S197 CaptKaos' 2011 S197 LS Swap Build Thread Profile - S197 Mustangs

[Captkaos]

Sunday Feb 19th 2023: Dropped off the front bumper cover at a buddies shop who said he could paint it for me.

Monday Feb 20th 2023: Installed the AN adapter fittings into the trans along with the 90 fittings and the braided hose for the trans cooler lines.



Cut and trimmed the factory deadener and heat shields to fit the modified trans tunnel and reinstalled them to put the transmission in for what I thought was the last time.



Sadly the lower AN fitting "clears" but wont allow the trans to mount centered. I will be removing it again and making some room for the fitting and line routing. On the positive side it appears I will be able to route them high enough away from the exhaust. Pictured is the fitting in question.

 

[Bill Pemberton]

Chaos ensues but the Capn is not deterred! CaptKaos we all enjoy the continuing saga of your build and your fortitude is admirable. Your Mustolet will likely be a fast runner when she is finally done?!

 

[Captkaos]

Mustolet...

LOL Now that my daughter is 16, I am being pressured even more.

 

[Bill Pemberton]

So she skipped " Sweet Sixteen " and went straight to " Speed Sixteen?"

 

[Captkaos]

Tuesday Feb 21th 2023: I removed the trans and took the sledge to the tunnel again to gain more clearance for where the Trans cooler fitting was hitting. Now as you can hopefully see it fits much better with clearance. I also put some sealer on the firewall seam (not shown)



Bolted up the transmission mount and the adapter and bolted the trans in for the last time.


I was very happy with the results as now the engine is sitting right at 2 degrees of down angle.

Back inside the car I final mounted the shifter and connected the cable

Back to the bottom of the car I mounted the shifter mount and cable to the trans, Still needed to adjust it but was happy to be this close.

I also sealed up the new shifter mount plate to the floor.

 

[Captkaos]

Thursday Feb 23th 2023: Drilled the trans body mount to attach the shifter cable and installed the driveshaft.

Went to test fit the exhaust manifolds I have for the Silverado donor and they wouldn't go between the head and the steering shaft. Researching exhaust manifold options.

 

[Captkaos]

Tuesday Feb 28th 2023: Ordered some Summit Cast Iron Manifolds SUM-G9084B, which Summit stated was the same as some Hooker version that fit. They showed up on Sunday so got them installed. They clear both sides on the car, they will need to have a slight bend put in them to get the to turn rearward, but the don't hit anything.






Once I got to that done we started to put the front of the motor on starting with the waterneck on the water pump. I ordered a Summit straight waterneck in December and when I went to install the thermostat, they said would fit when I ordered, well, it didn't fit. So sending that back and have another one from BilletSpecialties that is supposed to fit.

Wednesday Mar 1st 2023: Took the factory front exhaust section and chopped it down in order to fit new downtubes and get it up in the car. Currently waiting on some piping to show up so I can get both sides sorted out.

 

[Captkaos]

Monday Mar 6th 2023: Got the piping in to work on the exhaust. Reinstalled the rear exhaust pipes back in the car and put the front section back in so I can sort out creating the downtubes to connect exhaust to the manifolds.
Shown is the tubing preliminary marked/taped up on where the cuts would be made. Not shown is me using my old Asbuilt drafting skills to route piping through empty space in pipe mills using only spatial measurements









While I was at it I went ahead installed the new water neck outlet on the f-body water pump.

 

[Captkaos]

Tuesday Mar 7th 2023: I dont have a band saw or chop saw so I went by my buddies house and we cut the tubing down per the marks and I also cut the ends were there resonators are for a better fit for welding.

Wednesday Mar 8th 2023: Mocked all the cut pieces together. A few chopsaw flex areas will have to be fixed and one pipe I think was cut on the wrong side or something but pretty happy.

Passenger side shown where the end was a little shorter that I thought.




Drivers side shown where the end needs to be cut down more but otherwise happy with fit.




This is both sides shown put together how they will be welded, You can also see my downtube profile template.

 

[Captkaos]

Thursday Mar 9th 2023: Took the pieces over to a buddies house who said he could tack these together so I could test them in the car, he got them tacked up and I headed home.



Once at the house I got under the car and everything fit up really well, now I just need to tack the pieces together and get it fully welded up. Very happy to be done underneath the car soon.

 

[Captkaos]

Saturday Mar 11th 2023: With some help from a friend I got the down tubes in place and tacked to the factory exhaust.





Dropped it down and dropped if off with the welder to get it all complete welded.

 

[Captkaos]

Sunday Mar 12th 2023: The guy doing the stainless welding for me called and said he had the exhaust done so I went and picked it up. This week is my on call week at work so progress my be slowed a little

 

[Captkaos]

Tuesday Mar 14th 2023: Had some free time this evening from work so I took the opportunity to get the exhaust all bolted in. It is a great feeling to have all the exhaust buttoned up.

 

[Captkaos]

Sunday Mar 19th 2023: Just going to state that there is going to be a couple of weeks missing because I had issues with turbo setup brackets that I was testing out for the future that wasn't going to work with the LS6 intake.
With that said. I got the F-body waterpump and spacers for the Truck balancer installed. During this time I also ordered a few alternative Alternator mounts that didn't work out.

 

[Captkaos]

Tuesday April 04th 2023: I had issues with the length of the stainless braided hose so I ended up buying 10 feet of cloth braided hose with some new AN fittings, made them up at 4 feet 4 inches long. The problem with this was in due to the limited space in the transmission tunnel I have to remove the transmission in order to connect them, on the positive side, I also had to run the Transmission harness for the Terminator X Max anyway. I didn't get any pictures until I was done since I will just taking it apart to put it back the same way plus the transmission harness. The Intake and the truck DBW throttle body are just sitting there at this point, but I did reposition the factory Mustang AC system up out of the way.

 

[Captkaos]

Thursday April 06th 2023: The prior week I ordered a www.lssimple.net low mount alternator mount because with this being a iron block it doesn't have the 2 other provisions for bolt holes and I didn't want to have to go through the trouble of buying another low mount that would required drilling the block. I also got a factory F-body idler pulley. I got it bolted in and found that it had very little clearance between the alternator and the swaybar.



You can see here at the red arrow the issue.


So I took the grinder to the offending area and made some room.


And now I have plenty of clearance.


Bolted it all back in and installed the belt


With that out of the way I separated the AC core from the Radiator and Cooler so I could remove those and drain the coolant along with draining the trans fluid. With all this out I cut off the factory hard lines and plan to run a barb fitting with a clamp for the AN lines to the transmission cooler. Unfortunately, I didn't have the AN to barb fitting so I hope to pick some up tomorrow.

 

[PatientZero]

That is not much belt wrap on the alternator. Seems like it needs another idler pulley somewhere to pull that around some more.

 

[Captkaos]

Monday April 17th 2023: Got the Radiator and the trans cooler reinstalled in the car along with the fan assembly.



Removed the heater hoses and installed a Trans dipstick. Got all the grounds and upper bolts installed and installed the trans vent line.





Sized up the steam line and bent it to accommodate the LS6 intake.

 

[Captkaos]

Week of May 7-10th, 2023: I spent(Wasted) WAY more time that I care to say trying to find an off the shelf upper/lower radiator hose set that would work. I spliced a lower up and decided it had to many splices in it to be reliable so I ordered a bead roller and some aluminum pipe and silicone hose straight and 90's. I didn't want to have to attempt to remember or find a specific PN and cut at specific points. This all arrived this week.





Picture of the spliced pipe I abandoned.

 

[Captkaos]

Saturday May 13th 2023: I ordered a new Moroso Expansion tank that arrived. Got started on measuring up the upper radiator hose assembly.



Got everything cut and bead rolled and mocked in. Waiting on more aluminum piping (I used 1.5") to show up to do the lower.