Project Chili Pepper

[TomT]

Project Chili Pepper
1979 Malibu

My 17-year-old son and I are building this 79 Malibu. I've autocrossed, done track events, and drag raced over the years and it's now time for him to get some seat time too. Last year we had so much fun at the Holley LS Fest that we wanted to build an LS-powered car that we could race. I also got to participate in the optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational last year which was an absolute blast!

Our Malibu is a plain-jane car that we found in Indiana with low miles. Interestingly, it came factory equipped with a 3 speed manual floor shifted trans and is a radio delete car (which I hadn't seen before in a G-Body).


Our plans for the Malibu include the following:

• LS / 6 speed manual swap - We already have an LS2 from a wrecked GTO but we sure would like to put an LS7 in it down the road
• Holley EFI - We will be running a Holley EFI Dominator ECU which is self-tuning and supports DIS and Drive-by-wire; it will also seemlessly accomodate our later plans for an LS7
• Complete suspension upgrades using components from Detroit Speed
• Upgraded rear (probably a 9")
• Upgraded brakes
• Frame swap; although our frame is in pretty good condition it has a fair amount of surface rust as a result of its previous life in Northern Indiana; we have access to a nearly perfect frame from a super low mileage 87 Grand Prix so we're going to use that to underpin the Chili Pepper
• We'll definately have some pro-touring style wheels but we also want a set of wheels that look like the original "steelies" with dog-dish hubcaps but bigger and wider and made out of aluminum (although painted body color)

[cobragt]

This will be cool!

[craigs73]

cool always loved these cars cant wait to see the progress

[Chevrolaine]

Sweet, Welcome!! Sounds like an awesome project.

[coolwelder62]

Thumb's up to you for spending time w/your son.I hope you and your son have a great time wrenching on what will a cool ride.Scott M.

[RobertGP]

Nice Malibu! Good to see another G-Body in the forum ;-)

I would recommend http://scandc.com for G-Body suspension upgrades. Mark is the guy with the most know-how about G-Body suspensions on this planet, trust me :-)

[NJSPEEDER]

Sounds like a great plan. Only question is why mess with buying and installing a whole different engine control system? The stock computers for the LS motors are amazing and can be tuned easily by anyone with a lap top.

-Tim

[TomT]

Sounds like a great plan. Only question is why mess with buying and installing a whole different engine control system? The stock computers for the LS motors are amazing and can be tuned easily by anyone with a lap top.

-Tim

Hey Tim - The stock computers for the LS engines definitely are amazing but they are also very complicated. You can’t just plug up a laptop and tune them – you have to have tuning software and even then many of the functions are not accessible (not to mention the fact that the tuning software is pretty expensive itself). Don’t get me wrong, I think the factory computers are great, especially in the late model cars they come in. I just think the Holley EFI controller is a better solution for an LS swap into an older car. Tuning a stock computer is a very tedious and time consuming process that would have to be repeated every time any significant modifications were made to the engine (or like when we hopefully swap from the LS2 to an LS7 at some point in the future). The Holley EFI system self-learns so we can spend more time driving and racing and less time tuning.

[andrewb70]

Hey Tom!

I am glad that you found our little slice of heaven. I look forward to updates on this project.

Andrew

[tommycomfort]

Welcome Tom
We're really looking forward to following the build!
Tom

[CruizinKev]

I love this project!

[TomT]

Thanks for all the welcomes guys.

Before we started taking things apart we took the Malibu to the local track to see how much it weighed in stock form. With the factory cast iron V6 and cast iron 3 speed manual, it weighed in at 3040 lbs. (which we were pretty pleased with).

We'll be adding a bigger engine, a bigger transmission, a bigger rear end, bigger brakes, bigger wheels and tires, beefed-up suspension, and probably a roll cage. I really hope we can keep it from gaining a lot of weight. A lot of the new stuff will be aluminum rather than cast iron so hopefully that will help keep the weight down.

What have you guys with finished cars seen as far as weight gain?

[NJSPEEDER]

Hopefully with the bulk of the engine and trans being aluminum it won't put on much weight. I would expect to see the car around 3200 at most.

BTW, you left out a key piece of information, What'd it run?

-Tim

[TomT]

Hopefully with the bulk of the engine and trans being aluminum it won't put on much weight. I would expect to see the car around 3200 at most.

BTW, you left out a key piece of information, What'd it run?

-Tim

Hey Tim - I was kind of thinking maybe 3200 lbs. I would be dissapointed if it was more than that. We're going to try to do some things to hopefully offset some of the weight we will be adding.

Unfortunately, we didn't run the car the day we had it at the track. In stock form it was painfully slow. The V6 just wouldn't rev and the 3 speed manual was impossible to shift quickly (if you tried it would just completely balk). My guess is that it was an 18+ second car. I kind of regret not running it down the track now but it seemed pointless at the time.

[TomT]

We test fit the LS2 and T56 to get an idea of what it's going to take to do the swap. Even though this car doesn't have air it's still a little tight at the heater box. We'll also have to make a hump for the T56.

[63Duece]

cant wait to see this!

i looove these big square styled cars!!

great ideas!

GL w/ur build!

[TomT]

Thanks 63Duece. We really dig these square-styled cars too. We think it'll look cool as a pro-touring style car but we're hoping to really make it fast too and its lightness will help with that.

[TomT]

This is the 87 Grand Prix frame that we will be using. It came out from under a super low mileage car and is in amazing condition for a G-Body. These came from the factory with a tar-like coating on the frames which came right off our frame using WD-40 revealing perfect factory stampings over about 90% of the frame (the other 10% had light surface rust).

We're also cleaning up the MIG spatter and grinding off the assorted pieces of MIG wire still attached to the frame (and otherwise tidying things up a bit). It won't be show-car smooth but hopefully it will at least look well prepared.

[twosaturns]

cool! I had one of these w/ that horrible 3 speed stick! previous owner completed the bodywork, swapped in a junkyard small block which I'm sure wasn't much better than the V6. slow as grass growing but looked so good! in the early '90's when I had it it was on 15" rally's w/ 60 series gatorbacks.
another one of those "I shoulda kept that one..."

[TomT]

cool! I had one of these w/ that horrible 3 speed stick! previous owner completed the bodywork, swapped in a junkyard small block which I'm sure wasn't much better than the V6. slow as grass growing but looked so good! in the early '90's when I had it it was on 15" rally's w/ 60 series gatorbacks.
another one of those "I shoulda kept that one..."

Here's an interior shot with that horrible 3 speed stick (before we completely took it apart). The T56 will make it all better. Check out the radio delete plate.