Well like many people I have read articles from, it seems like a normal thing for a J-body owner to go from a blown stock motor to a 3.4 or a 3.8 motor. I am lucky enough to own two J-bodies. I have a 2000 Chevy Cavalier Z24 Convertible and a 1998 Pontiac Sunfire 2.2 5 spd. Here is my plan. The Cavalier motor has blown or close enough to it, so I am going to start gathering up the parts to do the 3.8 Series 2 swap. I've got all kinds of crazy ideas floating through my head and many more than I am sure will come. I am posting on here for some of my ideas, see if you, a more diverse and more experienced J-body customizing group. I want to know what you all think of these ideas, possible or not, as well as giving me some ideas of your own. Don't flame me for some of these concepts this is going to maintain a show car, not going to be driven on a daily basis or anything like that. Strickly for shows and cruises. I got the Sunfire for the daily driver.

Some of the ideas that I want to implement are:

Ø 3800 Series II motor with supercharger, wanting to keep the air conditioning and will probably mate with the automatic transmission just for sake of ease and durability
Ø Shaved doors that will be no door handles on the outside of the door nor on the inside, a set of momentary pushbuttons on the center console will pop the remote door system to open the doors.
Ø Want to look into building some LED headlights, but if not, will go with projector headlights with the purplish blue headlights
Ø Custom door panels that have a screen or two and three speakers, maybe some other cool display stuff. No need for a door handle so will have room to work
Ø Completely custom dash, wanting to completely remove the existing dash and use Autometer gauges and center these gauges on the fabricated dash
Ø Center console that goes from the front dash all the way to the rear speaker shelf
Ø Four racing seats instead of stock seats
Ø Relocate the battery to the trunk, and install a second battery
Ø Body kit, and either a widebody kit or toyota fenders with the side marker lights
Ø Custom painting the car completely black or acura blue with some sort of gunmetal accents
Ø Gunmetal colored rims, not sure if I will go with a 5 spoke like stock or a 7 or 8 spoke rim
Ø LED taillights
Ø Air ride system with tank mounted underneath car somewhere, prefer to keep it out of trunk.

Audio / Video System that I want to create:

Ø CarPC
Ø 7" touchscreen molded into dash to control the CarPC
Ø 7" touchscreen to control the air ride system
Ø PS3
Ø 2 Subs mounted in a enclosure to fit into the spare tire hole
Ø 2 amps for the subwoofers
Ø 1 amp for the rear deck speakers
Ø 1 amp for the door speakers
Ø screens in the rear of the racing seats
Ø cameras mounted where the side mirrors would go
Ø 2.5 inch monitors mounted on the a pillars connected to the cameras
Ø Rear view camera mounted near the license plate or mounted behind the third brake light


I have tons more ideas, these are just some that I could come up with in the 15 minutes I took to write all this up. Let me know if you have any insight into any of these ideas, or locations of people that have already done them. One in particular is the dash. I had found a forum post about someone who recreated the dashboard of his car and it had the stock gauge completely removed and I think it was 5 gauges across the center of the vehicle with 2 monitors on each side of the gauges. If you know where I can find this let me know. Any other crazy ideas you can all come up with let me know. I am going to start doing the gathering for all this now, the biggest project will be the motor swap and the dash fabrication, those will be done later. Let me know if you are local to North Carolina or somewhere close that you would want to help with the time comes. I'm going to be using deployment money to pay for all the goodies and custom work. Turning the car into a show car so once all the work is done I won't take the chance that the car will get hit on the road. Have had two cars totalled by drunks already.

Thanks for your time everyone!

Do you even have an idea to the extensive work that is required for the 3800 swap?

CraiGM wrote:Do you even have an idea to the extensive work that is required for the 3800 swap?

What do you mean? You mean the L67 doesn't just drop in and use the factory mounts? Who knew?





i find it amusing that SHOoff has nothing better to do but follow me around & be an unhelpful dick in even cross-forum. - Jon Mick

Haven't you guys seen the srt4 engine swap thread???


ALL motors fit in our cars. With NO modifications

CraiGM,

I have been reading the forums and talking via emails with John Lenko. I know there is an extensive amount of work, Yes I know that it doesn't just drop into the engine compartment. I do motor swaps on a regular basis on larger basis. I am a mechanic in the US Army, I swap Humvee motors. But its a one for one swap, thats why I am doing all the searching and studying now and not planning on performing the motor swap for another year. The other idea for the Cavalier was to have this company build a tube chassis and make it rear wheel drive. That was a crazy notion from a good friend of mine.

30,000 grand and it will be ready in a year!!!!

Well the engine swap won't be started for at least a year, I am getting deployed in 2010 and will be using my money from that to play with the car.

john beers aka thebondoman wrote:30,000 grand and it will be ready in a year!!!!

30,000,000?

Mike wrote:Haven't you guys seen the srt4 engine swap thread???


ALL motors fit in our cars. With NO modifications

ah, quoted on 2 threads...must make it true!