this is the first thing to actually arrive, but got a few more goodies on the way. 5.3L out of a wrecked 2000 Silverado. higher miles, but still a runner. may just drop it in and go for now (as there's a 98 LS1 needing some machine work in the shed). Not thinking too far ahead into the day led to the unexpected purchase of an engine hoist too

in the mail is a set of fbody accessories and my motor swap plates.

 

oh, and for the price, it was cheaper to buy this compete that it would have been for me to get all the missing pieces that weren't included with the LS1 longblock I had sitting. since it was completely bare, I was in need of a LOT of little things; this has em all

 

I see you've been infected by this forum. I too, see a tax check disappearing in my future

 

Sucks how fast that tax check seems to disappear! Off to a good start though.

 

I like the MGM G8 in the background too

 

thanks. even though its a base model, I love every moment of driving that car. I bought the v6 since it was about $5k less than any v8's in the area and I can't mod it. Let the DD be a reliable car, let the 3rd gen be the go fast one

 

Thats what I said about my LO3

Headers, LM1 and a LSx swap later...

 

shhhhhhhhhhh

 

today's delivery: fbody accessory setup. all brackets and pulleys required, harmonic balancer, and PS reservoir.

 

mmm toys

 

finally getting down to the meat and potatoes; truck accessories are all off, minus the hoses (still some coolant in the block) and the harmonic balancer (dont have a 3-jaw puller at the moment)

 

Good stuff Maynard!

 

there is a large plug under the passenger side manifold, that will drain almost all the coolant out.


Oh/ and i don't see a water pump....need one of those too

 

really just need to get this thing onto a stand, but it appears the local parts stores around here don't like to stock them. boo....

 

just sit it on the hood of the G8.....

 

Good purchase!

My wife wanted to go shopping w/ our refund - "sorry babe, Ann needs a fresh paint job"

 

them's fightin' words there...jk

took down the sbc that was occupying the stand and rearranged the shed to make room. then as the 5.3 was in the air, discovered my conversion skills stink. bolts to hold the motor to the stand were too short.

done for the night as i've got a concert to go to and its now dark; home depot will see me in the morning.

 

they are metric too..... I believe I used the acc. bolts from the truck acc. drive and the starter bolts.... save ya 5-10 bucks...lol

 

M10x1.5mm

Not the most common bolt

 

yeah, had gotten the right thread pitch, just not the right length. forgot the whole "measure twice, cut once" rule; the ones I bought on round one were just long enough to get a thread or two through my stand. All is well now, the motor's in its resting spot as of 4pm yesterday and stripped down to almost bare essentials now. Pics to come.

 

I wasnt to thrilled when my bellhousing bolts didnt make it through the stand at all. I hate buying bolts so every car I strip has every nut/bolt/stud thrown into a bucket so I found some long enough

Keep all the bolts from the truck parts you pull off. Most will be reused in different places. Unfortunately the intake bolts wont work and you must source them. A hardware store will not have them

I made this to help on LS1tech. The sticky is very informative with helpful tags such as "bolt" to help identify the dozens of different fasteners inside and out of the LSx engines

 

had to kill my buzz, didn't ya? i searched alllll day yesterday to find out about the intake bolts to no avail. at least you spared me of that mess. didn't feel like buying a new intake cause I destroyed it in a fit of rage.

luckily, the fbody accessory set I bought included all the bolts needed there, but I have not thrown anything out from the teardown other than the old hoses. all bolts, brackets, etc are hanging around until the motor actually makes it's way into the car.

 

finally have an oil pan in my possession.
still need new(er) oil pump and water pump. and intake bolts. then engine will be ready to fall into the car

 

The UPS truck might as well be Santa for gear-heads. I love shiny new stuff

Hope your install goes smoothly

 

thanks. Car's away getting some stuff done to it (you'll all see soon enough), so still stockpiling the parts til its back. buys me some more time to figure out how to get the crank pulley bolt off.....

you said it. back in high school, I was building up my last 3rd gen (the 89 RS) while my dad was restoring a 68 Roadrunner. We'd both be chasing the UPS guy to see who was getting a Summit or Jegs box first

 

you know its bad when you know the ups man by name. and he even signs for you and sticks the parts in the location.

 

Wedge the flywheel to block with an old screwdriver you dont care about. Support the engine with a chain hoist and put a jack handle over a lifetime warranty breaker bar. From the factory they are torqued to something crazy like 240lb/ft. Be careful not to tip the engine over. An impact gun 'may' get it out, mine didnt

 

This site is very good for finding part numbers/bolt sizes:

www.compnine.com

As for the crank pulley bolt, I would do the screwdriver to jam the flywheel, grab 1/2 in. breaker bar and slide a long *** bar over the end of the breaker bar (for leverage) to break that bitch loose. I was lucky i was able to get mine off with an impact, I had to leave the impact on it for like 3 minutes straight!

 

160 psi air and a good ingersol rand impact. gets it done everytime.then an installer and the same impact back on. has worked for all i have done for 5 years. remember to put some silicone on the bolt washer to.

as for removing them. since i do cam swaps frequently. i took a used crank pulley bolt and ground down the flat washer that is formed onto it. also drilled a dimple into the center of the bolt. now the puller will pull the pulley off over the bolt and the puller will; stay within the dimple and not walk.

 

i've got flywheel bolts on the way (mine did not come attached when i got the motor) and keep forgetting to bring the breaker bar with me to home depot/lowes for a nice fitting piece of cheater pipe (thinking 5 ft should be good) to go over it. The torch still has some propane in it to warm things up and the cherry picker's holding things up currently. hoping it'll work, but we'll see

 

quick update. project's still on, just going a bit slower now that the tax check's all gone.

finally got the balancer bolt off. big piece of flat stock to stop the flywheel from turning and a 5' cheater bar did the trick. 3-jaw puller rented from Advance got the old balancer off. replaced the timing chain with an LS2 version (beefier and many less miles on it). new-ish oil pump to replace the high high mile one as well.

fbody oil pan parts installed as well. quick observation - truck windage tray look identical to the fbody piece except it goes all the way to the front main. you could probably trim one down if needed instead of scrounging up an fbody piece.

awaiting new oil pan and timing cover gaskets to get everything buttoned back up tomorrow. i know they're supposed to be reusable, but 100k+ miles makes me think the $100 aint a bad investment.

maybe I'll start playing with wiring soon too.....

 

Yeah, don't wanna cheap out on the gaskets, that'll bite you later. Looks like its coming along pretty well, though. Lets see the car its goin in

 

she's away right now for some other things (more to come on that later....), but I should see the TA back here in the next couple weeks.

 

dang, you got your refund already and spent it and i gignt even file yet. once i do 1 of 2 things will happen. either my wife will go shopping or im gonna have to pay uncle sam.

 

ooh im excite! another local swap! im glad to see your finally doing it!

 

Where'd you source that stuff from? Looks great

 

everything, other than the motor itself, has been scrounged up from LS1tech. since i'm in no hurry, i just wait out for a good deal and snag it when it pops up

 

I see so you just bought the accessories off another member not a supplier?

 

correct. while I do work for a parts company, this engine project's all my own. no sponsors, nada. so I sit back and hunt out the deals. Luckily, time's on my hand this go round with this 3rd gen, so I'm in no hurry

 

i know its been a while, but slight update here. got the old trans out of the car and hopefully the motor will be out soon enough. happy to have some nice weather to get cracking

 

What trans are you putting in it?

 

for now, i have a 4L60E that I got when I purchased the LS1 long block (which is going to sit for a while since it needs block work. the 5.3 took it's place). Depending on how things pan out, I may end up going with a th350.

really would just like to have the thing running before the end of summer, making it go faster can come later

 

something's different about my engine bay.......



today's goal's been achieved. the engine's outta the car

 

now you're getting somewhere

 

driver's side harness is out now as well and will be getting the work over thanks again to Pocket's wiring help. Passenger side harness will come out in the next day or two (as i was too tired to fight with the dash today to get that end disconnected).

I do plan on pulling the k member soon to clean it up, notch it a bit (the oil pan clearance out back scares me a bit), and paint it with some POR-15. don't ever want to paint it again, so we'll do it right this time.

anyone ever box the front a-arms? no money to get the pretty tubular ones, but wondering if its worth beefing em up a bit

 

You can box the A-arms if you like, they are excessively beefy from the factory. Benefits will be minimal

 

consider this my pocket-in-training moment: wiring fun. thanks for the help so far on this. just waiting on a few more parts to arrive before I start doing the engine fitment

 

Off to a good start

Few tips for the truck harnesses:

You need car style injector connectors at minimum. Snip 8 from random GM V6 FWD cars in a local JY

Id suggest dumping the white connector HO2s for two reasons. 1) They're harder to wire in with the low signal common 2) Replacement sensors are quite a bit more expensive than S10 versions
Find a mid-late 90's S10 in a JY and unplug the black connector from the PCM. Its the HO2 harness and should have 3-4 connectors on it. It will come off separate from the rest of the engine harness and wont be too difficult to remove. Grab the HO2s as well. Some may be good, some may be bad, but its worth the cheap/free vs burning them up on a fresh exhaust break-in

Strange how the truck has the coil connectors separate from the injectors isnt it? Dont forget they splice into the INJ 1/2 bank fuses before going to the fuseblock when you build the harness

Remember the truck alt is a 2 wire and Fbody's 1 wire. Snip the gray wire if using the Fbody alt

The truck MAP sensor body is slightly different from the Fbody MAP and wont directly fit the intake. Use a razor to shave the clips off one side to allow a tight install to the intake

Hows you get the gear select connectors out of the module? All the ones Ive messed with were glued in from the factory and were destroyed during removal. Not that they're reused or anything...

Looks like a fun weekend ahead of you. If I start to confuse you with my ramblings, PM kthxbai. He successfully wired his swap the same method and may offer some insight on things that may give you trouble, but come as second nature to me so I dont think to address them

 

the HO2's were what held me up from getting everything finally apart; I didn't believe the low signal was a common and needed a multimeter for verification. it was odd to me that they all had individual pins that went back to the PCM (along with another one that was a sensor ground tied into them?) yet all the pins came to a central point too.

since mine was a carbed car to begin with, i'm doubting more (and will have to be certain) that the fuse box in the car will be of any use to this harness. probably will have to go with something a bit bigger under the hood, but thanks for the coil reminder.

MAP was destroyed when I got the motor, so I think I'll just be hunting down a new F-body unit.

gear selector was tricky and you confirmed my suspicions - they were not easy connectors to get loose. also wasn't sure if they needed to be reused, so kept them just in case.

 

In other words, you can drill lightening holes in them.