We have an update to our long running (since 2012!) 86 chassis development Forum Build Thread with this massive three part post. This time we show some new products for this chassis (like a new seat bracket kit, new seat options, oil pan options) as well as updates to some of our existing products (production LS swap long tube headers! updated LS / T56 crossmember design, new trans mount bushing, new tubular bumper beam, and more).
There are a lot of pictures showing the work to our shop LS swapped 86 – like the tubular front bumper beam we have added. We did this to allow for a bigger radiator which is mounted at a steeply rolled angle, which gives us a lot of extra room in front of the engine and allows for a cooling via hood venting. We show the steps to mounting a custom radiator, including the upper and lower mounting brackets and isolators.
After seeing some new “Tuner” series of seats from Sparco we bought a few, weighed them, and tested them in a number of cars – including our 86. We picked a pair that we will use for street and track use in our shop 86. Tilt back seats are much more practical that fixed back seats for the street, but still allow for 6-point belts to be used. This seat test led us to develop our production seat brackets for this 86 chassis, using a mount style we have developed on chassis like the R8, S197 and S550 Mustangs. So we have a pair of seats mounted in our shop 86 now.
Picking an oil pan for our shop car took some research, which we share in this post. We also show the new transmission crossmember and our LS/T56 Magnum XL drivetrain going into our shop car, as well as the front accessory drives we recommend for this swap. Then we show in detail the steps we went through to build new prototype long tube headers, then how the pre-production CNC bent units were installed, then finally the production batch after they arrived.
We show where the “Alpha” 86 LS build is today (above), and even supplied the new owner of this car with the 18×11″ wheels shown. That car has gone through a lot of updates and is racing in both NASA and Gridlife events. Lastly we show the next steps for our shop 86 build, including CAN integrated wiring harness, the Tilton clutch, oil cooler, and more. You can read the latest forum build thread entries starting here.