Derek Kiefer's 69 Malibu build

[Derek69SS]

A big hurdle of a LS1/T56 swap was fitting the transmission in the tunnel, while keeping the car low, getting proper driveline angles, and having plenty of driveshaft tunnel clearance.

I decided to just cut the whole tunnel out and make my own. I also fabricated it out of heavy 16ga steel as this tunnel provides a lot of the body's stiffness. Templates were made from construction paper, then traced onto a flat sheet, cut out with plasma cutter, and formed in Dad's home-made 4' sheetmetal brake.

[Derek69SS]

[Derek69SS]

Fitting the LS1 was a bit of a challenge. In 2010, there weren't as many options as there are today, and the Edelbrock headers were the first affordable long-tube headers available for the Chevelle chassis. I picked the Autokraft baffled road-race pan, and wanted to keep the stock low-mount F-body accessories for a clean look while also keeping it all factory GM so it could be serviced with replacement parts from any parts store anywhere in the country.

With engine mounts in the stock location, I had interference of the tie rods to the pan, alternator to the steering box, and the headers hung lower than the crossmember. All of these problems were solved by raising the engine up about an inch, and offsetting it about 1/2" to the right. With the tunnel cut completely out, I had a blank slate for engine placement.
AC compressor fitment required notching the RH frame horn for clearance, and drilling one well placed hole in the crossmember to be able to feed a bolt into the back side of a bracket.

[speedfreakcobra]

This is great. I love chevelles and yours is nicely done.

[Derek69SS]

The appearance of the factory firewall leaves a lot to be desired, and cleaning that up goes a long way toward making things look nice under the hood.
I smoothed the firewall and welded studs to it any place where I could to avoid having exposed fasteners.
I made a clutch master cylinder bracket and integrated that into the firewall.
The top edge I cleaned out all of the original seamsealer and trimmed each layer of sheetmetal straight, welded it solid, and formed a new front edge.
I also added a Vintage Air A/C system and hid all of the mounting and plumbing so no part of it is seen on the firewall.







Attachment 197653

[Oh68l30]

Looking forward to more updates. Looks great, can’t wait to see where it’s at now.

[Derek69SS]

Between 2010 when I took the car apart, and whenever I finally painted the firewall, (maybe 2014?) we moved twice, and the kids kept us very busy. I worked on it when I felt like it, but over those 4(?) years, it mostly collected dust with short bursts of progress every six months or so.

I blame the kids. It's entirely their fault. I would never leave a project unfinished for years on my own. 🤣

[Derek69SS]

After all the fab work and paint was done, I made some steady progress on reassembly for a little while, but then hit a wall again when it came to wiring and plumbing. I don't enjoy that type of work, and couldn't stay motivated to work on it. I had also made a career move into a position with high stress and little free time, but decent enough pay that I didn't need to be such a tightwad anymore... So, in 2017, I dropped the car off with Steven Kiehne, and picked it up a couple months later with the fuel system and wiring completed, and the car was yard-drivable. It still needed a lot of work to be roadworthy, but I could hear it run, and that was enough to motivate me to keep working on it.

[Derek69SS]

Over the winter of 2017/2018 I finished assembly of most of the car, and bought another new set of wheels, this time finally buying the expensive ones that I had wanted for many years, 18x9.5" and 18x11" CCW Classics. I had to make a little extra clearance in the rear, but I was able to stuff 315/30s in with no rubbing.

By spring of 2018 the car was nearly complete, and finally looked to be ready for the road...

[Derek69SS]

Summer of 2018 was full of expensive mistakes and lessons...

I wanted to run full 3" exhaust out the back, but needed to complete the install of the Watts Link first before I could do the exhaust, but I had trouble getting the Watts set up correctly. (Turns out I couldn't get the exhaust over the axle with the watts in the way, and had to dump it before the axle, so that was all wasted effort anyway)

I ran the car a little bit with open headers, but without exhaust on the car, the oxygen sensors were too close to the end of the pipe, so it was reading lean at lower RPM, and dumping in enough extra fuel to start fouling plugs. I cleaned the plugs, installed exhaust, and took the car to the Lyle car show for it's first trip out on the road. I didn't realize all that extra fuel had thinned out the oil, and was destroying the bearings.

I bought a cheap junkyard 5.3L to replace the damaged 383 just to get by for the rest of the summer. I then signed up for an autocross at DCTC, where a tensioner pulley seized and shredded the belt. Easy fix at least there.

At Street Machine Nationals, my season was ended with a loose lower balljoint coming apart, jamming the tire into the fender. In all my late-night thrashes, I had forgotten that I left the lower balljoint nuts loose so that I could adjust ride-height.

[Derek69SS]

Over the winter of 2018/2019, I had Dad replace the fender and repaint the whole right front corner of the car, and took the wounded 383" LS1 in to Baier's Engine Service for a rebuild. I pulled the junkyard 5.3 and while I had extra room to work, I cut the frame pockets out and installed Speedtech Chicane upper coilover mounts to change from the old dirt-track spring/weight-jacks to VariShock DA coilovers. I got it all back together and had it tuned by Steven Kiehne, making 434hp to the wheels peaking at 5650rpm.

[68Formula]

Beautiful car. Nice whp numbers on the 5.3l, what's your combo?

[Derek69SS]

434rwhp was from the 383" stroked LS1. (5.7 block, 4" crank, BTR Stage II cam, ported 853 heads, FAST 92mm intake & TB, not sure on compression ratio)

The 5.3 was only in it for a short time as a temporary engine to get me through a couple events when the 383 needed a rebuild. That was stock 2000 truck cam, and only made 266rwhp.

[Derek69SS]

2019 autocross season was humbling. I had somewhat expected to get right back into it and to be a contender in some bigger events, but after 8 years away from the sport, a lot had changed. The competition had gotten a lot faster, and I wasn't driving as well as I could. I fought brake lock-up on corner entry all season and just couldn't get the feel for that edge with a hydroboost.

I did quite a bit of local autocross, and a little travelling with it. Goodguys Des Moines was its first event of the year. We drove it to the Northern Ohio Chevelle Show 1400mi round trip, averaging about 18-19mpg running 80-85mph. I was awarded a "top 50" at that show of about 300 Chevelles. The car stayed mostly together all season, with only minor issues... I did have to replace the water-pump in the middle of the Northern Ohio Chevelle Show after it had started leaking at Dragway 42 the night before. I trailered it to LS Fest in Bowling Green, but had kind of disappointing results there.

At the end of the season, I started to focus on just having fun, and stopped putting pressure on myself to be fast... and that's exactly what I needed to finally start getting faster.

[wfo guy]

You have a good looking family. You know that the next step will be a complete frame swap, don't you?

[Derek69SS]

You have a good looking family. You know that the next step will be a complete frame swap, don't you?

Thanks!

There will be a few small steps in between, but the next really big step is retiring this car and racing a newer Corvette instead... I'm almost to the point where I've accomplished everything I ever dreamed I could do with this car, the gains that are left to be made are getting really small and expensive, and the limitations of a 3600 lb boat are more of a hinderance than any improvements of engineering or hardware can overcome. I'm probably going to run this for 2 more seasons before I'm ready to soften it up and move into a more competitive platform.

[Turquoisewelder]

This is perfect. A long-term home garage built car that is meant to be beat on. This is so much cooler than a $300k custom build. Keep up the good work, such an awesome car!

[Derek69SS]

I didn't change much over the winter of 2019/2020 other than removing the hydroboost and changing to manual brakes. First time out for a cruise in spring of 2020, my 8:1 Sweet Mfg. steering box (new previous fall) had developed a pretty significant leak, and while looking at that, I noticed that I corded the inside edges of the front tires. I re-checked alignment and everything had moved. Less camber, and a lot of toe out led to discovering my lower A arms were just starting to collapse. Thankfully, SPC replaced them with their newer beefier version.

My first event of the year was, again, Goodguys Des Moines.

[andrewb70]

You were lucky to discover the A-arm issue before racing it again!

Andrew

[Derek69SS]

You were lucky to discover the A-arm issue before racing it again!

Yes, failure had just started. Total failure was probably avoided due to rain on day-2 of the last event of the season. I still raced, but grip levels were reduced, so I'd bet failure began on day 1 and rain prevented further destruction.

I noticed the car was darty on the street, but attributed that to the change to 8:1 steering from 12.7:1 that I did about the same time. Didn't even think that it could have been 1/4" toe-out due to arms starting to collapse, until I saw the tires were corded on the inside edges.

SPC made it right, and I have no doubts about their new design arms.
One thing to keep in mind is that when those early arms were made, most people were on 235-255mm front tires that had half the grip of what we're running today. We're pushing this stuff way beyond the original design intent IMHO.