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Haha! But I'll be spending all my time on a big black girl.. Won't you feel neglected?? I squeezed in a couple things after work and the engine is starting to look more complete: The aluminum valve covers and alt are getting sent out to be repolished and I'm having the alt and p/s pullys chromed. Polishing these things once was once too many. I decided to just go with the stock balancer for now since it seems like it wants to go on a lot easier than the ATI. And I'm waiting for the fuel rail legs to dry.. So, I will have something holding the rails down. Thanks for all the positive comments guys, it definitely helps keep me motivated.

I totally blew past the rust issues. Sucks man. I totally feel your pain.

Today's hit list: -Assembled the master cylinder and installed -Lubed LCA bolts where there's metal on metal contact -Cleaned, re-assembled, and installed front coilovers with new top mounts and bearings. I decided to try wheel bearing grease on the roller bearings.. -Flipped the sway bar around the right way and tightened cause I'm an idiot -Cleaned the crap out of the UIM and installed with HV3. I'm using the UIM that I removed the inside fins from just for s&g. -Cleaned p/s pump and T/A mount -Rattle caned the flow matched injector bodies black

Lol. I wish I could work at least twice as fast. That would be sweet to just have an all polished/painted engine chillin on the stand in the garage. I'm pretty sure my parents would kill me though. lol. At the moment I have 2 short blocks 1 long block, an empty block, a complete trans and and empty trans in the garage. Let alone a metric ton of other crap. Can't wait to move out.. I got a few smaller things done today due to having to do both belts an alt and tensioner pulley on the i30. -Checked lifter preload and found I need shorter pushrods. Ordered those. -Checked the F-body 2-pc rotors I got fit my bolt pattern, and they don't.. My F-body powerslots do but these have tighter tolerances. So, I'll have to have them redrilled.. -Brought home my disassembled engine hoist from storage. -Drained the trans and got it off the stand.

The VCs will be polished again. Here's a pic of them before they got messed up:

I would really like to see a polished lip on the wheels. I know black with a polished lip on a white car works well because of aweb's GP. Here's the fast and dangerous way to do that: If you do add some camber to the front, I would add the same to the rear and space accordingly. Cars usually look better with the same or a touch more camber in the rear. Can't wait till the coilovers are on!! Seriously.. can. not. wait. haha.

Thanks guys. I'm definitely hustling when I'm home and have the free time. Here's the hit list from today: -Repolished the master cylinder and shine/sealed it. The original issue with it was I had it powdercoated clear, got brake fluid on it without realizing it and it effed up the powdercoat. I stripped it a couple weeks ago and it's been staring me down ever since.. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be I only had to hit a couple areas with sand paper. -Started to repolish the valve covers I had stripped chemically because of oxidation under the clear and realized they're oxidized much more than I thought.. I found out I have to take the covers and the alt down to 220 grit and work my back up.. FML.. I got the one cover down to 220, thought about blowing up the world and moved on to something else for the time being. -Shine/Sealed the tensioner assembly which was easy since it was clean and never coated before. -Got new drivers side caliper from Advance (actually passenger side for an F-body) took it apart, and got it to the powder coater.. Along with my rusty flex plate for shits and gigs. The caliper will go purple again and the flex will be black satin. I should get those early next week. -Bent the power steering lines to give more clearance for the LTs and put the rear mounts in while I was there. -Threw the 1.6 RRs, polished thermo housing, and tensioner assembly on the engine. I still have to check the preload though. That ATI balancer does not want to go on easy at all.. It kind of has me worried about using it. I'm not even sure what puller to use if it gets stuck. I should have the front suspension back together this weekend and hopefully by next weekend the engine/trans will be ready go in. There will still be a bunch of misc crap after they go in though.. so that's not the end of the road.

Thanks! I did some weird stuff with my work hours and took off today and tomorrow to work on my cars. Crap I got done: Also: -Installed the timing chain damper, front cover, and front oil seal -Installed a different oil pressure spring (think it was zzp?) along with the oil cooler oil filter adapter. The fittings barely clear the aluminum pan but they do clear which is sweet. -Ported LIM more to match and installed -Junked drivers side caliper trying to get the seized bleeder out -New ball joints -Realized I didn't order new coilover bearings and ordered those -Por-15ed the tops of the struts above the threaded sleeve and the two small brackets that sit on the strut towers opposite the STB. I'm definitely happy with the control arm bushing tool. The only part I needed something else was when I was installing the bushings on the actual control arms. The receiver cup was too large so I used a busted old trans dogbone as a receiver. Other pics: It might look like there is a lip up now on the LIM to head transition but it's level. And the L67 ATI damper is there for intended high revs. L67 (2 belt drive) just because it was cheap. I'm hoping to knock a couple more things off that list tomorrow in addition to fixing the i30. It doesn't like using belts at the moment.

I'm bad at spelling but not that bad. The a isn't connected

Haha. This thing will probably never be done. I made a little headway since the last post. I was soaking the tailshaft of the trans since it's been forever since I started the trans build. I finally got the side cover bolts cleaned up and torqued down the cover. So, it's due to come off the trans stand. Knowing that the Eldorado rads are larger and fit, I searched for the largest one I could find. What I ended up with was one that is over an inch thicker than stock and still fits like stock. Ebay link here. This should really help with the high compression. And I wanted to figure out a better solution for the rear dogbone trans mount. Since I raise the engine and trans up 1.5", I modified/welded the diff mount for the rear dogbone down 1.5" before. Last year my wheel caught a barrier on the highway when I was trying to avoid accident. The car went up a couple feet and I bottomed out my car real bad. The part of the mount I elongated on the diff housing hit the ground and punched the trans hard enough to crack the housing. Knowing I may go lower, I wanted to take that out of the equation. I found an adjustable Dogbone mount that Fiero guys use. It looked close enough to try and my guess was right. When the engine and trans are in the car, I'll just shorten the mount and it should work really well with my bolted front trans mount and new d/s rear and p/s TA mount. With my heads milled 0.050" and thinner head gaskets I was wondering if there were going to be alignment issues. The aluminum LIM gaskets needed to be shaved at the bottom to work with the rubber valley gaskets. The LIM I had milled to match does bolt up but there is a lip at the bottom of the intake ports transitioning to the heads. The top and sides line up good though. So, I'm going to have to port the bottom of the LIM ports before I install the LIM. I'm hoping to take care of that soon, along with the front cover. Here's a short list of stuff that needs to happen before I drop the engine and trans in... Still lots of misc. crap to do after that before I can take it for a spin though.

You might want to see if you can get a metal ribbed tensioner pulley. I've had problems with plastic ones, switched to metal and never had a problem since.

The firewall is all covered with plastic and the majority of it is under the fuse block cover and Vac booster. Here's a pic to give you a better idea. The pic also shows the nasty HVAC box cover falling apart. That's why I had the box ceramic coated.

I'm going to pull the engine and fix the oil leaks while I'm installing the new parts.. It makes sense to me since a header install is a 1/3 of the way there anyway.. So, I ordered all the parts for the engine pull.. The rear mains, front bearing seal and crank seal, timing cover o rings, Nissan sealant, new valve covers since the spark plug o rings are integrated, and maybe a couple other things I'm forgetting for the engine. I also got new front control arms with new bushings/ball joints, and sway bar bushings since it's metal on metal on the one side. After I ordered all that, the car wanted to show me who's boss by losing the alt/aircond belt in center city Philly during rush hour. I parked it, pretended it didn't happen for a few hours, started it and I drove 40 mins home.. lol. I lost the power steering belt on the way home too. I replaced the belts this morning and it started up without having to pop start it. Pic of what was left of both belts and the headers/cat/cat-back and JICs. The goal is to get all this stuff done the weekend of July 9/10th.

There's a bunch of small stuff that needs to happend once the engine/trans gets in. Cooler routing, brake bleeding, some wiring, etc. And I still need to repolish a bunch of things which is time consuming.. Got some more crap done today though.. -Grinded and Por-15ed: front unibody corners in front of front doors, areas where the subframe bolts up in the rear, and newly welded coilover top mounts -Got all the subframe to body bushings in after the paint dried -Ported oil passage in rear cover, went to dealership to get the new style aluminum rear cover gasket and rear main, installed -Re-installed oil pan -Painted the engine GM Oil Leak Black with a Por-15 engine painting kit. It's a 4 step process which took a while.. I used spare L26 parts to cover the heads, lifter valley, and front cover area. -Installed EWP to front cover -Put L26 oil pump in the L36/67 cover and packed it The new knock sensors, tensioner, TC bolts, a 2 row 1 3/4" thick all aluminum rad, and some other misc things are in the mail. I may be rocking the same LCAs so they'll come out, probably get painted, get new bushings and ball joints, and I'll do the top mounts at the same time.

Lol. July. I just ordered a 1 3/8" thick (7/8" stock) double row all aluminum rad made for an Eldorado that should fit my car. That and the big oil cooler should help with the 11:1ish compression.

My goal would be sometime next month. I go on travel again the 16th of next month so I would like to get as much in as I can before then.

The ball joint stuff is on hold. I need to get this thing on the road. The forcast said rain when I got off work today but I pulled my subframe when I got home anyway. I got the new subframe/rack/sway/most of the body bushings in and I was just finishing up pressing the subframe bushings in when it started to pour. So I didn't make out too bad. The j-tool for the subframe bushings works awesome.. I also got the Abbott Racing heads on with ARP head studs and 0.045" MLS gaskets (cleaned plus each layer sprayed).

Soo.. I just paid $2k for $3k worth of parts. JIC Magic VIP coilovers Cattman headers & full exhaust (equal length Y makes it sound 350z/G35ish) Granted this still falls under this: It's safe to say I'll be holding on to the car for a while.

Anxious to see them painted and installed. I don't know if you figured this out already but the 92-99 Bonneville x-laces (the ones that look the same just not as wide or agressive offset) have the same size center caps. Just if you want mroe options at the yard.

I wish I had my own garage. This project is the umbilical cord I have to my parent's place. Once I finish this, I'm finally moving out. In the mean time my parents are being super cool about taking over the garage and the driveway. Looking at the pics of the angles and realizing I have two spare control arms.. I'll probably modify the ends of them. That makes the most sense at this point. I can make 3 cuts, push the mounting face for the ball joint down, correcting the angle, box it in and even add sheet metal to the top for strength. The only real hard part is making them 100% identical.

My interior got a little nicer.. Newer stuff: steering wheel, seats and floor mats. The wheel was pretty bad.. Newer Pics: My car got reallly loud a few weeks ago and here's why: I got an OEM muffler and hangers at the junkyard for $5. That allowed me to get rid of the Mickey Mouse stuff that the PO used to hang the muffler up. And I may get JIC coilovers for the car this week.. I hate how wobbley and squatty the car is and can't stand the stance. I was going to look at a set of blue drivers doors while I was up in NY Saturday but the place was closed. I didn't think to call since it was noon on a Saturday and there aren't very many places that are closed then. It sucks because I was in a cargo van too.

I finally got back from travel last week and got a few things done Friday and Sunday. All the brake lines are run to the MC. I used a 90* bulkhead for the ABS reservoir rubber line and bushings for the F/R brake lines. I still need to repolish the MC and the bleeder snapped off my driver’s side F-body caliper.. I'll get that out somehow. There's a pic showing what you'll see brake liens wise in the bay.. Just 3 lines running behind the strut tower. The passenger side wiring is finished, grounds, bushings, etc. Most of the battery wiring is run. I used a plastic bulkhead for where the power goes through the unibody. I still have to cut the line at the starter, throw a connection on it, and make an alt to fuse/relay center line. I popped my trunk for the first time in 6 months.. lol. The battery tray is going to get por-15'd. The driver's side wiring is mostly complete. I just need to get a bushing around where the body wiring goes through the unibody. I got the new cam in the engine with new timing chain.. I'm just going to run a stock chain/damper since my last chain/damper still had life left in it after 80k with LS6 springs. I'm waiting on a tensioner to put the front cover on. I ordered a por-15 black engine paint kit I'm going to do the block and heads with that.. I was going to paint the heads purple but I think it'll look good to have the black as a contrast. The LIM/front cover and trans are all purple. This is the it's too late or crappy out part of the build. I picked up my reworked knuckles with the flipped tie rod hole and reamed out ball joint hole. They had the top part of the bushing cup I'm making done too. I welded up the ball joint carriers and bushing cup then test fit the monster truck ball joint on the car. I ran into a problem that I have been worrying about.. There isn't enough range of motion with the ball joint and it's maxed out before I can even bolt up the knuckle. I'm kinda bummed out about it but I'm hoping I figure something out. I might be able to find a different 727 style ball joint that will work. I know of at least 1 other I can try.. I just have to look more into it. I also decided to just run the same style of top mount I was running. All the solutions I came up with are a huge undertaking that will probably never get finished in the time I need them to be done. I at least used a shorter pipe so it can't get out of round.. I welded those up but still need to paint them. I'll address this later..

Since I know you're goint to have a more agressive offset/ride height.. You might want to think about rolling the fenders before you have any paintwork done. You won't have to give it the heat gun treatment or worry while rolling that way.

I'm a member over there too but I haven't been very active. I did find it. Thanks for the heads up.

Yeah the joys of having a black car.. lol. Bill any chance you could link me?