January of 2012: Pulled the heads off the motor, after talking with my dad we decided to just pull the motor and send it out to have it redone. I started buying parts at that point to make it stronger as well; LS7 lifters, PAC 1218 springs, & chromoly pushrods. Ended up buying a new LS6 Cam, ditched the idea to keep it "stock" . Factory cam was junk, cam bearings were junk, rod bearings were pretty worn as well. also had a defective cam retainer plate.

Got everything back from the machine shop at the end of January, at the same time i was doing headgaskets on my truck, what could be better than one broken vehicle?

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Me being me I had to do something about the engine bay and ended up getting a little carried away with it but in the end it was worth it. At first I just wanted to fix some rust from a battery leak and paint that was eaten off from a brake fluid leak, then I said hey why not just paint the whole thing quickly with single stage (bad idea). I sand blasted the rust and missing paint areas and hand sanded the entire bay. I kept having an issue with the primer fish eyeing on me, I ended up figuring out that if I prepped it with fast dry enamel reducer it wouldnt fish eye, I also figured out that fast dry enamel reducer did a very good job of stripping off the factory base coat. Boy did I wish I tried that in the first place, much quicker than sanding! I did half the bay with single stage and cleared it, and was going to do the other half when i had more time. Well after letting the car sit outside for almost two weeks and realizing the paint wouldnt cure I ended up stripping it down AGAIN. this time i was taking no short cuts and decided to use base clear, chromabase and a real nice clear we had. To add insult to injury I also managed to break the windsheild in the process of removing the wiper arms, go me! I love nothing more than a few hundred dollar mistake. But hey whats a few hundred more bucks after blowing your engine up right?

It was getting close to summer nationals so I had to get my ass in gear and get the car back together, first and foremost assembling the engine. Oh and I changed my mind again, big surprise and decided to go with 799 heads to complete the "LS6" top end.

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Still had to fix the "new" trans

Random Pictures From 2011:

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Nice! I like the idea of showing the start to now instead of just one project at a time!