I am picking up a 91Z from the junkers in a couple weeks. I own a 88 IROC-Z that had the L03TBi in it with a 700R4. anyways, i have gutted the whole inside of the car almost, i removed the dash & wiring harness, etc...

Anyways, when I do this coversion, will I run into any problems with the 92, due to that it has Air Bags & different Dashboard? Will everything wire up properly, I am thinking of just runing all after market gauges, but, if anyone has ever done this swap, can u please help out, thanks.....

 

you have both cars... should be pretty straight foreward.

 

The only major problem I had when I did the L03 to L98 swap was that the under-dash connector changes from year to year, so my injectors weren't getting power. All I had to do was wire them to a 12v. source powered by the ignition right off of the fuse block. Other than that, everything should work fine. Make sure you change the ECM too. Oh yeah, another thing I forgot is the VSS, the vehicle speed sensor has a buffer on the ECM. The plugs were different on the different years so I had to cut and splice them in. If youdon't hook this up, your timing, convertor lockup, and idle will be adversely affected.

 

Well yeh, Iwill have the other car, and am going to strip it completely. But, i am changing all the wiring entirely, from under the hood, inside the car, etc....

How long did it take you to do the conversion?

 

It took me a while because I had to chase down several gremlins and i was only working on it on the weekends. I started on Saturday and by lunchtime I had the old motor out. I pulled the transmission too. Then it took about 8 hours to drop in the new motor, wire it up and hang the tranny. That also included putting in the radiatior and front accessories and soldering alot of plugs on the harness. Then it took me about a day or maybe a little more to drop the rear and fuel tank to change the fuel pump and put the rear end back in. All in all, if I had done it all at once, it would have taken maybe 3 days.

BTW, why are you changing all of the wiring in the car?

 

Well, seeing as how I only drive the car in the summer, and want it to go fast. 1/2 the wiring harness is useless anyways, the enitre heating system is gone, i probabbly wont be using the gaugesin the dash maybe, and just be running aftermarket gauges, i just heard from a bunch of pople, its easier to do the swap, this way. Plus, when I was removing the TBI Harness, I count figure out how people were using the original harness on the interior of the car, unless, they cut the wires & resoldered them back, I dont know. I didnt see any harness to seperate.

Did u do any mods to the engine before you droppped it in? Im thinking of doing some minor motor work to get it up to 300HP, at the flywheel, 50HP basically right, Nice set of Headers ( SLP ), port & polish, etc....

I cant wait until its all done..

 

Everything from the firewall back is the same, so I'm not sure I understand. If you're removing it b/c it will never be used, thats one thing.

I had the whole motor rebuilt, .030"over, polished crank, new bearings, ARP rod/main bolts, cloyes timing set, zz4 cam, hooker headers, aluminum vette heads, Fluidampr harmonic balancer, 3000 stall convertor, B&M flywheel and while it was out, I took the opportunity to clean and paint the engine bay and the motor.

 

Thats whykid man. What does it run?

Im also dong a T-56 conversion, and putting soem 4.11s in the back...

 

It's nothin' crazy really. It's a small cam and other than that, it's just a stock motor with headers. It oughta run low 13's when it's tuned and I get all of the bugs worked out.

 

finally, i can get my question answered...
i am doing the tpi swap from my 91z to my 92 rs, should everything be straight forward, or will i run into night mares? the only things im unsure about is the harness, like above and the throttle cable?
will my swap be fairly easy b/c the similar years?
any help greatly appreciated

mike

 

The swap should be extremely straight forward. Just take the harness and ecm out of the '92 and put it in the '91. Should be no problems. If so, just ask.