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Heads up, may have to notch out the tranny cross brace for the pan to clear. I did. No big deal, not alot of material need removed. Picked up another one,in great shape via ebay,,,cheap.cut one is now garage art.  Might want to drill and tap your new pan for a drain plug.

Thanks for kind words! 
This is not a deep pan and should work fine and it already has a tapped hole for a drain plug!
...but some adjustments may be needed, we'll see! 

Not much are happening here at the moment....

I´m waiting for the desire to work on the car to come back again and still missing some parts from the US.
Hopefully we will get the tranny down but it's not going to be easy when you have a small garage without a car lift.
At least the Hugger is placed on four jack stands, the tranny is empty on oil and the drive shaft is done so now its just the rest left to do.

The starter is back from the starter shop and it has been overhauled big time and hopefully it will work better this time. The bendix gear has been replaced and is now made from Brazilian (!) steel, apparently the best a man can get!? All bearings and wiring has replaced as well, among other things.




I also got the new aluminum oil pan for the TH350 tranny from the US and I really think this raw cast look will match the ZL-1!

Your welcome! Amazing quality! Im building a similar build (with a '69 Mustang, powered by a modern Can-Am 494/Boss 429 engine) Im always intrigued on these aluminum powered monsters. Hopefully, one day I will build a 1969 Camaro, and I would build it just like yours. Keep up the excellent work!

Wow, that sounds like a beast! 
Stay tuned and hopefully I'll keep the pace and get ready to this season! 

Reading your thread, and all I can say is: AWESOME build! Love it.

Thank you very much, man!  I'm impressed that you spent that amount of time on my thread! 

I've been a bit lazy during the holidays but we've been gathering parts for the converter swap that's supposed to be done in my small garage without a car lift...

Wow, love that color combo!! 

Will do!
....or remind me if don't! 

Really neat to know that there is that much American Muscle in Sweden. I like to know how the 3000 converter works out. I kind of thought you would need something with your cam. I was going that route with my Chevelle with the LS6 cam before I sold it. Like to know how slippage you have just street driving. My thoughts were headed to a little lower stall speed. I think your distributer and carb are the way to go. My L78 with a choke still is a little tricky backing out cold. It likes to chirp the tires when you put it in reverse.

Kelley, you would be surprised if you knew how many American muscle we have here....based on the number of people it wouldn't surprise me if we have more muscle cars then you guys do? 

We just have to wait until spring/summer before I can answer your question but hopefully it will work much better but you never know....
I think the 3000 rpm depends on the cam and engine so it lower in practice maybe...?

A TH350 trans hooked up to a ZL-1 engine? 

Personally, I would have gone with a TH400. I believe that's what came with them when new (if auto equipped)...

But hey, if it works what the heck.

Nice build...

Yeah you're right there camaronut, but I reused the tranny I already had in the car and it worked ok except for the converter...plus that they used TH350 in racing, I've been told! 
Thanks for your comment, appreciate it! 

Well I am all for originality, but if it prevents function, I have to go to what is going to work. The heat shield is tucked under the manifold enough, where someone would have to look for it.

You're so spot on!

The heat shield I ran on my 66 Chevelle SS-396 was a insulated Moroso, and covered the whole solenoid.
like this one:
https://www.summitracing.com/oh/parts/mor-74300/applications
Worked great for me and never had the issue again.

Thanks, I've used a similar on my old 355 but I wanted to use the more original stuff on this build...guess I have to change my plan here since the original parts doesn't really work well in this case!

Your's is on my short list of favorite builds!
Always interested in updates.Such a cool factor.

Wow, you make me blush with those kind words!
Many thanks and I will try to keep you all updated with our progress...

Well the summer has pasted and now we´re entering the winter here in Sweden but no snow yet! 

The Hugger didn't run that many hours that I wanted too because a lot of things but the main one was the starter. 


It was a rebuilt one I got from a friend that got it from a friend so I didn't really know so much about it, but it worked ok when we ran the ZL-1 in the dyno.
But running in the street is a different ball game and here it did not deliver. Despite my original GM heat shield, which btw is too small,  the starter got to hot when you tried to stat if again after a quick stop. It didn't even made a click when turning the key....so I had to put the starter on the to-do-list for this winter.

I at least got the car to the biggest car event my town during this summer together with my 427-pal Nikke, as you may know from this forum. Here are our orange monsters together in my garage and at the show. We really got some attention with our rides among the 1500 other cars that attended! 








But during the up coming cruise night I had to feed the beast but I didn't get any further then this due to the troubles mentioned above.


My ZL-1 does givs a LOT of raw and fun power as it sits but it has been very difficult to just get it out from the garage, especially when it´s cold. But we think we have the solution for that.
My old 750 Holley 4 barrel didn't really match the spec of the engine and the old converter that I kept had to low stall speed. Together with a borrowed distributor it was a fight to get the car out of the garage and running...

Therefore a new custom made carb based on a 4 barrel Holley from https://www.smicarburetor.com arrived the other day to the home of the Hugger. It has an electric choke and a vacuum secondary to match the TH350 and gettin the power smoothly instead of instant. I've heard that this was the intention from Chevrolet from the beginning, when having a street usable ZL-1 together with an automatic!?


I also ordered a custom made distributor from Performance Distributors and I came earlier this summer. Both this parts has been built based on the specs from my ZL-1 engine so it really hope that this will do the trick! 


We also got our new 3000+ stall speed converter from B&M Holeshot Torque series part no 20413.


So now it just a matter of time and effort the get the Hugger running next summer again, let the winter start! 

"Several features of this engine make it highly unsuitable for street use."

He suggested some modifications that would result in better street operation. The changes were not implemented.

Interesting, William!
You don't happen to know more specific what those modifications were?

Hakan,Where is the video of you lighting up the tires? Just leave in drive, hold the brake a little til it breaks loose, my L78 will actually shift into second while doing it. Doing it lights up my day (2). Nice job on all of it.

Hehe Kelly I´m afraid I´m going to disappoint you cause we didn't get the time do make such a video this year so you just have to settle with these three short ones....at least you get a glimpse of what the ZL-1 sounds like and handle! 

https://youtu.be/DP_gxPTKSb0

https://youtu.be/imt2AzavMcU

https://youtu.be/MAf-MpslqVk

Hakan,

They look pretty good - did you see the Design Studio ZL-1 pics for inspiration ? They were apparently only on the grille and tail panel, car was black and gold; I saw a cloned version of the car at Indy Super Chevy many years ago that replicated the car down to the emblems. I (and many others) would really like to discover whatever happened to the original -

Good effort, I really like what you have accomplished with this build - especially considering the distance you are from sources here in the US.

Yupp, seen that one before but I really didn't like that emblem style and I've seen somebody before made something similar to "my" emblems for grille and rear though.