Right now I have a 95 Trans Am. I like it a lot, but I'm in love with third gens. I want to sell my car and get a 91-92 Camaro in it's place. I'm going to do one of two things.

1) Get a 5 speed 305 Camaro and drop and LS6/ T56 into it.

or

2) Find a Camaro that already has an LSX swap done.

I've started saving already and figured out on paper that I can save about $200 per week (conservative estimate). That's $15,600 if I wait until next Summer. KBB.com values my car at $5,250. For arguements sake, let's say I get $4,500 for it. That's $20,100 total.

With this amount of money, should I find a car with an LSX swap already done and convert it to an LS6 if necessary, or should I just get the car and everything else on my own, then have it swapped? I've been looking around in the classified section and have found several LS1 Camaros for sale. One for $8,500, one for $9,500 and one for $14k. Just based on what I've read on this site, most people pay about $11,000 for their LS1 swap. Obviously I'd be paying more for an LS6. $8,500 for an LS1 third gen seems like a steal. What do you guys think would be the more intelligent thing to do?

I figure that with $20,000 I can get the car, put a Jong Bloed hood on it, upgrade the suspension and still have plenty of money left over for a beater car.

 

your money estimates seem kind of high. I'm betting most people here are doing an ls1 swap for less than $11,000. I dont know though, not an Ls1 expert.

If you can find an LSX camaro that is going for a good price then buy it, otherwise put in your own LSX.

 

I don't think they're including motor, tranny, all necessary parts to make it run and labor only.. I hear that a huge portion of that goes toward the suspension and the other things to make the car really handle the swap the way it's supposed to. I guess it basically nickle and dimes you to death.

 

Nail it on the head. Its really up to you. Do you want to buy a car that someone has already done alot of work on and possibly have problems with it. Or do you want to do all the work yourself and know its done right?

Doing it yourself will definitly cost you more than the cars your looking at. You have to find a good roller, the LS1/tranny, ECM. Then do fab work or get a tubular k-member. Plus a whole long list of other stuff you could need or want. I wouldnt say 11k is that far off.

 

where are you located?

do you need the car emissions legal?

 

Long Island, NY

I need the car to be emissions legal. I'm probably moving once I get my associates degree, but I'm not sure where to or if this will even take place. I can't take a chance and assume I'll be moving somewhere that lacks emissions laws.
*EDIT* Sorry, just clicked your link and realized that your car is for sale. I didn't know why you were asking. Yours is one of the car I looked at though .

I estimate that it should take me until Summer of '07 to get the money for this whole set up. I want this car to have the best of everything. . I want to make sure that this thing stays in pristine condition for a very long time. Nice strong LSX, lightweight parts like a chromoly K member and A arms, fiberglass hood, etc. I want to use as many light weight parts as I can (within reason) to help this car to be as efficient as possible with the least amount of strain on the motor. An LSX swap in itself drops a considerable amount of weight, but I'm sure further weight reduction isn't a bad thing. I'm not really into drag racing, so I'm thinking I might go with 3.42 or 3.73 gears to keep decent gas mileage, since my girlfriend lives almost 30 miles away. I do have to admit that I love to bury the gas pedal when merging onto the freeway or when driving with no one else around in the dead of the night

I'm thinking I might steal Z28_from_Europe's idea too-
https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...hreadid=306193

 

Yea if you need to do all new suspension and rearend then 11k would be that far off. I had already done most of my suspension, and i put close to 7k doing my swap. If you went to the bare min and already had a car to put it in i think you could do it for less then 5k, but who wants to do the bare min. I would say figure a good 10k if your going to have to upgrade parts on a roller, like brakes, suspension, then on top of that the ls1 and the parts to go along with that.

This swap is one of those that can be kinda expensive and can go up to ridiculas. But man its defintaly worth it

 

finding an emissions legal swap already done might be hard to come by. I had the car basically sold, then guy backed out because it needed work to be emissions legal....

oh well, car is getting a set of turbos now