Step 1, convince daughter how much better her life would be if her car was fuel injected. If you are a carb lover, stop reading now.

Step 2, find a local board member with a TPI motor and convince him how much better his life would be with an LSX.

As luck would have it, nearby is an '87 IROC-Z being converted to an LS2. Bonus score for complete roller cam engine and trans 5.7L. Slightly over heated, but low miles. No codes, excellent compression. The donor yielded:

Complete L98 with accessories and emissions
700R4 trans
ECM
Y-pipe
(a wire harness)
MAF

The Camaro setup has the battery and carbon canister in the same locations as the '84 Trans Am Carb motor, but will require a custom air intake. More on that later. The '87 Camaro also had a mechanical speedometer same as the older Firebird. I believe an L98 Firebirds would have electric speedo.

 

Found a too-good-to-be-true deal on a TPI fuel tank. It was. Price doubled when my daughter went to pick it up and I found two holes in it when she got it home (picture somebody screwing down their boom box). No longer trusting any of what the seller said, I fitted it with a new fuel pump. Plugged the holes and it cleaned up nice. Slapped a couple coats of Rustoleum on it.

The carb fuel lines were replaced with a set from a V8 TBI car. The carb version clamp on hose lines can't take the pressure and enter the engine compartment on the wrong side. This car also supplied the fuel pump pass through connector under the back seat. The original harness doesn't have the fuel pump circuit and the fuel level is branched off of the tail light harness.

 

With the engine out and having had the boil over when it was driven to my garage, I decided to pull the heads off and inspect it. The head gaskets were gooey. After some measuring it was decided it was a good candidate for deglazing the cylinders and fitting new rings and bearings. Also added new oil pump, timing set and new seals throughout. Cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning.

 

Subscribing , I am doing the same swap to an 83 trans an soon. Good luck

 

The car was prepped with the high pressure fuel lines. The guide clamps aligned to existing holes on the frame rails. Swapped out the carb throttle cable for the longer TPI cable while the bay was empty. The trans cooler lines were also dropped into the engine bay loose so I didn't have to snake them through later. The fully dressed engine (minus distributer and coil) and trans were then slung into the car. This would have gone a little smoother if I had made sure the engine was hanging level looking at the front. No surprises with the mounts.

 

Sweet project! Looks like everything is coming along quite nicely!

 

 

A lot of that reminds me of my '86 LB9 TPI onto '86 L69 swap. Good choice of '87 as the donor.

 

Thanks guys.

The best wiring harness available at the moment is from an '86 TA. These had VSS speedometers. I'm hoping the cable drive Camaro ECM will just ignore this unconnected circuit. I haven't found a definitive answer.

 

'86 and '87 harnesses are a little easier since they're kinda separate from the rest of the wiring.

The '87 Camaro had a VSS in the back of the speedo.
Dash wiring leads over to a plug that connected to the ECM harness.

The Firebird had a VSS. Not sure how that's wired but I think it fed the ECM and speedo separately.

Both ECMs received the same signal...

 

Thanks JMD, that's needed info. Do you think my '84 TA has the VSS on the back of the speedo? I always wondered how my scanner reported speed from the diagnostic port. Where was the PID coming from?

Didn't put a deal together, harness shopping again.

 

I'm 99% sure it does. Pull your cluster out and look; it's right next to the cable.

By the way, my 86 LB9 harness is uncut.

What I did was something like this:

LB9 harness=[click connector]=LB9 donor dash connector plug=[solder]=4bbl ECM harness connectors=[click connector]=4bbl dash wiring.

I made very few splices except to tie into the SES light and ALDL, and add fuel pump.

 

Had some fun with heater hard lines. Should have had that back in before engine. Broke the shifter cable slinging the engine/trans in. LG4 mid-pipe is too small to mate with the catalytic correctly. Going to leak a little until replaced with correct size.

Cut 38mm x 30mm square hole for for fuel pump pass through behind rear seat. I have an '87 T/A engine harness on the way. I'll have to reroute the VSS wiring. An '86 harness has different arrangement for oil pressure switches. If going for a factory operating install, the whole system must be matched. Each model year has differences.

 

Drove the car to work today. High idle issue I've been puzzling over since I first started it 2 weeks ago disappeared half way home.

I ignored the '87 Firebird VSS wiring branch on the harness. It took pieces from 5 harnesses to put together what I needed for the swap. I did end up with good clean unbroken connectors all the way around. Costs have skyrocketed at the end as I nickle and dime my way through the final details.

 

My car does the same thing. it will idle high sometimes and sometimes it won't. 1500rpm.

 

What I've noticed is that when it is idling 600-650 RPM, my scanner will link and I get data. High idle it won't connect. I've checked the wiring over and over again. I think the ECM or the PROM has a problem.

Update: Replaced ECM and that has corrected the idle and scanner issues.

 

The '84 didn't have one. I ran a 10ga wire from the back of the fuse block were I was able to crimp and solder to an existing blade supplied by a heavy pink/black wire that supplied key on power. I picked up a 6 pin molex connector from Radio Shack to build my own C221. From the '87 harness the two pink/black wires each received 10A fused power (injector feeds) and the tan/white wire 20A fused power for one of the fan relays.

 

Lots of vague info about the pinouts for this connector online. Here is what I did:

"A" - ECM Pin A2 - This is connected to terminal "C" on ALDL for EGR solenoid, this was unchanged from '84

"B" - Fuel pump check - I didn't connect this (ALDL "G"?). I expected this to hot when fuel pump was running. I didn't, so I skipped it.

"C" - ECM Pin A5 - This supplies a ground to activate light. The '84 dash's light driver module works backwards. I connected this to a relay. The wire from the dash is normally closed to ground by the relay. The ECM now grounds the relay coil activating it and opening the circuit to the dash light ground. The power supply for the relay coil was an unused pink/black wire from the '84 side of the C207.

"D" - Fuel pump feed - I moved this to my homemade C221 connector. This is connected fuel pump power wire from the gas tank that I added.

"E" - ECM Pin A9 - ALDL test terminal "B" , this was unchanged from '84. You ground this by jumpering to ALDL "A" to put ECM in diagnostic mode.

"F" - ECM Pin A6 - 12V ignition on power supply to ECM, this was unchanged from '84.

"G" - EGR purge solenoid power supply, 12V ignition on, this was unchanged from '84.

"H" - ECM Pin A7 - ALDL terminal "F" to check TCC lock up, this was unchanged from '84.

"J" - ECM Pin A8 - ALDL terminals "E" and "M" serial data for scanner. I picked up an '87 ALDL connector pigtail to add these two terminals.

"K" - ECM Pin A10 - VSS feed to ECM, this was unchanged from '84.

"L" - Not used

"M" - ECM Pins "D1", "D3" and "D10" - ALDL terminal "A" on '84. This wire needs to have a good ground to the body added that is missing on '84 side of the C207.

"N" - ECM Pin "B10" - Gear select switch, this was unchanged from '84.

"P" - TCC control from brake switch, this was unchanged from '84.

"R" - Cold start injector power supply. I moved this to my homemade C221. I tapped the big purple starter wire coming from the shifter switch in the console and ran it through a 10A fuse to my C221. This powers up the 9th injector whenever the starter is cranking. The original wire on the '84 side was always hot with ignition on to supply the electric choke.

 

Rather impressive work going on here!

 

Big setback with the engine. It was still going through a quart of oil every 250 miles after 800 miles. Engine was pulled and tore apart as my best guess was that the rings didn't seat. The second machinest I took it to thought it was the heads. With a pile of parts and a bare block in front of him, we went with a 0.030 over bore and new pistons anyway. The heads were fitted with new valves. 2 weeks and $1150 later I picked up my assembled and painted long block. Haven't had to add any oil (break in oil change at 200 miles per builder).

After 2 weeks and 700 miles of fine tuning and tweeking the car is running great. Starts easily, idles smooth. No check engine lights. Everything but the A/C working. 19.4 MPG and rising.

 

Ouch! At least you're getting some great mileage!

 

I used the bellows and MAF from the donor Camaro. A 3" cast aluminum elbow, 3" 45 degree tubing, two 3" couplers and a cone filter were all sourced from ebay. I made a bracket to support the MAF that is bolted to an AC compressor brace. I also made a heat shield air filter support.

It is a tight squeeze. The tubing was dimpled about 6mm to create some clearance to the upper radiator hose inlet. The upper hose support was cut away from the radiator fan top mount and the hose routed lower and zip tied for support. Heat wrap was placed on the upper hose below the MAF and where the dimpled air tube pass over. I used playdough to verify clearances. There is a piece of adhesive foam attached to the hood at the pinch point by the radiator inlet.

It is noisy. You can hear the air sucking in at idle. The car is running great and was driven from Michigan to my daughter's new home in Georgia. As a bonus to the driveabilty and power improvements the car got 22.5 MPG on the trip down. She had us stop at one point for gas because she was sure her fuel gauge quit working.