bradleyss14

I've had my C5 Corvette for about a year and a half now, and I have done a lot of things to it. So, here goes my build. It all started by reading the HPDE thread and basing my mods on that.

The car is a 2001 Speedway White with gray interior 6 speed. It already had Z06 front screens, and functional Z06 rear brake ducts on it when I purchased it. The car has about 63,000 miles on it at the time of the build. As you can see, it is not a "top dollar" build. I'd like to think I spent where I needed to spend, but saved where it was okay to save. What I believe I've done is capture all of the performance from a C5 Z06, with the enjoyment of having a targa top and a big, choppy cam.

The end goal is to have a car that I can take on road trips, take to Road Atlanta, Roebling Road, and Atlanta Motorsports Park for HPDE events, take it to the drag strip once in a while, and go on the occasional late night trip to "Mexico" all while having it tame enough that my wife will still enjoy riding in the car with me. To that end, I tried to stay with OEM-style parts because I also didn't want it to become a full-blown hot-rod that was in the garage being worked on more than out on the streets being enjoyed.


Build List

• Engine
  • Heads/Valvetrain
    • Junkyard 243 casting heads (1 from a Tahoe, the other from an Impala SS)
    • Summit Racing trunnion bushing upgrade
    • BTR valve stem seals
    • Summit Racing Valve locks
    • All valves cleaned and lapped
    • Trick Flow TFS-16918 valve springs by PAC Racing
    • Cam
      • Summit Racing Pro LS Stage 3 Cam (SUM-8708)
        • 231/242 at .500 lift. 113+3 LSA, .600/.600 lift
    • Stock-Length BTR hardened pushrods
    • LS2 Timing Chain
    • Melling Timing Chain Damper Adapter Kit
    • Texas Speed Heads and Cam Bolt and Gasket Kit
      • TSP Head Bolts
      • GM MLS Gaskets
      • TSP Water Pump Gasket
      • TSP Timing cover gasket
      • TSP Front Seal
      • GM Harmonic Balancer Bolt
    • Crank Pin Kit
  • Other Engine Components
    • Summit Racing SFI Approved Harmonic Balancer
    • LS6 PCV Conversion
    • Amazon oil catch can
    • Amazon remote mount oil-cooler kit
    • PCM of NC oil cooler bracket
  • Clutch/Drivetrain
    • Luk LS7 clutch and pressure plate
    • Fidanza lightweight aluminum flywheel
    • Tick Performance slave cylinder kit with shim pack
    • Tick Performance clutch slave cylinder remote bleed line
    • C6 Grand Sport shifter
  • Fuel and Air
    • Modified Z06 airbox
    • NGK TR6 plugs
    • MSD 8.5mm wires with heat sleeves
    • Remanufactured 36lb fuel injectors (measured at 2 bar), from Injector-rehab (at 3 bar LS fuel pressure, they're really about 41-42 lbs)
    • Amazon long-tube headers with off-road x-pipe
    • Billy Boat PRT exhaust with quad 4.5" oval tips
  • Computer tuning performed by Vengeance Racing in Cumming, GA. I'll be going back up there for the dyno tune when the clutch has been properly broken-in.
• Suspension/Brakes
  • C5 Z06 springs
  • C5 Z06 sway bars
  • Doug Rippie C6 Z06 Bilstein shocks
  • Polyurethane bushing kit
  • Russel Stainless brake lines
  • C5 Z06 Speedline wheels (not on the car yet. All of these pictures are with the GM Y2K wheels)
  • Centric high-carbon pads with Duralast ceramic pads for the street, and Hawk HP+ for track days
  • Refurbished factory calipers and painted black with brushed "CORVETTE" letters
• Interior
  • Sony XAVAX1000 double-din apple-carplay receiver with rearview camera
  • Infinity reference 6.5" speakers all around with new wire run from the receiver to each speaker. All bose is GONE
  • Rockville SS8P 400w 8" powered subwoofer in the rear cargo area
  • Redline goods alcantara shift boot
  • GM C6 Grand Sport Alcantara shift ****
  • C6-style gauge bezel surrounds
  • Chevy SSR Rearview mirror with Homelink, auto-dimming, and LED map light.
• Exterior
  • Rear lower bumper wrapped in 3M satin black
  • ACA-style headlights with 5000k HID bulbs in H1 projectors with Lightwerkz adapters

Now, onto a picture dump!

bradleyss14

Options Codes from inside the glove box. It's a 40U Speedway white car! Exhaust Pics below

bradleyss14

Brakes being done and calipers refinished. Shocks, Rear wrap


Previous owner decided that brush-on red caliper paint was the way to go. I took the calipers off, hit them with the wire brush, sanded where I needed to sand, then gave them a good bath in brake cleaner.



I like the black caliper look better. It just looks clean and complete. After the paint dried, I sanded the "CORVETTE" letters and gave them a brushed finish with 220 grit.



Before and After.


Doug Rippie Bilstein shocks.

bradleyss14

Radio work and rearview camera, Keen eyes will notice the C6 Z06 shifter and not the C6 Grand Sport shifter. (I had to update to a later model C6 shifter in order to use the cool alcantara shift ****)

bradleyss14

Headlight stuff. Busting apart the ACA-style housings to get the adapter plate on for the good projectors. I should have just bought the Radio Flyer setup...but lesson learned. Keen eyes will also see I was riding around with the zip-tie mod for while until I got a Z06 airbox and modified it.







Test firing the new lights before going through the entire process of putting the buckets back on. This pic is with the halogen bulbs that come with the kit.

bradleyss14

Z06 Airbox and modification to enlarge the front inlet port.

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Now here comes the FUN stuff. Heads, cam, clutch, and all of the goodies.

Here's a look at one of the heads before it was cleaned.


Cam Card


Valve springs, valve locks, trunnion bushing kit, lightweight flywheel, clutch and pressure plate, injectors, cam, and heads.




Inspection sheet from injector-rehab. The gentleman at IR, Keith Gibbons was extremely helpful in talking me through which injectors I needed for this build without breaking the bank. I wanted to stick with OEM re-manned injectors because I think they would be more reliable than the Chinese knock-off bosch's that are all over the various sites. And I didn't want to pay for "premium" brand injectors.



Trunnion bushing installed on one of the factory rocker arms from the 243 heads.

bradleyss14

Cleaning the heads and prepping them for install.


Don't forget to water in your heads to make the horspower grow big and strong!






If the heads are already flat (judged by a square and feeler gauges) and just need a scuffing for the gaskets to mate to, then tempered glass is a perfectly flat surface. 400 grit followed by 500 grit gets the heads to the recommended level of "rough" for optimal gasket sealing.

bradleyss14

There's always a level of nervousness when you've gotten this dang far into the engine. Will we get it all back together and will it run properly?

bradleyss14

Next up, taking a cutoff wheel to a perfectly good aluminum block to cut out the nodule so that the LS6 PCV system can go in.

I thought all 2001 cars had LS6 blocks, but I guess mine doesn't. We even checked the casting number on the back. It's an LS1 block all the way. Got that done and the new valley cover put on...along with new knock sensors because mine crumbled when I tried to take them out of the original valley cover plate.

Also, 243 heads are on.



The new GM LS6 valley cover is a nice looking piece. Complete with the freshened up heads, it's starting to look like an engine agian.

bradleyss14

Here's some clutch-related pics. Old flywheel definitely had some hot spots on it. The clutch looked to be in good shape, plenty of life left in it.








Here you can see our measurements to determine which slave cylinder shim that we needed to use. Ended up using the 1/16" shim.





Added some heat/sound deadening to the tunnel plate on the cabin side.

bradleyss14

Other knick knacks. Power steering cooler and oil cooler going on.

GIGANTIC "By the way" moment here...DO NOT use the hydraulic or "bread" method to remove the pilot bearing from an LS engine. There's a plug on the back of the crank that will give way before the pilot bearing gives way. This causes that plug to fall into the oil pan, requiring you to either fish it out, or take the pan off. Since we had the engine out, we took the pan off.

Don't make the same mistake we did. Get the pilot bearing puller and do it the right way.


Oil cooler mounted on some PCM of NC oil cooler brackets. This is a really trick piece and saved us a bunch of time from having to fab up something that mounts to the air dam support structure.



Added a Z06 power steering cooler since base models didn't come with one. I added it because I cooked my power steering fluid at the last track day I went to. It's Georgia...in August. Our expression here is "it was hotter than hell's front porch" so this was kind of expected. I wanted to see how much modification I would have to do to the cooling system to handle occasional track days.


Oil lines going into the adapter plate to the pressurized oil ports on the side of the block. People are exactly right in saying that you need to do this before the headers go on. Once the headers are on, that baby is completely inaccessible. We had to bore out the adapter plate to fit the stock oil temp sensor probe, but otherwise, it's a pretty good part.

bradleyss14

Amazon long-tube install.



Front mounting tabs didn't come anywhere close to where they needed to be on the car. Going to have to make some new ones.


The bolts they give you for the collector chamber thingy are ridiculously long. lol



The x-pipe mounting plate lines up with the car's mounting bolts. But they're spring-loaded, so there's plenty of "give" for those to work out.


As expected from other amazon/ebay header install threads, the tunnel plate had to be cut to accommodate the O2 sensors. Not a big deal. It's just stamped sheet aluminum so it cuts easy enough. Just mark it off and fire away.



Here is the lowest point I could find on the headers and the bottom of the car. They hang down about 3/4" from the bottom of the body. This is before the collector, so it's far enough forward that I can raise the ride height of the car in the front slightly to accommodate for any scraping. The collectors and rest of the exhaust all tuck up nicely. The steering shaft doesn't interfere, either, so we didn't have to "clearance" anything.

bradleyss14

Steering rack had some issues as well. It was leaking where the wire came out for the magnasteer component. We took the whole thing apart, thinking "well, it's already messed up, so we might as well see if we can fix it before buying a new or reman unit" We found that the o-ring for the wire is just held in by pressure at the bottom of the housing. We figured that if we machined a groove into the housing that contains the wire (3rd pic), it would hold the o-ring in place and prevent leaks in the future.

bradleyss14

And finally, as homage my brother, who has done most of the work on this car, I had a trophy shop make a couple of stainless medallions laser etched with his "shop name". I say that in quotes because it's always been a running joke that he calls his shop "Super Number One Technology" or SNOT. The amazon headers had AIR provisions on them, so they had to be cut off and the hole plug welded shut. I had these made to tack over those holes and give him a little visible credit for all of the hours he has spent messing with this car. Here he is in a picture his wife sent to me late one evening while he was out there working on the car.

Vetteman Jack

Nice mods so far. Good luck as you go forward.

MWWarlord

Very nice! The car looks good, and should be fun to drive. Thanks for sharing.

bradleyss14

Here's the video of the startup on the base tune.

95wht6spd

Interested in- Chevy SSR Rearview mirror with Homelink
Is this plug and play?

mstromquist

Looks like it's going to be pretty fun. Great job with it so far.