Surprise!
Hey, I got a package.
I was not expecting it.
What was in it? This:
We have door panels, people! Well, we have a significant portion of door panels, anyway. I’ll have to add the bright work from the old doors as well as other random, decorative bits, along with window felts. I’ll also need to cut holes for all the handles, cranks, etc. Whatever. I still have a big box filled with finished stuff.
The folks at Cars, Inc fashioned new panels around my old top rails in a quite timely matter. I figured I’d be waiting forever for these things. I’m nowhere near needing these yet, so off to storage they went.
Le carter d’huile
When last we met, I was in the middle of swapping out the old GTO oil pan for a replacement F Body pan. That process is now complete. Rather than bore you with the details, I shall convey the entire, quasi interesting process in a set of photo montages. Yes, plural.
I suggest you have this playing in the background.
Ready?
Here we go.
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OK, STOP!
Stock oil pickup tubes for an LS1 are usually mounted to the oil pump with a single bolt through the top of a tear drop shaped mating flange. The weird thing is, there’s another, normally unused threaded hole on the other side of the oil pump side of the flange. It’s as if GM changed their mind at some point. You can see the oil pump side of the mounting flange in the bottom left corner of the second to last picture up there. Note the two bolt holes.
I procured an oil pickup tube girdle, which is just a milled piece of aluminum that goes over the pump tube flange and allows you to use both bolt holes for a more secure end state.
It’s a little hard to tell from this picture, but that bolt on the left is so obscured by the tube itself that you can’t get a socket on it to torque it to spec. You can’t get much of anything on it, really. (Maybe that’s why GM decided not to use it.) The bolt on the right is torqued correctly and I did manage to get the one on the left snugged up pretty well. Everything seems to be seated correctly and there’s blue Loctite on both of the bolts, so I feel reasonably confident that all is well in oiling land.
I really, really, really, hope that no gremlins have entered the picture at this point, because I really, really, really don’t want to suddenly lose oil pressure in the middle of an Indiana corn field. I think we all know what that leads to…
So…let’s not have any of that.
Oh, also, the oil dipstick on a GTO attaches to the pan. Not so if you’re using an F Body pan. There’s a little plug that had to be removed from the block. No problem. Screwdriver + Hammer = Removal.
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OK, start the music back. It’s time for more montage!
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There, you have it. Oil pan swapped. NEXT SONG!
(Can you stand the excitement?)
