[FLYNAVY30]

We got back from our wedding in September of 2014, after having our honeymoon cancelled due cancelled flights on the part of Delta, and incompetent call-center customer service on the part of Orbitz....side note, I'll never use one of those travel sights again. I decided to yank the wounded motor along with the tired junk-yard transmission I had originally used, and hunt for a long term, reliable replacement. I settled on a long block from Thompson Motorsports in Texas. They have an excellent reputation for a quality product on all of the LS forums. I went with a stock displacement, 6.0L iron block with a few upgrades like forged pistons, bigger cam, and some head work to bump the compression up to 10.5:1. For the transmission, I went with a Gear Star 4L65E STG 2.

While I was making such major changes, I decided to upgrade to the Holley Terminator EFI to run fuel injection, along with the ignition and transmission controller. In the first iteration of the build, I never felt like the engine and transmission were in sync. Shifts never seemed to be at the right time and the carb was very fussy to get started after sitting out overnight in the winter.

It took a while to get the truck back on the road, but I had it up and running in time from some later summer, early fall road trips in 2015.