also multiple weeks lead time, where as getting a stroker kit might save some time, and just getting forged pistons and rods would save a lot of time and could probably get by without any machining then. Back to the flip side though, I was a cheap skate with the bottom end and intended to eventually upgrade it (just like the transmission) and that bit me in the butt, so want good shit this time around. I could buy forged pistons and rods for $1000 and be up and running in a week or two, but that's also $1000 towards a stroker! I don't know, so many options and ideas to play with.

 

Honestly IMO just get a TS short block and slap it in and have fun... you cant take $ with you when you die. LOL

 

I'd go with the short block as well.

 

Over the weekend pulled the block and tore it down.











Today dropped it off at the machine shop. Immediately after ordered the 408 (6.7L) stroker kit from TSP A short block was like a multi month lead time, and they didn't have any gen 3 blocks so my wiring harness would need to be hacked up or a different one bought since some sensor spots are moved for a gen 4. I called TSP and dude said essentially everything was out of stock, so I said okay what is IN stock, and we came to the below parts list. All I really cared about was the piston dish, with -15cc I should be in the ~9.8:1 range depending on heads versus the previous setup was around 10.7. All these parts are apparently in stock, and dude thought they'd ship by the end of the week.



The machine shop will balance the bottom end, and I'll drop the harmonic balancer and flex plate off so they'll get balanced with everything. Then the cylinders will be bored out for the 4.03 pistons, and everything else cleaned up and inspected. I plan to buy new heads and a new cam optimized for the supercharged 408 combination too, though I need to research and call around first. I've been looking around at dyno shops in Las Vegas, and now definitely want to get the engine dyno tuned. It's turning into a pretty serious build and don't want to cut any corners and grenade this one too Hopefully have the engine back together by the end of the month, and then start looking at transmissions. Right now leaning towards the stage 3 4l80e from Jakes Performance which is rated for 1000+hp, and just having them build it, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

 

So sick, and 4l80e would be the smart choice!!! are you doing manual valve body? curious to hear if you will run overdrive or not?

i have to find someone who knows 454 big blocks and 4l80e's I have some questions and issues with my Bourbon.

 

I wasn't planning on doing a manual valve body, the Holley Dominator can directly control the trans so I can tune it in, and I think between that and "normal" down shifting I think it'll be fine. I'll still keep 4th gear if that's what you're asking, I think it'd be nice at high speeds and then the engine isn't super revved out, especially with the stroker and a lower redline it'll be able to chill in 4th at low rpm and still make a ton of torque.

I know nothing about 454s, or really much in general, so I'm probably of little help LS swap it

 

hahahaha yeah the 454 runs great, I'm having issues with its TPS and its throwing the trans computer and ecu into a tail spin, I've had so much $ dumped into it through shops to try and fix it. But its not working. I need to basically maybe either do a painless performance wiring harness. And / or do a manual valve body and a floor mount manual shifter.

 

From what I read after my trans shit itself, you should be able to unplug the transmission and it should run mechanically just fine. I don't know if that fixes the engine side of things, but it seems like if that doesn't change anything then it's not a transmission issue maybe?

 

yeah I had a trans shop tell me in no uncertain terms that its ecu / pcm and engine related. The trans is in good shape.

 

Got a bunch of goods in today and dropped them off at the machine shop! Also got all my springs in from Eibach, which showed up at the opportune time that they'll sit in boxes for a few weeks Texas Speed forged 4.000" crank, K1 forged H beams, Wiseco forged -15cc pistons. Now to hurry up and wait!

 

the men's version of jewelry (aka shiny things)

 

It's weird how 70lbs of precision machined parts costs the same as a quarter size hunk of gold

 

Still haven't heard back from the machine shop, but made a little progress on other things in the mean time. I started modifying my hydraulic steering reservoir to be water cooled. I bought an aluminum tube off of McMaster, some AN bungs that match my supercharger intercooler ports, and then cut some filler plates and a little internal divider too out of 1/4" aluminum.







Excuse my nasty ass welds, for one I don't weld aluminum often and still unsure of the best settings, and two it seems like plasma cutting it injects a lot of nasty shit that is hard to fully get out. Regardless, got it all welded up and it seems to be sealed. The next thing to do was the hydraulic fluid passages were kind of convoluted. The line off the orbital went into the filter, then the filter outlet (in the middle) came up, did a 90deg turn and went straight towards the outlet for the pump. The reservoir itself was T'd into that leg from the 90 to the pump outlet, so effectively the reservoir is ONLY used for fluid thermal expansion since the ports aren't setup to actually circulate fluid through the reservoir. To fix this, I just drilled out the middle hole coming off the filter outlet so it's blowing straight into the reservoir. I don't know if that made any sense, but this is what the inside looks like now:



So the two ports into the reservoir are connected, but since the one coming off the filter goes straight it should just push fluid into the reservoir and then the pump outlet is just gravity fed which is how it behaved when I hooked a hose up to it. With all that said, I now have a reservoir for my hydraulic steering that has a water jacket for cooling, and the hydraulic fluid ports and the cooling ports are properly setup so fluid is circulated all through/around the reservoir to optimize cooling. The supercharger return line for it's intercooler will go straight to this, and then back to the intercooler reservoir so the blower and the steering will be cooled off the same loop.

After that I started building my rear axle bump stop towers:









And at this point I ran out of argon and called it a day. Besides some other little things, that is the extent of work for the last month

 

Still haven't heard back about the engine (I think they meant 2 months to do it, not 2 weeks!) but it had moved from it's place of rest in the front room of the machine shop I saw. I've started compiling parts so once it shows up I can slap it together, and if I have any hope of going to Trail Hero in October (a nice 40 minute drive from the house) then I need to get everything in order to be efficient about putting it back together. I've been looking around at head and cam stuff and was totally lost, and I kept seeing the name "Pat G" thrown around so looked up what that was, turns out it's this older dude who builds engines and does consulting, and you can pay him a few bucks for advice. So I went ahead and did that and essentially said I'm building an Ultra4, I have a 408 and a LSA supercharger, and nothing between them, what would you do for the valvetrain? He got back to me an hour ago and said get the AFR LS3 heads and this Brian Tooley cam for a supercharger and it should be very controllable and tame on the bottom end but pull hard, so now I have new heads and a cam on order! Already ordered a new gasket kit and some LS9 head gaskets, and some ARP main studs so I think I have everything to put the engine together when it's ready. The heads and cam are like a 4 week lead time though...

Which on that note, I still have a transmission where reverse and neutral are forward gears! I wanted a Jakes Performance stage 3/4 transmission built for 1000hp, but it turns out their projected delivery is past the end of the year right now AND their kits are multiple weeks out and backordered. I watched some videos, and it looks like rebuilding the 4l80 and specifically the forward clutches (most likely culprit for what's wrong) actually isn't that bad. I ordered a transmission table mount, and a handful of specialty tools to help pull it apart and then bought a run of the mill rebuild kit off Amazon. Due to lead times on everything, the only two options really is a basic rebuild or get another used transmission. I figured it doesn't hurt to rebuild it, and I have some time to kill waiting for the engine stuff so may as well try it. Best case I can order the Jakes kit in the future and save $2000 and rebuild it with upgraded internals---but for now I'm just shooting to have it good enough to run some rocks with my friends in 2 months.

Additionally I ordered some Branik 35 spline unit bearings for the front axle, though that's the extent I've gone down building the axles. Worst case I weld the rear and maybe the front, and run them stock, best case the engine and transmission work is cheaper and faster than I expect and I lock and regear and chromoly everything but I doubt I'll have time for that, main focus is get it driving.

I picked up two 40s from a friend in SLC for $200, about half tread but I had a 5th beadlock sitting in a box so now I have spares. This is roughly what I was thinking placement wise, but angled up a bit (parallel with C pillar) and then a replaceable mount coming off the back of the chassis. That thing is an utter bitch to get up there though, even with two people and it's at full bump. If I ever pop a tire I'll probably just leave it behind and say fuck it lol



Something I've been putting off is fixing the brakes, the reservoir was mounted at a hardcore angle to get the brake pedal angle "more right" and turned into being a bitch to fill. I cut it all off, cut new brackets, and welded it back up.



That meant I had to make the brake pedal not a POS. The easiest way I decided was to keep the top section with the pivots, and modify the bottom so I cut it up.



And turned it into this:





It's already WAY better. The big issue with the original is it's a 12:1 travel or something, and inevitably by the end of pedal you are tip towing the top of the pedal assembly. To fix that, my thought was make a round pivot that your foot is on, so the pedal just rotates under your foot versus pushing a plate essentially. I tried to machine some grooves in, which got kind of fucked since I didn't realize machining a 4tpi thread would be hard due to how fast the machine is moving--regardless I think it turned out pretty well. Still need to weld it up, and I plan to move that floor tube since the pedal sits too far up my foot to be comfortable if I rest my foot on the tube, so if I drop the floor a few inches which I have room to do, then I think it will be very comfortable and I can push the full travel without my foot running into the top of the pedal.

That wraps up my minimal progress on the buggy, hopefully get the engine together early next month and hopefully get in to a dyno (or create a super safe basic tune to start with), and hopefully have the transmission back together before then. With some luck maybe I can take something besides the can am to Trail Hero this year

 

I got my limit straps in so hooked up the rear since the front CV can't handle the droop and remembering to hook up ratchet straps was annoying.





My welding needs a bit of work, but I think it'll hold. She's cooked but penetrated





It's strapped at 23", though the trailing arms and shocks could pull 26" if I'm remembering right. Hopefully I can use some of that untapped potential when it's flexing since the limit straps are pretty far inboard so the trailing arm mount is cantilevered past the strap a good bit. Originally I thought the double cardan was binding at droop, but I think the pinion is just sloppily hooked up and running into the carrier. Sounds weird, but there's tooth marks on the carrier and I had swapped the pinion flange out for a yoke and then just randomly hit it with the impact until it was snug since I won't be using these gears or anything--point being, the pinion is not torqued correctly and it obviously has run into the carrier so might be what's actually binding up at droop. If that's the case I might be able to pull a bit more travel out.

I have straps for the front axle, but I haven't made the front driveshaft yet so nothing is binding up there and I want to wait until the motor is in to hook up the straps since everything is super tight up front. I have tubing showing up for the front driveshaft this week so get that done and get the midship bearing fully mounted if it all works.

Today I started working on the center console, ie I cut a plate for it and figured out where I wanted the hand brake and shifter to go and got those mounted.



Additionally I flipped the front brake calipers since the bleed screw was on the bottom, now it's on the top so hopefully I can bleed them better. After doing that I found out the rear brake line had become a ground path at some point between the chassis and axle and had pin holed itself, which is part of the reason I started the center console since I needed to buy new brake lines to hookup the handbrake inline with the rear line anyway.

In sad news, the invoice from AFR states the heads wont ship until September 30th... So my NEW plane is if I can find a junkyard engine for $500 or less to throw that in, keep it 100% stock and send it. I'm waiting on a few tools to show up next week, but have most of the stuff to rebuild the transmission, and once that's done I just need to install springs and would have everything needed to actually take the buggy out on the dirt and start seeing what issues there are. My primary concern is handling since my link setup is rather unique, and after playing with my Bomber RC which suffers immensely without a sway bar I'm worried I'll have the same issue. I'd rather figure out sway bar stuff or changing link geometry while I'm waiting for the big engine parts, than keep tweaking on small stuff and throw the big engine in and the chassis just falls over in a corner. There's a guy selling a Suburban for $800 nearby that I'm trying to get a hold of, throw it's engine (whatever it is) in as a temporary thing and start testing is my hopes... if anyone knows of a 5.3 or 6.0 in Southern Utah for under a grand let me know

 

Love watching this build and progress you are making!

 

I don't usually have much to post, but there is a lot of cool shit happening right now! I got all my tools and parts in to rebuild the transmission, so today I pulled it and tore it down!



I bought this transmission holder and then made an adapter plate to the engine stand:





And an hour and a half after mounting it we're here!







Fucking insane! I have to give a shoutout to this dude's video, I followed it to the Tee and he made it wickedly easy: https://youtu.be/iiYgX0yh6gs

Props to you my man or I would have never attempted this. When I first watched that video, I went fuck yea I can fix this myself. To recap, I lost reverse after using it once. From what I read it was common if you ran it low on fluid to have the forward clutches seize up, and that makes reverse and neutral now become forward "gears" which is what I experienced. I had run it low on fluid, it was hard to get the level right with the rear mounted radiator and the aftermarket dip stick and everything else, so it all seemed plausible. The forward clutches sit in a basket which is easy to get to and easy to replace them, so that was my intent ultimately for tearing it down. Lo and behold!



That is the forward clutch basket, it is discolored which in dudes video he says is bad and it got cooked. BUT:





That spline is supposed to engage the forward clutch basket! The female splines are totally gone! Now to be fair, I have not checked the clutches in the basket yet (I literally just came in after tearing it down) so there could be/probably is more issues. But holy shit! Massive failure in the subassembly everyone referenced, but in a way I had never heard of! I don't know how this happens, I can't believe running it low on fluid would annihilate the splines like that. I have a friend who had an interesting theory that the drivetrain was beat on hard and reverse was essentially gone when I got it (I only used reverse once and was idling during my two test drives, then it never worked again) and could explain why my pistons detonated prematurely. I find that a bit of a stretch, but it is crazy that two massive failures happened and I didn't even drive it half a mile. To be fair, I have literally ZERO idea what this spline does or the forward clutch basket, or honestly anything in the transmission. Maybe this is a common failure? Maybe it can fail and no one notices? This thing is so fucking complicated it's insane, but actually pulls apart really easily. Anyways, super cool and obvious failure straight away which makes me happy!

 

I don't know if I'm actually making any real progress, but things have been happening! I finished rebuilding the 4l80, the clutches I got turned out to be wrong but the company sent me the correct ones so that was nice. I think there was one clutch pack that wasn't utterly fucked, this is one of the overdrive clutch pieces compared to a new one. This clutch used to have material on it, it was literally worn all the way through the shim stock in places!



Tranny back together and ready to rock:



My neighbor then told me that his brother's neighbor had a suburban he was trying to get rid of, so $500 later it was driven to the house!



The machine shop is painfully slow, but apparently they do really good work so I'm fine waiting, plus the AFR heads I ordered have an end of september ETA, so the plan was to swap the 5.3 from the Suburban in so I can keep doing (fun) stuff. Throttle pedal, exhaust, passenger header, I now have springs for the coilovers so could start playing with the handling, etc. I was also hoping the 4l60 would give me a spare trans, but I didn't realize it's completely different in every aspect compared to the 4l80.











Pulled the engine, that was a complete bitch, and then lots of degreaser later and a little scrubbing and power washing and she was ready to go! Except not, the 5.3 can bolt to the 4l80 but everything power wise doesn't line up. This was a week and a half ago and I was about to leave for vacation, so put in an order on Summit. The 4l60 converter doesn't work with the 4l80, and the 4l60 is a 3 bolt torque converter - flex plate vs a 6 bolt for the 80, so a different flex plate that is spaced and has the 6 bolt pattern is needed. Was pretty cheap surprisingly; also got new spark plugs and wires, and I think that was the extent of money spent on the 5.3

Came back from vacation at 11pm on Saturday and had a box of parts, and with some help on Sunday from some friends got the 5.3 fully dressed and dropped in and driving!



I was hoping to keep the 5.3 as a fairly stand alone engine that I would have in parallel with the 408 I'm building, but it turned out that it was gonna be a lot easier to just use the long block and swap over the supercharger. The supercharger is kind of it's own little unit that has fuel rails, injectors, injector harness, the dual feed lines to the fuel Y block, and the dual returns to the regulator, so literally the whole unit just drops straight onto the heads and the fuel system is done essentially. Likewise, my accessory brackets are specifically designed with the blower in mind so I wasn't sure if I could reroute them and make it still work. By keeping the blower, everything I learned from the 6.0 before pulling it out applied directly to the 5.3. I have a lot of random parts laying around, so eventually the 5.3 will get built when it gets pulled for the 408, but for now it's a 100% stock long block with a 1.9L LSA supercharger on top. I updated my 6.0 tune for the 5.3 and adjusted the timing down a ton, what was 22deg of timing at WOT is now 13deg and I figured out how to get the knock sensors working so those are correctly turned on now!

Upon fire up it made a horrible noise, literally sounded like a wrench was attached to the torque converter or a socket was in the supercharger. It was the loudest knocking I've ever heard from an engine, so I called my neighbor over to help figure out what the hell was happening. After pulling the blower apart and checking both valve covers (I didn't pull the pan, covers, or even check compression before installing the engine since it drove to my house a week prior and I never modified anything) it seemed like nothing was obviously wrong... the knocking was intermittent and much louder than a rod knock, after testing some things and revving the engine up a bit the noise started to slow down and go away! My neighbors theory is one of the lifters was loose and since I have a rear mounted oil cooler, it takes the engine a minute to fully build oil pressure when the system is drained. After the engine was run and revved up (oil pump is a bit on the weaker side too it seems like) the sound went away as the lifter pressurized.

To further confirm that theory, the following morning (Monday, yesterday) I fired the buggy up and there was no sound at all and I drove it probably a mile around the neighborhood and the engine ran and sounded great!







My biggest concern was handling, a handful of people have said that my "excessively" triangulated rear links would make it handle horribly, and my previous 4500 car had super shitty link geometry that made the body fall over just crawling around a corner so I was super worried about that. I had ordered springs a few months ago but it took awhile to get them, and by that point I had already pulled the 6.0 out and sent it out for work. This was the first trip with springs, and honestly all I really cared about was going around the corner at the end of the block and seeing what happened! Turns out it can take a corner! Granted, the front axle doesn't have shafts and the rear is fully open and who knows how slow I was actually going, but the chassis stayed level enough I considered it a win! I'm sure it's nothing special, and will probably need a sway bar, but the fact it drove like a normal vehicle where as my last build didn't is awesome!

However there was a caveat to all this: the transmission is not fixed whatsoever. Reverse and neutral still act like forward gears for some reason, so obviously changing all the clutches and some seals and bushings did not fix the issue. At this point there's a few near term options, have a professional tear it apart and figure out where reverse and neutral went, or get a junkyard transmission. For the moment not sure what I'll do, I'll cross that bridge when I have time.



The suspension needs to be dropped probably two inches in the rear, the tune needs to be tweaked so the throttle isn't so laggy, and a handful of other basic tweaks to try and dial in what I have right now. Then I can start picking away at the other remaining big tasks, like building a floor! I have to resist not taking it down to 3 peaks where the WE Rock/Supercrawl events are (literally a straight shot down the road from the house) until everything is a bit less janked together. But it's running (again), and even if it has no reverse, it finally is sitting under it's own power and can go around a corner and it's awesome!

 

Kiddie pool for the win!

 

More updates since the last post! I couldn't handle messing with it a little today and driving it again and actually paying some attention to what was happening instead of worrying if I was going to die the whole time, so we bled the brakes again using the method of putting a hose from the bleed screw into a cup of brake fluid and pumping them and got a LOT of air out of the rears. I also opened up the front bypasses, which are carry overs from my 4500 and which had all the bypass tubes closed for short course racing so opened those up to soften the ride and see if the body roll got worse, and then finally adjusted the enrichment on the tune since it was really throttle laggy before so just arbitrarily increased the enrichment curve. Then went for a drive around the blocks again!

And man is it fucking awesome! This thing is always ups and downs, and right now it's on high point of upsides! I'm only going around corners in a subdivision, but the corner at the end of the street I drove into really as fast as I'd be comfortable in with most vehicles and it stayed super flat through it, that's not saying much I know but still impressing me. It also has quite a bit of torque roll when accelerating, like it literally has more torque roll than body roll and from my data log I haven't even blipped it to 50% throttle yet (and this is the small engine with really conservative timing and no tuning!) so I admit I'm slightly worried about it being a handful at WOT, I think it'll all depend on how much the axles steer as the front left lifts. I must admit I didn't pay much attention to the nose lifting from anti squat, at a minimum it wasn't enough to really notice where as the torque roll I could definitely feel the chassis lean over as the power came on. The bypass changes I didn't really notice, but I was on pavement so not much to say there. The final thing is the brakes are WAY better. Prior to this they've always been spongy and I've been worried since this is my first full manual setup. It'll take some getting used to pushing that hard, but I think I could lock up all 4 on pavement if I needed to, and the brakes actually feel pretty good--but again, I don't know if I even got up to 30 or 40mph. The one thing that is a little disconcerting is the ass lifts a LOT when braking hard, the nose doesn't seem to dive, but the ass comes up and then you stop and it considerably settles down a few inches. Granted, I don't have the spare hanging off the back and the fuel cell is empty and the ride height is still a couple inches too tall, so all my friends think it'll tame down a bit and maybe it's just an unavoidable side effect of trailing arms.

Also the transmission still doesn't have reverse, and then the dip stick ended up falling out of the transmission so it ended up dripping fluid for who knows how long. But I've come to accept the trans is something I can't fix, so best to just ignore it and not worry.

There's so many things on this--manual brakes, tube chassis, full hydro, trailing arms, V8--that I've never had in an offroad vehicle, that my basis of comparison is literally nothing. So for all I know it sucks in every aspect, but the fact I can drive it down the street and it even remotely acts like a "normal" vehicle to me is a huge win and makes me really excited and is really motivating. It's fucking awesome! Almost exactly 3 years since I started this project!



And to remind future me of what I did to make this run at all, here are a bunch of photos of all the janky shit to make this thing functional.

After the water jacket conversion for the hydro reservoir, I haven't built a new reservoir mounting bracket so it's bungee corded to the old bracket:



The battery tray is literally welded to the passenger hood area, and is a complete rats nest of wires:



The passenger exhaust is an ebay header with 4" extensions off the flange to make it clear the cooling tubes, and dumps at the passenger foot well:



I will run two fans, but right now I have one which is literally laying on the radiator. I also forgot to turn it on today until about 10 minutes into the drive, but the temperature only got to 212 by then and the fan instantly brought it down so that at least proved the cooling system works, even with half the fans. I also have a welding blanket draped over the radiator cap area, I've worn all my fire/race gear driving it, but still wanted protection in the event the coolant blows right over my head.



Here is the driving area, hard to see much, but there's wires running everywhere, no floor, and there's no throttle pedal since the throttle is a piece of tig filler wire that I pull on:



Anyways, that shows that everything isn't roses, but just more tasks temporarily working to make it drive, but I think that's okay since it's awesome! Maybe with a lot of luck I can take it to trail hero even in 4 weeks. Knock on wood.

 

Literally nothing to update, but I got the AFR heads I ordered in August today now to go to the machine shop and pick up the block and stroker assembly that's been lying there! KOH is next week, so go to that, get motivated, and come back to rebuild my engine again



EDIT: Stopped by the machine shop, the broach they've been waiting on to notch my crank pulley came in last week actually and they were working on the crank when I walked in. So hopefully after hammers I can build this bad boy! 1000hp here I come

 

That is one heck of a nice piece of machinery!!!!!

 

I spent the last hour or so reading through your entire build page... frickin dope! You've got some serious welding skills!

 

Thank you sir! I've tried to pull out all (or most) of the stops on this build. My previous vehicles always felt too hacked together, course they also took less than 4 years to do so I guess that's the trade off hopefully this will be the year! (Though every year has been hopefully the year haha)

Thank you sir! Learning TIG has definitely been a game changer and also helped improve my fabrication skills in general. I'm much more conscious of cleaning stuff, fitment, positioning, etc. Kind of sucks parts of the chassis aren't TIG welded, but it also tells a cool story where I started with MIG, then learned TIG, and then my more recent TIG welding spots and the progress I've made in the past year or so. Hopefully it all holds together

 

Today was a good day, I worked about an hour on actual work, then picked up the block and rotating assembly and then prepped the tundra for KOH! I'm so excited for all the engine parts $1000 to clean, bore, buy/install bearings, and balance the rotating assembly. Now I just need to pull the supercharger/fuel system and accessories off the 5.3 currently in the buggy and I should have all the parts to build this bad boy! 408ci (6.7L) balanced and forged, supercharged stroker if that doesn't get you excited I don't know what will!

 

i love this thing so much!

 

I had a supercharged 406 I put in a 86 4rnnr... knowing what that was like, I very excited for you!

 

WOW!! Just WOW!!!! Outfrickenstanding!!!!!

 

Been a fat moment since I've touched the buggy. I got the passenger header finished, it's not the most beautiful thing but it'll work; I figured I'll probably redo the exhaust eventually anyway.



My friend picked up a 4L80e from SLC and brought it down awhile ago. I swapped it in last week, this one is completely stock, no idea the year or miles but if it has reverse it's a step up from what I had!



My current plan is run the temporary 5.3 with this 4L80e, build the 408 and get a built transmission, then swap the two new units in at the same time. Because of how tight the chassis is near the bellhousing, I had to cut some brackets off the bell housing to get the trans to even slide in. I had given up even installing the transmission and then said fuck it, I'll just cut the brackets off and that was the solution! Easy from there on out.



Transmission and new header mounted up. I ended up adding a little bend off the header and and currently have the muffler tacked on there.



This morning I researched a bunch and made some adjustments to the engine tune. After getting that wrapped up, filling the fluids, fixing some minor stuff it was time to fire it up and go for a few test drives. Luckily reverse works on this transmission! Actually the first time I've ever had reverse! I did a bunch of drives through the neighborhood and did some datalogging, mainly to see if I'm getting any knock with the new tune setup.





It seems to be running great! Getting a little bit of knock, but the knock sensors are pulling timing out so it's much better than before. There might be a misfire on the passenger side I need to chase down. It's making about 7psi at WOT, which is less than I was expecting but that's more than the Tundra makes, and at sea level the Tundra is over 10psi so maybe 7psi at elevation makes sense... With the quick change pulley I can easily bump that up too. It honestly doesn't seem very fast, but that's on stock gears (3.73 or 4.10?) spinning 40s and a completely stock old 5.3 with a supercharger and fuel system thrown on top, and potentially a conservative tune... I'd say it's around the same acceleration as my wife's v8 4Runner? Hard to compare.

I put a handful of miles on, drove it over to my buddies house.



It seems to handle pretty well, though I can't get going very fast in the neighborhood obviously. The brakes seem to work pretty well for being manual. It seems to ride alright over the small dips around, but that's not saying much and I don't even know what the bypasses are set at let alone the valving in anything.



I need to get the spare tire figured out since the ass is sitting super high without the spare back there. The next step is to start building the floor and routing the wiring. I also bought some RCVs for the front, so the next big purchase will probably be gears and lockers for both axles then I'll be able to build those. We'll see how long I stay motivated now that's running and "working". Though it's getting warm out, no more freezing in the shop so hopefully I can gain some ground before baking this summer.

 

And then .......................