I’ve been planning the engine rebuild for the truck for a while now and needed to pull a head off and see if I had a tired old smoker or a half decent base for the turbo motor. It had been raining all day here, so I did some more work on the door gaps and hoped the weather would improve. It had stopped raining when I went in to get a cup of tea, so when I came back out I pulled off the hood and set about pulling one of the heads off. It all came apart easily and just as I was lifting the head off it started to rain again with the bare metal hood outside. By the time I realised it was raining it was soaked, so I left it out there as it wasnt going to get any wetter and carried on.

I was pleased to still be able to see the factory cross hatch on the cylinder walls, and the carbon lip at the end of the cylinder was almost non existent. This is good news as the pistons I’d bought on impulse from ebay were stock bore sized and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to use them. I took a few pics and popped the head back on for now. I also thought I’d need a new throttle body to fit the LS1 manifold as it had a fly-by-wire one on there, but after checking I found the truck one bolted straight up. It’ll need the outlet moving on the water pump and the idler moved to get it on there properly, but it’ll be worth it not to have the hideous truck manifold.

I bought a motor off ebay early this year, and have had it sat on a pallette in work waiting for its day. We were quiet in work, and the ’55 was going to get its exhausts done, so I got it dropped over in the works van. It’s a 6.0L LSx series engine from a 2002ish Chevy pickup or SUV. It’s an Iron block with ally heads which have lower compression than the car versions so are perfect for forced induction (can you guess where this is going?)

I’m completely comfortable with all of the electronics on the LT1’s in the ’55 and Camaro, but this is the next generation to them and has a lot more wiring to work out. I intend to make my own loom from the factory one as I actually enjoy doing it in a strange and twisted way. I went through all the disconnected plugs and worked out what went where in my head, but was left with a huge bundle of wires. Most of these will be replaced with a new fuseboard or removed but there’s still an awful lot to find. The truck itself is out for media blasting at the same bodyshop that did the Camaro. They are priming it and painting it with a top coat of left over paint to give it some protection from the elements when it comes back. Looks like I have a few years work yet.