Fixing THE WORST LS Engine Factory Defect Ever & Adding 100 Horsepower In The Process! GM Failed US!

well it's been about a month since I removed and disassembled the engine on my 2012 Chevy Caprice PPV and it's just been sitting while I fixed a broken Italian car a broken German car and while I waited on a few new parts and one very used part this is the camshaft out of another six liter Caprice engine and as you can see this cam lobe has seen better days like many GM v8 engines of this era the Caprice has a FM or active fuel management otherwise known as displacement on demand this system uses special lifters to shut off four cylinders during light load and cruising situations to save fuel the system uses a valve lift or oil manifold or v loam which houses four solenoids when the computer commands it the solenoids open and allow pressurized oil to flow to the intake and exhaust AFM lifters which activates their latching pins with the pins pushed in the outer portion of the lifter follows the cam lobe and the inner portion that would normally push up on the push rods stays stationary this keeps both intake and exhaust valves for their respective cylinders closed and the computer turns off the injector and the coil for those cylinders as well now the issues with AFM were mostly caused by low oil pressure the lifters require about 25 psi to activate the latching pins and if a switch to v4 mode is commanded with insufficient oil pressure the pins could get stuck in sort of an in-between position which damages the lifter body and causes a collapsed lifter that sounds just like this to make this simple you can think of a collapsed lifter as a shorter lifter it's not able to take up the slack in the valvetrain which causes the lifter to bounce up and down this literally beats down the cam lobe and can also break a push rod the oil pressure issues were mostly caused by leaking v loam clogged v low oil screen engine sludge low oil level or even a bad solenoid now this doesn't happen to all AFM engines I know one of your babies mamas cousins uncles brother has a Chevy Silverado with an afm v-8 that has 300 thousand miles on it and all he's done is tires and brakes I get it and in fact my caprices engine was in excellent condition but if you're about to add a hundred of horsepower with a big cam headers an intake and a tune like I am or you're not worried about the roughly one to two mpg increase you get with AFM then you - well delete it because it can be a problematic system that can cost a lot of money to fix I love LS engines but they had a couple more issues and we're gonna get into that in this episode as well I'm back on the Caprice project now so my friend Eugene and I removed the transmission and set it on a tire I unbolted and removed the flex plate and then we manhandled this aluminum six litre v8 engine onto my engine stand because Eugene and I are actually pro bodybuilders and were really strong or the aluminum LS engines are really light I don't know one of the two since we're replacing the cam I'm upgrading the oil pump and removing the oil pan makes this infinitely easier so off the oil pan came from here I removed the pickup tube and then the old oil pump and then I donated some cash to the Gary Sinise Foundation and his first responder program yes Lieutenant Dan runs a pretty awesome foundation that helps out our veterans and our first responders the first responders program provides 100% mortgage-free homes to severely injured officers as well as home modifications and even car modifications to help them restore their independence and mobility I'm not sponsored by the Gary Sinise foundation at all Lieutenant Dan has no clue I'm mentioning this I just want to help out our men and women in blue and when I revealed the Caprice project I said be picking random police charities to help out in the reveal video I donated to the get behind the vest program and my sponsor for that video Avalon King ceramic coating donated $1,500 as well if you're interested I'll leave the charities linked down below in the description box alright so we have the transmission hanging out on an old 315 35 17 inch tire that I used to run on this car when it had the factory WS six wheels I saved two of them to do a big smoky burnout and then I got rid of the 17 so it has been relegated to transmission duties we have the engine completely disassembled and let me show you guys some of the new and upgraded parts that I'll be installing first off we have the factory cylinder heads I sent them to my local machine shop so they have been resurfaced so we don't have any head gasket sealing issues we have the dual BTR valve springs and the titanium retainers installed at the proper height for the proper spring pressure and the only modification I made to these heads or the intake valve okay so this is a factory intake valve and you can see it's a nice and chunky 110 grams and this is a hollow stem ls3 intake valve at only 88 grams so I found 10 of these used you only need eight so I have two extras and they were only 130 bucks they looked brand new but we had a three angle valve job done to the heads and even though these are direct drop-in valves this was an excellent time to install those and the heads look practically brand-new ready to be installed so we also have an awesome camshaft I'm so excited to install this is a mayhem three from England green I'll leave a link down below this is a 234 to 44 duration and I forget the lift it's on a 113 LSA and it sounds kind of like this [Music] needless to say this cop cart will be chopping away nicely and that cam is gonna produce some awesome awesome power on the dyno as well a couple other things we're doing while we're in there we're upgrading the oil pump so we're using the Mellon's 10 to 95 high pressure oil pump it comes with the red spring inside you can put the stock pressure blue spring in or check this out they have the COPO Camaro spring so this increases the pressure 15 psi over the red spring we're gonna leave that out but kind of cool that they specify a spring for the rare copo camaro we're also going to be replacing the timing chain guide to I believe this is just the normal ls3 style we're moving to a three bolt cam instead of a 1 volt so we have to change out the sprocket we have a brand new GM timing chain I measured these they're identical there's practically no wear on the old engine and then later on in the video I'll show you the trunnion upgrade for the rocker arms we have hardened push rods over there I'm probably forgetting some stuff but regardless let's get back to work on this engine we're gonna be installing the camshaft the oil pump the timing chain everything right now getting the pans on there and moving on [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right our engine is all cleaned up our mayham camshaft is installed we have the cam retaining plate torqued and lactated in place and now we have a three bolt cam instead of the original single bolt cam so a couple things we have the little dot here on the crankshaft sprocket in the 12 o'clock position pointing up so we have top dead center on cylinder number one and then if you put this little dowel to the right on the camshaft it'll kind of get you in the ballpark of where you need to be with this cam sprocket so see this little marking here that needs to be in the six o'clock position and it needs to go dot 2 dot with the crankshaft sprocket so a couple other things that have to do with cleaning that this may already be in the comment section but you want to be really gentle when you're cleaning an aluminum engine so although I was using an air tool my wheel at the end is a very soft bristled plastic brush and this doesn't remove any material whatsoever that's what you want so don't use anything like this like this or like that it will definitely make little divots in the aluminum and you'll have head gasket sealing issues so this cleans it up in short order as you can see it looks really really nice and I used my hundred year old oiling can that I literally found buried in the backyard of my hundred-year-old house when we were doing some work out there and I just scored a little bit of oil into the cylinders since they were drive from all the brake clean kind of move it around in there and then I'll do a final clean when we go to put the head gasket and the head back on because it's a little bit oily right now but right now we're ready for the timing chain a little damper that goes here the oil pump the oil pan and then I have a neighbor coming in about 45 minutes to help me lift this thing back onto the cradle and then we got a torque converter to install as well oh and if you guys need all the torque specs for most LS engines I'll leave that linked down below it's totally free and while you're down there check out my Amazon garage where I've put links to all my favorite automotive amazon products and tools there's some really good deals down there and it's a totally free way of supporting my channel Amazon sets aside a small commission for everything they sell so as long as you click on any of my Amazon links or just the garage link before you buy literally anything doesn't even need to be something I've listed I get a few pennies at no extra cost to you because Amazon would have normally just kept this commission I've also started a new automotive business that a lot of you guys might be interested in so check that out in the description box too [Music] about an hour later and our engine is ready to go back on the cradle so I'm going to be installing the heads and everything else on the cradle and you may notice I already have the balancer on that's because I always put that on to center of the front cover before I tighten it that's very important otherwise you'll get some leaks there's a special tool for this that I don't have but you got to put this on anyway so I like to do that and I haven't had any issues yet something else I didn't show is that you can actually replace the rear cover in the rear main seal on the stand it's kind of a pain in the butt to slide it in and out but it's doable so we have both front and new rear seals new gaskets new oil pan gasket new oil pump everything is sealed up and ready to go so we're moving on to the transmission and I actually removed the transmission and I left a torque converter bolted to the flywheel just to make it lighter for us to pick up but that was just postponing the inevitable because I have to put this torque converter on the transmission first and I like to pre-fill these a little bit as well so this is gonna be a heavy beast going back together and the torque converter that we're using is from Circle D they make phenomenal torque converters I've used them in the past this is a 3800 multi-disc lock-up torque converter so this can be locked up under boost under spray it's a very strong torque converter it's kind of overkill for this build unless we go crazy but a very very nice piece and I'll link all the sponsors down below for you guys but circle D torque converter very nice piece this is going to allow the Caprice to launch like a bat out of hell and it's gonna match the camshaft perfectly so I specked out the camshaft and the converter together I spoke to both companies and they agreed this would be an excellent match and that's how you want to do it so let me slide this on to the transmission my neighbor is almost here okay hang on this is too pretty not to show you guys this thing was facing down in the box so I didn't even get to see this look at this torque converter this is so so nice LS multi-disc 258 millimeter then they put their little date code down there as well this is a billet torque converter this is probably one of the nicest ones I've ever seen so it's a shame that will never see this pretty face again well unless I grenade the engine or the transmission then I guess we'll see it again all right so we're moving along here I'm getting excited I just bolted up the torque converter to the flex plate that is torque to use Loctite on those as well as per these Circle D instructions and I was just about to install the starter right down there and I noticed that we have some wiring issues take a look at this look at the wires going to this connector the insulation has completely come off so everything else on this harness I looked over and it's very flexible but in this one spot which is right there the heat must have just been extreme when it was idling away in Florida now the wiring itself seems intact so I think what I'm gonna do here is we're gonna tape it up and then I'm gonna wrap it up with this heat tape and that should fix our problem we weren't getting a check engine light or anything like that so I think the connection is good here but anyway I'm going to start plugging away I'm gonna wrap up all of this little stuff and then we're bolting the cylinder heads on all right guys we dodged a bullet with this harness I was able to wrap each wire individually we have our heat tape and this is good to go [Music] all right we are moving along I like to put a lot of the front together before the cylinder heads that way we're not kind of wrestling with another piece of metal about this high so we get the AC compressor in nicely the alternator back in and not have to fight anything especially hooking up lines and stuff underneath the cylinder head so anyway this stuff is all done we're moving on to bolting the heads on and I've already put in some of the lifters but I just wanted to show you what was going on here so this is a new lifter tray these are factory ls7 lifters GM was on strike for so long and these were on backorder forever but they finally came back a bunch of Chinese knockoffs hit the market it was a big mess but these are the real GM lifters and these are the displacement on demand lifters here as you can see so we're going to all traditional lifters so we're deleting that entire system and that means we're getting rid of the V loam plate that houses the four solenoids that sends oil pressure to the lifters and we're just going to be using a factory style normal valley cover plate and that'll eliminate the entire DoD system so this is all cleaned up I just have to break clean it a little bit more insert our bolts here and the lifters are really easy let me show you how they go in the LS engine in general is so easy to work on you saw the timing marks no big deal takes two seconds to time the engine and the lifters are really easy the difference between these and the old Chevy small blocks is that you do have to have the cylinder heads off to replace your lifters but that's it our lifters are in we're gonna get a bolt here put the other ones in and then we're ready to go ahead and put the cylinder heads on something interesting this engine when I took it apart it didn't have rear dowel pins for the heads it was really weird there were only two in the front so I went to the dealer picked those up we're good to go it's time to get those on here and we got a mess around with these headers these headers are going to be a big pain in the butt because of that cooler [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right we have our cylinder heads on this thing is starting to look like an engine again and I had a little bit of help which was nice and we've mocked up the headers and I'm having some issues as you can see by this gigantic gap here and I'll get to that in a minute but first let me show you guys another upgrade I'm doing to prevent possible engine damage and this is something that can happen especially if you're modifying an LS engine and that would of course be with the rocker arm so these have already all been modified let me show you guys what a stock one looks like and here she is so if you see here in the middle you have this portion that moves so the bolt goes through the center you have your push rod that goes on this side in this context the top of the valve so this is constantly moving like this and there are needle bearings inside of here this is the trunnion body the center portion and there are needle bearings inside of here you really can't see them and these normally don't fail when the engines completely stock but when you start modifying them with a big low P camshaft these can walk out these caps and the bearings can spew into your engine so this is what that would look like all these little tiny bearings in your engines so they've come up with a trunnion upgrade the one I bought is from BTR there are a few other ones on the market and you're basically replacing that entire center section and then you're using C clips and a washer on the side and this ensures that this trunnion can never slide out in the bearings won't ever release themselves into your engine now these are not difficult to replace at all you're going to use a 22 millimeter socket there's a flat side to this you put that down and then a 13 millimeter socket on top normally you have this bolted to your bench I just bought it but this is how it works and you just simply push it out it's much easier if it's bolted down but I wanted to show you guys even though I have a hydraulic press in the garage that you don't need that in order to do this so I went to Harbor Freight just a couple hours ago and I bought this and they're only about 50 dollars and basically pay for themselves right away with one of these jobs here so right now we have a completely emptied out rocker arm and we can start to press the new parts in so here's the roller bearing assembly you want the letters facing up and we're simply just going to place that here make sure it's even and these push it really easily all right so that's that now we're gonna drop the new trunnion body in take another one of these caps with the roller bearings put it on the top there we're gonna set up a washer on the bottom and a washer on top and we're just gonna press it on just like that from there we're just gonna put a washer on and a snap ring do the same to the other side and bam you've just corrected an issue GM had with their rocker arms if you modify your car I'll give it to them from the factory the rocker arms they're pretty stout alright so a couple of other issues with the LS engine and this one I'm gonna make a separate video on this isn't an actual LS 7 valve this is just one other the Caprice but the LS 7 so the C 6 zo 6 and the 5th gen z28 Camaro they had issues where the valves would drop into the cylinder and completely wipe out the really really expensive engine so that was a major factory defect and it was just a bummer because otherwise the car was phenomenal something else on the Caprice if you put a gigantic camshaft in like I am what can happen with these factory valves is they can start to mushroom at the top so not a huge issue but if you're revving these things to 65 7000 rpm that's another reason why I went with the ls3 valve so it is lighter and it's stronger so won't have that issue so yeah you could replace those valves if you're putting a big cam in your car the very early LS ones in the Camaros and Firebirds and even Corvettes they had oil pump failure issues so we don't really see that anymore but early on that was kind of like the first factory defect on the LS 1 along with some pistons slap issues which was deemed normal but overall the LS family of engines which does include the Caprice the L 76 the L 77 the lq 9 and the trucks the lq 4 these are all LS engines all right guys they're the same all the parts are basically interchangeable but they have different designations so anyway these are very very awesome awesome engines as you know everybody puts them in practically every swap so obviously I'm a big LS fan I've owned that for 16 years and had every nut and bolt out of it it's a thousand horsepower turbo Trans Am and now we have this right here so let me show you guys the issue I'm having with the headers so on the passenger side I mean this won't even come close oh I'll have one bolt in it but basically the trans cooler lines are totally in the way and the headers are hitting this pedestal right here as you can see I'm kind of tapping on it so we would definitely need to modify the trans line somehow it seems almost impossible at this point I'm gonna have to figure that out and then this was the side that I was expecting to have the issues on and these are fifth-generation Camaro SS headers so they're not specifically built for the Caprice I believe Kooks is the only one that builds Caprice specific headers that fit like a glove but they're like a thousand bucks these are like three hundred bucks so I figured I'd try and make these work but everybody said I would have issues with the oil cooler hitting and it clears see the oil cooler down there it clears these are basically bolted up they have no gasket but so I'm not really exactly sure what's going on there but it is also hitting that right there the engine mount pedestal so I'll have to dent in the header on this side if I want these to fit so anyway that is for the next episode we're gonna get these headers fitted on our engine we're getting this thing completely put back together put into the car and we're starting her up alright guys that'll do it for today's video make sure to follow me on instagram at legit street cars where I post quick updates on all of the projects hit the thumbs up button if you like the video share the video subscribe if you're new and most importantly have an awesome day I'll catch all of you in the next video [Music]

Channel: LegitStreetCars

Views: 887,523

Rating: 4.8916898 out of 5

Keywords: ls engine, LS ENGINE ISSUES, LS ENGINE FACTORY DEFECT, GM, general motors, active fuel management problems, afm delete 6.0, afm issues, DOD, displacement on demand, ls cars, caprice ppv, fastest police car, INSIDE AN ENGINE, LEGITSTREETCARS CAPRICE, INSIDE AN LS ENGINE, LS ENGINE CARNAGE, LS3, L77, LS1, LS2, LS7, how engine works, INSIDE AN INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE, HIGH MILEAGE ENGINE TEARDOWN, AMSOIL, AMSOIL DEALER, amazon affiliate program, SEE THROUGH ENGINE, ls engine build

Id: 3GKF2ic5iRQ

Length: 24min 47sec (1487 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 11 2020