Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Out with the old






396 sold and removed from car. Ready to start working on car again. Dropped a nut into a lifter pocket on the 5.3L engine while engine was upside down on stand and had to pull heads to retrieve it. Will begin install once the parts come in to reassemble.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Taking a Break

Haven't done very much on the swap recently, still working on the oil pan mod. Did learn how to put video on youtube however.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmzCdGC-D-8

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Break-Time!

Time to get away from this project for a week, and everything else.

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Sunday, May 30, 2010

New paint for engine

I decided that the engine needed to be painted. I decided that I could not easily get all the surface rust off using wire brush or scraping or chemical cleaning. I got a portable sandblaster and a bag of "black diamond" blasting media from Tractor Supply. I taped off everything that I did not want to get blasting grit into. I then put on a clear faceshield and covered myself and the engine with an old bedsheet to contain the blasting spray. Holding a flourescent worklight in one hand and the blasting gun in the other, I blasted all the non-aluminum surfaces on the engine. These LSx iron block engines do not have much exposed iron. Front, rear, and valley covers are aluminum and the heads and oil pan are aluminum. Used about 60# of the 80# bag of "black diamond" and took about 1.5 hours to finish blasting. I will spend the next year cleaning black specs from stuff in my garage, even trying to contain it with the sheet. I then painted it with spray can self etching primer and then spray can krylon engine paint, cast iron grey color. It turned out exactly how I wanted it, a dark grey that has a bit of a gloss to it.

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Friday, May 14, 2010

Changing 4L80E wiring to 4L60E wiring

First I should note that this is applicable to PCM that uses blue/green connectors. I suspect it will be similar for blue/red PCM, but haven't verified yet.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Av2_VYcgmwMqdHdhUnZ6aUpTNFZtUXk2OWtSOGozNlE&hl=en

Another pic of finishing up wiring. I sat down at the table and went one wire at a time to make sure I got it right. Be patient and double check at each step. It is easy to do if you get it right the first time. It is a severe headache if you make a mistake and have to track it down later.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

The Wiring

First, a pic of the recipient of this documented struggle to convert from BBC to Gen III SBC.
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The harness from the salvage yard was not from the same truck as the engine/tranny and was somewhat damaged. I traded this harness for programming on my PCM to make it ready for stand alone operation. Purchased a 2003 6.0L/4L80E harness off truck forum classifieds. Was advertised as in new condition and complete. It arrived in that condition, best $124 I have spent on this project.



The harness from the salvage yard was not from the same truck as the engine/tranny and was somewhat damaged. I traded this harness for programming on my PCM to make it ready for stand alone operation. Purchased a 2003 6.0L/4L80E harness off truck forum classifieds. Was advertised as in new condition and complete. It arrived in that condition, best $124 I have spent on this project.


Started by removing plastic split tubing and the back endcaps for the PCM connectors.





Then I laid the harness on the engine/tranny. This helped me to figure out a few more plug ID's. Most of the info I have gotten from LT1swap.com. All the info necessary to convert a harness to standalone. I also looked at a 2004 GMC YUKON engine to figure out where some of the connectors went.
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As I determined what each plug was I labeled it accordingly. After determining purpose for all but about 5 plugs I started removing pins/wires from the PCM connectors. Just use the info from LT1swap.com and it is fairly easy to do. Here are some pics of the process. Wires balled up in chair are not needed.


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After I removed wires from PCM I then removed the unneeded plugs such as oil level, EVAP, A/C, ect. Then I Labeled all the wires that did not go to a plug. I ended up with a harness that had only the wires I need for my 64 Chevelle, all plugs/loose ends labeled as to function. All thats left is converting the Tranny plug from 4L80E type to 4L60E type, but thats another post.


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Thursday, May 6, 2010

Started a google doc to track expense.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Av2_VYcgmwMqdGJkaWdwcFBIVGJpV0RFSlZKSkg2Z3c&hl=en

Sunday, May 2, 2010

64 Chevelle 5.3L Chevy Engine Transplant

Starting a blog to track the progress of my engine swap. Removing a 396/700R4 combo from my 1964 Chevelle Malibu SS and replacing it with a 2003 5.3L/4L60E. I wanted coil on cylinder, roller cam, fuel injection, and aluminum heads. Cost to do this to my BBC setup would have been very high. All this technology is standard on the new chevy truck engines. I have done a lot of forum reading on ls1tech.com and chevelles.com and think I can do this with a little help here and there.

First, the current engine.


And the "new" engine.

I plan to keep an updated total cost involved, I might regret this before its done. Still going thru the junkyard engine parts, looks like I will have to make another trip to the salvage yard to get a few things right, but the guy at the yard assures me he will work with me to get it right.

More to come.

Started a google doc to track expense.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Av2_VYcgmwMqdDBBaDAtTXhDZzZRR1dkaWhxN1AzS2c&hl=en