I Thought This LS3 Was a Deal... I Was Wrong

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:01]Well, well, well.

[00:00:04]Three of the most diabolicals on this side of the Mississippi.

[00:00:10]What's up, guys? K with TK Speed Shop and today we are going to be starting on the LS3 Swap D100. Now, couple ground rules we got to cover before we really get into this shindig. this bill.

[00:00:27]There is no time limit. There is no budget. Okay? The only thing that I want to do is I want to be able to document this entire process. Okay? When I say there's no budget, there's really no budget, but at the same time, I kind of want to save the money on. You get me? So, this right here is an LS3 with a crank in it.

[00:00:57]All right. I have pistons. I have rods.

[00:01:00]I have everything. This was a short block. Okay. I have the heads as well. I guess you can call this is a long block because it had heads. Anywh who, this thing needs some work and we're not taking it to the machine shop.

[00:01:15]We're going to do everything inhouse right here. Okay. So, we need to look over this, all right, and see what do we need to associate ourselves with. Do we need cam bearings?

[00:01:29]Do we need to hone the cylinders? Do we need to polish the crank? We need to come up with a cohesive game plan for this and see what we get accomplished.

[00:01:39]Okay. Again, if you are here for LS knowledge, this is probably going to be a good video series for you because again, we're not going to the machine shop.

[00:01:55]We're doing everything in house. So, I'm going to be doing everything that I know in my knowledge to prep one of these blocks to be assembled. Okay. All right.

[00:02:06]I'm done. I'm done with all that.

[00:02:09]Let me bring you in and show you what the foundation that we're working with.

[00:02:14]Okay. All right. So, again, LS3. All right. It's a pretty overall clean block. I actually think this is a truck block, but it is aluminum. So, we take that. First thing that I notice is these cylinders. Okay. These cylinders definitely need some work. And if you look down in there, you see that crank?

[00:02:34]Yeah, that crank's going to need a little polish job.

[00:02:38]these cylinders. Yeah, we're gonna have to we're gonna have to dingle ball these.

[00:02:44]Might do that this video.

[00:02:48]Yep.

[00:02:50]Yep. They definitely need a old dingle ball home.

[00:02:54]Let's check out our lifters.

[00:02:57]Our lifter boards look pretty good.

[00:03:02]Yeah, everything else looks pretty solid.

[00:03:06]Let's see if I can see that cam bearing from here.

[00:03:12]How far can I get you down in there?

[00:03:16]Nah, that cam bearing looks decent.

[00:03:24]They look okayish. This one back here though, I don't know if you can catch the the glint of that, but you see that right there? right there between where the um block splits. Yeah, that bearing don't look too hot. So, we might have to put some dang cam bearings in this. I should have never looked at them. I should have just ran it now.

[00:03:48]Now, now just to verify, it is a 62 Gen 4 block.

[00:03:58]That timing that rear main seal cover looks pretty fresh, but we're going to be changing all this crap out.

[00:04:05]We do not have the bolts to go in the side. That freaking sucks. We're going to have to order all that crap.

[00:04:12]This is probably the worst way you can go about doing an LS bill. If you want me to be 100% honest, it's best to go ahead and get the motor as complete as you can possibly get it. That'll save you a bunch of that nickel and dime stuff.

[00:04:27]What you're about to see over the course of these videos building this is how quick this nickel and dime stuff can really really add up. Um, I need you guys' help.

[00:04:40]Obviously, we're here because this is going into the D100.

[00:04:46]I also said there's no budget.

[00:04:50]Couple my friends have floated the idea of doing the conversion on the top end to put the Hellcat charger on it. So, I got I need you guys to comment down below. Do we put the Hellcat charger on it? Now, before you answer that, just know that the more outrageous stuff that we do to the whole build itself, the longer this build is going to take.

[00:05:12]Okay? I just It could take a year, it could take six months, it could take two years. Who Who knows? Who knows? But just remember, this stuff costs money.

[00:05:24]All right. All right, bottom side of the motor. Look at that. It spins pretty good, you know. But you know what's not good? That's right.

[00:05:36]Look at these. Look at these raw journals.

[00:05:43]That's pretty rough.

[00:05:48]Now, your typical guy would take this to a machine shop.

[00:05:56]First thing first, we got to get this We got to get this crank out of here. Okay, we're going to go ahead loosen up all our mains.

[00:06:17]I told you guys I want you here for all of it.

[00:06:22]We going to build this together.

[00:06:36]I'm also going to have to take this freaking rear main cover off, but I'm pretty sure I can sneak my hand down here and get all those bolts out without without even having to fight any dang thing. Get you one of these things. By the way, whenever you're doing engine work and stuff like that, get you a little Get you a little container to put all your stuff in.

[00:06:56]If you're trying to keep up with stuff, get you a set you up a bag and tag setup. That way you can bag and tag what you're doing. Unless you just know what goes where.

[00:07:06]Don't blow smoke up my ass and say you know what goes where seven days a week.

[00:07:18]Oh yeah, we're reusing that.

[00:07:26]There we go.

[00:07:29]Now the crank should just come out.

[00:07:33]But before I take this crank out, let's look at this real quick. Number five.

[00:07:49]You see that?

[00:07:52]Got a little groove in it.

[00:07:55]I can barely pick it up with my nail.

[00:07:58]Barely. Number four.

[00:08:04]The thrush bearing. Or number three.

[00:08:11]Number two. Number two got it the worst.

[00:08:14]Look at that.

[00:08:17]You know what? Let's clean it. Maybe let's see what we really got going on right here.

[00:08:31]Got a little groove in it.

[00:08:35]Number one.

[00:08:41]You can definitely see number one.

[00:08:50]All right, let's see what we're working with. Okay, I'm about normal.

[00:09:04]About normal.

[00:09:10]ain't looking too bad.

[00:09:19]But look at those. Oh, let me let me let me show you these cam burns. Jesus Christ.

[00:09:26]Hold up. Yeah, we got to change cam burns. We done looked at them now.

[00:09:35]Look at that one. That's number two.

[00:09:38]That's number one. Number one's not that bad. But look at number three.

[00:09:46]Number four.

[00:09:49]And that rear one back there.

[00:09:59]So like we're installing cam bears.

[00:10:03]Comment down below. Should I just not have looked at it? Look guys, we're building something. We're building a 62.

[00:10:10]This ain't just a run of a mill 4853 kind of shindig. If it was a 48 or 53, I probably would have ran it. But we got a premier block here, gang. A premier block.

[00:10:24]So far everything looks good. The only thing that I have a little concern for is if you look right there on that sleeve. Look right here.

[00:10:37]I don't know how I feel about that.

[00:10:44]The rest of these sleeves are intact.

[00:10:49]Now granted, I don't think the piston even travel down that far, but that's that's some concerning stuff.

[00:11:00]I'm going to have to sleep on that one, gang.

[00:11:09]We may have got shindick.

[00:11:12]I don't know.

[00:11:15]That kind of just knocked all the wind out my sail. I'm not even going to lie.

[00:11:23]Now, these are sleeved. So, I mean, I could probably knock that sleeve out and order another sleeve and put a sleeve in it, but I don't know.

[00:11:41]We're going to hold off on moving forward real quick.

[00:11:48]Going to hold off on all that. Going to do some research. I'm going to call some friends.

[00:11:54]Bada bing, bada boom. I have a more cohesive thought of what we're going to do. We might be okay, gang. What is the common theme with this block? You see how that bore is? You see that cross-hatching right there? How the cross-hatching changes a little bit? All right. You see the common theme here? The piston doesn't even go down that far.

[00:12:20]So, if the piston doesn't go down that far, will it really cause an issue?

[00:12:30]I'll see you in the morning.

[00:12:34]Okay. You saw those cam bearings?

[00:12:37]Yeah. Got to change out cam bearings.

[00:12:40]Now, I was looking at these cylinders.

[00:12:47]And we're definitely going to have to hone them now on this cylinder right here. You see that little chip right there?

[00:12:53]Yeah. So, I'm kind of concerned about that. But if you look, there's a common pattern here. You see that that that hone surface? You see how the cylinders are different? There's a spot to where it gets to where it's completely different.

[00:13:11]Basically, I don't think the piston's going to travel that far down, nor is the piston rings are going to travel that far down in the bar. So, I don't think we really have anything to worry about. So, we're just going to run it. Now, I'm going to look back over it once we hone it. And if we need to kind of like debur the edge a little bit, we might debur the edge a little bit, but you know, whatever. Anyway, let's flip this sucker.

[00:13:41]um in a corresponding way. And let's make some home juice. Now, now when you're making some home juice, you need two things.

[00:13:55]You need mineral spirits and you need some ATF fluid. All right? Some people use diesel. Some people, you know, they pick pop, whatever. I like to use ATF fluid and I like to use mineral spirits.

[00:14:08]I do a 50/50 split. All right. So, we're going to take this little bucket right here and we're going to pour one quart worth.

[00:14:22]Going to pour that up to two quarts.

[00:14:28]So, that' be one quart ATF, one quart mineral spirits.

[00:14:43]is a flex hone. Okay.

[00:14:46]Now, you're going to have to go online and get your measurements for whatever hone you need for what size cylinder board you are working with.

[00:14:55]So, do your research.

[00:15:02]They basically look like this. You guys have probably seen them all over the freaking internet. Now, when you're doing a set of rings on an LS, you want 320 grit. This is perfect. Look at this.

[00:15:14]We're just going to Yep.

[00:15:17]Spin that bad boy in there. Let it soak a little bit. Now, what I'm about to do is I'm about to take some more of this ATF fluid.

[00:15:27]About to wipe some of this dirt and grit out of the cylinder walls.

[00:15:31]It's lint free, by the way.

[00:15:36]It's okay if you spill some. I mean, this is basically detergent any dang way.

[00:15:44]But you want to get these cylinders kind of pre-oaked.

[00:16:00]All right. I'm not trying to make this video long as Alabama. So, I'm going to do a one take. Okay, that is literally it. That is how you do that. Okay.

[00:16:18]Now, what I like to do is I like to do it like that first. Then I'll go back and I'll clean all this up again. I'll wipe the bores. Wipe, wipe, wipe, wipe, wipe. You're going to be wiping the crap out the bors until you get all the gray out. Okay. Once you get all the gray out, get you a nice little coat of ATF in there and hit it one more time. All right. But I'm going to show you what that did.

[00:16:45]Obviously, you can be cleaner about this situation than I am. Probably have a little catch pan whoopy whoopde whoopde whoop. But transmission fluid is detergent, so I don't mind it being on this floor. See all that gray down there? That's the material.

[00:17:00]How about slip and slip slides?

[00:17:04]Look at all that. That gray is what you want to get out of there. Once there's no more gray, you're kind of in the clear.

[00:17:15]It might take a couple paper towels, but I am as messy as possible when it comes to doing this kind of thing.

[00:17:27]but that is okay.

[00:17:34]Okay, more gray.

[00:17:44]And look at this cylinder on my flashlight. There it is.

[00:17:50]Look at that. Look at them crosshatches.

[00:17:53]Oh man.

[00:17:56]That's what you want to see.

[00:17:59]All it is, one take, one go.

[00:18:03]I count it in my head. Be consistent across the board. I'm going to clean all this up and I'm going to lick it one more time. And then we can turn our attention to this.

[00:18:18]Want to take this moment to go ahead and thank all you guys that made it to this point of the video. So, I appreciate all the love and support. If you haven't already, go ahead, hit that subscribe button down below, like, drop a comment.

[00:18:30]What do you think so far? I mean, guys, I mean, this is down and dirty as it gets. It looks pretty good. There's a couple cylinders that got like a little spots in them. Like this one right here, they got a little spot in it. I can't get that out. Now, it's not deep enough to where I can really get my nail in it, but there it is an imperfection.

[00:18:53]I'm just going to be 100% honest with you guys. We're going to run this as is.

[00:18:58]All right?

[00:19:01]Cuz I made a little post about um hot tanking this dang thing at a machine shop. You guys wanted me to do the at home shindig and that kind of got me thinking, why don't we just do the entire process at home and not even worry about it. though. Like guys did stuff worse than this for many of years.

[00:19:22]Okay, that that's not going to be too bad. Look at it like this. Okay, this will run exactly like that. It might have a little blowby, but this will run.

[00:19:34]This will be perfect for what we need.

[00:19:36]If you guys are so serious about any of that, when we get everything buttoned back up together, we'll do a compression test, okay? And we'll just we'll call it a size experiment more or less. Okay. Uh I am a professional.

[00:20:00]Yeah.

[00:20:02]See that one got a little bit more on it. We was able to get that one done. We was able to get that one done. We still got to touch that one back there. But this one had a little bit more on it.

[00:20:12]So, I wonder bring you in.

[00:20:17]What am I doing, you may ask? I'll tell you. I am Iron Man.

[00:20:25]All seriousness aside, we're taking 800 grit sandpaper. Okay.

[00:20:31]And we're doing this.

[00:20:34]All right. We're wrapping it. First, we got to soak our sandpaper, both sides. Okay? You want it soft and wet. It's getting sticky.

[00:20:48]All right? You want to take it and you want to go like that. Okay? You want to wrap it around that thing. Then you're going to take a sho string out of your pair of J's.

[00:21:05]You're going to drop your sho string out of those pair of J's.

[00:21:09]And you're going to take your sho string and you're going to wrap this.

[00:21:16]One time's good enough.

[00:21:19]Okay. And what we essentially has done, you feel me?

[00:21:33]I'm going to give a little couple little sprits every once in a blue moon.

[00:21:42]And you're just going to keep adding it.

[00:21:46]See how that spots going away now?

[00:21:54]That's what we want to see. And from there, we repeat the same process but with 2000 grit. And you get a result like that.

[00:22:10]That's basically how you do it at home.

[00:22:13]polish your crank jobber. Don't take too much off. Don't don't don't cram it on there unless you're trying to you play with bearing clearances. We're not checking any of that stuff on this build, so don't talk about it. Ah, I don't even know where to begin.

[00:22:28]Okay, so I told you guys I was going to bring you in and show you these cam bearings and whatnot. Well, cam bearings are smoked. Okay, they're they're pretty bad. Um, number two smoke, number three smoke, number four smoke, number five smoke.

[00:22:49]The only one that was good was the front cam bearing. So, that lead me to believe that this motor, okay, I know for a fact that this motor's been going through.

[00:23:00]So, usually, here's how I go about things.

[00:23:05]It's basically three strikes and you're out. Okay?

[00:23:10]three strikes. All right. So, let's talk about strike number one. Okay. So, when I was honing these cylinders, I had this edge uh right there. You can see it right there where it's clipped. If you look at the rest of them, the rest of them are fine. All right.

[00:23:30]Pay no attention to the flash rest. At this point, we don't even care. All right. See how that's chipped? All right. Now, we know that that's not really going to affect anything because the piston and the rings of it doesn't even travel that far down the bore. So, we was, you know, going to smooth the edge out and just let it ride. But that was issue number one.

[00:23:53]All right.

[00:23:54]Issue number two was cam bearings. Obviously, we were going to put a set of cam bearings in it anyway. When I was um polishing that crank, I noticed when I was polishing the crank that one of the rod journals, particularly the number four journal, had a little scarring on it, and it was is good enough to where a polish isn't going to help it. So, I'm going to have to ground the crank. All right, so that's number two. I can't do nothing about grounding that crank myself. That has to go to a machine shop. All right.

[00:24:29]Same thing with these bores. Some of these boards, despite number four, which is this chip right here, despite number four, some of some parts of those boards I can barely grab my fingernail. That's not ideal. That's a standard B bore block, which is 4.065.

[00:24:48]All right. Typically, you would just take that 070. All right. Well, I think it needs to go a little bit further and it needs to go to 075.

[00:25:00]whatever. You know, I tell you what, we can overlook all of that. All right? We could throw some We can throw the standard pistons back in it. Throw throw all that crap together. Throw some new um cam bearings in, new mains, new rod bearings, and just run it. All right.

[00:25:17]And it probably would last for, you know, another 50, 75, 100,000 miles. All right. You might you drank a little oil because of the cylinders, but whatever.

[00:25:26]Blowback. But strike three happened off camera. All right. Now, let me do something for you real quick.

[00:25:36]This is my scale. All right.

[00:25:39]So, for whatever reason, something told me to check my pistons.

[00:25:45]1357.

[00:25:47]All right. I don't know if you can tell, but there's indentions in these pistons.

[00:25:52]That's a key indication that this block has indeed been torn apart. All right.

[00:25:58]This is number two.

[00:26:01]This is number six.

[00:26:03]This is number eight. Where's number four? Number four is right here.

[00:26:10]All right.

[00:26:11]Number four has some technical issues. All right.

[00:26:18]That chip in that block, that's because number four threw a rod.

[00:26:25]How do I know number four do a rot?

[00:26:27]Well, if you look at all these pistons, there's obviously, you know, dirt, oil, buildup, deposits, whatever. Look at this one. This one's perfectly fine. This one's not stamped.

[00:26:48]This was a replacement rod. Now, that's cool. We threw a replacement rod in it.

[00:26:53]It should be fine to go. Right. Wrong.

[00:26:58]This motor has been running.

[00:27:02]But let me show you something. This is number four.

[00:27:08]And this is a random rod.

[00:27:11]Let me see if I can do this with my hand.

[00:27:15]These pistons are different.

[00:27:20]This piston is a replacement piston.

[00:27:23]You can tell because of the way that it is. This is a replacement piston. It's standard bore.

[00:27:30]That's not the issue, though. Here's the issue.

[00:27:52]All right.

[00:27:54]1342.

[00:27:56]Now, let's take the replacement rod and piston.

[00:28:03]1372.

[00:28:06]That's in grams. I don't even have to weigh the rest of those to know that that cylinder, that piston is out of balance with the rest of this stuff.

[00:28:18]I've already done it off camera. All the other pistons and rods and assemblies weigh exactly as this one. This is the only oddball one. All right.

[00:28:30]So, we got Mitchmat going on in the bottom end. Now, I did some research. I pulled that part number. That is indeed a Hypert replacement piston. But somewhere along the lines, they didn't they didn't balance it right or they didn't shave off enough. Now, could we do all that stuff here? Yeah, we probably could. But there's science to it. We need to figure out if it is in the piston, if it's in the wrist pin, if it's in the ring packs, if it's in the rod itself or the bearings. We don't know what the discrepancy is as far as like weights go. So that kind of you know what I mean?

[00:29:11]So with all that being said, basically everything we just did in this video is pointless. Yep. We tore down the motor and found problems. Now I could have avoided all of this if I would have just looked at the pistons because the pistons was already out of the motor. But I didn't do that.

[00:29:32]Yeah.

[00:29:34]Couple days of recording gone to waste.

[00:29:37]Anyh who, so now this is where the community comes in. All right. I need you guys to kind of figure out what we're going to do. We're not going to abandon that block. We're not going to abandon it at all. Actually, I've been making some phone calls and I'm thinking we can punch that block out to 075 and those rods seem good. Next video with this, we're going to disassemble all that stuff and we're going to weigh and we're going to figure out exactly where the problem comes from with that extra grams of weight, the extra 30 gram of weight. Um, I want to know what do we do? Um, at this point it's going to be an entire fresh fresh setup because the crank is going to have to get grounded.

[00:30:23]So, once we get the crank grounded and the rod jars and all that taken care of, we'll have basically a brand new crank to throw into this with rod bearings, of course. We'll reassemble all that crap. We'll get all these pistons and stuff disassembled. We'll figure out um what are we going to do for a piston? So, I need you to comment down below. Do we dome? Do we do dish?

[00:30:45]Keep in mind that I'm not trying to really put an aggressive cam shaft in this. I want to keep it relatively simple like a BR um like a BR uh BTR stage one LS3 cam version two something like that in that guidelines where we ain't got to really fool with piston to valve clearance issues. Um might go ahead and get the block decked at this point. get it true. And we need to figure out what kind we need we really need to figure out what we're going to do with the bill. Are we going to boost it? Are we not going to boost it? Um, preferably not boosted just to keep things simple and going. Um, yeah. So, comment down below. Do we just go ahead and just bite the bullet and make it a 416?

[00:31:34]Do we put some domes in it and try to play with the static compression and stuff and see can we get our piston to valve clearance just enough for that cam or a cam so we can maximize what we got going on. Basically, this motor is going to be fresh.

[00:31:51]Every time I play with something that's a 6 L or above, this happens. It happened with the 6 that we got in the Monte Carlo when I was pulling the cam shaft out and the cam bearing decided to pull itself out right along with it. So, um, yeah, 48 and 53s I don't have these problems with at all. They they usually are pretty nice and they they want to cooperate with me. Anything like this, it never wants to cooperate with me. So, man, but comment down below guys what you want to see. I'm about to wrap up this video cuz that knocked all the sail out my wind. I just when I found out when I when I looked at those dang pistons and I was like, you know what, something's going on with number four and I just researched it and I should have just not even looked at it. But that's that's a good thing. That's a good thing to pay attention to stuff cuz what would have happened if we would have just threw all that crap back together and ran it and who knows who knows. Anyway, I want to thank you guys for watching so far. I know this video is a day out. Had a busy busy weekend go on. spent some time with the family as well. So, it kind of put me behind on a video. I could have released another video, but I didn't want to do that. I kind of wanted to do a followup on this because you guys like that little pow-wow D100 video that I just did. But, um, yeah. Comment down below what do you think we should do.

[00:33:12]075 it 416 it cam shaft. What do we need? What do we need to do? Um, I want to stay with the recreport heads.

[00:33:22]Um, I'm just going to go ahead and say this. If we do 4, if we make it a 416, I want to go ahead and just get some monster heads or something like that. At this point, when you do something like that, you might as well just take it all the way there. But again, we necessarily don't need that in a D100. We want something nice. Um, I got a couple leads. I know I want to do a standard. I really want to do a standard, but I got a couple leads on a 6L80 and that might pair really nicely with it. I don't know yet. So, that that stuff's still in the air. But, I'm rambling at this point. I want to thank you guys so much for watching these videos. Remember to like, comment, subscribe, whoopde-doop, and drink plenty of water. It is 102 degrees where I'm at right now.

[00:34:08]So, stay hydrated, and I'll see you in the next video.