Welcome back to Chuck's Garage, we're back to our LS engine swap and this time Chuck
walks us through the plumbing.
Hi I'm Chuck Hanson, welcome to Chuck's Garage.
Now if your joining us for the first time what we're doing here is we're installing
an LS engine into a classic Chevelle chassis.
Now in the past what we've done is we've installed it using parts from Hooker and Holley and
if you're interested in the specifics be sure to check out our earlier videos.
Now what we're gonna be working on today is the plumbing.
We're gonna use Earl's plumbing hoses, fittings, connectors, all that stuff there to get this
thing plumbed and ready to carry all the fluids, we're gonna plumb the trans cooler, the power
steering cooler, the transmission, the fuel system, the whole deal.
Now what I'm working on right now is the gas tank that we got from Tanks INC.
As you can see I've gone ahead and already done the installation here for the fittings
connecting to the pump side and we have a fuel sending sensor over here.
Now I've done all this, I'm about ready to slide this tank into place.
Hey, before I slide this tank underneath here, let me show you a couple of things.
Now the lines, this line here, this is the pressure line here, it comes off the fuel
pump, this is the return line, this is going to come from the regulator up front there.
This is just a vent line, this is just a rubber hose that's going to allow the gas tank to
vent it's self.
Now I've also gone ahead and wired everything up here the red actually is going to power
the pump that's inside the tank, black is for the ground, and the green is for the fuel
level sending unit.
Now since we're going to be talking about plumping today, we're going to talk a little
bit about the different types of hoses and fittings you can use, and what lead us to
make the decisions that we did.
For the majority of our plumbing, we're going to use this Pro-Lite Ultra.
Now some of you might be familiar with the Pro-Lite name, it came in an earlier version
called the Pro-Lite 350, but the reason we're using this is that it has a higher working
pressure, it's still got the stainless braided reenforcement, it's rubber lined carrying
all types of different fluids here, and it's got a tighter weave on the outside for a little
bit better brace resistance.
Now to use that hose what you've got to use is a AN fitting.
Now these from Earl's are called their swivle seals, and as you can see, the standard red/blue
fittings are what you are probably most familiar with, but, since we're wanting to be cool
with this whole installation, they also make this Ano Tuff fitting, basically the same
AN fitting but it comes with a hard anodized finish in black, and as you can see, it's
going to go together really nicely with this black hose that we're going to use.
Now over here what we've got is Earl's Super Stock hose, basically it's a black rubber
hose with a working pressure of up to 250 PSI.
Now you can see, it's just that there's no stainless steel reenforcement, and what we
like about this stuff, besides it's 250 working pressure is that it's really easy to use.
It works in conjunction with these special barbed fittings and the insulation's really
easy, I'll show you that in a minute.
Now the last hose that we're gonna be working with today is Earl's power steering hose.
Now this goes on the pressure side of your power steering pump down in the steering box,
and it has a working pressure of 2250 PSI.
Now that's going to be more than enough for what we need, it's got a nice braided fitting
on the outside again for anti-abrasion capabilities there and it also uses a very specialized
fitting.
Now they're very similar to the AN fittings, but these are made out of steel and they work
together like this, the installation is pretty much the same as with an AN fitting, and I'll
tell you what, let's go ahead and show you how this stuff all goes together.
Well alright, now the first thing that we've got to do once we've determined the length
of the hose that we need is, we're going to have to cut it to that length.
Now once you've determined the length of your hose, we're ready to make the cut and the
first thing that we'll want to do is give it a wrap with some tape, to kind of keep
the ends from fraying when your making the cut.
Now I like to use duct tape, other people use making tape or whatever, the main thing
is that you get it on there and it secures the end.
Now once we're ready to make the cut, we've got air in the shop here so we use a die grinder
with a cutoff wheel on it.
It gives a nice clean, easy and quick cut.
If you don't have the luxury of air, of course you can always use a trusty hacksaw.
Now what you want to make sure though is that you've got a fine tooth hack saw blade in
here, at least 32 teeth per inch, now I have friends of mine that tell me that they've
also used a cutoff saw which works but, what you want to do is make sure that you use what
ever is handy and that you make a nice clean cut on their, it'll make putting that fitting
on a whole lot easier.
Now I know that we told you that we told you that we're gonna be using those black Ano
Tuff fittings here but for demonstration purposes we're gonna use the colored stuff to make
it a little bit easier for you to see.
First thing we do is we take the fitting apart.
If you look inside of the fitting there, you'll see that there are threads in there and they
go counter-clockwise.
What that's going to do is it's really going to help seat the hose inside of this fitting
here.
Well now we can go ahead and chuck the fitting up here in the vise so we've got a nice stable
platform to work with.
Here's a little tip for you, now we've threaded the hose into this red fitting here, and I'm
going to put a little piece of tape around here to show us where the end mark is so when
we get to assembling the pieces, we'll be able to tell whether it's pushing the hose
out or not.
Now we'll just put a little lube on the threads of the fitting there, a little bit on the
insides of the hose, and we'll just start threading it on to the blue fitting.
Now we're gonna keep on tightening this red fitting here, until the gap between the red
fitting and the blue is 23 to 46 thousandths.
Now we're going to use a 30 thousandths feeler gauge here, because it's kind of right in
the middle.
There it is, and that ought to get it.
Alright now one more tip before we're done with this, you want to make sure that incase
there was any trash or anything that went down into the line, just give it a quick blow,
there we go, make sure you get all that trash out of there.
Well now we're gonna work with this Earl's Super Stock hose, you remember what I told
you about this stuff being really easy to use?
Well it is, and I'm going to show you just how easy it is, and I'm going to start by
making a cut.
Again once you've determined what your length is, I use this hose cutter that I got down
at Sears, and it just slices through this thing like a hot knife through butter, all
there is to it.
Now the next thing you want to do is take the little thing here and just slip it over
the end, just like that.
Alright now we're going to chuck the fitting up in the vise again just so we have, again,
just a good stable platform to work with, that ought to do it, and then, we'll put a
little bit of oil right on this fitting here, little bit on the inside, and you see these
barbs?
All we're going to do is push that head on, there we go, until it's fully seated.
That's all it is to that, doesn't get much easier than that.
Well now the last piece of hose that we're going to be working with is the power steering
hose with that 2250 PSI.
Now it uses a fitting that's very similar to the other one, in fact if you look inside
of this, you'll see those threads that go counter clock wise in here to help make the
thread grab the hose and thread it in there and seat it fully.
Now we're gonna go ahead and put this hose in the fitting here.
If you remember those threads are counter clockwise so what I do is I push in and turn
counter clockwise at the same time.
We'll do this until it bottoms out in the fitting there.
Alright, this one's a little bit tougher than the other ones to get started here, but we're
still going to go ahead and put a little bit of oil on there, put a little bit of oil on
the inside of the fitting here, and once we get things started, just thread that on there.
Now once we've got this started on the fitting here, we're going to go ahead and lay a piece
of tape in there to service our marker again to make sure that the hose isn't pushing out
while we're tightening up that fitting.
Now you might remember that on the other fittings that we were looking for 23 to 46 thousandths
clearance here between the one half if the fitting and the other, this one here, we're
just going to tighten it up until it bottoms out.
Well the tape didn't slip, so we know that we got a good installation there.
Now again just like with the other hoses, one last step that we want to do is go ahead
and blow everything out, make sure any debris that might have gotten in there is blown out.
Now we're gonna go ahead and plumb this power steering hoses first.
Here's a little tip for you, whenever you get ready to tighten these things, make sure
that you hold the adaptor or whatever your screwing into, good and solid with another
wrench, that way you can tighten it up and that will ensure that you get a good seal
there.
Ok, now what we're going to do is hook up from the cooler back up here to the steering
box.
Now the way we plumb that cooler is pressure from the pump goes into the inlet side of
the power steering box, comes out on this side, goes back through the cooler, then comes
up here and it goes into the remote reservoir.
Now in order to make all of this happen, we had to get these special adaptors here from
Detroit speed, they come in, depending on what kind of gear box your using, they come
in both the metric with the O-ring fittings or just a standard tapered flared fitting.
This is a metric box out of a Jeep if you remember, so we used the metric kind, with
the O-rings on it.
Now I've gone ahead and removed the power steering pump so we can replace the stock
fitting with this one from our friends at Detroit speed.
This will allow us to use AN fittings on here and it just replaces it perfectly.
Alright, now the high pressure hose goes onto this side of the power steering box, and we'll
connect it to the power steering pump once I get that reinstalled.
There we go.
Now I went ahead and fabbed up my transmission cooler lines here.
Now they'll just attach tot he side of the transmission were I've already installed these
adaptors.
These go from quarter inch MPT to a -6.
Alright, we're gonna go ahead and cinch these down with a wrench.
Since these are AN fittings you don't have to torque them down, all you have to do is
get that good seal on the inside there where it flares, doesn't take an excessive amount
of torque, and we're good to go.
Well now we're going to turn our attention to the fuel system.
Now when we dropped the tank in earlier today, I had already run all these lines and kind
of estimated how long they needed to be.
So now I've got them run up by the frame rail like we were going to, and this is the pressure
line here, so we're going to plumb it in to the fuel filter and then it goes on up into
the fuel rails.
So I've already marked where we need to make the cut, that ought to give us a little bit
of slack there and we'll make the cut, put our fittings on there, and we'll be set on
the pressure side.
Well the other line that comes from the gas tank is the return line and it's ultimately
going to come off of our regulator here.
So my plan is to create a sort of a fake fire wall where I can mount the computer and the
regulator and then we'll be able to connect this.
That's going to have to come at a later time but as you can see we've got plenty of hose
here to make that connection and we'll tend to it later.
Now we had to remove the power steering pump in order to get the AN fitting on there so
now we've got that done, so we're ready to bolt it back up.
Now with the pump securely bolted back in place, the last thing we have to do is hook
up the high pressure hose.
Alright now we'll just take the tension off of the tensioner here, slide the belt back
in place, there we go, we're back in business.
You know while I'm down here we have one more operation that we might as well take care
of.
We're going to install the O2 sensor.
Now installing the O2 sensor isn't that difficult but it's placement is kind of critical.
What you want to do is get about 6 inches down from the collector and that will allow
it to get a good sampling of the exhaust as it comes out, and you also want to get, I
don't know just a slight angle, maybe you know 3-4-5-6 degrees.
And what that's going to do is that's going to point it down and it'll prevent the condensation
from the exhaust from getting up in there and doing damage to your O2 sensor.
So I've determined that right about here should be a good spot, I'm going to go ahead and
mark it, there we go, and then we'll take this pipe off, we'll drill it, weld it, and
we'll have our O2 deal in place where it needs to be, and then we can move on to the next
project.
Now the O2 sensor requires that a 3 quarter inch hole be drilled in to this head pipe
here, so I already drilled a quarter inch starter hole for it.
Now what I've got here is a step bit.
We're gonna just go ahead and insert that in there and keep drilling until we get that
3 quarter inch size that we need.
Now before we start welding, it's always a good idea to kind of dress out the inside
of that newly drilled hole there to get rid of any loose grindings or metal shards that
might be in there.
I think we're about ready to start welding now.
Now the O2 sensor comes with a threaded nut that's a bung and it just welds directly to
the pipe and it retains the O2 sensor in place there.
Alright, now we're ready to go ahead and reinstall this head pipe.
Go ahead an torque down these head flange bolts, and then the clamp that holds the head
pipe in place to the rest of the exhaust.
And finally we can screw the O2 sensor into place.
Now if you've been with us since the beginning of this LS engine installation, you probably
remember that we used a Holley oil pan to facilitate it's installation, but you run
into some steering interference in lock to lock situations and you can see where the
steering linkage comes in contact with the oil pan.
Now Holley has since modified that oil pan to give us the clearance that we need on Chevelles,
let me show you what we've got.
Well to correct that interference problem between the steering linkage and the oil pan,
here's what Holley's come up with.
Where the sump would actually extend itself all the way to the front of the pan here,
you can see where they've actually created a scallop, and that's going to give us the
clearance that we need between the linkage and the oil pan.
On the inside you can see that it's been changed on the inside as well, which also necessitates
the use of this new pick up that comes with the oil pan.
As you can see it's got a little extra kick in here to comply with that extra kick up
in the front of the oil pan and the windage tray is the same, all the hard ware is the
same, but this will work on any 64-72 GMA body.
Now that about wraps it up for today, next time when we come back, we're going to wire
it and we're going to fire it, so you want to be sure to join us in a couple of weeks.