I had intended to start a swap thread much earlier, but my time was divided between the garage and the computer, so naturally I favored the garage.

But rather than drone on with all my musings in a half dozen other threads, I figured it best to consolidate my experiences into one thread.

After not turning a wrench for near 20 years, I have this in my garage:



Looks tired. Car has 161k, and I think the motor probably does too.

I don't plan on anything fancy, I just want a strong, reliable motor. Like, say, a stock LS1 from a 2002 F-body:



And yes, that's my helper, my son Dallas.

 

TGO helps me out by answering a few questions here:

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/ltx-...ons-round.html

 

Then another round of questions here:

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/ltx-...ons-round.html

 

I get the fuel pump in. This TrickFlow fuel pump had 5/16" hose fittings at each end:



And I had trouble finding 5/16" hose fittings from Russell or Earl so I ended up with the above based on using brass npt fittings. Since I thought I couldn't mix and match brass and aluminum fittings, I settled for that. But now I'm told it's ok to mix these parts, so I want to convert the above to AN fittings with a short length of braided steel fuel line in place of the rubber fuel injection hose shown. I'm really not comfortable having any sort of hose exposed anywhere beneath the car. I assume braided steel will resist damage better.

I put my fuel pump where most guys put their regulator, under the back seat. The pump came with self-tapping fasteners (very small) that I didn't think would be very secure just going into sheet metal. So I bent a piece of 10 gage I had laying around, through bolted it to the floor pan, and tapped 4 holes for screws to thread into. The piece shown is hovering about 1/4 inch below the floor pan so if need be I can through bolt the 4 small pump fasteners (like if I ever strip one out):



You can see the through bolts and wiring grommet here under the back seat:

 

Make some backing plates for my motor mount nuts:



I only used three motor mount bolts because, well, that's all the factory mounts used and it was easy enough to fish this little L-shaped bracket through the springs and into the k-member:



The fourth little nut is so I can attach the backing plate to the k-member and then set the motor mount without having to fumble around. You can see the small bolt installed to hold it in place:

 

Cut the notch in the k-member for my A/C compressor. I took measurements relative to the motor mounts and cut it more snug than a lot of guys because I was nervous about cutting the k-member. But it is still a huge cut, and then I got to worrying "what if I cut it just a bit too tight?" Fortunately it works fine (tested it this week), but I think I could have given myself another 1/2" without making much difference in the destruction of the k-member--big hole either way:

 

Made a thinger to hold my throttle cable (as seen on TGO, one of Pocket's posts iirc):



The piece is fairly light gage steel, maybe 20 gage. I started by drilling and cutting to get a roughly oblong hole then used round files to shape it to the smallest opening that my cable would snap into by just test fitting until it snapped in:



And I used screws at the firewall, not rivets, but I think I would prefer rivets, just didn't have the tools and materials handy.

 

Put my regulator in the engine bay on basically stock fuel lines:



I've seen many bring the fuel line up on the driver's side near the brake lines. I read a lot about using braided lines near other lines and that over time vibrations can cause the braided mesh to act as a grinder on adjacent materials. Since the stock lines should provide adequate flow for a tame LS1, and the factory did such a nice job of molding them into the tunnel where they cross from driver's side to passenger side, I put my regulator on the pass and let my fuel line cross the engine to the fuel rail inlet at the driver's side.

Also, I figured when idling in traffic on a hot day, the lines to and from the regulator will be flowing fuel. If I had the regulator in the back, there would be a single supply line coming up past the exhaust that would be flowing much less at idle and maybe warming the fuel more. So my thinking was this gets the fuel safely up into the engine bay with the least potential for heating the fuel while idling in traffic.

 

And stick in the motor:



Oh, and I almost forgot the wiring harness. Hours and hours of work and study and learning-the-hard-way was skipped by simply having Pocket do the harness. Turned out great!

 

I did one of these numbers for the 3rd gen clutch pedal:

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/ltx-...e-4th-gen.html






And once the motor was in, I tried out the pedal to see if the linkage was ok. It was, but there was no resistance on the pedal. That led to this thread https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/ltx-...ic-clutch.html and a new slave cylinder from the supplier of the LS1/T56 dropout. All's well that ends well I guess.

 

does it run yet?

 

Funny you should ask...

That leads us nicely into this thread:

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/ltx-...ml#post4997362

It started. Worked out some bugs, snugged up some exhaust fittings, but still it didn't sound quite right so I took it over to a local speed shop for a second opinion. I actually got 2 opinions, both said there seems to be an unnatural knock in the lower end.

So now it's back in the garage and the motor is back out of the car. I probably drove it fewer than 10 miles. Today I hope to determine more about the condition of the bearings.

I've been on a crash course on third gens and LS1's. But the more critical the issue, the more I will lean on the knowledge and experience of TGO. Bottom end bearings are pretty critical so I will be posting more soon. I will stick to my existing "runs, knocks" thread to resolve what I have.

First couple bearings look just fine, but I expect I'll find something soon.

 

Now that the knock issue appears to be resolved, I was able to get it tuned on the dyno today.

Stock performance is all I have been looking for and it seems to have turned out just fine.

The last run showed horsepower at 341 and torque at 353. I'm very happy, hoping I can go ahead and start putting some miles on this motor as a daily driver.

Thanks for reading!