When a Plan Doesn't Line Up: Dodgeball Project Update
If you’ve been following along with us at The ROY Garage, you know we’ve been putting in some serious hours lately. Last night, we rolled up the shop doors, cleared off the benches, and turned the cameras on with one massive goal in mind: finally mating our engine up to the drivetrain so we can get it all installed back into the Dodgeball project
The Heart of the Build
Freshly rebuilt and ready to rumble.
Here is the star of the show—our 5.3L LS LM7 engine. We just finished rebuilding this beast, and it is looking way too clean to be sitting on an engine stand.
Watch the full teardown and rebuild below!
The Drivetrain Setup
The 4L80E transmission and transfer case combo.
To handle the power of the LS, we’re running a heavy-duty 4L80E transmission paired up with our transfer case. It’s a bulletproof setup built to take a beating, but wrestling these heavy components together on the floor is always a workout.
The Empty Nest
Waiting for some real horsepower.
Looking at an empty engine bay just makes you want to get to work. The Dodgeball project has been sitting without a heartbeat for long enough, and we were determined to change that last night.
Watch the full Dodgeball playlist below!
Getting Close...
Bolting things together with the good stuff.
We hoisted the engine, carefully lined up the splines, and brought the two massive pieces together. I was standing there holding a fresh set of high-strength ARP torque converter bolts, thinking we were completely home free. The transmission case slid smoothly onto the engine block, and it felt like a massive win was just minutes away...
The Twist: When Custom Builds Fight Back
Well... that's not going to work.
That’s just the nature of the garage life—nothing ever goes completely according to plan. Because we're mixing and matching parts to build something custom, we hit a classic bolt-pattern mismatch. So, it is officially back to the drawing board. We are on the hunt to find a flex plate that will correctly adapt our engine and transmission combination, while still playing nice with our starter alignment.
The wrenching never stops, but we'll get it dialed in.
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