I will likely follow along with this as some day I will be doing a lot of what is on your list so I can keep my car going down the road like it should!

 

Cool post!

 

Thanks guys....performance isn't always about going fast. I need to get 350K outta this thing and hopefully there'll be enough left over when I'm done driving it everyday to make into a hotrod....

 

I know the feeling well my friend!

BDV

 

I had that same plan until the car decided to have other plans and the oil pumped failed and now it sits on jack stands for the summer and winter while it gets a newly modded motor put in it, but have to save for it first. So up on stands it went. Will do some things here and there just to keep getting my "v" fix in and feel accomplished.

 

That socks man. How is one supposed to prevent oil pump failyre? Mileage?

 

I've been trying to justify an oil pump replacement but have found very very few cases where a stock pump failed....I've seen more reports of the melling replacements failing because of excessive casting flash.

 

To start things off, I took the car to a muffler shop to make sure it would actually come apart after 10 years and almost 200k miles. As I want to take the cats off to make things as easy as possible for the starter and motor mount swap, I was particularity concerned about the manifold studs..

They broke one and went ahead and replaced it and all the rest including the cat back bolts and charged me 130 bucks...a little steep but if you've ever tried to drill a manifold stud out laying flat on your back under a car, it isn't unreasonable...this will save me a lot of time and time is money!

My list keeps growing so I'm editing the original post as I go...

 

When I was doing the exhaust with my friend (on our backs in his garage) I had one of the manifold bolts come off of my drivers side manifold. Luckily for me he had just put on LT's and still had is factory manifolds laying there so I just had to take mine off and put his on. Did it way faster than I thought in about 2.5 hours. made me happy and it was free! hehe Still to this day I do not know how it came loose and off the manifold but hey got it fixed!

BDV

 

Good call on the replacement bolts. However the starter and cats were not necessary for motor mount install on my stock 06. Only thing that hung me up was one bolt on the driver side top mount. Took a freight train to bust it loose.

 

Never wrenched on the V but I've read that while not necessary, taking the cats out should make the stater and motor mounts easier....I'll be frustrated enough just trying to get this all done in a week...I'll need all the help I can get!

 

May prove to be a useful thread, thanks!

 

I wish u the best of luck that's a lot of work for one week. I hope nothing snags you up. In what order is your plan of attack

 

If you were in the DFW area i would lend a hand. That is a lot work for sure in week!

BDV

 

I'm going to start up front and r&r the balancer first so I can get it torqued good before putting it on jack stands (no lift but I got everything else). While I'm doing the balancer ill stick the water pump and tensioners/idler on it, remove alternator then put it up in the air. Remove exhaust take starter off and take it and the alternator for overhauls. i changed my mind about the trans mount going with a cs mount but i wont get it until later next week. while im waiting on the mount/cradle bushings, ill do the trailer hitch, motor mounts, fuel filter and interior work. Will need the mount so I can measure for shifter base mods. Clutch and cradle mounts will be last.

Have this weekend all next week and next weekend to get it all done. Have all the tools except lift I live 3 blocks from the shop and there's an autozone right next door. Should be fine done a lot of research have most of the parts too.

Wish I was in Dallas too bdv! Oh wait, I am in Dallas, Dallas nc!

 

Work progressing well...struggling through wrong or damaged parts, the dreaded drivers side lower motor mount bolt, completely shot brakes, etc etc blah blah blah....

Learned something this weekend...do not, i repeat do not, damage your heater hoses because it appears the only way to get replacements is to buy the whole dame thing! I was told at the dealer this morning that to get the two hoses that connect to the waterpump, you have to buy the entire setup including the aluminum lines and the pressure hose that goes all the way around to the reservoir.... Needless to say at $190 bucks I won't be doing this!

I have some universal molded replacements on order but this may or may not be an easy fix...

Glad I initiated this project as my AC idler was on the way out and the starter plug fell apart in my hand....While improvements in vehicles design have made some jobs easy as compared to older cars, this is not an easy car to wrench on in general.

Taking notes and pictures that will be added upon completion but for now, its time to drink a beer.

Thanks for all the help!

 

Enjoy that beer, yup its always something . That Motor mount bolt shocked me on how much of a BI*&% it was to get out. I had to make the craziest setup to pop it loose. Snapped some cheap extensions in the process.

I wonder if a junkyard would have some heater hoses for you to dig out?

 

Besides being plagued with wrong parts, I finished everything on the list except for lubing sunroof tracks and modifying trailer hitch and the only reason I didn't do that was because there really isn't much of a way to conceal it....I am beat down so updating this thread may take a while!

What a difference in the car though....With the balanced clutch assembly and ATI damper, there is very little if any vibration in the steering wheel at idle even with the UMIs. With the CS cradle and sway bar bushings, the car handles and drives much better while providing a more solid yet smoother ride...love it!

 

These are the part numbers I used on Amazon to save me a few bucks. Everything else is straight out of the catalog, over the counter or bought off the forums...

ACDelco 89018052 Water Pump with Thermostat and Housing

ACDelco 12569301 Serpentine Belt Tensioner

ACDelco 38462 AC Drive Belt Tensioner

ACDelco 12568996 Idler Pulley

12639250 GM rear crankcase cover and seal

12585673 GM Front crank seal

12557840 GM Harmonic Balancer Bolt

Gates Power Steering Pressure Line Hose Assembly 365684

80412, 87666, 88350, 87679 - Autozone premolded heater hoses

Motive Products Power Bleeder Fits most late model GM cars and trucks - (with Brake master adapter)

Motive 1109 45mm Power Bleeder Adapter - (clutch master adapter)

----------

Day 1 – Basically got the car up on jackstands, got the exhaust, driveshaft, wheels and tires off and then dug into the engine bay and got all the way to the damper when I realized the large 3 jaw puller from Autozone wasn’t going to fit so I had to go back and get the smaller one…I called it a day after going back to Autozone and getting organizied.

----------

Day 2 – I got the smaller puller from Autozone and the damper came straight off, no problems. With the damper off, drilling for the crank pin was next.

The ATI pin kit is easy enough to use but it left me wondering how deep I should be drilling the hole in the crank. You generate a lot of chips doing the drilling so be sure to be careful not to get any inside the motor...I used a shop vac. The instructions require leaving .093 inches of pin exposed for the keyway on the crank hub and after scratching my head for a while, I pulled out the calipers and started measuring all this because if you go too deep, not good, not deep enough, not good either.

http://www.atiracing.com/instructions/918993.pdf

After measuring the crank snout and running the numbers, to achieve the .093 inches they require, you drill all the way through the crank snout and the pin winds up sitting on the harmonic balancer bolt with absolutely no room to spare. I thought this might make installing the balancer hub kind of challenging but it actually went easy. The picture below is of the pin kit chucked up on the crank. The screw holds the drill bit guide into place than after the hole is drilled you remove the drill bit guide and install the reamer guide...I've never drilled a hole in a crankshaft before but i was able to get through it with the drill bit supplied on a cheap cordless drill that was half dead. All in all a very easy and worthwhile thing to do if you've gone this deep.

http://www.atiracing.com/instructions/LS1-LS7-Damper.pdf

Installing the damper would have to wait because I didn’t get the T40plus bit that’s required to assemble the thing! So I ordered the T40plus from ATI (couldn’t find one locally) and started searching for an installer tool cause Summit was back ordered and ATI’s was designed to work with their puller and is pricey.

So I go to install my front crank seal I got from Amazon and it was bent so off to the dealer….

At this point it became clear the brakes were also toast so I went ahead and ordered up a set of el-cheapos from the Zone along with the 2 front brake hoses because of the TSB that was out for them on the regular cts….

I also got the alternator and starter off the car so I could have them rebuilt…getting the starter off seemed about impossible so I loosened up the motor mount to finally get it out. The factory harness plug for the starter fell apart as soon as I touched it…just in time

Beer thirty…

 

Day 3

Took the alternator and starter for rebuilds and went to the dealer for the front crank seal. While I was there I inquired about replacing the 2 front heater hoses I mangled getting them off the water pump only to be told the only way I can get them is to buy the whole heater hose assembly (from water pump all the way to the reservoir) which would be coming from the dark side of the moon and cost 190 bucks…not!

Off to Zone and Advance to see if they listed either one and of course they don't.....great. They were accommodating and let me cruise through there available stock and I wound up finding a suitable replacement for the smaller one but the bigger one I pieced together from 2 different hoses. I was ok with that cause I had planned to install a shut off valve for the heater core as linked in my first post…that didn’t work out because of room constraints and a lack of time so I pieced it together and may revisit this in future as this mod seems to make sense.

After getting back to the shop, I got started on the motor mounts and PS hose. I replaced the power steering hose with the motor mounts out of the car and the motor suspended by a hoist so it went pretty well. Spent what seemed like an eternity putting the aluminum heat sleeves on the power steering hose which turned out to be a bit of a pita.

Wanted to do the motor mounts before the clutch so I could take advantage of the UMIs ability to let the motor sit a little low by leaving the through bolts out thus giving me more access to the transmission and bellhousing. But I didn’t want to put passenger motor mount back in until the starter was done so I got the driver’s side mount done and moved on to the trailer hitch.

Of course that was a pain because Valley’s plan of installation was vetoed by the car and it was time to do a little welding…by the time I finally got that done, I called it…you don't want to see pics of it cause it really ain't purdy....its a trailer hitch but i need it for my motorcycle.

 

Day 4

While waiting for the starter/alternator to get done, I decided to go ahead and do the Dynomatting, fuel pump access door and carpet install.

Cutting for the fuel pump door can be a little unnerving but if you follow the instructions linked in my first post, you’ll be fine. I used an air saw and it worked very well and I took the piece I cut out and used a piece of the aluminum heat shield outlined in philistines transmission tunnel post to reinstall it back into the car…very sanitary. Fuel pump harness looked fine btw…

Gray carpet will never work with me so I installed a black carpet set I got at LKQ for 20 some odd dollars including the mats. Installing it wasn’t bad. No need to take the seats out, take the seat tracks loose or even unplug the seats as the carpet set is in 3 pieces so just removing the blots and moving the seats around made enough room to get the carpet installed no prob. Be careful not to cut any harnesses running on the floor because the seats are heavy and the tracks a little sharp. Had all this done by lunch.

Dynomatting – cut peel stick. No big deal, I didn’t get super detailed, just cut nice square pieces and went at it. I had enough left over to do the underside of the trunk lid and passed on the spare tire well cause I have a nice heavy spare tire in there that should do all the noise suppressing I need.

From there I drained the diff and transmission and made a weak attempt at installing my Fram fuel filter but it was 1/16th too big to easily go into the bracket. So was every other aftermarket filter I looked at so on the dealership list it went. I spent 8 bucks more for the factory filter but time is money and this filter went in without a fight…worth every penny.

Finally, I made a little air deflector to help route fresh air across the ps cooler. The stock ps cooler sits behind the bumper and looks like it isn’t getting a ton of direct air across it so I set out to cure this problem with the fresh air tube I tripped over at the junkyard. Me thinks it came off a early 90's f150. You can see the before and after pics below but after hacking at it for a few minutes, I used a couple of screws and mounted it up to the bumper. The vent is plenty rigid so it shouldn't flop around and after a couple of days driving the car, I can't tell its on there. Can't hurt I guess. I thought briefly about putting a larger cooler on it but I'm not tracking the car so this in conjunction with heat sleeving the power steering hose will have to do for now. I put the GM synthetic all season fluid in it and got it all bleed out and filled with just a quart.

The black carpet turned out nice i think and i shouldn't have to worry so much about getting it dirty. I put a cts console and a 1 inch taller stick on the shifter to match up with it and I like the way it feels. I've got a 54 shifter and the throws are still plenty short...if you bet me in a drag race because of the split second extra it took for me to shift that extra half inch, that race would be too close to call anyway!

 

Day 5

Got the alternator and starter back, put those in and finished assembling the motor mounts. I converted from the stock starter wiring harness to a ring terminal and found a nice little motorcycle battery cable that was silicon wrapped to splice into the harness. Worked well.

All my brake parts came in so I cleaned and painted my beat down brake calipers (silver cause I’m boring) installed the rotors and front brake hoses and used by handy dandy motive bleeder to completely flush the system….best money I ever spent.


-----------------


Day 6

Time to do the clutch…

Before pulling it all apart I measured the installed height of the transmission with the stock mount still in it thinking that if I could shim the crossmember back to this original installed height, I could minimize my driveline vibrations…wrong.

Using the UMIs with the bolts out helped out significantly at creating a little more space. After getting the crossmember out of the way, I loosened the 4 clips holding the heat shield in place and it slide right out. While I was at it, I pulled the pins for the shifter base and lost it too…both of these took less than 5 minutes and gave me enough room to get the transmission bolts out with a half inch impact and a 3’ extensions without even needing to use a swivel…happy happy happy.

Lucky for me I have a couple of beefy godsons who seem to think they may get this car as a hand me down some day so I put them to work doing the heavy lifting and I set out to modify the shifter base, shift linkage and crossmember.
We welded tabs to the shifter base that would allow the base to bolt to the transmission (instead of the car itself) to the VSS on the driver’s side and the transmission mount bolt on the passenger side. While I had plans to weld up the original shifter base mounts to be solid, we found no need for it once we dummied it all together as it was solid with the factory bushings still in it so we left them in.

We also modified the shift linkage to capture the pivot coming out of the transmission on both sides instead of just one and while I would have liked to have gotten the linkage lined up perfectly with the shaft coming out of the transmission, it shifted well the way it was and we were pressed for time so in it went. I believe I can get this out of the car without pulling the transmission so I may perfect this in the future...but then again maybe I won't. I'm no engineer but in my mind the reason reverse can be hard to find is because the pivot is getting bound up in the stock configuration.

I also replaced the isolator cup and had to do some grinding to get it to fit as outlined in lollygaggers write-up. Thanks!!! Brian also turned me out some shift linkage bushings with quickness and for that I am appreciative!!!

With these mods, finding reverse is as easy as finding first and it shifts really really well. Solidly mounting the base to the transmission introduced a little more noise into the cabin but only when I'm in it, not during normal operating conditions....this I can live with.

All of this lead to some serious beer drinking and while talking it over we had the bright idea of adding some counter weights to the crossmember to help alleviate some vibrations. If you’ve been under as many cars as I have you’ll see something like this eventually however, I wish we had some smaller dowel stock to hang the weights off of cause it would be more prone to soak up vibrations that way. Also, it would have been nice to hang the weights on the transmission side of the 4 15mm bolts that hold the transmission crossmember to the car but there really wasn’t enough room for that so we congratulated ourselves for the attempt and called it a night.

As it is, the car is extremely smooth at idle...maybe this helped maybe it didn't.

 

This is all great stuff and an enjoyable read! I do not know if I will undergo all that you did when it comes time but still good to know this is all done.

BDV

 

Day 7

First thing I go to install the pilot bearing and realized I had the wrong one so mad dash to the dealer for the right one….get back to the shop and go to pull the old one out and realize the handy little pilot bearing puller they rent down at Autozone had different threads than the slide hammer they rent that’s supposed to be a match for it…nice. Go to Autozone and get their blind puller setup instead which worked well but sucked up valuable time.

After this, I measured the slave cylinder clearance as outlined in the shimming link in my first post. Pretty self-explanatory really however, getting a clean number off the face of the throw-out bearing can be challenging because it’s difficult to get it to seat squarely. I wound up taking multiple measurements between the throw-out bearing face and the transmission mounting surface and then taking the average of those before getting confident in the numbers. In the end, I had something in the neighborhood of .09 inches or something which was outside the parameters listed in the shimming post referenced earlier in this thread but I was squarely outside the need for any shimming so in it went.

Installed the clutch, pressure plate and flywheel but before installing the transmission, I took a few minutes to polish the input shaft to help things slide together easily. A little 400 grit goes a long way here and it must have helped because we made the clutch easily when installing it.

The very pretty transmission jack I bought down at Harbor Freight sucked for the reinstall and our floor jack was on its last legs so my oldest godson pressed the transmission into place with his knees and arms….I guess I got paid back for the z50 I gave him on his 6th birthday….. Once we made the clutch, we used some longer transmission bolts to gently pull the transmission in, compressing the slave cylinder as we went and finally making the pilot bearing with no issues....don't ever try to force the transmission back in with bolts, if you can't just about hand thread the bolts back in and see the transmission pulling itself in, something isn't right.

We broke a little early because as it was 25 cent wing day at the local hangout and the boys were hungry….

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Day 8

Installed shifter base, wiring, heat shield and crossmember. Took the nice big sheet of heat reflective mat I was going to use in the transmission tunnel and used it in the driveshaft tunnel and floor boards instead, especially in the area by the cats…

At this point I go to replace the bolts in my UMI mounts when I come to the brilliant conclusion that the one on the passenger side isn’t going unless I…take the freaking starter back out!
The planets must have been aligned cause it came right out but for the life of me I couldn’t get it back in so I took a grinder with a 80 grit flappy disc and took about an 1/8 off the lower motor mount base in a fit of frustrated rage and the starter slide right in. I only relieved it where there were rub marks from trying to force it in so I don’t see it breaking but if it does, I’ll replace it…don’t see that happening though as I only “faced” it at best.

Finally bled the system out with my favorite new tool the motive bleeder….but before doing so I took a few minutes and 15 bucks to heat sleeve every clutch hydraulic line I could get a hold of including my Tick speed bleeder. Can’t hurt.

I was so pleased with the great clutch pedal I had and so beat down after 8 days of doing this that I went home and passed out.

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Day 9

Putting the godsons back into action, they did the CS cradle bushings and diff bushings for me….how nice. What a slick little kit Max has devised for doing this otherwise brutal job and it took about 3 hours start to finish for my fairly well trained godsons to knock this the freak out! Having an industrial sized compressor and a nice IR impact doesn't hurt either!

Much thanks to Kristie and Max for getting me dialed in because I added this gig at the last minute and they made sure I had everything I needed to do this in a couple of business days with no issues whatsoever! The hardest thing about doing the cradle bushings was figuring out how to get all the tools back in the box....

While they were doing the rear, I was installing the damper hub. I let it cook at 225 degrees for about an hour (didn’t want to go hotter than the normal operating temperatures for fear of cooking the seal) and used a 120mm 10.9 bolt I bought earlier in the week to pull the balancer hub on…worked like a champ and once the 120mm bolt bottomed out, I reverted back to the old balancer bolt but by then, there was plenty of thread for it to bite into without fear of damaging anything.

I didn’t bolt the balancer to the hub for the install as I figure it would be easier to handle without all that extra weight. However, it was necessary to find some bolts to temporarily bolt the ac pulley to the hub as it goes behind it…worked out well. Torquing the balancer hub wasn’t too bad although I broke the first Autozone torque wrench and had to go back for another one. Based on the instructions on the balancer, I torqued all the T40plus bolts to whatever that was because I can’t remember now.

After I got the balancer assembled and installed the tensioners, waterpump and serpentine belt, we put the driveshaft and exhaust back in and called it…

 

Day 11 and beyond

Went one day beyond schedule but got everything buttoned up and started the car with no issues really. The car was a little pissed because the battery was disconnected for so long but it finally figured out what it’s supposed to be doing and started acting right.

I was surprised that it took 3 gallons to fill up the cooling system especially considering how small the radiator is.

All in all, the project was successful. The car feels much more “athletic” for lack of a better term and it’s almost to the point that I can use all the power the car is already making. The clutch works well, little to no vibrations at idle which I was a bit surprised about considering I went with sold mounts. The shifter base/linkage mods worked out well and this thing shifts light years better than it did before. Only a minor increase in diff whine using the CS cradle and diff mounts...the car rides better over all but might "jolt" a little harder over potholes. Squeaks and rattles are greatly diminshed but i was kind of expecting that based on prior experiences with body/frame mounts.

However, I pissed the driveshaft off. Alignment issues is my biggest guess here but after fixing the flex everywhere else, I’m guessing I’ve put additional stress on the carrier bearing surround. I’ll try the window weld fix outlined here:

http://www.cadillacforums.com/forums...tle-issue.html

And then attempt to properly align the shaft using the procedure outlined here:

https://www.revshift.com/shop/cadill...sc-coupler.php

http://www2.dana.com/pdf/J3311-1-HVTSS.PDF

The only problem with this is the shifter base I solidly attached to the transmission (which seems to be working well). Because the shifter base will now move up and down as I shim the transmission crossmember, there’s a good chance of it hitting the floor of the car once I start aligning the driveshaft.

So now I’m shopping for a good driveshaft fix and am looking at all my options here:

http://ls1tech.com/forums/cadillac-cts-v/1734647-aftermarket-driveshaft-options.html

Until I get the driveshaft resolved, I'll be using the stock shifter base and if it works well enough, I'll leave it in. If it doesn't, I'll modify the transmission mounted shifter base and put it back in the car.

So this weekend, I’ll be dropping the exhaust, pulling out the modified shifter base, installing the old shifter base, window welding the driveshaft and realigning. In the end, I don’t know that the shifter base is making all that big of a contribution now that the car has UMI motor mounts and a CS trans mount…the drivetrain isn’t moving much in the relation to the car anymore so it may not be helping at all…we’ll see.

I need to get this right because I have a business trip which means I’m driving to Detroit for a 3 week stay…wish me luck!!