ok guys. im wanting to take the plunge and put a 5.3 truck engine in my camaro. my car has a 350 turbo transmission in it and i have a few questions.

1: I know that you need a spacer to fit the motor to a 700r4. is this the same for a 350 turbo? EXACTLY what kind of flywheel, torque converter, and spacer do i want to use? im trying to put together a parts list.

2: How in the world do you do the wiring? is there a kit you can buy that is just plug and play so there is no painful wiring? i usually do carburated swaps and i hate doing wiring. if there is a harness somewere i could just buy and plug in thatd be great. and exactly where would i find this.

3: I heard that you dont need to change the intake or the alternator if you have at least a 3 inch cowl dood. which i have and its a wide one. so if my info was correct then i think im ok on that. i also know that i need to change the water pump and the oil pan and the fuel tank over to a 4th gen one. what other stuff would i need to change to make this motor work? and i also want to keep my power steering and power brakes. would i need to change anything to keep these? or is it all pretty straight forward?

Sorry about having so many questions but im really wanting to do this swap and wanting a good powerful reliable engine and wanting to do this thing quick and fairly painless. pretty sure everything should fit ok in the engine bay with the proper mounts. its mainly just hooking it all up im worried about.

 

What's stopping you from going carbed? Would get max power.

I don't think you need to swap fuel tanks. The truck brackets fit fine under a cowl as well as the truck intake. The power steering will fit with a bit of finessing the line. Power brakes are not problem.

Painless I believe sells a full wiring kit, don't none how painless it is compared to the MSD harness when you go carbed, that simply plugs right into the coils, crank, cam sensor. Then you ground the ground wire and hook the power to a key on/off source.

 

im also looking into this swap but with a turbo. but from my understanding you can buy a drop out engine with a wiring harness and pcm and use that just fine, just need to get a scanner or tuner and turn off a couple things in the pcm you wont use, although the carb option from edelbrock looks nice

 

Yes, you can pick up a drop out setup and the EFI will work great tuning boost.

 

the motor that i have still has the wiring harness and the fuse box, all still attached and un butchered. is there an easy way that i could just use that fuse box?

 

You can use that fuse box. It will probably have things you don't need. It won't have fan relays, though. I have one somewhere that I plan on using for my LQ4 swap into my '57 Bel Air.

The adapter for the flexplate is the same for a TH350, TH400, TH700. My son has one like this http://www.summitracing.com/parts/HUP-HP3795/ he'd sell you. He went with a complete swap kit from Summit (which I can't find at the moment) that included adapter sleeve, flexplate & bolts because the 5.3 flexplate that was used by the swappers (he bought the vehicle with the swap already done) didn't have the proper holes for the Hughes torque converter they used, and they just elongated the holes in the flexplate. The swap flexplate had the proper holes to bolt up the torque converter.

 

how would i go about hooking all of it up? just possibly hook everything that is in my stock fuse box to wherever it would go in the new one?

 

The LS1 swap sticky has a section and links about wiring.

You don't "need" a 4th gen tank, but you will need an electric fuel pump capable of producing 58 psi. In my LS1/T56 swap, I did use a 4th gen tank (make sure it's an LS1 tank). In my LS1/4L60E swap, which started out as a factory carb'd car, I put a 3rd gen EFI pickup assembly in the tank with a Walbro 255 replacement pump, and used a Vette filter/pressure regulator. In both cases, I had to run new wires to power the fuel pump since neither car had an electric fuel pump from the factory.