Now that the majority of parts were sourced, the next step was to start building the hot side and getting the turbo mounted. I borrowed Pete's MIG welder and ordered up some mild steel bends and got to work. Please keep in mind, I have no idea what I'm doing. All I've got at this point is the Sloppy Mechanic's page, the trusty angle grinder, Pete's welder, and of course, a group of friends willing to nod their heads and say "looks good to me".
I wanted to keep the accessories in their factory location, so I had to use two drivers side manifolds to clear the alternator. All in all, the hot side checked all the necessary boxes. The piping was all the "correct" sizes, I had a surprisingly good merge at the turbo flange, the waste gate was positioned well, and it probably didn't leak (never tested) too bad. I eventually grinded those welds down and covered all the ugly welds with the high temp wrap, as a gentleman should.
Pete had a customer come in for an engine replacement in their Tahoe and offered the old engine up for my build. I was told it was making some valve train noise and QUICKLY learned why. As you can see in the photos, oil changes were not a priority for the previous owner and this thing was full of sludge. It was like a 1/4" layer of tar had been applied to all parts of the motor. In an attempt to save money at the machine shop, I decided to clean the engine myself in a tub full of diesel fuel. I can laugh about this experience now, but I 0/10 DO NOT recommend doing this. It definitely worked, but it was a ton of work, a huge mess, and just simply not worth the money saved at the machine shop.
After a diesel bath and a good power washing, I dropped the block off at the machine shop to be honed and have new cam bearings installed. This engine was one of the weird cross over year LS engines that was built with a 24x reluctor crank and Gen 4 rods and pistons. The plan had always been to keep the bottom end stock, so the gen 4 rods were a nice surprise. I bought a new set of rings, locked the angle grinder down in the vice, and gapped the rings. Looking back, it's like I almost wanted to do everything the wrong way while building this engine. I knew it was wrong, but I wanted to make it work, and work well while doing it wrong. I got some 243 heads, a BTR stage 2 turbo cam and valve spring kit, ARP head bolts, LS7 lifters, a new timing chain, and an oil pump and was on my way.
With the new engine in, it was time to build a cold side and punch a hole in the fender. Once the body was all set, it was time to just button up wiring and fuel system components. I picked up on the basic functionality of the MS3 Gold Box pretty quickly, but I really had no idea how to tune the car. I was on the sloppy mechanics base tune and set the fuel tables to auto tune and hoped for the best. I had also planned on cutting a hole in the hood for the waste gate once everything was ironed out. SPOILER ALERT - I never actually got the car tuned, and the hood never goes back on. As time went on, I was more hesitant to cut the hole knowing that this turbo kit wouldn't be the last.
Once I had it running, I was eager to get it back to the track. While building this setup, I knew it would be here for a good time, not a long time. Nothing about it was built for reliability and I was aware and ok with that, I just wanted to go fast and didn't have a lot of money to do it. Despite my eagerness to get to the track, I wanted to enjoy it on the street before putting it's health on the line.
You know how the old saying goes - Every race car is a show car, but not every show car is a race car. Car shows were always fun because the reactions were basically guaranteed to be extreme. I would either receive extreme looks of disgust from the purist type enthusiast, extreme confusion/curiousity from the people who accidentally ended up at a car show that saturday afternoon, or extreme enthusiasm from the people who loved some low budget, home built, hacked up, cool shit.
The car was a blast to drive. It felt ridiculously fast, sounded magical, and shot fireballs on demand. Unfortunately, on the track I wasn't very happy with the numbers. It was running in the mid 11s. Looking back with all things considered, that wasn't a bad time. I was still on the ground control auto cross suspension. The power was going through a used, stock clutch I pulled off the fourthgen parts car and was slipping like crazy. I had a Strange 12 Bolt rear in the car that I pulled from a different parts car, and it had 4.10 gears. Lastly, I was still boolin on the sloppy base tune. So, overall 11's were a win.
Unfortunately, on the night of the highway fireballs my oil pressure said farewell. I trashed the main bearings and the engine had to come apart.
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