Engine Assembly - Progress

Over the last few weeks, I've been tinkering with the engine, not performance stuff, just trying to make the engine fit with my black and silver theme.
The LS engines aren't the prettiest out of the box, but they can be made to look pretty good with a tidy up, some color and a bit of bling.

The Progress so far,

Partial strip down, all the accessories off, inlet manifold, valley cover, rocker covers, sump, starter, water pump, timing cover, power steering pump, engine mounts.
This pic is the engine almost back together except for Water Pump, Starter, and Power Steering Pulley.



 In this pic, you can see the LS3 oil pan with rear sump,
The sump on my engine needs to be changed to a front sump due to the placement of a cross member on the chassis.
This cross member placement is a decision you need to make with Classic Revival when you order as it could have been placed further forward to suit later engines than the LS1 front sump version.

Bought a second hand VZ LS1 sump off eBay, stripped it down,
HPC coated in gloss black.
You can see the oil ports available for use after removing the recirculating plate just above the filter mount.

Pulled apart the alternator to clean up and add some color.










The VE alternator is made by Mitsubishi.
The most difficult part of dis-assembly was removing the front pulley, there is no where to lock the spindle from rotating, and Holden doesn't sell spare pulleys, so some care is required.
After trying to shock the nut loose with an impact gun, I lucked on the easiest way to hold the pulley from spinning.
Wrap the serpentine belt around the pulley and clamp belt in the vice, as the vice closes, the belts lock up on the pulley and the impact gun will whip it off easily.
Next undo the four long bolts that hold the 2 halves together.


To separate the 2 halves, you don't need to remove the four small screws behind the pulley, these only hold a keeper plate over the back of the bearing.
I removed this and the bearing later so i could get the casting HPC coated.

Wriggling the 2 halves back and forth, the front half will come away from the coils.
you can then easily pull out the shaft and magnet assembly leaving just the coils still screwed in to the back half.

3 screws hold the coil assembly in place, 2 are easily accessible, to get to third, the coils need to be lifted out a few millimeters which bends the wires at the bottom, so care is needed, this will uncover the third screw as can be seen in this pic.
Every thing then lifts out easily.








The trick to re assembling the rotor back into the housing is too press down the brushes in to the bearing housing and insert a pin from the back to hold them down while you insert the rotor shaft back in to its bearing.
You can see the little pin sticking out of the hole in this pic just below the center of the back housing.







Here's a pic with the Alternator, Corvette Engine Mount Bracket, VZ engine mount and sump fitted.










Its funny how the simplest tasks can be quite frustrating,
The pic here is the alternator support bracket.
With the move to the Corvette Engine Mount Bracket, which now mounts to the forward engine mount bosses, effectively moving the engine rear wards in relation to the chassis, the Alternator Bracket sits 12mm off the boss face, and also hit the Engine Mount Bracket forward Web.
Turning it upside down and slotting the mount hole was all that ended up being required.


You may have noticed in an earlier pic the Oil Cooler Adapter, this is from Improved Racing and is specifically designed to fit the LS GTO and Holden LS1 sump and accessories package.
Part number IR-EGM-1007
Its the only adapter i could find that clears the Engine Mounts and Alternator, and doesn't lower the filter below the sump base.

The original LS Oil Gallery Cover is removed to reveal two ports just above the Oil Filter.
The Adapter is a two piece unit.
The first piece is the mounting plate.


This pic shows the port block mounted to the adapter plate.
Two versions are available, -8AN, and -10AN fittings with two 1/8th NPT ports for Pressure and Temp Sensors.








View from below.














View from Side.

In this pic, you can see how the adapter sits in relation to the Alternator and Engine Mount

In the upper right you can see my coil relocation brackets.

The LS3 has the dip stick tube mounting in the block  towards the rear of the engine, as opposed to the LS1 being mounted into the side of the sump towards the front.
In this pic, I've drilled and tapped to suit an M16 grub screw and added some gasket cement around the thread to seal up the hole.

The standard VZ or GTO dip stick tube clears the Engine Mount Brackets perfectly without modification.









In this pic you can see the LH Coil relocation Bracket.
While i hadn't seen this bracket mounted like this before, the holes in the bracket line up perfectly with the bosses in the block previously used by the VE engine mounts.
I'll replace the leads with some right angle versions to clear the exhaust manifolds.

This is the RH Coil Relocation Bracket.
Fits just as neat, but the coil loom plugs interfere with the starter solenoid.

The two choices are either make up a bracket that moves the coils out a bit at the bottom, or get an indexing starter motor like the MSD 5096 model.

These brackets I bought from CBM to suit the LS3 coil.

In this pic, you can see the CAM Sensor extension wire and shield fitted, this is not standard on Holden versions because the loom comes down over the top of the engine.
I saw this part fitted to a crate engine, it suited my needs as i want to hide the wiring as much as practical.
Also in this pic you can see a plug over the crank end i machined up from a bit of acetyl rod i had lying around.
This is to accurately locate the timing cover back into place which needs to seal evenly around the crank balancer and line up with the block sump face to mate to the sump, otherwise they leak.