Having a good group of friends (people like Dr. Bobby) around you is the best part of life. Especially when everyone can help everyone :) I'm so glad to see the next steps completed Josh and I can't wait until maiden track day!
I've subscribed to this channel after randomly remembering your videos from a few months ago. It's honestly really refreshing to see someone doing something like this for the first time and making mistakes and not making it look easy.
I did the trunnion upgrade over the winter when I pulled the heads to have the valve guides replaced and new SS valves installed. I used a magnetic trunnion tool with a vice and it went very smoothly. I was on the fence with replacing them, but the new cam I installed has pretty decent lift .65, so I figured why stop short and risk it. Cheap insurance.
Great progress, Josh!!! I’m at the race track as I type this. First day of the season is a wrap. Feels great to be back out here. Can’t wait to see your first time after you get Goldie back together.
Too late now but there is a tool for pressing the trunion bearings in and out using a vice. With that setup, I did not struggle at all in doing that upgrade.
Love the vid. Thanks for keeping us posted. Crazy every little part has to be put together. Seems like the rockers would come with bearings in them. But, what do I know. Very little..
I just received the same trunions but i opted to have them already installed in the btr rockers, fearing the struggles you had. I regret not ordering them with thr GM rockers.
I definitely underestimated how much work it would be. It looks like a 2-hr job and probably would be for somebody who has done it before and has the right tools.
One thing I've always wondered is why more people don't bother overbuilding from the very beginning. If you target a certain level of performance, the amount of power you make should always be LESS than what the rest of the car is capable of handling - whether it's in terms of the transmission, suspension, tires, brakes, cooling, or oiling. My belief is that if you've overbuilt the car, once you go racing, you can then use that safety factor as a way to figure out where you can and cannot shave weight.
I think a lot of times we don't put much effort into planning our goals in advance. Often somebody starts with a sports car they think is cool, then they think about upgrades. Adding power is really appealing, especially since it is noticeable in regular street driving. With this project I initially wasn't going to touch the engine at all, because I figured with my goal of hitting a better lap time than a 991 GT3 I already had enough power and I just needed better handling. And I think a good reason not to add power is because when you go to the track you're just going to start overheating and breaking stuff and costing yourself money. Where does it end? But once I was forced to spend money on a new engine I couldn't resist a little bit more 🚀
I would worry more about crappy valve springs, then the rockers. Seen so many valve spring failures even on daily driven suvs and cars under normal driving conditions
Thought about it, kept putting it off, figured that since there were no mods on the car and miles were relatively low I would probably be fine for a while. Oops!
Did you do the larger oil sump yet?? If not you will blow that motor again. You need an 11 qt oil sump to avoid oil starvation at high Gs. Linginfelter is what I have.
I did. Although I know a guy who has been tracking his 07 like crazy with no issues and he's using the factory tank. Worth the money for peace of mind but I don't know if you're guaranteed to get starvation unless you're pulling pretty high G's (like slicks) for sustained periods.
@@JoshVanVeld Glad u addressed that especially because it is a cheap fix. I blew my 07 ls7 (heads had been fixed) in a high G corner because of oil starvation with the 8 qt factory sump. $14k later I’m beating GT3s and GT3RSs pretty easily at this point but I have 600+ whp, 2,950 ish weight , and all new brakes suspension and upgraded bushings and aero etc…
Honestly to save cost. Katech advised me on what made sense for my goals with the car. I'm not going super aggressive with the camshaft so the factory rockers should be fine.
I commented on the other video but wanted to make sure you saw and were able to take into consideration swapping out the generic LS7 lifters with the Cadillac racing lifters. At least look into it and ask some of the people you're in contact with for their opinion.
I did see that comment and meant to respond. I went with the GM LS7 Lifters Katech recommended. The cam I'll be using isn't very aggressive which I assume played into their decision. I'm planning to keep this car for a while so if I feel like my "mostly stock" approach gets boring I can do another round of upgrades to add (and support) more power.
@@JoshVanVeld You're good, you just have a lot of money/time wrapped up into this and wanted to make sure you knew your options on a critical component. Katech obviously knows what they're doing but they might have also been keeping budget in mind is what I was thinking. LS7 lifters have held up to some stupid stuff but I've also personally seen them fail with less but could have been installation error, wrong preload who knows. Not too difficult to swap them out in the future I suppose but for reference the caddy lifters are rated to 8000 rpm and will function just like a LS7 lifter. These videos are awesome, hope everything goes smooth the rest of the way to get it back up and running!
Good question. You're right that it's not a low-budget project but I'm also trying to keep the budget reasonable (if you can call it that). Goal was to be all-in less than the $20K GM would have charged to replace the stock motor with a new one and have something more reliable and more powerful. Katech helped me determine which stock parts I could get away with. I'm not going with a very aggressive cam so I don't need all the valvetrain components to be super beefy. The initial build will be something like 600 hp at the crank but as I understand it the potential is there if down the road I want to flow more air in and out and at that point I may upgrade some components. Keep in mind I'm still a relative noob when it comes to LS internals.
