My parents have a 4wheel drive blazer that needs a whole new rear bumper and they found some guy with a 97 blazer that is selling the whole thing for a grand.. i was gonna check into see'n if the motor ran and getting the whole thing and i was wondering if it's possible to put a 4.3 vortec into a camaro... i was gonna use the tranny also if it isn't four wheel drive... anyone know what kind of trannys those are?? or would my 2.8 tranny work with it?

 

I'm actually wanting to put a 4.3 in my car too and I have a 2.8 as well, I just called chevy and they said that the 97 has an m-30 trans it not sure what that is in lamen's terms but maybe it'll work but more then likely you'll need the trucks trans and rearend gears I guess the best way to find out (at the moment) until you find someone who's done it is to try, I'd try first but as of yet I don't have the 4.3 nor to my knowledge a trans to bolt up to it, I have found out so far that the wiring might need to be change and your gonna need everything out of the 4.3's engine bay, mounts too let me know how it goes once your done

Side note: don't actually try til you get more info could be disasterish

 

You should really do a search for stuff like this. The 4.3 swap has been discussed many times and the 4.3 will not work with the 2.8 trans. The 4.3 is a 90* motor while the 2.8 is 60*. Also, you would have to change over to all the OBD2 stuff that's in the blazer including the computer, EVAP leak detection stuff, downstream O2 and all that crap.

You could do it, but the general concensus on it is that if you're gonna do that much work, you might as well drop in an 8 cyl.

 

i'll probably give it a try, i mean, my parents are going to buy that vehicle and just give me the engine and tranny for free... so to me thats a hell of a deal.. i would drop a V8 in there, but i dont really have that much money to be investing into a V8, i also heard it'd just be cheaper to get a V8 card than to try to swap in a V8....

If anyone has ANY info on dropping a 4.3 into a camaro, please lemme know.

 

do it. the M30 is a 4L60E tranny. ask me how I know ( besides owning a 95 Blazer 4wd).

Do a search in the engien swap forum, plenty of posts there to help besides those that say "jsut drop a v8 in it"


snag the whole engine & dash harness, while you're at it to keep things simple. You'll nee dit for the vss conversion, and just makes things a whole lot simpler (types from experiance).

As far as the 4wd tranny goes, the casing is removed and the transfer case ins hooked up in it's place. When I was doing my 3800 swap I discovered a difference in tranny cases betweeen the 95 4L60E and the 98 4L60E. The 98 had a removable bell housing, and a different torque arm support brace pattern. This only matters if you don't have the correct brace plate/bushing facing the correct direction.

If you do keep the blazer tranny, get the tail housing from the newer f-bod tranny, as it will have the torque arm mount hookups, or buy an aftermarket frame mount torque arm set up.

 

thank you very much, that is about the best info i've heard in awhile from this site, lol... i'm not sure if that tranny is 4wd, not sure dont know alot blazers... i just know i wanna get something a little better than a 2.8 and still try to keep it v6 for the gas milelage.. haha... thanks alot for your help, i'll remember what u said and when i start the project, i'll make sure to take some pictures and steps i took, so other people can check it out.

oh i did a search and wasn't really able to find out much about switching a 4.3 into a camaro, dont know if many people have done it not i guess

 

that 4.3 is a nice motor.hell my buddie ha sne in a blazer with 300,000 + miles on it and it still runs strong as hell,

 

if possible, avoid the cpi 4.3 engines, the 2.8 has a better aftermarket. ANd, it sounds like you'll basically do the same as my my 3800 swap (hopefully a bit more successfully) as motor mounting goes. The tranny 4L60E tranny actually gave me a bit more room than the 7004R but then I did have the engine sitting a bit lower than the 3.4

 

Tip, the fuel pressure for the CPI is consiberly higher then our MPFI/TPI's.

 

shouldn't be that much higher, , but the 1 cpi injector is a cost efficient $300

 

IIRC its about 10 more psi. CPI is very high pressure.

*edit*

quick search..
also, I thought you had to replace the whole fuel assy thing if an "injector" went bad? I called it "the spider".

 

it is 1 injector, and yes, I did have to replace it*



* good thing I worked @ AZ at the time and got the 20% employee discount

 

are you refuring to "it" as the spider, or just one nozzel?

cause 300 for the spider isnt 2 bad IMO (although I know thats a fat chunk of cheese).

 

just wondering if i'm still going to be able to use my old dash gauage cluster and stuff tho with a blazer tranny and engine, i was hoping to figure out a way to hook up the cruise control too, i hate not having that, althou i know its possible to get it on a thirdgen.. mine doesn't.. sheesh... another thing, is, what would be an okay gear ratio for for the rear end with 4L60E? I'm thinking about getting ahold of a fourth gen rear end, i'd like the extra 2" of tire width on the back end...

 

yes, the cpi injector is that spider thing.


as far as teh camaro dash goes, find one that has the vss setup. You may need to rewire teh dash harness to the camaro connector, but it will be worth it, and not as hard as it sounds w/the resources available.


My blazer has a 3.42 rear and it has some get up & go, considerig theweight of it. vee-ate rears on 4th gens are mostly (not all) like 2.73 or something like that.

 

i dont really understand the whole gear ratio, lower number means what compared to a higher number?? sorry, i'm kinda new to all this stuff, i just kinda started messing with cars about a year ago when i got my camaro.. i've been following information that i've found on this site and have found that its not as hard as most people think it is... but without this site i pry would have been screwed... but could u explain the whole gear ratio?

 

ok peeps, correct me if wrong, but.........

the higher the numerical numbers, the lower the gear ratio.

3.73 will have more get up & go (dig off the line) than 3.23/2.73, but the lower numbered rears will let you cruise @ highway speeds w/a lower rpm. 3.42 seems to be a ood number for street driven automatics, w/the sticks being comfortable @ the 3.73 mark.

 

3.42= 3.42 revolutions of the input shaft for every trun of the tire. like he said a larger number has more getup and go but is less fuel efficient cause the engine had to turn faster to turn the wheels at X speed

 

not always true
a car with a small engine like a 2.8 camaro will get worse gas milage with say 2:73 gears then 3:42's cause to go say 60 it takes less hp due to the gear reduction less hp used means the less u have to be on the gas, but once u get over a certian ratio u do lose gas milage due to exccesive revving
oh and the rpm diff from 2:73 to 3:23 is 500 rpm
3:23 to 3:42 is about 250 rpm
3:42 to 3:73's is about 250 and so on