tommypenguin

A couple years ago situation finally presented itself where I was finally able to have a dedicated sports car in addition to a daily driver. I had done the 4 cylinder turbo before with my 05 Legacy GT that I modified heavily. Did the v6 on my 2010 Accord 6-6 that was also fairly modified but never had done a v8. Picked up a supercharged 01 Corvette C5 and have been busy making it my own since. I rebuilt the motor over last winter for a horrible reason, was my first time pulling a motor, assembling and installing one. Did something right after the rebuild my car put down 730whp/601wtq, have put almost 3000miles since the build.

Below is a picture of how it looked when I got it.



Pics of how it sits now...

justnspace

iTrader: (1)

holy chit, I LOVE THE HEADLIGHT CONVERSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


and you didnt mention why you had to rebuild? Over-revved?

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

"for a horrible reason" caught my eye too!
Love this thread, congrats man! As someone that just recently drank the V8 koolaid...
it's hard to go back to less cylinders huh...

Great looking ride, man...some things I woulda probably not done, but overall...sex!
Also love your wall of tools...that's the impact makita i wanted to get but settled on the dewalt cause there were better deals on it and it was available.

justnspace

iTrader: (1)

^I dont like the zo6 vent on the side skirt. but overall vedy nice!!

and the spoiler!!! i just noticed that it wraps around on the butt end
weird butt cool at the same time

KaMLuNg

iTrader: (5)

all that and no engine bay pics?!?!?!

CCColtsicehockey

Never been a huge fan of the C5 but really like what you have done with yours. Looks good.

justnspace

iTrader: (1)

its def. gotta be the headlight conversion.

gnuts

iTrader: (1)

looks great! Stock they almost look feminine to me. You man'd it up nicely.

Majofo

tommypenguin

Thanks.

Definitely do not have a cool story about the motor. Long story as short as I can...

I bought the car built, the previous owner had a shop do all the work on the car. Then I took over and have done all the work except machining the crank/block/heads. A year/4,000 miles after buying the car, lost oil pressure on a day I didn't drive the car hard at all, when losing oil pressure I had just started the car after getting the mail a block from my house. Assumed it was the oil pump but drained oil and cut the filter open and found metal shavings in it along with shavings stuck to my magnetic drain plug. On the corvette you can't pull the entire oil pan without dropping the entire front cradle which at the point you might as well pull the motor.

So I did and discovered stuck in the oil pickup tube screen was an oil foil seal from an oil bottle along with the plastic attached to it obstructing probably 30-35% of the pickup screen. I have been using a funnel with a screen in it for as long as I can remember to prevent foreign materials from getting in the engine during an oil change, strongly recommend you all do the same or remove your oil bottle seals when taking it to a shop. I suspect the previous owner's shop was pouring oil into the fill cap, the seal fell off the bottle and went through the heads, which damaged a couple of the rollers on the lifters and ultimately damaged a couple lobes on the cam shaft which interfaced with those rollers. That explained the metal shavings. The debris being stuck in the pickup screen likely caused a premature failure on the oil pump from starving it.

When I discovered this I thought, great, all I have to do is replace the lifters, cam, oil pump and I'm back in business but there was more. The shop who did the work on the car previously installed ported Z06 heads on my base C5, if you don't clean out the head bolt holes thoroughly when you go to torque the head down you can crack the block. Turns out that shop who did the work for the previous owner didn't clean out the head bolts. While looking at my engine on the stand I noticed there was a crack right along a head stud on the outer edge which is why I never leaked coolant or oil. Because the block is aluminum I could not find anyone willing to weld it that felt it could withstand the power I was pushing. So I had to replace the block, and as preventative maintenance replaced the rings, bearings along with having the crank polished and block honed. Was planning on putting in a forged rotating assembly initially but found out I was having a baby a week before placing my order, naturally that changed the build plans just a bit.

At this point the car runs great, knock on wood it has been back in the game for almost a year. Despite this issue I had a great time tearing down and doing the build, was so much fun. Probably will only put 2-3k on it a year and am hoping that it will hold together till my son is 6 or 7 so we can assemble a LS7 7.0L together to get his feet wet with working on cars.

Pics of the carnage...

Costco

Holy shit. All that because of the little seal on the bottle. I am really careful to always tighten the caps on all my reservoirs and fillers in the engine bay lest crap fall into them or I forget to secure them. The funnel with a screen is a great idea!

Nice numbers.

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

Jesus, quite a story.
Now I'm sad.

WTF...

love your attitude and your plan for your kid.
same reason i'm hangin on hard to my S2000...can't wait for my daughter (10 months) to be like, Daddy, let's take the yellow banana!

Aman

Congrats! That is a large amount of horsepower.

And while that sucks about the engine, you got to do something pretty cool for the first time, and it was successful. That's cool.

wackjum

Are those the Stealth Light Cannon V3 headlights? Actually everything about your car looks fantastic.

A C5 Z06 is on my near future list of cars. I've been looking into mods already

Oh Sickest TL

iTrader: (3)

^what you did there, I see it

fsttyms1

Congrats on the vehicle. To bad about the motor, but at least you knew what you were doing and got it fixed!

justnspace

iTrader: (1)

when I tore into my engine, I didnt know what I was doing......


I broke it even more.... lol

juniorbean

iTrader: (5)

I've always been on the fence about the C5 Vette, but that headlight conversion really sets it off. Good stuff!

gatrhumpy

iTrader: (1)

I also like how you painted the rear B panels black behind the windows. It looks MUCH better now than the red color.

tommypenguin

Love all the torque off the line with a v8, it would be hard to go back to anything less for a sports car. Since I found out I was having a baby during the rebuild process I couldn't in good conscience spend out of pocket money on the car so I sold a whole bunch of stuff including tools I could live without, one was that large Makita 1/2" impact. I have an air compressor with a chicago air impact and decided the makita was more of a luxury than necessity. Miss that damn thing, didn't have to charge up my tank to pull lug nuts, it also had enough torque to pull the balancer bolt on the corvette. Couldn't recommend it enough if someone was on the fence about it.

Putting on the Z06 brake cooling ducts was one of my first mods, almost threw up having to cut holes into my car but like the way they turned out and they are functional.

That's awesome, hoping the garage and the car will serve as a source for great memories to be made between us as he gets older. Hope you get to do the same with your daughter and the S2000.

Yup, they are radioflyer steal cannon v3 headlights. I customized them a bit by throwing on some morimoto xbaled halos on along with having the light bar follow the shroud. Felt it gives the car a hint of NSX look to it and most important I'm not scared to death to drive at night like with the stock popups.


Thanks, did that, tinted windows and also wrapped the rear fascia in black, to give the car a little more contrast.

How did you break it more? When building/tearing down a motor there are plenty of areas that can cause an issue. I bought a book, watched videos, and read up as much as I could. Ended up having a couple of close calls where I could have made a mistake that would have resulted in having to tear down again but when there was doubt I researched till I was 100% confident I was doing it right.

tommypenguin

My car was on a lift for the first time a couple weeks ago since I bought it when I went over to my friend's house to have him weld in exhaust cutouts. Unfortunately I don't have any welding tools or skills and deferred to his expertise. He did a great job and now I have a switch on my dash that controls if I want to have the exhaust dump out and skip the mufflers or be quiet and go back out them.

Here are a couple pictures of the job and a couple sound bytes of how it sounds with them open. When they are open you can probably hear the car from a mile away, the sound captured doesn't do it justice.

1StGenCL

Those headlines make the freaking difference, nice pick up but and mods; what do the badges say?

1StGenCL

Crabby was just telling me he loves riding your yellow banana.

justnspace

iTrader: (1)

Lol wtf ?! I do?

2K2SilverTL-S

haha...you definitely did something right!! Those have to be some of the highest numbers I've heard for a sc'd stock block LS1! I assume you are running Meth and ?E85. What are your engine mods? I wish I had your skill level to be able to pull and re-build the LSx. I've went through hell and back with East Coast Supercharging who are currently building my motor.

I have the C6 Vert' version of your C5. Red on Black is one of the best combo's on a C5-C7 Vette IMO. I think a set of black or CF C6 ZR1 style side skirts/front lip would finish your Vette off nicely! Regardless, strong work TP and best of luck with her.

tommypenguin

Thanks, The badge on the fenders say LS1 supercharged.

Thanks, got a link or cliff notes on the story with your motor and ECS? Actually am running an ECS rear end in my car, it has held up to my power and drag radials being on my tires.

Before doing the motor build I would consider myself a mild DIYer with cars. Think I had more will than skill when it came to the rebuild, put a few hundred hours of research into the project and did preassembly 4 or 5 times to double check tolerances because I'm so OCD. If you have a high attention to detail you can build a motor, I've read enough horror stories from people paying shops to build their motors to know no one would be as meticulous as myself. Can guarantee you many shops that build motors do not do preassembly, which is where things go wrong if not caught.When building a motor if you're take stuff apart and double, triple checking it along with organizing parts well, you're doing something right.

The car made 79whp/68wtq after the motor build by switching out the cam and doing headwork with a retune. Will say my new dyno was on a dynojet, the previous dyno before the motor was rebuilt by a different tuner was 651whp/533wtq was on a mustang dyno. Also I'm still on a maf tune and maxed it out in cold weather at 6300rpm. Could have made more power if I upgraded to a 4" MAF but am totally happy with the car as is and know I'm on borrowed time regardless with my stock rotating assembly minus the rings and bearings. When I put in a new motor in a few years then I plan on dropping down another pulley size or two, put on a bigger maf, cam along with having the bigger displacement and bigger/better heads.

As far as mods that result in HP, running...

• Vortech V3 10psi pulley
• Meth
• Ported LS2 TB
• Fast 92 IM
• Ported 243 heads and 3 angle valve job with beehive springs
• Comp Cam 220R
• Sealed Performance Rings/Clevite Bearings,
• FLP Long Tube Headers
• GHL Catback

Actually had purchased ACI skirts and Vortex lip from Corvette Creationz and they strung me along for 3 months saying the parts were on back ordered even though I had paid in full. Ended up getting a refund and purchasing the cutouts and HPTuners instead. Might do the lip and skirts next year but enjoy not having to be on extreme pot hole avoidance while driving.

sixsixfour

Dear god that horror story with the foil getting ingested. Thats why I do my own oil changes. Something so simple can cause something so effed up.

What you did to rebuild everything was awesome. Kudos man!

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

I want cutouts real bad, bro...
I might have to jump on that after getting the Corsa mufflers.

sixsixfour

lol do eeeet!!!!

tommypenguin

The cutouts are one of the favorite mods I've done right after putting on drag radials and the C6 Z06 BBK. You will love them on your ride and if you don't want to hear them because you want to chat with your passenger or pull into the garage with a sleeping baby you can shut them with the switch. They also make a wireless remote to control opening/closing them. Currently pulled one of my cigarette lighters and mounted the switch in its hole next to my hacked up DVD case AFR gauge mount

iSeeYouTwo

Looks and sounds amazing!! Ever considered painting the rear trunk spoiler black?

tommypenguin

They actually offer the spoiler in carbon fiber, I have definitely thought about swapping out the red one for the carbon fiber one.

Jinxed myself by saying my car was running great, I had to do my first repairs since rebuilding the motor over the weekend. My ABS/Traction control module threw a code which is a common issue on the c5. I had to pull the module from the ABS, then pull the circuit board out and resolder the bad connections for the relay that threw the code. No money spent just time and back in business there. Would have been a fortune to buy a new ABS/Traction control module or a used one off of ebay. Also discovered my 4 year old coolingmist methanol injector was leaking at the quick connect to hose fitting from what looks like a bad o ring. Had to order new fittings.

Pics of the ABS module and where I had to solder.

1StGenCL

Love being able to fix things, best feeling ever.

JS + XES

iTrader: (1)

Awesome car man. One of my canyon run buddies has a supercharged C5, non Z06. But his car is at 750whp I think. Awesome cars.

tommypenguin

It is always a good feeling when you know you saved yourself hundreds by fixing something in your garage, that way you can take the money saved and do more mods

For the money it would be hard to get a better sports car platform than a supercharged C5. Owners that supercharge them typically only get an extra couple grand more versus a stock one.

tommypenguin

Been a few years still modding. .

Majofo

@rockstar143

She looks great

JS + XES

iTrader: (1)

Looks sick. A few of my buddies have C5Zs. One gave me a ride along at the track and it was brutally fast. Murica.

rockstar143

iTrader: (6)

The spoiler looks better than that saturn lookin one you had before although I didn't realize I didn't like it until I saw this one!

gatrhumpy

iTrader: (1)