Haha you started this post over a year ago and just now updated?! At least you came back! I'm making my engine look much better right now too.

 

I'm going to be replacing the seats and carpet, so I'm not too worried about shampooing stuff. I do have to pressure wash the black carpet, I don't trust it being totally clean, even though it looks like it is.
I hadn't really thought about the plastics holding much, I'll have to clean them real well. Simple green or odoban should work. I'm going to have to work on the headliner soon as well, the fuzzy stuff is annoying. It looks like a fuzzy pocket.

I started to polish the aluminum venture engine mounts. The brushed look from 220 grit looks good. Polished will look even better. I will have to do something with the fender supports to tie them in. I'll probably either go with an annodized look paint or try to have them zinc plated or something. Even red would look better
I haven't bought a spare intake plenum to start polishing yet.
I think after very throughout cleaning, the car should be relatively smoke free. The cabin filter is probably holding a lot of smoke too.

I had a seized ignition cylinder and with school I had no time to mess with it. I fixed it a couple weeks ago, real simple. I still have to get a new cylinder because I don't trust the used passlock in the junkyard cylinder. It'd be nice to have one key again too .

I'm back at it again, atleast until school starts.


I'll have to take some "baseline" pictures to have something to compare my results to.

 

I'm back and I'm making progress.

I got camaro calipers with brackets (and bolts) from a local auto salvage for 25 each last weekend. Aside from the bracket being a little rusty, they don't look too bad. I think I'll rebuild them to make em good as new. A rebuild kit is a lot cheaper than turning them in for remans. I trust my work over offshore re-builders .

I;m going to inspect the pistons and bores this weekend to make sure they are still serviceable. They only have a few dry rot cracks in the dust boot from sitting unused for so long. I took a peek under the boot and they seem shiny , with some rust on the outside of the pistons (above the seal), which is totally normal and fixable and not a real issue. On a side note, I think the two aluminum calipers may be lighter than one of our front boat anchors. If I remember, I'll take a few pics during the rebuilding process, because there's not much out there except for an article from install university covering the matter.

I'm making progress installing the tiburon seats. I ground the rivets holding the front "fingers" on the seat bracket, then bolted the fingers to the tiburon bracket, using grade 8 fasteners. Luckily the tiburon seat brackets are similar in width so it's easy enough to mock em in. There is a small difference in length. (small enough it's challenging to negotiate another bolt hole in custom rear portion of my bracket) add to that they are spring loaded manual coupe seats and it's fun every time I bump the handle during adjustments. (I'll take some pics during reassembly after I install my new to me black carpet)
I haven't played with the rears yet, but by the looks of it, I should be able to fasten the lower spring steel "bracket" from the monte to the tiburon seat with bailing wire, stainless steel zip ties and heavy duty nylon zip ties or maybe small hog rings. The lower rear seat is slightly narrower than the monte one, so I may have to fiberglass in some arm rests in the side plastics to fill the void.
The upper rear seat shouldn't be too difficult either(it's also 50/50 bench), utilizing the "swivel" bracket from the tiburon and bolting on the tiburon latches to the metal support behind the seat. Again the upper rear isn't a perfect fit so I may have to do some fiberglass work later to make it look stock"ish". I was thoroughly surprised at how much lighter these seats are than the stock ones, even the rear bench. They have a higher quality more supportive foam as well, not the heavy squishy orange stuff gm uses . Heck with all this weight reduction, maybe I'll be able to keep up with a 3.8 .

I'm still doing my research on what actuator to use to lock my fuel door. We have a gas thief in the area, and I think he/she should start to pay for their own. I have my eye on a fuel door actuator that GM uses, but I'm still trying to figure out what connector they use, doesn't quite look like a standard actuator connector (not like either our trunk or doors) in pics and I can't find a wiring diagram to see how many pins it has. If anyone is knows that connector gm used for its fuel door actuators in the corvettes, I'd love to know.

Again with a full school schedule I don't have much time to mess with the car too much lately, Atleast until christmas break. Too much to do, and not enough time. I don't post much, but when I do it's a story

 

I'm going to get rid of the smoke smell next. I thought the coffee and citrus odoban did the trick, but this heat wave brought it right back.[/QUOTE]


The Smoke smell can be difficult. I had a Leather Jacket that I left at a friends home. Didn't realize where it went till about a year later she gave it back to me.
She has a wood stove in the house and the Jacket smelled of Smoke.

I used everything I could think of, with little results. I finally tried a freshener from a lumber supply store it has charcoal filters in it. It was the size of a small jar. I stuck it in the garment bag and let it hang for 6 months and now the smoke smell is gone completely.
So that might be an option?
You also might check with those companies that restore homes after a fire or flood to see if they recommend anything.

 

Thanks for the reply,
I'll try the charcoal to see if it does anything. I think the majority of residue smell is clung on the windows and in the cabin filter. If changing the filter and scrubbing the windows doesn't help, I'll try hanging the car in my closet with some charcoal . In all seriousness though, I'll try some charcoal or activated carbon and see if it helps. Coffee did help a lot, so maybe charcoal will get the rest out.


Update on the calipers,
I checked all four of the caliper pistons and they are fine. The worst only has some dried brake fluid and melted rubber boot on the working surface. These are prime candidates to rebuild. I have the brackets sitting in some phosphoric acid, converting the rust.

Now all i gotta do is get the seals, boots, and guide pins; then I can get started on the rebuild process.

 

I thought about doing F-Body calipers but it's not worth it really. And if you want you can check out my garage, i have my future plans for my LS there. Mine is daily driven so I'm not trying to aim for huge gains... Pretty much basic mods

 

From what I've read, the f-body upgrade seems like it has some merit. Some people say that the pedal has more movement, but others say its basically the same. Not knowing how thoroughly people bled their system after replacing the calipers, I'm going to with hold judgement until I do the swap. Rock auto shows both vehicles have a 1 inch bore on the master, there shouldn't be a noticeable difference in pedal travel unless someone let some air in.

I took a look at your garage, we are going in similar directions with our cars. I saw you put dual thrush mufflers on yours. How does it sound ?

I gotta take some pics and set up my garage, never got around to that yet. PO didn't take good care of it so I gotta find its best angle. Being a 3.4, instead of adding performance mods so much, I'm just trying to change things to my take of what stock should/could have been. If I can add some pep here or there though, I will.

 

Same here, my PO let his 2 sons drive to high school.... They sons were 5 years apart so the car took some beating but was pretty low mileage. There's more but i don't want to ramble on about my PO. But here is my youtube channel:https://www.youtube.com/user/Brendocee55/videos

Just recently starting to post on there that's why there are only 4 vids

 

Update:
tapped the caliper bracket to match w-body bolts and did a quick test fit. These calipers are gonna be a TIGHT fit under 16 inch wheels. I wouldn't recommend doing this mod if you have other people do your tire rotations; your calipers and wheels will get banged up very quickly that way! It takes a very steady hand to slip the wheel over that caliper without scraping while lining up the wheel studs. However, no more front caliper gap!


ordered:
slotted rotors w/ ceramics from brakelabs on ebay (just shy of 180) -gold zinc color was cheapest
rebuild kits for the ls1 calipers

just gotta clean up the calipers and prep then for new seals & boots
Can't wait to feel the difference in stopping power. Those brake pads are huge compared to our stockers!

Everything should be here in time for spring break.
I'll do a write up for rebulding the ls1 calipers, install univ. has one, but it could use more pictures; it's not horribly detailed.
Buying good quality calipers at the JY and rebuilding them yourself is by far the most cost effective way to do this. Plus, I don't trust parts store reman calipers anymore, we've had far too many leak out of the box. Nobody likes waking up to an empty MC with a puddle of brake fluid under your wheel .

 

Would love to see pics of all your progress