AliveBoy

That's a 6.2 litre v8 too for a comparison, that's a Ford capri behind it

a hybrid of the truck and camaro ones, they're in really good nick so I'll leave them. It's a small amount of rubber, probably half an inch thick, so they'll do just fine

So! Over the weekend I got the engine and gearbox in and securely mounted up which is so cool! tomorrow evening I'll be taking it back out though The cam covers touch the firewall a TINY bit and the exhaust headers need to be put on the block before it's put in place I'll be "persuading" the firewall in a touch on each side for clearance and then the fabrication starts. It's very exciting! Off the top of my head, the list of jobs is: weld in patch panels new power steering system mounts mount clutch pedal mount clutch master cylinder respray engine bay gearbox modifications engine in drill shifter hole in floor mount clutch line engine wiring re wire behind dash and add new digi dash new fuel lines (including making a fuel return system) wheel tubs; modify for clearance and spray front end conversion re wire all lights front and back strip truck down mask truck up fill problem areas, sand, scuff paint respray rebuild wheels on burnouts... LOOOONG list which I'm sure will only get longer! edit: forgot full brake upgrade

"Suitable for vehicles with a 12 volt battery ONLY" Phew, thank goodness he said that, I was going to fit one to a LEAF to extend the range by 20% "or more!" Lorries have 24v batteries, so do some camper vans etc.

I'm sure Darren and Adrian saw that and thought "you cheeky bugger" What I meant was, they're not a professional garage who only work on cars, but the number of FI installs they've done for Z's they might as well be a garage. Not meaning anything bitchy or anything

Engine swaps are harder than FI builds, also you have a garage (for the sake of argument) doing it for you I have basically the same to do as Wasso, just thankfully no ECU to have to make sing as that will not be easy/fast. Definitely some cool projects going on through this forum though

hmmm... I spy a challenge. Can I get my build done before yours! Ok mine has less electronics to be done, but it has bodywork to do and the electronics I do need are wired from scratch, including lights etc!

As above the zed shed 2 isn't finished yet, so they can't progress on this build...

Last night was the heavy lifting! At around 3pm on Saturday, the engine bay looked like this: as of 10:30pm last night it looks like this: It's not the fastest engine out job in the world, but it's home brewed and labelling wires etc does take a fair amount of time So I'm now left with this beautiful thing: the truck's engine mounts have been put on the block already, I have the gearbox mount for the truck too, so now is just for a test fit on Saturday (if time allows) then it will be a case of moving the shifter position, cutting a hole in the floor and working out all of the plumbing and wiring! the difficult bit starts now!

God I'm regretting subbing to this thread with instant email updates yesterday Looking great though! The progress has been rapid once red tape is out of the way.

Thanks Bennet bearing in mind how cheap parts are, I've just spent £1650+/- on the front end, totally wiped me out financially for a bit The camaro will be up for sale soon as a rolling chassis if anyone wants a bargain! The paint will be satin black for the foreseeable certainly, I haven't got the budget for a proper high quality gloss paint job at the moment, so I'm going to use a proper satin paint, there's one called "hot rod flatz" paint which is apparently very good. I'll be having lots of chrome trim on the truck to contrast with the satin, hopefully the vision in my head comes out well. the only thing I'm nervous about is how light the rear end will be, it's not unheard of for people to put lead inside the chassis rails on high power trucks! I know 500 isn't ridiculously high, but I like to have solutions before I come to the problems

Update o'clock! So on Thursday last week I made more templates to fix rust and then on Saturday I degunked the engine bay as it was thick with mud, grease, trans fluid etc. there's so much room with neither of my toys in here Whilst I was waiting for it to dry I had nothing to do, so gave the camaro a send off before I started to strip it down for the bits I need.... (Sorry for the failbook video link) Last night I carried on disconnecting the engine/gearbox and managed to strip the thread on the alternator bracket, so went home as I don't have an imperial tap and die set and don't want a mix of imperial and metric bolts on the truck if I can avoid it. Unfortunately it's a steel bolt going into the aluminium head of the block, so I need to be careful when I fix it as the heads are edelbrock ones which are super mega expensive Hopefully I can save some of the thread! you can see the damage I stupidly did below The engine should be in mock up by the end of this week I hope. I've taken the decision to get the engine in and wired up etc, then pull it back out to paint the bay as then I know I won't scratch any paint etc as I work and scrabble around.

he's a real petrol head, not just an actor. I'm sure it's not just tokyo drift that influenced his taste in cars.

fixed that for you

my bread and butter

I haven't luckily; I'm using the gearbox from the camaro as I didn't want automatic any more. The camaro already has an aftermarket gearbox which is used for everything from mental LS engine swaps to the Aston Martin DB7 and V12 Vanquish as standard. The truck is rear wheel drive so it's not as complicated as the G-Wagen set-up would be. The only complications from using this gearbox is that I need to change the gearstick position to clear the bench seat and I'll need a custom driveshaft to match the box to the Jag diff Sorry i didnt make my point properly regarding ratios. The issue with a saloon car gearbox was due to the wheel+tyre diameter. Obviously the G-Wagen had much larger wheels+tyres than a saloon car, so the gearbox ratio's are all wrong to get the car moving and driving normally with a saloon car 'box. I can't remember the maths but it's the equivalent effect of revving your tits off to not move very far or revving just a little but move too much... if that makes sense? Ah ok, get you. I haven't got an issue because I'll be running the wheels from the camaro on the truck the diff is from an XJS and is a ratio of 3.54:1 with the standard camaro ratio being 3.42:1, obviously there's a difference, but it's negligible

I haven't luckily; I'm using the gearbox from the camaro as I didn't want automatic any more. The camaro already has an aftermarket gearbox which is used for everything from mental LS engine swaps to the Aston Martin DB7 and V12 Vanquish as standard. The truck is rear wheel drive so it's not as complicated as the G-Wagen set-up would be. The only complications from using this gearbox is that I need to change the gearstick position to clear the bench seat and I'll need a custom driveshaft to match the box to the Jag diff

speak to Flex on here, he's a bean counter

so last night I made my first ever patch panel, it'll be welded in and then the surrounding metal will be replaced. It literally took hours to get right as there's a slight curve in the panel and the edges curve up a bit. I'm happy with it for my first ever go, the weld will close up the panel gaps. I made a rough template from masking tape which then translated to a cardboard one which I then traced to the metal and then refined the metal shape Tonight I'll be making templates on the two or three other holes before rust treating everything that doesn't need to be chopped out

Very good question, Mouthwash and StevoD (#bannedbutnotforgotton) have asked me the same thing several times It's ugly, it's very 80's (not QUITE as bad as the 90's one! ) I don't really like it, it's too similar in shape to many other 80's cars (RX7, Supra, 300zx etc) in it's wedge shape for my liking. All the bits I like on/in it are the bits I'm keeping, oh and once the truck is finished it will be worth waaaaay more. Just got to put the time in to get it finished. Most importantly, why drive something which is ok when I could (hopefully!) build something which is epic

please tidy those cables :scare: cool set up otherwise

So I'm doing this in my spare time around my job (being a tax accountant basically ) so don't expect the progress to be too fast I'm trying to work on the truck on monday, wednesday and thursday evenings until around 11pm and saturdays from 9ish until about 5/6. I could do more, but I want to enjoy the build and still have a life! Anyone is welcome to come to the unit in Wokingham and have a look/watch/join in As a teaser for you, here's a clip of the engine running from the headers, it's not the best but it will have to do! The plan is to leave the exhausts separate, I know it's not the best for power, but it sounds so much cooler as two banks and we're not exactly short on power with this engine!

Have you SEEN the number of museums you can get into for free with one of those bad boys!! Yes I'd buy one!

Some of you may know that I sold my 350z back in August and replaced it with an American truck! It's a "mechanically sound" 1968 GMC long bed stepside truck (think basically a Chevy C10). I bought it back in August on a whim from Glasgow and drove it all the way home to Surrey without a sniff of an issue. Three weeks later the auto gearbox decided to change to 1st at 60mph and has done a bit (LOTS!!) of damage. The bodywork on the truck is a mess, both front wings are terminal, they were full of paper mache with body filler over them and a few random bits of metal in the filler so when I used a magnet it didn't seem suspicious. The main issue is that there's a fair amount of rust in the cab. The floor has been fixed but not brilliantly, and the sills were "replaced" but not very well too. It's looking like I either need to do a lot of welding and fabrication to make the truck better but not perfect, or get a new cab. The bits aren't visible, as they're covered by the scuttle panel and the wings but I'll know they're there and it will irritate me. Also, it looks like the previous owner was aware of an engine and transmission issue as the coolant tank had bits of copper in the bottom when I drained it, suggesting that k-seal was put in to prevent the head gasket from going and/or to fix a coolant problem. The torque converter also looked like it has been bodged too as there was some sealant which was very wet around it. All in all I've been feeling a bit demoralised, so I thought I'd start a build thread to show my slow progress The truck will be a project and I won't give up on it, with this in mind, I've bought a 1983 Chevrolet Camaro as a donor vehicle and will be converting the truck's 4.1 straight 6 and 3 on the tree auto transmission out for a relatively well set up small block chevy with a T56 6 speed manual gearbox. The engine has been worked on a fair bit and is now running a hair under 500bhp on 100 ron fuel; I'll be dialling the timing back a bit though as I want to run 98 ron Shell fuel as personally I prefer it over anything else. The power figure will drop a bit and the exhaust will change from the Camaro one which might adjust the figure slightly too. The rear end is already a jag IRS from an XJS which will be re mounted and strengthened to handle the power increase. A suspension drop of around 4 inches all round will lower the altitude and improve the handling. Corvette brakes will be added up front and the rear jag brakes will be rebuilt so we have stopping power as the huge addition of go means I need a bigger addition of WOAH! The rust in the wings isn't an issue, but the rust in the cab is concerning as below the windscreen on the drivers side is particularly bad. When I got it home: Taking the engine out: Moving to the unit/in the unit: (There's no engine or transmission in the truck here, so it's not over weight...JUST!) Teardown/rust finding begins: Rust removal from the "small" hole in the bulkhead... And for those wondering, the camaro which is donating some of it's bits Thanks for looking

It's already been proved that the Americans are fond of doping, just look at Tyson Gay for an example of an athlete stripped of their 2012 medal.