Any questions?

Okay … so we tell everyone that Baltimore has mild winters.  For most years that’s pretty much the case but this year we’ve had record snow falls – 2 and 3 feet at a time!  Where’s that global warming thing when we could make use of it?!

Well, we’re almost out of it now and we’ve begun again working on the Vicky project car.   More to come, I promise …

The windshield arrived over the weekend – thank you StreetBeasts!  The glass was shipped priority as promised.

Next up – the bumpers.  Hopefully,  SB had those in stock and will ship soon if not already.  The bumpers are heavy and regular ground transportation is fine for them.

Well, boys and girls … the LS1 is in the shop for a makeover.  It started a few weeks ago when Dave and I set out to install the new cam and valve springs.  First, the valve springs required a special tool that I didn’t have but was able to readily obtain via eBay.  Once the tool arrived, we were able to remove the stock valve springs and replace them with new GM Performance Z06 valve springs (the pretty blue ones in the picture).  A potential problem arose when it came time to remove the stock cam and install a new GM Performance “Hot Cam”.  It appeared as though the front cam bearing was showing signs of wear.

Long story short and a few opinions later, I decided that it needed to be torn down and see just what was up with this prize all-aluminum mill.

The block is now at Bill Colemen’s in Linthicum Heights, MD.  Bill is one of those guys who has forgotten more than I’ll ever know about engines.  It’s in very capable hands.

 He checked and measured the internals.  It wasn’t pretty.  The cam and crank bearings and a few pistons were bad and definitely needed to be replaced.  The bad pistons were out of round as were their respective cylinders from contact with the pistons.  It was discovered that although the engine came out of a 2000 car, it had 2002 rings in it.  The engine was obviously apart before; but since I don’t know the circumstances, it’s just another good reason for rebuilding the engine.  Bill will work his magic on the block but more on that when it’s finished.

The heads went to Ladd’s Porting Service in Elkridge, MD for a little back cutting the valves and bowl porting.  That should pep up the engine quite a bit but keep the torque within the same rpm range.

When it’s finished, this should be one bad-ass LS1with decent street manners.  It will be a couple of weeks until the engine and heads are ready for re-assembly so stay tuned and check back to see how it turns out.