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Engine SwapEverything about swapping an engine into your Third Gen.....be it V6, V8, LTX/LSX, crate engine, etc. Pictures, questions, answers, and work logs.
Yes I was a little skeptical on the compression fittings at first, but these are stated to be directly compatible with stainless lines. As you can see in my pics I also water tested each fitting at 100 PSI for no leaks.
The issue why I went with it was after doing several different configurations I ended up wanted the lines to exit in the TPI location to ease connection to the chassis. I first made aluminum lines with AN flares but I was worried it would fatigue at the hose end over time. Stainless I was worried would flares really seat against the aluminum AN fittings. When I saw these and the good reviews on the Earls unit I decided to go with these. Apparently a lot of use of these on LS swaps on the fuel rail to adapt to AN fitting.
The Fuel Pressure Setting for the RAMJET is ~43 PSI just like TPI
It is supposed to fit under the stock Camaro hood, others have done the swap have said it fits (Formula hoods have some trouble I believe). Will make it work!
Thanks for the info !! I will keep following.....
Here is an idea....use the stainless lines with flares and STEEL AN fittings.....just like aircraft use....just a thought.
so I have been making a lot of progress, but way behind on posting.
just to finish up the comments on the fuel lines, for the flex line portion to connect the hard lines on the engine to the hard lines on the chassis I used Earl's Vapor Guard 3/8 EFI hose. It is very easy to work with. on the engine side I connected directly to my line by using their hose barb to -6 female fittings, 750166ERL. On the chassis side, I had my chassis hard lines made with GM quick connect ends in 3/8 and 5/16 respectively. therefore on this end I again used the 750166ERL fitting and then added to it on the 3/8 side russells EFI quick connect fitting 644123 and on the 5/16 side their 644113
over the month of march and actually to this point, I have mainly been working on the engine control wiring and then the changes to chassis wiring necessary to support my new Holley EFI HP and also the conversion from auto to manual tranny.
for efi control I am using the Holley HP EFI system. I decided to go this route as I am interested in standardizing on one control platform for all my projects. the Holley HP or the bigger Dominator can support SBC, BBC, LSx, and pretty much anything else you can dream up. getting to one software platform without having the hassle of all the HP Tuner credits, and initial programming for LS swaps or all the different flavors of TPI I am running seems attractive to me. also the Holley has a lot of customization potential which as an engineer I really like. we will see
so to support this idea, I decided to start out with holley's efi main harness as the Universal Unterminated Harness 558-105 and do it the way I want it. I would tell you this is very doable for anyone who understands electrical fundamentals, has proper access to schematic information, is diligent in details, and willing to invest the time, money, and other resource needed to determine and get the right components and tools. Going this route can quickly overwhelm you if you are not committed to acquiring the knowledge needed or have realistic resource set aside of the tools you will need to reliably make the connections, etc. the upside if you do this, is you end up with a harness the way you want it with all the options you want, that fits like it was made for your application, which of course it is!
my first step was to take apart the Holley Harness! even though it is basically a bare unterminated harness, it still assumed that the fuel pump relay and fuse would be by the ECU and a couple of other things like that which I did not want to have that way. So I took it all apart right down to the individual ECU connectors as a place to start
As you can see in the pics below, you need a very large space to work with to start as Holley gives you a set of very long leads to work from which is great. I was able to route everything the way I wanted with no splicing on any of the holley wires
You need to break out everything and understand what the wires are. Label everything, and the wires that you aren't going to use, remove from the harness and fill the ECU with blanks. I also at this point thought through natural groupings of wires and how I would run them in the engine bay (ie even and odd injectors, etc). I grouped all these together into their appropriate sub groups and did some rough measurements in the camaro. I then did some rough cuts of these groups, still keeping them plenty long, but shorting them to make it more manageable from the original holley wire lengths
Also on the main power harness, I didn't like the FPR by the ECU, I want it on the drivers side firewall. So again, I needed to figure that out and unterminated the Ducon 6.3 connector, swap ends essentially of the holley wiring as a place to start and re-terminate with the correct terminals and tool that supports the Ducon 6.3
After that I was ready to start thinking about the interior length of wire needed to run from the passenger side firewall entrance to the ECU (I am mounting the Holley HP in the original OEM spot)
For mounting on the interior side, I decided to have 24" from the wire end of the ECU plug to the passenger side harness entry
For harness protection I am using Painless Power Braid
To fill the passenger side firewall hole I found that GM grommet 12066591 fits very well. It is round so the corners need to be sealed. To fit it over the harness I expanded it using a 1 1/4" PVC tube and slid all the unterminated wiring through
Once you get to that point, you will be glad you studied ahead and figured out what items you need and how you want them to run and that you labeled and grouped everything.
To aid me in keeping track of lengths I placed a piece of green electrical tape at 60" from the end of the ECU connectors on the interior (you can see it in the pic above the end of the heater box). This gives you a good reference mark for how long the wiring in general is in this overall harness
What is the part number of the crimper you used for the Holley ECM terminals? I can't quite read the labels in the pictures. Always wondered if a Deutsch crimper would work with that.
Also, how long are the wire leads in the unterminated wire kit? I was thinking of building a fresh harness next winter, without all the splices and such that I had to do the first time. Nothing wrong with my old harness but I've got to do something or I get bored.... and harness is a whooooooole lot cheaper than building another engine!
I've liked the IWISS Molex crimpers but any Molex compund action crimpers should work fine. If you are thinking of making a harness check out DIYautotune's wires and connectors. They sell the wires that have the labels printed on them and no two wires are the same color or stripe combo. It has made harness work much easier for me since you really don't need schematics with the wires labeled.
I will get you the info on the crimpers I use, but here are a couple of quick comments
- The Holley Universal Unterminated Harness comes with the P1A and P1B connectors fully populated, ie the harness is all terminated on the ECU end, so all you need to do is decided what wires you really need and remove the ones you don't from the P1A and P1B to start. This makes it an easy place to start, as the color coding of the wires all match Holley's schematic, the P1A and P1B use a somewhat odd Tyco pin with unique crimper, shielded wiring for the Cam, Crank, WBO2 is already there with shields terminated, etc
- Since I am using a SBC with traditional 90's ICM type distributor, ie one coil, I removed all the individual coil command wires that would be associated with an LSx type application for example.
- In the end I needed to actually only crimp one wire for the P1A and P1B connectors since I wanted to move the Fuel Pump Relay from the point near the ECU to on the drivers side firewall
- The Ducon main connector for the power you need to take apart and redo if you want to move the fusing, FPR, like I did. The good news is that the actual wiring length itself is long enough to do this without needing to use a different set of wires.
- The overall wire length of this harness starts out probably around 15 feet and again why it makes sense to get some relative lengths of your runs and rough cut it down to make it more manageable. Also pre-sorting and taping together like runs really helps avoid a snarled / tangled mess inside the engine bay when you are first starting out.
from a crimper viewpoint, these are the ones I am using
- For all the GT150 3.5mm sensor connectors, I use Delphi Dual Crimper 15359996. This crimper holds the terminal and crimps the core and insulation in one step
- For Weather Pack connectors, I use Delphi Dual Crimper 12014254. This crimper holds the terminal and crimps the core and insulation in one step
- For other terminals that I don't have a dedicated crimper as above I use a 3 set of Delphi single crimp crimpers that pretty much can crimp almost any type of terminal. I have a service manual from Delphi that gives a good indication on which crimp to use on which Delphi/GM terminal with these
Delphi 12085271 "A" - "E" Crimps
Delphi 12085207 "1" - "5" Crimps
Delphi 12085115 "F" - "G" and Blue, Yellow, Red Butt Crimps
With the wiring in the engine bay, it was pretty much a process of getting it laid out the way I wanted to run it, such as FPR relay on the drivers side firewall, battery on the drivers side, etc and sorting through the terminals
A couple of notes
- For the smaller gauge wire (< 18 AWG), I like to strip the insulation back 7/16 and then fold over the core and use a 18 gauge type terminal. this makes the crimp a lot stronger on the small signal wires
- You will need to make some of your own ignition power and gnd wire bundle splits... ie power for the injectors for example as the holley harness to stay small does not bring out an individual wire for all the sensor grounds and power for each injector. this works great, you just need though to plan in advance how you will do it
in addition to the holley hp harness, you need to adapt in the C100 harness. the portion of the headlight side stayed exactly the same. the portion on the engine side had substantial changes. I started with the original OEM V6 harness and made a lot of changes. these pics give some idea of those changes.
- For all the GT150 3.5mm sensor connectors, I use Delphi Dual Crimper 15359996. This crimper holds the terminal and crimps the core and insulation in one step
- For Weather Pack connectors, I use Delphi Dual Crimper 12014254. This crimper holds the terminal and crimps the core and insulation in one step
- For other terminals that I don't have a dedicated crimper as above I use a 3 set of Delphi single crimp crimpers that pretty much can crimp almost any type of terminal. I have a service manual from Delphi that gives a good indication on which crimp to use on which Delphi/GM terminal with these
Delphi 12085271 "A" - "E" Crimps
Delphi 12085207 "1" - "5" Crimps
Can you post a few shots of the jaws of the crimpers? I have a few of the Delphi crimpers too, but It seems like maybe I want to buy those dual crimp for the GT150.
I have the crimper you have shown in the picture where there are two crimpers, pin extractor tool and two bags of parts, I have the one next to the pin tool, but I am not sure what the upper one is.
I have a lot of info to post to catch up with the work I have been doing, but great news and big milestone today on this project!
I got the RAMJET fired up for the first time today using the Holley EFI HP, and I have to say it was the best startup ever in any of my swaps, which have included several LS with E38/E67 ECU types and many SBC TPI 165, 730, EBL types.
Time will tell, but I'm really liking how nice and flexible the Holley system is.
I started with one of Holley's included MPI tunes and made the minimal changes required (sensors, injector type, IAC type, etc.) and then did a couple of basic checks before the first start- - Fuel Pressure good at 43 psi. - Timing check at crank (injectors unplugged) at my setting of 15° (note I needed to use a basic timing light as my nice one fooled me at first as no light on crank but it doesn't start flashing until after 250 RPM). Also this allowed good oil pressure verification, tach signal working, etc.
Fired up then for first time this morning. Ran pretty decent, although i would get some start and stalls until WB warmed up and it went into CL mode.
Did some learning then took it for a drive to get some gas, etc. Ran decent other than couple stalls on clutch in.
I then adjusted the cranking fuel down by about 10%, seemed to help the starts some, but still stalling, so per Danny's advice on the HP EFI forum observed IAC at hot idle was about 35-40%. Adjusted set screw to ~5%, now starts great, idles great, no clutch stalls on several long drives this afternoon.
How I set IAC was I observed with Camaro running what the IAC was, shut it off gave the set screw on the throttle body a couple turns, turned ignition on, did TPS auto set, started, observed IAC at hot idle, repeated a couple times until I had it dialed in.
I have to say that so far the Holley is quite impressive, i never have had such a quick initial dial in that is now basically drivable with so little effort, looking forward to really using this.
You build a lot of cars. Just curious what happens to all of them?
I put them all in my 3rd gen garage of course!
I am very blessed to have a wonderful family and job that allows me to pursue my 3rd gen passion in some of my spare time. From summer of 1988 until fall of 2008 I had one thirdgen to drive (my 1988 sport coupe from 1988 to 1990, and then my 1991 Z28 vert). I always loved 3rd gens and loved to work on the two I had in my early years in my parents gravel driveway, but didn't do much with them once I got married and started raising our family as while I really have a passion for 3rd gens, they of course are nothing compared to my family. By 2008 we were getting to the point our finances would support and my son was beginning to get old enough to work with me that I bought my 1985 IROC and did my first LS swap. From that point it has been a great family passion working with my son especially on the multiple swaps we did on his 1987 Formula I got him for his 16th birthday. Those swaps were the most fun and also the most pressure on me as when spring rolled around he wanted on the first nice day to be ready to roll back into the high school parking lot, etc... it is one thing when your own car is down, but another thing altogether when you are holding up a teenager!
My swaps now are generally getting more stretched out as I have other priorities with my wife and family as my son and daughter go to college, but still enjoy the time in the garage during the winter and the cruising around in the summer (will we get a summer this year without rain????). As you can imagine I have a lot of work in progress, but I just do it for enjoyment and no pressure to get it done as I always have a couple ready to roll!
I was wondering the same thing! As annoyed as I was that the car wasn't driving come spring it hasn't really mattered. I've only counted about 3 days I missed when I could have driven the car. Really wet spring!
here are some pics of the jaws of the crimpers I use for the GT150 3.5mm as requested
Originally Posted by scooter
Can you post a few shots of the jaws of the crimpers? I have a few of the Delphi crimpers too, but It seems like maybe I want to buy those dual crimp for the GT150.
I have the crimper you have shown in the picture where there are two crimpers, pin extractor tool and two bags of parts, I have the one next to the pin tool, but I am not sure what the upper one is.
That's EXACTLY what I need. I have build quite a few harnesses and the double (really triple) crimp gets lame. The better crimpers I have rock the terminal on the 20-22 gauge crimp, so I have a set of parallel jaw for those crimps, but it is a cheap one so it doesn't put enough pressure on the wire, so I then have to crimp it AGAIN on my better set, then I have the seal crimp. It gets old. I have a set of jaws for my other crimper to do Weatherpack that does the wire and seal at the same time, it is very nice to use, that crimper looks exactly like what I need, thank you
For the air intake I fabricated it from the Airaid 100-350 tube. This tube gives a lot of good straights and angles and I could easily make it work. One thing I don't like is they put ribs in the tube for cut lines which I wish they would just delete. I would prefer to end up having smooth sections versus these raised areas. I needed to sand down the area going to the throttle body inlet based on where my cut ended up
The silicone joining pieces where from Vibrant Performance including their VIB 2735 hump for the throttle body connection and VIB 2716 for the straight section to join. I used their t-bolt clamps VIB 2796 (3.8 - 4.0') except on the throttle body where I needed a larger clamp and used Summit's SME-240400
I put my MAT sensor in the tube by drilling 13/16 hole with a step drill, and then using the appropriate grommet from Summit's SUM-890090 kit (1/2" x 1/4" 13/16"). The air sensor is GM 12160244
The air inlet filter is an afe 24-90072 MagnumFlow Air Filter
I made my own custom support plate from stainless steel sheet as I have done with other swaps
I also needed to do quite a bit of work on the cluster...
- Repaired the trip odometer for the common plastic j hook breakage using an 8d 2 1/2" finish nail... I will explain in another post how I drive the speedo now that I have a T-56
- Swapped out the tach for a V8 version, but also swapped out the tach board with a new one from gcj280 (Cajun Tach Shop) to correct accuracy issues (have used several of these boards, they work great)
- Replaced all the lights with SuperBrightLeds.com 194-NWHP5 Natural White 360 deg Beam Angle
- In another post I will describe how I drive the fuel gauge as I now have the 40-250 ohm in the tank, but still a 0 to 90 ohm original guage
I am very blessed to have a wonderful family and job that allows me to pursue my 3rd gen passion in some of my spare time. From summer of 1988 until fall of 2008 I had one thirdgen to drive (my 1988 sport coupe from 1988 to 1990, and then my 1991 Z28 vert). I always loved 3rd gens and loved to work on the two I had in my early years in my parents gravel driveway, but didn't do much with them once I got married and started raising our family as while I really have a passion for 3rd gens, they of course are nothing compared to my family. By 2008 we were getting to the point our finances would support and my son was beginning to get old enough to work with me that I bought my 1985 IROC and did my first LS swap. From that point it has been a great family passion working with my son especially on the multiple swaps we did on his 1987 Formula I got him for his 16th birthday. Those swaps were the most fun and also the most pressure on me as when spring rolled around he wanted on the first nice day to be ready to roll back into the high school parking lot, etc... it is one thing when your own car is down, but another thing altogether when you are holding up a teenager!
My swaps now are generally getting more stretched out as I have other priorities with my wife and family as my son and daughter go to college, but still enjoy the time in the garage during the winter and the cruising around in the summer (will we get a summer this year without rain????). As you can imagine I have a lot of work in progress, but I just do it for enjoyment and no pressure to get it done as I always have a couple ready to roll!
the RAMJET intake comes with basically two vacuum ports for you to use. one in the back for the brake booster and one on the rear of the passenger side for fuel regulator. the intake already has separate mounting and dedicated ports for the MAP sensor and pcv.
I needed though to think of the best way to plumb in the other vacuum needs of the camaro. in the end I decide to take the existing fuel regulator port and turn that into my general accessories port, and add a port basically to the brake booster vacuum feed
On the side port, I removed the supplied fitting and substituted in a 1/4 NPT to 1/4 Hose Barb, I used ICT AN840-04-04A. This now feeds the heater / AC vacuum vents, etc
On the brake booster feed I used a modified 3/8 NPT to 1/2" Hose Barb. Started with Earl's AT983208ERL and drilled the side with a "C" drill and tapped with 1/16 NPT. Allowed me to then install a 1/16 NPT fitting from Aeromotive 15630SS that now feeds the Fuel Regulator
also on wiring, I wanted to have a Shift light with the holley ECM and also needed to run the fuel gauge signal to a different point to change the signal since I was using a 40-250 ohm sendor with a 0-90 ohm gauge. therefore I needed to do some wiring work on the C1/C2 instrument cluster connectors. the terminals for these can be found in Ron Francis PC-12 terminal kit
for mounting my holley HP ECU, I made my own plate out of .060 SS. I formed it up so that it would mount in the same basic location as the original OEM ECU using the same mounting points. I also needed to accommodate a Dakota Digital SGI-5E VSS interface box and the Classic Instruments Fuel-Link fuel gauge signal converter
the Classic Instruments Fuel-Link fuel gauge signal converter box works great.
as you can see I ended up mounting mine on the back of the holley unit using a wide piece of Velcro. I was originally going to mount it in the front with the SGI-5E but it was too tall.
the Fuel-Link easily translated the 40-250 ohm signal from my tank to the 0-90 ohm signal required for the gauge. it is easy to program, appears accurate (I have gone through a couple tanks already) and has good filtering for the signal so the gauge doesn't move all over as the fuel sloshes
the Fuel-Link easily translated the 40-250 ohm signal from my tank to the 0-90 ohm signal required for the gauge. it is easy to program, appears accurate (I have gone through a couple tanks already) and has good filtering for the signal so the gauge doesn't move all over as the fuel sloshes
Very glad to hear that. I have a 4th gen tank and I had the 0-90 ohm sender installed, but when the pump died I had to replace it with the, newer, revised sending unit and the 0-90 didn't fit so I have been stuck with a non-op fuel gauge for over a year, I just have to pay attention to my mileage for filling. I have been eyeing that Fuel-link for a while, just haven't had time to buy and install it. Thanks for the review
For the speedometer drive, I needed to translate the electrical signal coming from my T-56, going to my SGI-5E unit, to a cable drive signal to run the speedometer
I used the Dakota Digital ECD-100 Unit. I set it in the 8000ppm mode and had this signal sent from the SGI-5E unit
The best place I found to mount the ECD-100 unit was in the center console box.
I mounted it on the left side using the top two mounting tabs on the unit. The two 3/16 holes I drilled for this where down 1 5/16 from the top of the deck lid spaced 5.5" between.
In addition I needed to drill a 1 1/4" hole in the bottom left with a step drill to allow the cable to pass through as well as the signal wires to the ECD-100
The cable I used was a Pioneer CA-3005 which is 60" long. this was a good fit routing the cable from the console through the radio are and over top the steering column to the cluster point where the speedo sits.
This arrangement has worked well. It will take a couple seconds for the speed to initially read when you start from a stop but then it does read nice and steady
when I put coolant into the engine and cooling system I used a vacuum feed unit. I have used this before a couple of times on LS swaps, etc and it works out well to get a good initial coolant fill without air pockets
unfortunately when I first filled the engine / coolant system I noticed I had a small puddle of coolant on the floor dripping from the front passenger head/intake area. this was without even starting the car so I knew something was definitely not right and traced it down to it had to be the intake to head water port as I could see it was eventually coming from that area
so after being sad about that for a couple of minutes I of course took all the wiring, etc off the top end to get the intake off. I found that I had outsmarted myself using the super vortec problem solver Felpro MS-98000T gasket set. It didn't quite line up with the fast burn heads on its channel grooves and was causing the weep / leak.
Of course I should have paid more attention to that the first time around, and quite honestly can't believe I didn't, but putting it out here so someone else doesn't make the same mistake as a lot of vortec forums indicate the MS98000T is by far the best vortec gasket. It may be for production engines, but it appears the fastburn head isn't quite the same
so I looked at a lot of gaskets to determine which one to use. in the end I went back to the GM recommended one for the fastburn head "duh", which is GM 19301685 which is the Felpro 1289-5. it is also a .120 thick gasket vs .060. I used the ARP bolt kit 134-2002 and torqued to the recommended GM bolt torque sequence and value. Also before setting everything back in place, I completely cleaned out the top, ran some additional oil through as a flush, and also used some alignment studs when setting on the intake. Was a smooth install.
The ECD-100 is supposed to be adjustable so you don't need to use the SGI-5 also. I have one in my 69 pickup connected to an NV4500
Yes it is, but I wanted the speed signal to also go into my Holley HP for data recording and maybe future logic use. The HP can only take a digital DC type input vs the VSS output of an AC signal. Therefore I needed to use the SGI-5E anyways for that, so I decided to send a fixed 8000 ppm signal to the ECD-100 which is one of is pre-calibrations already ready to select
Yes it is, but I wanted the speed signal to also go into my Holley HP for data recording and maybe future logic use. The HP can only take a digital DC type input vs the VSS output of an AC signal. Therefore I needed to use the SGI-5E anyways for that, so I decided to send a fixed 8000 ppm signal to the ECD-100 which is one of is pre-calibrations already ready to select
Ahh, that makes sense then. I didn't realize you were doing other stuff
You didn't use anything on the back side of those intake gaskets? Not even spray High-Tack?
correct, based on reading through felpro 1289-5 comments and instructions on their forum they specifically said to apply it dry. i have typically put some light rtv around the water ports on other builds, but i haven't used this type of gasket before so i went with what they recommended. so far no problem
I've been using those Fel-Pro gaskets (1205) for over a decade and have only applied the bare minimum of RTV on the back side to keep it from sliding down when the intake seats on it. I've never had one of those gaskets fail and they seal very well.
I have been quite happy with my RAMJET over last summer's driving season... the one thing though i haven't been satisfied with is the clutch. the SPEC disc i have (stage 3+) installed from a left over project chatters a lot when cold and the overall pedal feel like all the t-56 lt1s that i have done just doesn't feel "right" compared to my other non pull style set-ups.
so i was going to change the disc this spring to a SPEC stage 2 to get rid of some of the chatter when i came upon the RAM push to pull conversion set-up for LT1 T56
i gave them a call and after a discussion ordered one last month. i just finished the install and thought i would show the details. the kit was very well designed and went together very well
first a pic of the old set-up that was taken out... bye, bye fork and pull bearing!
02-24-2019, 09:08 AM
