Intake Manifold arrived

Last night the intake manifold that I bought arrived. I bought this used from an individual who owns a brand new 2010 Camaro that he upgraded. The intake has 400 miles on it, and as expected, looks brand new. After my motor & clutch nonsense, this was a breath of fresh air. I got a great deal, and it came very well packaged, and looked perfect as promised.

on with the pics.

As it was after unwrapping it:


on it's back:


fuel rails removed:


Insulation piece removed:


Additional parts that came with it:


I need to verify what the additional parts are. One appears to be the vacuum line that would go to the master cylinder. Another is a fuel line, though I can't see how it attaches to the rail. The third is a mystery, though I suspect that it's a vacuum line or a PCV line. It's unlikely that I'll use any of them anyway, but for now I want to know what they are.

One neat thing is that this manifold has the plastic piece with the foam insulation that covers the actual runners. If I keep the stock fuel rails, it might work well to paint just this piece in order to enhance the appearance. Originally I'd planned to paint the whole intake, and I still may, but this will be a good way to decide if I like that look or not.

More good news!

The used clutch I bought (yeah, I know...) came in yesterday.

It's trashed. Fortunately the seller has been great so far and is supposed to refund me right away.

Pressure plate:


Clutch:



backside of flywheel. How hot do you think it got to turn purple on the BACK side?


Buying used stuff is awesome!

Well that bubble burst in a hurry...

Today I finally got around to running a carfax report on the VIN that was on the tag that my new motor came from.

It turns out that the vehicle had 130,000 miles on it when the salvage title was issued, not 62,000 like the salvage yard indicated. Awesome! My motor has over twice the miles I thought it had.

On the other hand, there's an extensive service history showing that most work was done at the dealer, which means that it spent it's live soaked in Mobil 1 synthetic oil. Visibly, the motor is in excellent condition, so maybe I'm getting worked up over nothing, but now I have to at least crack the main caps and connecting rods to see what the crank journals and bearings look like. :(

Another oddity is that the carfax shows that the milage jumped from 43,000 to 93,000 miles in a 14 month period. Holy frig! I guess one bright side is that most of the miles are apparently highway miles.

I guess it's time to start pricing stroker kits.

Motor Tear Down has started!

My good buddy Lance and his wife Phaedra came out to visit on the weekend before last. I always enjoy the time I get to spend with Lance because he's one of my only friends that's a fellow gearhead. I have a couple friends that are into cars, but not into turning wrenches. Having a friend to turn wrenches with is one of the most enjoyable experiences I have outside of my family, so having the rare opportunity to actually do it is something that I really look forward to. This opportunity did not disappoint.

Lance and I spent most of Saturday tearing the motor down. I'd left it untouched until he got here so that we could start from the beginning.

First order of business was to start pulling the wiring harness off. We labeled most of the connections as we unplugged the connectors, and unbolted various connections holding the harness in place. We then removed the coil packs from the valve covers. This was the result:


We then pulled the intake manifold off:


Here's a glory shot of it next to it's new home:


Next we popped off the valve covers and the lifter valley cover. The valvetrain looks outstanding. Everything was nice and clean under the valve covers:


Off came the heads. You can't see it in the pic, but the cylinder walls all look outstanding, with a nice cross-hatch pattern still clearly visible.


That's where Lance and I stopped. I had hoped to continue by pulling off the oil pan, but we ran out of time.

One issue that I ran into later on was trying to get the pulley/damper off the crank. None of my pullers were adequate for this job. Over this past weekend I borrowed a puller from Advance Auto and was able to get it off with only a mild amount of drama. If I ever get time to work on it again, I'll pull off the oil pan, and then pull off the timing chain cover, pull of the timing chain & gears and pull the cam out. That'll basically be the end of my motor work until I get all of my new parts so that I can re-assemble.

Speaking of parts, I've been buying up stuff as the deals come up. I've purchased most of the parts that I need for the transmission swap (minus the transmission itself) along with some of the new accessories that I need for the swap (water pump, power steering pump, alternator, etc). Just yesterday I finally landed a deal on an intake manifold, fuel rails & injectors off of a 400 mile 2010 Camaro SS.


The last big items that I need to buy for the motor is the cylinder heads, camshaft, and f-body oil pan. Once I've got that stuff bought, I'll be able to start putting the motor back together. Ideally I'd like to have the motor together sometime over the winter, and then sell the Corvette as soon as possible in the spring so that I'll have the money to buy the rest of what I need to do the installation. I'd like to have the new drivetrain running by the end of the summer so that I can get it tuned and use it a bit before next winter.

Whether or not that actually happens remains to be seen. :)