E39 Build: 6.0 LS. Coils. Burnouts.

[nsogiba]

Spent some time in the garage last night. The hose bib fitting was leaking so that came out for a new one to be sweated in - of course I ran out of half inch copper pipe couplings, so that will get done tonight.

Onto the automotive work - it was a drivetrain kind of night

Sprayed down the subframe a bit with brake cleaner, then simple green, then finally warm soapy water to clean it up.

I had drained the diff a few weeks back when I pulled it out of the car, so I filled the diff with about a quart of new Mobil 1 75W-140, and turned the output stubs quite a few times to churn up all the sediment/beer can tabs in there, and drained it. When I had the cover off I cleaned it up fairly well inside and resealed the cover, so it was nice to see only a bit of brown that came out. Filled it back up fully, torqued the plugs, done. I would have reinstalled it in the subframe last night but unfortunately my new front diff bushing melted/deformed just enough during the mount reinforcement welding that it was junk - slid out of the bore with a strong push from my fingers - so another is on order. I should have waited to install it until he had done the welding with the old one in place, so the blame is on me - but live and learn.

I also took apart the shifter on the T56 to diagnose and solve a somewhat severe rattle I had under load. The plan was to replace what I thought was a bad receiver bushing (plastic) on the shift rail. Of course I found that it had been replaced with a brass one when I had the unit rebuilt last year. The shifter itself felt funny and loose, so I disassembled that and found the aluminum cast case to be cracked in a few placed with some small bits of material missing around the central ball fitting. Keep in mind that I bought this used with unknown miles and proceeded to beat the hell out of it for 10,000 miles, so I really owe it nothing. I was never really satisfied with the shift action of the stock unit so I decided to treat myself, and picked one of these up

MGW


With all my bodywork now at the painter's I placed an order for a few things that I wanted ready when he was done so that I would not be held up, as well as some other items that I have been putting off.

Fender Liner hardware
Fender bolts (OEM Torx)
Angel eye harness - one side of the current setup is fraying/damaged and causes flickering
Axle to diff stub hardware (OEM external Torx) - with as many times as I've removed and reinstalled diffs the external torx heads on these are torn up.
Front diff bushing
Rear sway bar bushing brackets (steel) - factory material is aluminum and is prone to failure. The steel units are from an E36 M3 application
New cabin air filters- Mann

I have a lot of pictures of recent progress and details somewhere but my laptop has been acting up lately so I am in the process of backing it all up onto my HDD.

[nsogiba]

Magnetic drain plug on the M5 differential told an interesting, but not that surprising, story

Fine paste/sludge. This is after all the liquid oil drained off, and the plug had sat overnight.


Sludge cleaned, leaving fine particles. Again not too surprising considering this was with entirely brand new clutches/disks, and was the same fluid that that I did "break in" on. Fluid has approx 10K on it.


Rear diff cover is pretty clean, no surprises.


After receiving the rear end back from my fabricator. Bet you didn't know a whole rear end will fit in a wagon!


I am running 75W-140 this year rather than the old 75W-90 last year as it is what was originally recommended for the M5 diff.


I also removed the old single fan that I robbed off a 2005ish Monte Carlo at the junkyard last year. It was originally a dual fan but didn't fit the Corvette radiator, so I carefully fabricated it to size (who are we kidding, I sawzall'd it right down the middle).


Besides looking ghetto, it obviously didn't have the CFM that two fans would, and didn't provide the extra cooling capability that something with an integrated shroud would provide.

See ya later buddy. When the radiator exploded in its face last summer, it kept working just fine with no issues, so I'm thinking that as a thanks for its fine service, I would hook it up to 12V and put empty beer cans in the blades (put on your safety glasses kids)


Empty! Note the long hose between the crank pulley and radiator that runs from the overflow bottle to the water pump area. This was previously zip tied to some plastic flanges on the old fan.


The replacement fan is an OEM dual fan out of a 4th gen LS1 WS6 Trans Am. Uses the factory mounting clips on the radiator for perfect fitment. Even the electrical connector is the same! I just need to wire up another connector via relay to feed the 2nd fan, and have my tuner activate the 2nd fan in the tune.


How's that for OEM: the WS6 LS1 fan even comes with these nice clips that probably held the old fan harness. I used them for the previously mentioned coolant line and it fits like it was designed to be there. Sorry, no pics of the fan installed.


Pulled the cluster and MID as they both have had missing pixels since day 1. My money is usually spent on less trivial things but a specialist somewhere in the northwest does both for $150, so I can't go wrong with that.




Finished up the evening by pulling the rear bumper in preparation for the new one.

[nsogiba]

parts came in.


Axle stub bolts to replace the old ones with damaged heads
Few spare wheel well cover bolts as those always go missing
New torx-head fender hardware to replace old damaged ones
E36 M3 Steel rear sway bar brackets
New front diff bushing
Cabin Air filters
Replacement angel eyes

Old cabin air filters.


Old angel eyes, plugged in and turned on. Both harnesses had seen better days and had fraying wire, broken connectors, etc.


Test run of new ones:


And in


Need to make up an offset arm for the shifter, this won't do


Differential pinion snub mount. The aluminum block has a 1/2-13 threaded hole that accepts some threaded rod. The contact point is scrap block of PVC plastic trimmed down to fit the angle of the diff and with the same threaded hole, and 2 lock nuts securing everything.



Finn approves, but is ready for it to be back on the road.


I also reinstalled the whole subframe and driveshaft. The center support bearing got 3M Window Weld to minimize any lateral movement. There is still some play, but greatly reduced from stock (even with a new bearing). Also drained the T56 of old fluid, which didn't look bad at all.

Still a ton of little things to chip away at...

[nsogiba]

Winter refuses to give up...these are from a few weeks back, probably early March





Finished my shifter extension handle! Don't worry, it's not permanent


While dealing with the trans I decided to remedy my reverse lockout situation. The OEM intended design uses a very stiff spring inside the solenoid that is "disabled" when under 5mph (LS1 manual trans PCM). Above that speed the PCM re-engages the solenoid and you only can get into reverse by overcoming the compression of the extremely stiff spring. Since my PCM controlled an auto trans it never had the capability to control the solenoid, and therefore I always selected reverse by just forcing the shifter past that spring. Now that I have installed my MGW short shifter, I have that much less leverage, making the leap into reverse and overcoming that spring quite literally a 2 handed operation. I wasn't interested in PCM segment swaps and dealing with adding it in the PCM, so other options were:

-wire it to the brake lights, so that when you step on the brakes the solenoid disengages, allowing you to easily select reverse. I'm lazy and didn't want to find brake light wiring, add a relay, all that crap

-buy expensive SAMCO module that does the same thing.

After some research it seems that some Mustang owners swapping T56s into their cars have run into the same issue - they remedy it by going to a softer solenoid spring. Now you don't have to wire anything, and still have the protection against going into reverse rather than 5th at speed.

Bought the spring here: http://www.core-shifters.com/servlet/StoreFront

T56 Reverse Lockout Solenoid disassembled


Original very stiff spring on bottom, new soft spring on top. The tiny spring just provides a bit of preload so that the whole cartridge isn't rattling around internally


Empty lockout case



Tonight I plan on reinstalling the lockout, filling the trans, and installing/sealing the MGW shifter.

[loekaaz]

at least you can adjust jour rear view mirror while shifting....

[nsogiba]

Kind of an awkward early Spring update - car is kind of on the road, kind of not. Found a bunch of pics from my DSLR from the past few months.

A better view of the yee haw shifter - this was before I cut it down to the right size. Note cluster and MID are missing - sent them off to PixelFixNW, he had a special going on for both.





"OMG...look at that shifter, you moron"


"what has been seen cannot be unseen"


Deleted the old OEM BMW AUX fan, it was no longer plugged into anything and just taking up valuable airflow. The kidney shroud was all smashed up too so I replaced that as well - found one cheap brand new on eBay, from a dealer in NJ.

old


Aux fan taking up a ton of area


see ya! Much more direct airflow to the radiator now.


Cluster and MID came in - replaced the LCD screens on both as they were pretty scratched and damaged. Repair is perfect and they look brand new.


New glass


New radio button, old one had all kinds of interesting things growing in it


At this point I had some of the bodywork nearing completion so I pulled the rear bumper to transfer the crash beam over to the new unit.


New spacers came in, I think they're 12mm?


Finally on the ground for the first time after all the subframe and rear end service/maintenance.




The fenders still need to be rolled in the rear as they rub at the current height. Check out the Mercury Marauder craigslist tires on the back with the super cool smooth sidewall.


Pulled the plates out of storage at the DMV


Went to get ice cream in the city with open headers


I drove it literally twice before taking it all back apart. No noises or vibrations from the rear so the subframe service and pinion snub was a success. It's getting a new cam, valvetrain goodies, and a revised intake.

Old setup


An hour later:


The crappy Advance auto crank pulley puller fingers wouldn't stay attached to the hub , so I persuaded them to. It worked.


Cam comes in Monday. I already pulled off the front accessories, timing cover, locked the lifters in place, pulled pushrods and rockers, blah blah. Once it's drivable I'll button up rear bumper and drive it to the shop for exhaust fab and a new tune on the dyno.

[benz88]

GM makes like 4 or 5 different shifter assemblies for the t56. I believe the GTO has the longer one

[aLaFleur]

Somehow i have missed this thread and I'm severely disappointed that I have. V8's, Germans, CATS... You've got it going on my friend. Killer build!

[ImAwesome]

I chortled

[Lukey]

this is fucking amazeballs

[Teeson1111]

This is amazing.

Moar plz

[nsogiba]

anything in particular you wanna see?

I am installing the cam and new valvetrain tonight. Not sure if I'll make if far enough to fire it up

[laBeef]

WOW! Amazing. You have hands made of gold. Can't wait to see more.

[nsogiba]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2WVnMOf2nc

she alive

i put about 60 miles on it last night. now that the springs have been heat cycled I'll change the oil tonight to get rid of the assembly lube and take it out for a bit more.

[nsogiba]

Got the body nearly squared away, it needs a good buff and wax but it's basically done. I had a hell of a time aligning the hood but finally got it to sit well enough. I also still have to have the other exhaust tip welded on and the gaping hole in the trunk area patched up. I also had some issues with belt noise that I will have to detail in another post.



Hit the dyno last night for some tuning. Despite 100% humidity we were able to finish up the WOT portion but still have work to do on the idle and part throttle. I had a few hiccups slow me down including some incorrect MAF wiring at the pigtail (due to the revised order of wires for the LS7 MAF) as well as some scaling/calibration issues, but l'll let the results speak for themselves. Last year I made 370whp/374ft-lbs on a stock 2001 Z06 cam, oem BMW exhaust (with cats), and small 3" stainless steel intake with stock van LQ4 MAF tube. This year I ditched the intake for a true 4" aluminum tube, much larger filter, and LS7 MAF. Exhaust is now a 3" dual system with an xpipe between the fuel tanks; one side dumps straight out the back with a close-off flange for quiet operation, the other through the OEM BMW muffler. Cutouts on each side before mufflers. Cam is a Texas Speed 228R - 228/228, .588/.588, 112LSA.



427whp, 400ft-lbs, with over 350 ft-lbs by 3000 rpm

I took some videos with both my camera phone and real camera but still need to pull the ones off my Nikon.

Click for videos:

Dyno Pull 1

Dyno Pull 2

Will be taking the car out to see some friends in Rochester this weekend about an hour away so we'll see how she does.