fbekholden.com

I can get some for you Blacky. I’m actually on my way to the west as we speak for work so when I’m back in town can get whatever photos you need.

The problem we faced is that they are physically too wide for the front spring hanger. The way we got around it was to unpick the inner front hanger point, plate the rail which then also spaced it out the required amount and rewelded the hanger back on.

They also needed a bit of trimming which again pissed me off becuase we waited a few weeks for them “at the powder coaters” from the suppliers only then to have to cut and grind them to get them to fit anyway….

Anyway, rant over when I’m back in qld I can get some more pics for you.


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60Special wrote:A great read and pics BS. Being a fellow V8 converter I can fully understand the need to continually dip into the wallet to cover the unexpected. Great job.

Yep, again I had this conversation with Tim on the weekend. If we were doing this on a Hq onwards or even a K/T/G it would have been a lot more straight forward.

Anyway it is what it is and it’s almost done so just need to push through the pain


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Great perseverance on your part for this project. Rust repairs look great. It is hard to comprehend just how much crap can accumulate in the Y frames, after seeing the piece of yours below the radiator, wow!

Regards
Stephen

Alright, with the rust taken care of, the rear end, engine and transmission all sitting where they needed to be it was time to start planning how to get all the ancillaries to fit. I didn’t realise how small these cars really are until you try and jam a v8 in one…

Given what I wanted to do with the car one of the things that was important to me was keeping the car cool and able to handle the qld summers and traffic.

A few calls to PWR and a lot of measuring we came up with something we thought would do the job. This of course required a little bit of trimming, fiddling, infilling etc to get something that was going to work efficiently with the condenser and trans cooler to go in front of it.

In the end we decided against using the factory rad support and had to trim the bonnet latch despite the best efforts to retain it and made up our own rad support to suit. This gave a solid mounting point for the header and overflow tanks which Tim tigged up. Tim likes things being symmetrical. People often give me shit for my OCD tendencies but put something in front of Tim that that isn’t symmetrical and which his eye start twitching…













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While the cooling system was being nutted out it was becoming apparent how quickly we were running out of realestate.

It was at this point where we could see the subframe would need a trim in a few places to satisfy the required clearance for engineering.

The commodore water pump was going to not be ideal so it was swapped for a heavy metal garage billet job, the castle main rod shop alternator mount was not going to work (ended up being a good template though….), the ac compressor would need some clearance around it so all these little things added up while sorting out the clashes and what got priority.

To make some room in the bay we ended up remote mounting an astra power steering pump and brake booster under the guards.

The springs on the factory bonnet hinges hit the master so I pulled the trigger in the V6 conversion ones which need the lip trimmed of the subframe. This looked a bit dicky (and triggered Tims OCD again) so we removed the whole section after figuring half of it was missing and wouldn’t really be functioning as designed anyway.

Lots of little clashes that needed to be sorted to get everything to fit and functioning properly but still allowing as much serviceability as possible with limited space.
















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That PS rack looks really neat. Makes the old front-mount UC/LH ones look really untidy.

Cheers,
Harv

not sure if you know this but protect the part i have the arrow pointing at on the booster from dirt and moisture, it will destroy the booster in no time flat apparently

It's the breather, which allows air in/out of the booster guts (not into the engine!) as the diaphragm flexes. With the booster under the guard, a remote breather is reccomended - see here for what they look like:

viewtopic.php?t=23007&start=180

Cheers,
Harv

Thanks Mick and Harv for the heads up. The plan was to shroud the booster, power steering pump and other bits and pieces I’ve had to put under the guards to protect them a bit. I’ve also ended up running fenderwall headers (pics to follow shortly)so I wanted a bit of heat protection also but I might double the security of the booster filling up with shit and run a breather as well.


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Far out Brendon I take my hat off to you mate.
Unreal results so far
Kudos!

how come fenderwells apparently CRS do out the proper place extractors for LS in FB/EK, but i spose they only work in conjunction with their front end and engine install kit

Mick wrote: Thu Mar 07, 2024 9:14 pm how come fenderwells apparently CRS do out the proper place extractors for LS in FB/EK, but i spose they only work in conjunction with their front end and engine install kit

My guess is they don't fit - like all the other shit they build ........

Blacky wrote:

Mick wrote: Thu Mar 07, 2024 9:14 pm how come fenderwells apparently CRS do out the proper place extractors for LS in FB/EK, but i spose they only work in conjunction with their front end and engine install kit

My guess is they don't fit - like all the other shit they build ........

Bingo!

They are designed to be used In conjunction with the CRS starter relocation kit(I’ve left factory starter and location) and CRS front end and then you still need to chop them up to make them fit… Tim built Peter Kellys ls powered ek which used CRS catalog and he still has nightmares about it so based on his advice and previous experience we gave their stuff a miss.

As mentioned previously we bought one of their high mount alternator brackets and used half of it for a template and the rest ended up in the bin. Ok if you don’t want to be able to adjust it or be able to plus the front temp sender into the head….


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Once everything was sitting where we could find the most suitable location for everything it was time to start plumbing everything up.

The goal was to try and make everything look as neat as possible while still being as practical possible.

Unfortunately another expensive exercise. Bloody AN fittings and hose are not cheap.

All new brake lines were also plumbed up.








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With everything from the firewall forward sorted taken care of for now it was back to a bit of fab work.

Seatbelt mounts, boot floor, battery relocation and finish welding in the hangers for the caltracs










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