Anybody done this swap? I'm looking at buying an iron block 6.0 and throwing a carb setup on with a t56.

 

do a search bud, tons of people have done carbs ls swaps with a t56 or th400 or whatever.
you need a seperate controller for the engine you need the coil packs, the intake carb etc. i was gonna do this but parts for it would be another grand that i dont have.

 

Does anybody know what controlleer will work is it the same as the ls1 or ls2 one?

 

Since what you're looking for is "thoughts", here are mine.

Sure. Go ahead. While you're at it, use non-detergent petroleum single weight oil. And bias ply tires. Get rid of your turn signals and stick your arm out the window when you want to turn. One brake light in back is a good idea, too. Pull out the seat belts. Vacuum windshield wiper motor. Get a tube AM-only radio (only one speaker, in the front, allowed). Friction shocks. Mechanical brakes. Mount a lever on the steering column for spark advance.

Wood subframe connectors would complete the retro suite.

 

lmao^ sorta harsh five7. i too have had this idea, and honestly its sorta useless unless you have a strict race car, even then its not necessary. go on summit look up msd 6010 or 6011 maybe 6012. cant remember its one of those three. you need to buy your block first count the teeth on the reluctor gear and then decide which you will buy

 

:-) Now, now, it's hard sometimes I know.

 

Five7kid you might be onto something. Maybe I'll do that.

But really I'm still trying to find a 6.0. Everybody reAlly think the carb setup is that bad of an idea? It sounded like a good idea to me and with the research I've done it seems like a good idea to me

 

theres really no benefit, you get just about the same performance, less gas mileage, and i think just a little more torque. honestly deal with the f.i. stuff thats the glorious thing with ls based engines. if you want carbd then do a sbc or bbc. if your gonna do it for looks and want it to look like a sbc then you have to hide the coils and all that stuff and its honestly just not worth the work.

 

why would you ever want to go carb? the price alone is more then fuel injection and you get half the proformance! do more research!

 

I need to look around a little more apparently. Everybody seems to hate his idea

 

I was going carb for the simplicity of it. No messing around with the wiring or any of the electronics

 

if you get an uncut harness you only have to hookup about 8 wires.

 

Have you ever done the swap personally? Not giving you a hard time, just trying to only use people who have experience personally

 

Yes doing it now... I actually extended my whole harness to where I wanted it to go thats why I believe its only 8

 

Oh ok. Ill defiantly do more research in the efi swap then

 

steffy i was planning on doing this swap. then i priced it out did info on times and such and it wasnt worht it whatsoever. yeah its simple but twice as expensive, and theres so much good info regarding wiring on this forum that its ridiculously easy. if you go on the lsx ltx swap stickies theres a link on how to swap an lsx in your car with links to various wiring diagrams and such. each is step by step and they dont leave anything out, so do some more searching. the wiring may seem bad but with the directions and help these guys give it makes it tons easier.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmgSe...x=2&playnext=1 heres a video on what to do

 

Thanks guys. I am coming from a carved sbc so I was leaning that way but maybe I'll go fuel injection now. Doesn't seem as bad as I thought it did

 

If you are building a drag strip car with an LS-based engine, sure, go ahead and put a carb on it. I saw a dyno run on FB of a carb'd LS putting down 700 HP at the crank. Very impressive. The car will be trailered to/from the track.

If this is a street or street/strip car, EFI is much, much simpler. Carb is complicated.

 

Put over 900 miles on my metered fuel leak ls based motor this past year and around 30 passes on it. Had way too much fun cruising it and worked too much to race a lot. Had no issues with overheating, had my cruise A/F ratio in the 14:1 range(aka as good as efi). If you're wanting overdrive, I agree no reason at all to put a carb on top when the computer will control the trans. If you're going th400/th350 then there really aren't as many benefits in fuel savings. 90+% of the guys out there should keep the EFI, get a nice tune and enjoy it. If you plan on making big power, even the efi guys are running single plane carb intakes with injector bungs and 4150 style throttle bodies.


I just can't picture anything else under the hood of mine. Granted my DD just had a efi 5.3L swapped in, and for what it is, efi is the proper choice. If you want to add a big cam, heads to support it, a huge intake, 4500+ stall, 3 speed trans, more compression, etc then the choice becomes blurred a lot more.

 

http://ls1tech.com/forums/conversion...ring-info.html

 

I'm looking to boils reasonably big Power around 500 horse

 

Too I've read that he lq4s have cast pistons. Is there any problems with revving them too high or any other problems with them?

 

500hp on a lq4 is very very easy... this isnt your old small block chevy

 

I was thinking cam heads and intake manifold right off the bat. I want to wait a little while to build the bottom end.

 

now thats funny

Half the performance really?



The people that put down carbs generally dont know how to work on them. You can get just as good throttle response etc as FI. Cold start quality will be better with EFI but really who starts a modded motor up cold and just starts hammering on it except Bubba. Mpg will be a touch less with carb if that whoppee

Advantages to both. Personally I hate all the damn electronics and chasing codes/sensors.

Do some research.

 

The more research I do the more the answer becomes blurred

 

answered blurred towards what direction? honestly what is the goal for this car your swapping a 6.0L into?

 

Everybody is clearly biased one way or another. It's hard to decipher what's true and what's not.

Goal is to make 500 to 600 horsepower

 

not what goal power is, efi is easily able to make that so is carbed lsx. ones just more efficient at doing so. what i meant by goal for the car is, is it gonna be a street car, street soime strip, or pure race car no street?

 

It would be A streetcar used for some racing

 

id say efi then

 

I think I'm just going to go efi and see how that goes for me

 

Results with my street/strip EFI cars for 2011 (plus 3 more not in the pic for season points finishes):

 

BTW, I don't consider myself "biased" on this. The carb'd LS guys are going a lot quicker than I am. But, how many of them drove their car to work this morning in 23 degree temps? (It has started snowing now as well.)

Yes, you can drive a carb'd car on the street. Never said you couldn't. Did it all the time myself until last year. But, the LS EFI $/HP does very well up to the point factory intakes can't support the power. Since aftermarket LS EFI intakes are very expensive, at that point you can justify carb for a car that's raced > street.

Technically, though, no carb is emissions-legal on an LS engine anywhere in the U.S.

 

I dont think anybodys bias against carb or efi... were bias to what YOU want to do and what will work best for YOU.

 

I think it's human nature to be biased toward the choice you've made (unless it went poorly for you, in which case you may be biased against it). I know I have to watch that in myself, and I work toward recognizing it in myself (and others).

I'll have to say I've seen plenty of bias on this Board. My personal bias is to run what you've got - until what you've got is inadequate for what you want to do with the car.

LS engines come with EFI. And, it's a very good system (unlike, say, the '96-'99 Vortec EFI system). So, until it is inadequate for the power you're looking to produce, I'd say stick with the factory EFI.

In my mind, it's easier to convert a carb'd car over to EFI when swapping in an LS engine (done it twice) than it is to swap an LS over to carb (never done it). But, I realize the LS engines making over 600 HP and raced almost all have carbs.

 

I agree with everything but what you wrote here. MSD 6010 box only needs a power, ground, and plug in a few connectors and the motor will run. Hook up a tach signal if you like to the box(in proper output signal also) compared to the 4 cyl signal of the efi setup. Then it runs, much much less complicated than building a harness, buying an already setup harness, building a fuse block etc. Basically I could swap in any ls motor into a chassis that was previously carbed and have it running and driving the same day. Don't really know of any efi swaps that go that fast. I sure know that I had almost 20 hours into my suburbans harness before the engine even met the chassis setting it all up, lengthening wires, removing connectors, it was a pain. Totally worth it, but no where near as easy.

 

I should have said I was assuming a complete drop-out (which is what I had in both cases), where the only harness mods are hooking it into your chassis wiring harness. I spent more time stripping out what I wouldn't use from the chassis harness than I did hooking in the LS1 harness (which I would have done with a carb conversion). Fuel pump and cooling fan wiring (which you would have to do with carb as well) was more hassle than wiring in the LS1. I got the 4th gen fuse box with one of the drop-outs, used a $100 eBay swap box for the other.

I didn't have to buy intake, carb, engine/trans control box (although I did find an LS6 intake for each one - got better-than-normal deals on them). Nor did I have to get a cowl hood.

I did have to reprogram the PCM to delete emissions and reset tire/gear/etc. parameters. That was included with one drop-out, paid $80 for the other. You can reset the tach output when you have this done.

Yes, the carb guys tend to go faster on the track (I already conceded that). They don't tend to drive them daily in the snow belt.

 

My first set up in my firebird made 440 whp with efi and a t56. Daily drove it. Yanked the efi and added a carb and victor jr and made 455whp. I drive it all through the winter until it wont go up my driveway. Drove it to work tonight and it was 20* out when I left. I like the carb because its different and you dont have to have the ecu flash again everytime you change something.

 

I see no reason why efi vs carb wiring would be the make or break of doing either swap.Both need power,ground,ignition,starter to run.Everything thing else is literally optional,fan/s..1 or 2 wires extra,tach..optional,trans wiring..t56/auto all depends on mechanical speedo or not which is the same for any swap regardless what motor you swap.If you stay efi there really isnt much to wire unless your being picky of how it looks and where you want to tie wires into.You dont have to strip the whole harness down unless you want to.I bought my pcm from spareecm and had it preflashed to delete what I didnt need.I used my factory original fusebox,no need to use the 4thgen or make one.My harness took an hr to put in the car once i dropped the motor in.Its not as hard as it looks ..at all now that I have done it myself.Put it this way..if i got a lsx with no ecu/harness and no intake and wanted the car up and running asap..id go carbed.But for the maybe 20whp difference between the two stock for stock and for my driving style,efi was the better choice.plus i like being able to remote start my car without having to pump the go pedal first lol.

Decide what you want.Peak power..the ability to throw different parts on the motor without having to retune a ecm all the time.Do you drive places that may affect your carb tune due to weather etc?Are you concerned with gas mileage, do you have a target budget? How confident are you with your skills in doing the swap.Seriously sit yourself down..write out to yourself the pros n cons of both and see where you land,your choice will become clear.Compare prices between getting a ls1 or whatever motor you find..if its complete then see how much if its for the carb swap parts vs selling the efi parts on the motor...or if you have to buy efi parts needed.Is you car carbed to begin with or efi?

 

actual the wiring really isnt the same and the other wires are not optional at all, unless you consider the individual injector wires to be optional then i guess id agree. but they are rather critical to the engines operating

 

You dont have to touch the injector wiring at all if you have a complete engine harness,the injector wiring is going to the ecu..not the cars existing wiring so you just plug in play.The bare minimum to make an efi ls1 run is take all the ecu 12v constants together,all the grounds together and all the ignitions together,wire those at a sufficient source.Hook up the fuel pump turn on,delete vats on the ecu and it will run.Some cars have single or dual electric fans,or some people use stand alone fans so that is optional depending on your setup..not needed to make the motor run.Whats so different in wiring for a carb? You still need ignition,starter wire,maybe fan if you have it on a toggle swith or thermo switch, no fuel pump wire(not a big deal) and 12v constant for the carb ignition box.And regardless of carb or efi..a tune is in order imo for optimal performance.Ive seen guys not too happy with the preset carb tunes on those ignition modules and having to still adjust the curves and the carb to get it dialed.Wiring for gauges i wouldnt factor in for choosing between efi or carb because thats dependent on creature comforts really and isnt difficult,coolant temp and oil pressure,for efi you change the cts to the 3 wire and theres your coolant temp,oil pressure just slice into the sensor.Efi can be just as simple if you think of if as any other motor,needs spark/air/fuel.The ecu thats controls this needs 12v constant,ignition wire and ground to work,the rest is either input sensors which you dont have to change the wiring for or you are deleting sensors(o2,egr,maf or even deleting trans input etc) and then you have the output wires for the fuel pump,the fan/s,maybe check engine light if you want to retain it.As I said..its optional depending how far you want to take things.This was my approach and I was hella scared to attempt doing my swap because i wanted efi and now looking back months ago it was easy.I spent more time on the mechanical aspect of my swap than i did for the wiring,the fuel regulator fittings gave me trouble,the coil near the heater box gave me trouble,making a y pipe and dual cats sucked.After that I spent time on making it look neat.

 

Side note to anyone else reading this thread and on the fence of what to do.Ill say this..dont let the big bulky harness scare you.Each connector can only plug into the proper sensor except the injectors and the o2 sensors(if you keep them).Aside from that..get your hands dirty and jump into the lsx world lol.Everything on here is super well documented and the guys on these forums are major help if you are in a pinch.There hasnt been a problem that hasnt been covered here yet from what I see...carbed or efi.So get er done

 

it's threads like this that made me go injected when i first did my swap....but what the guys don't tell you in threads like this is the cost of tuning one of these setups. you have two options if you go with a factory operating system:

1. get someone to tune the car for you. depending on your location, this could require a long tow (in my case, atleast 2 hours). you will need to become familiar with the tuners in your area so that you can find someone you trust, because a good tuner will need the car for more than just one afternoon on the dyno. dyno time is expensive. this could cost you $200-500+ depending on how wild your combo is. if you ever want to make a significant change on the car, be prepared to take it back to the tuner, and do it all over again.

2. get HP tuners or efi live or the like. it's ~$700 for the cable and software/licensing. this does not include a crash course in how to use it or anything. you do get the use of the HP tuners techboard, but unless you know the terminology, it's still all greek. don't start out with an engine that's too crazy otherwise you'll never get it running right.

the other injection option is to go with an aftermarket operating system. with the advancements in the last 18 months with the new Holley Dominator system and other systems like it with their self-tuning capabilities, however, those systems are $$$.

i put a carb on my car half-way through the year last year (2010), and it was the best decision i've made regarding my car. no more arrogant "tuners" blowing smoke up my *** while i pay them big bucks to tune my car everytime i want to make a change. no more wondering if i've managed to get the best out of the combo, no more saving money up to take the car back to the tuner, and being out of the loop on my car that i built with my own hands. no more being put on the back burner by shops that don't "have time" for the little guys that didn't have the shop do the entire build, or my car getting knit-picked at while i'm there waiting on the dyno.

the holley dominator system is about the only thing i'd even consider at this point, but i love the look of the carb, and the simplicity of tuning.

 

Some day I'm going to tune mine.

 

When the engine is stock its not a big deal, but if you have lots of compression and a big cam with big injectors and the whole nine yards, it is no longer an option.

Something.else that comes to mind is intake selection. You will get to a point where an ls6 intake won't be enough. A FAST intake is outrageous in price. You could buy an intake and an all out race carb for the cost of a FAST and you won't have to pay for a retune.