James bought an 06 GTO last Wednesday. I am very jealous of James. It's a 47K mile Phantom Black over Red 6-Speed with a HUGE amount of modifications (what we could see included Trick Flow heads, FAST LSX intake, Pace Setter coated long tube headers, SLP Loud Mouth full exhaust, carbon fiber real CAI with F-Body style flat K&N in front of the radiator, MSD coils, billet fuel rails with SS fuel lines, Hurst shifter, and staggered TSW's). James wails on it a bit, but not too bad because he paid $19.5K for the car and he rolled $6K worth of debt on his WRX trade-in into the loan. Saturday night he's actually just tootling along to get some grub and the pistons decide to exit the side of the block.
Long story short, we need an LS2 or 6.0L short block. I'm thinking Summit crate long LQ4 (6.0L iron block) 460HP for $3,500 because it's all new, and a known quantity. I'm thinking whatever unknown cam and valvetrain parts didn't play well with the unknown tune and that his heads are probably borked, though everything else is fine including the oil pan.
Did James get anything besides a "taillight warranty"?
Yoiurbjealous of a guy that has $25,000 worth of debt on a useless car?
I'm just going to walk away muttering something about Dave ramsey
trucke
HalfDork
2/25/15 9:30 a.m.
Let's congratulate James on his new ride.
James is fortunate to have a friend like you to help him out.
I have a good, running LS2 that's wrapped in a clean 05 GTO package that he can have for $12k. 
Tom_Spangler wrote:
I have a good, running LS2 that's wrapped in a clean 05 GTO package that he can have for $12k.
If I had that dangled in my face before getting the Charger that would have been tempting. However we were really looking for a 4 door cause of the baby.
icaneat50eggs wrote:
Yoiurbjealous of a guy that has $25,000 worth of debt on a useless car?
I'm just going to walk away muttering something about Dave ramsey
This made me laugh, as I'm taking the Dave Ramsey class right now.
The bicycle seems like a good option.
is he doing the work? is he screwed and without a ride?
step one would buy an $800 beater to get to work. step 2 is pull motor and inspect, don't write heads off yet. step 3 depends on condition of heads.
I wouldn't put an iron block in that car. Say hello to destroyed resale value if you do. Pull the heads and take them to a machine shop. As long as there's not damage to the combustion chambers they should be able to save them.
Once it's back together make sure it's got a safe tune on it. Lots of people with HP Tuners think they know how to tune these and unfortunately this is the result.
I wouldn't order ANYTHING until you pull and inspect what's in there now. Hard to tell what the really story is until everything is apart.
Honestly this is a really sad story because, with the the LSx swaps going on out there, he probably could have bought what he has now (engineless GTO) for about $4-6k. And only that much because he still has a low miles T56 and all the hop-up parts.
Just to clarify, I was jealous of James' car as it's pretty much my dream GTO. Definitely not jealous of his current life situation. He lives literally 2 blocks from work and walks in, plus has a bicycle and his GF's car so transportation isn't an issue. The car is at a shop now and they are pulling the motor apart on Saturday.
