LQ4 into a 3rd Gen/1972 Nova by frojoe

3 minute(s) of a 891 minute read

Mostly-welded x-member placed back on jig to check alignment...

Driver side alignment is pretty good..

Some welding on the driver side notch (was previously the passenger side notch), but not a ton..

Trans mount alignment is pretty good

Passenger side has more linear butt welds...

And there's the shrinkage. Very interesting that the passenger side doesn't have too many more welds but all the shrinkage occurred on the one side. To make my life easier I'll probably just slot the holes laterally instead of make a new side plate or space the side plate out and add a filler plate or just filler weld...

Oil pan swap is for a couple reasons:

1) bottom of the Holley 302-3 oil pan is same height as my modified truck pan, however the sealing face for the oil filter is about an inch closer to the block (like an f-body pan). Because my pan is a truck pan, the filter feature on the pan is quite a bit lower and I was forced to run a super stubby oil filter in order to get the filter to not hang below the modified bottom of the pan, so the Holley pan will let me run a bigger/longer filter while keeping the bottom of filter slightly recessed from bottom of pan

2) the Holley 302-3 pan also comes with dual turbo oil drain ports (1/2" NPT) already tapped in it, so I don't have to screw with welding my existing oil pan and the resulting possible distortion and impure welds

3) new pan's turbo oil drain ports are also about 1-2" further forward, which gives more clearance for the turbo drain fittings at full steering lock to the relocated locations of my inner tie rod ends, where they mount to the drag link. This wouldn't be an issue if I hadn't customized my drag link to minimize bump steer

4) new pan has a clearance hump in the front half of it for a 4" stoker crank.. at the time I got the pan I was throwing around the idea of stroking my engine in the near future, but now I'm more inclined to leave the engine together for a while. Because my modified truck pan also had a rework on the front half of it, with thick-wall aluminum plate used, I was doubtful that the mods would clear a 4" crank

5) the welds from the original modification of my truck pan (in the front half above the subframe cross-member) are super gross and porous, and have misted out oil over time which really pisses me off