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00:00 [music]
00:20 Bam! I hope you're ready for this because we are about to stuff that garbage with 630 horsepower.
00:28 This is Hot Rod Garage presented by Lincoln Tech and our new '74 Chevy van is sponsored
00:33 by MSD Atomic EFI. And what we're going to do is take a Lingenfelter 630 horse LS7 and
00:39 a Gearstar 4L80E and put it in the van. And our hope is to get this thing ready and, believe
00:44 it or not, painted in time to run Hot Rod Power Tour 2015 with me and Mike Finnegan
00:50 to promote our Roadkill show. We're going to get into the fabrication on this episode
00:54 of how we got the drivetrain in the van. But first, crack open your little brain and wait
00:59 for it to be impregnated with knowledge by Clarence Barnes from Lincoln Tech.
01:04 [music]
01:07 Here's the difference between a recovery tank and a puke tank in the cooling system. In
01:12 either case, the tank is capturing water that's been pushed out of the radiator when the coolant
01:17 expands with heat and exceeds the pressure limit of the relief valve of the radiator
01:22 cap. That's usually around 12 psi. With a puke tank, the water just goes into the reservoir
01:28 and eventually will need to be drained. Drag strips require this at a minimum so water
01:33 doesn't leak in the track. A recovery tank, also called an expansion tank, is set up such
01:38 that the water in it is drawn back into the radiator as the coolant drops in temperature
01:43 and contracts. It's a better system and also allows the coolant to be topped off in the
01:48 low pressure recovery tank rather than having to open the hot and potentially dangerous
01:53 radiator cap.
01:55 Lincoln Tech can teach you how to have a career working with cars. See lincolntech.edu.
02:01 Our '74 Chevy van is the short wheelbase quarter ton model. The thing came from the factory
02:06 with a 250 inline six and a turbo 350 and this thing was pig slow. So we're going to
02:12 yard that thing completely out of here and on this episode we will show you how we fit
02:16 this new engine and transmission and I hope we actually get this thing into the 11s.
02:21 Here's our $25 saddle for our $1 horse. This hunk of all aluminum goodness is a Lingenfelter
02:28 crate engine. It's the same as their 650 horsepower LS7 with one exception. It's got the smaller
02:34 Lingenfelter GT19 camshaft in it. Mike Copeland over there tells us this makes about 630 horsepower.
02:41 It's going to be tame. We're going to be able to drive it anywhere. It's got 11.5 to 1 compression.
02:46 JE pistons, Oliver Billet rods in it, a Dragon Slayer crank and the heads are production
02:51 GM LS7 units but they're CNC ported by Lingenfelter. And we're going to top it all off with this.
02:58 The new MSD Atomic EFI Air Force intake manifold. The buzz in the marketplace is that this thing
03:04 makes really good power but what we're going to do in this particular episode is just show
03:08 you the mock up of everything that it took to get that LS7 and the Gearstar Trans into
03:12 the van. Speaking of the transmission, we needed overdrive and we needed beef because
03:16 we're making decent power. And so once again we've gone to Gearstar for our transmission.
03:21 The thing that's interesting is that I never wanted a computer controlled transmission
03:24 in any of my cars and these guys pretty much forced me into it and now I love them. Because
03:29 with a handheld device you can adjust all sorts of things. The other thing that's cool
03:33 is they ship these things with absolutely everything you need. There's a mount, they
03:37 come with exactly the right amount of fluid, there's a dipstick, there's a cooler. Now
03:41 this transmission, interestingly enough, is actually for our Chevelle project that we're
03:45 doing on Hot Rod Garage. But we used it for some mock fitment in the van until we got
03:50 our actual unit. We also had an empty case that we used just to be able to throw around
03:55 easily in order to get the fitment done in the van which I'm going to show you right
03:58 now. Here's what we started with. A good old plastic motor. This is from a company that's
04:03 called P-Air and they make these anatomically correct mock up engines that are really easy
04:08 because you can just pull them in and out of the truck a whole bunch of times while
04:10 you're making it fit. You can get these for everything from flat head Fords up to modern
04:15 engines. They're really pretty handy. But once you're done with the plastic you've got
04:18 to get to cutting metal. We really did not want to have to cut the floor out to fit in
04:27 our LS7 because we wanted to use the stock doghouse and we were able to do that by mounting
04:32 the engine kind of high and forward. Lucky accomplished that by taking the stock frame
04:37 mounts and drilling them to accept a 76 type Chevy clamshell motor mount. And that clamshell
04:44 then bolts to a hooker mount that goes to the block. Now this hooker mount is a part
04:49 number 12621HKR. The application is for a 73 to 87 Chevy truck and in the van it ended
04:56 up putting the engine right where we needed it to be so that we could mount up the transmission
05:00 on the back and not have to hack on the floor at all. Now if you were working with a regular
05:04 LS3 you would be able to use a Holley low profile oil pan on one of these things and
05:09 it will fit with the stock crossmember. However the LS7 uses factory dry sump oiling and oddly
05:15 enough it's a bigger pan and so we had to notch a hole in the crossmember in the front
05:20 to clear that. Now the other thing about the dry sump is we need a physical dry sump oil
05:24 tank in order to hold the oil and that's going to go here where the battery used to be and
05:29 the battery has been relocated to behind the driver's seat. Once we had the engine in position
05:33 that really dictated where the transmission was going to go. Lucky did hack out a couple
05:37 of little braces underneath so that he could fabricate a new simple tubular crossmember
05:42 to hold the transmission right where we wanted it for our drive shaft angularity and floor
05:46 clearance. The last bit of sheet metal work is that we needed a little bit of a whoop-de-doo
05:51 in the passenger side frame rail to clear the exhaust manifolds that we're using here.
05:55 These are off of a 6.2 liter in a 5th gen Camaro. The bad news is Lingenfelter tells
06:01 us they kill 50 horsepower so probably by the time we get this running you'll see us
06:05 with some headers on the van. Finally down to the wrenching. Now the right thing to do
06:09 with these vans is to drop the whole subframe out of it and take the engine and trans out
06:13 from below and because that's the right thing to do that's not what we did. Instead we took
06:17 that 6 cylinder in the automatic and pulled it right out the front after taking the top
06:21 of the core support apart. And when we come back next time there's going to be all the
06:25 little detail to make this thing run. You're going to watch us plumb the dry sump, put
06:29 in that Gear Star trans and control it with the MSD controller. We'll show you how that
06:33 works and we're going to have to do a whole lot of little details including putting in
06:37 a rear end that is not going to shatter like the Death Star when we go wide open throttle
06:41 on this thing. So stay tuned for that on upcoming episodes of Hot Rod Garage presented by Lincoln
06:45 Tech. But now wait for the expertise that will be dished out in this question and answer
06:51 session with myself and Mike Finnegan from Roadkill. Hey it's the question and answer
06:59 session on Hot Rod Garage presented by Lincoln Tech and in case you hadn't noticed that is
07:03 not Mike Finnegan. Nope that's Tony Angelo you saw him on the last episode of Hot Rod
07:08 Garage where we just sort of threw him out there as the new host and a lot of people
07:12 freaked out. It's like that's not Freiburger, that's not Finnegan. I think that was about
07:15 90% of their freak out. But the other concern is guys thought you were probably a complete
07:21 import loving chick because you're a drifter. Is that actually true? No, no of course not.
07:26 I mean I don't think people really understood my connection to the hot rod world. Yes I
07:32 have been a professional drifter and stunt driver. My background started when I was 13
07:37 or 14. I always wanted a muscle car and somehow I got that idea past my parents. And the deal
07:43 was if I got good grades they'd buy it for me and if I didn't get good grades I had to
07:47 save for half. So obviously I was working at a tire shop saving for half. I worked,
07:52 that was my first introduction to like real serious car work. I knew I wanted a 70's or
07:56 late 60's muscle car. That era was always the best for me. I wound up getting my first
08:01 car which I still have and still love to death. I have a 71 Dodge Demon 340, matching numbers,
08:08 4 speed car. Wow that is really cool. Very similar story. I had the same deal with my
08:13 parents on the grades. My first car is my 70's Super B and I still have it. So yeah
08:18 same background. You're a PA right? Yeah, yeah outside of Philadelphia. So you worked
08:22 at the tire shop you just mentioned. I know you worked at the Porsche race shop. Have
08:26 you ever had a job that didn't involve cars? No I've only ever worked either in backyard
08:32 shops. I've had my own shop in Philadelphia for the last 4 or 5 years. What do you guys
08:36 do at your own shop? Well at my shop we did all the fabrication and preparation on my
08:42 800 horsepower drift car. We built a Camaro in there, an IROC, we put a cage in it and
08:49 tried to make it handle and put a turbo on it and stuff like that. There's always a couple
08:52 of old Mopars torn apart in there. We've done body swaps on diesels. Yeah you told me about
08:56 the 78 Ford truck with the Dodge chassis. My buddy had bought a 78 F250 camper special
09:03 so it's got boat style tie downs on the outside. All the old man stuff. It's two tone and it's
09:08 got chrome everywhere but it's clean and it had a 460 in it that was getting awful mileage
09:13 and not performing. So we decided let's put a Cummins in it because I have an 06 that
09:19 has just been a beast for me. And when we got them next to each other we started looking
09:23 at them and I said listen the frames beefier on the Dodge, better brakes, it's going to
09:27 handle better. What if we just swapped the bodies? And what we wanted to do was have
09:33 visually no Dodge left. It looks authentically 1970s Ford and it runs like a champ. So how
09:42 do you get from being a Mopar loving hot rodder to being a professional drifter? Well I think
09:48 I just always wanted to drive fast and I just wanted something that was, I'd had my Demon,
09:56 I started working at a Porsche shop, 944 Turbos mostly, they let me autocross one of their
10:02 cars. I did pretty well, like I said my entire education in driving was just being a total
10:07 idiot on these back roads which is not something I'm super proud of and it's really not the
10:12 way to learn how to drive. Did you tell me you lost your license 13 times? 13 or 14 times
10:16 I lost my license. How do you not go to jail for that? How do you get your license back
10:20 after the 12th time? I think if I'd have been in a different state I'd probably be in jail
10:25 but I really got away with murder back home. Pennsylvania is one of the only states that
10:28 doesn't have, local cops don't have radar. Oh okay. It's one of three left. They time
10:34 you across some lines and they can pace you and that's it. So a lot of talking and a lot
10:39 of smiling and hoping for the best and I kind of got away with it but really from driving
10:45 the autocross cars I got into an RX-7 Turbo which handled pretty well and at the time
10:51 they weren't really popular for tuning so my buddy's dad was working in Singapore and
10:56 he's like those cars are really popular over here, send you home some videos and some magazines
10:59 and we saw drifting and we were like that looks really reckless and fun. Yeah. We should
11:04 do that next and then from there I started, I helped start the first East Coast Drift
11:08 events in like 2003 and that's really where I got an education in real car control because
11:14 once you're in a closed course you can learn in a day, it'll take you a year to learn.
11:18 Yeah I bet. Being an idiot on the street. I mean it's crazy and from there I started
11:21 to progress and develop and within a year there was the Pro Drifting Series Formula
11:26 D and I started competing there and really just driving whatever, whoever paid you to
11:31 drive it. Whoever paid me to drive it I would drive it. Is your general Pro Drift driver
11:35 guy actually a gear head? It's a unique situation. I think probably 75% of drifters really know
11:44 what's going on in their car which is far more than any kind of pro racing community
11:47 just because they've usually worked their way up as a grassroots driver, had to work
11:54 on their car, had to learn at least the basics of suspension and engine tuning and stuff
11:58 and worked their way up from there but some of the guys are really knowledgeable. Some
12:01 of them still work on their own cars, some of the champions and stuff are still hands
12:05 on in the shop. That's how I always wanted to be. So you kind of got attacked on that
12:09 first episode but you feel okay telling the audience you actually know what's going on?
12:13 I mean I think it all adds up between you being a gear head your whole life, being into
12:16 Mopars, building muscle cars, building diesel trucks, drifting. I've been reading Hot Rod
12:20 since I was probably 13 years old. There's issues that I've kept for 10 years. The pain
12:26 in body issue I probably wore out just going like, "Oh I can't wait." That's because of
12:30 the girls in it. Yeah, yeah. It was like really informative and I think at the time there
12:35 wasn't such a clear guide on how to do stuff. You know you got a magazine it was like the
12:40 bible and it was better than paying attention in class obviously. So yeah I mean I've been
12:45 a Hot Rod fan for so long and just to be here and have this opportunity I'm so stoked. We're
12:51 glad to have you too. And you're going to see Tony on some more episodes of Roadkill
12:54 as well. We're going to run 24 hours of lemons coming up in June. In fact he and I need to
12:58 start pounding on the car here like next week. I don't know if you realize that. So we're
13:02 going to have a lot of fun with that and you're going to see him again on Hot Rod Garage presented
13:06 by Lincoln Tech. We'll see you next time.
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13:44 BAM!