How to LS Swap a FJ60 or FJ62. Quick and dirty guide for regular folks wanting to do an engine swap in their driveway. (15 Viewers)

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Hi mate, what “dakota box” exactly did you use for the tach, and how does the conversion to digital work?
The box I used was called the SGI-100BT. It allows you to adjust the signal of the GM tachometer and spits out a signal that the Toyota tach can read. I haven’t messed with the speedometer functions of it because I’m just using the mechanical speedometer cable that was on the truck originally.

The stock tach on my truck only goes up to 4K rpm, so a little down the road I think I’m going to have a gauge restoration shop reprint the tach and adjust it so it reads higher.


There are aftermarket gauges like the speed hut gauges, and they can print whatever you want on those too. They use EL lighting though and aren’t front lit like the stock ones for illumination and aren’t as bright as my stock gauges with white LEDs installlrd.

The nice thing about the aftermarket speedometers is that there’s kind of a lot to choose from depending on what you use. You can use the VSS signal from your engine harness, GPS satellite signal, or OBD2 CAN signal. This is about the furthest I’ve gone into reading up on it since i just kept my mechanical cable, but if you were to use the VSS or OBD signal electric speedometers you could adjust your Speedo to read accurate with oversized tires in HPTuners, the GPS one I think would just read accurate all the time
 
yeah the folks I know with the gps speedos like it for tire swaps since it self calibrates. Speedhut also has a gauge face option with type that looks pretty close to factory, but the illumination won't match the others
 
yeah the folks I know with the gps speedos like it for tire swaps since it self calibrates. Speedhut also has a gauge face option with type that looks pretty close to factory, but the illumination won't match the others
Yeah i checked out a buddies car with speedhut gauges and noticed the illumination was pretty dim. Sometime down the road id like to revisit electronic speedos but i really like the stock gauges in the 60. Maybe speedhut will use something different for lighting in the future. With my stock gauges with white LEDs i have to have my rheostat turned down all the way because theyre super bright!
 
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If you used a 4l60e or similar, the transmission oil pan is pretty wide. Youll notice pretty quick if you tried to put your stock front driveshaft on there its not going to fit. Theres two things you need to do to fix this.

First is driveshafts. You can either re use your yokes and ends of your current driveshafts, or just have new ones made. If you are not doing the driveshaft rebuild locally, shipping 2 ways on driveshafts makes the price creep up to getting new ones, but choose whichever you want.

Either way your front driveshaft needs to be longer and your rear needs to be shorter.

For the front you will need to use 2 inch thickwall tubing for your new driveshaft tube. The fj60 yokes will fit barely. If you want even more clearance you can use the smaller spicer yokes.


I used a company called JE REEL out of california and they built me some great new driveshafts that were pretty affordable for what they are. My front is OEM FJ60 driveshaft ends with matsuba ujoints, with 2 inch thickwall tubing. The rear shaft is standard size tubing but also thickwall and uses superduty ujoints and fabricated flanges. These ujoints are much larger than the factory toyota ones.


When you call them, they can tell you what you need to measure for length, and make sure you measure your output flange holes. There are a few different types of spacing for these output flanges and you want to make sure they get them right and they match up to whichever output flanges you have. This is super important. Also theyll balance your rear driveshaft, but spend the extra money to get your front driveshaft balanced.

You dont have to use JE Reel, but they make good stuff and were recommended to me by woody here and compared to my old shafts these are much stouter. They got me these driveshafts in like 4 days in the peak of covid shipping delays.

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Now even if you are using the stock pan, these driveshafts will work and give you clearance, barely. You put your motor spaced over to the drivers side with your motor mounts for this very reason. I had to take the grease zerk off of the front driveshaft yoke and put a flat plug on there to get a little extra clearance for the zerk on the corner. Its tight.

This is my trans pan with the Dorman steel trans pan replacement with the better drain plug:

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A lot of people will dent in the actual pan for the transmission to gain more clearance. I would recommend against doing this because you have no real way of controlling how far you dent the pan in. Plus you are dropping all this dough on a swap and want it to look nice right? The other thing is if you dent the pan in too far, the transmission wont operate right. For example, the corner of the pan that is closest to the front driveshaft that you would probably hammer, if you dent it in too far it wont shift into 2nd gear.


So if you dont want to dent your trans pan you can just notch your trans pan..... or just buy one already notched here. The jeep folks have already figured this issue out adapting Dana 300 transfer cases for their LS Swaps. This is really the best possible option for trans pan. It also has a drain plug thats lower than the bottom of the trans pan, unlike the stock drain plug so it actually drains all the fluid out. Im almost positive that this pan is the same dorman pan i have thats been notched.



Here are photos of @wester11 's 4l60e pan with a driveshaft made with 1310 yokes and the Novak notched trans pan I linked above. It pretty much is perfect. This would work with 60 yokes too...

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Once your driveshafts are in youre ready to get started on your exhaust!
 
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For exhaust you have a couple of considerations and pros and cons for each of them. Really there are two choices here. Take it to an exhaust shop, or do it yourself.


If you decide to take it to a muffler shop, you dont have to worry about messing with it as the shop will be doing it. There are two types of exhaust shops. The ones who build custom exhaust using stainless mandrel bends or pie cuts, use tig welders, and cost a lot of money... and the kind that use mild steel, tube benders, and mig welders. You will definitely pay for the difference here, as a shop at the former will cost over $2-3K or higher and the latter will be $1.5-2K in expense. You are paying someone else to do all the work for you and the exhaust needs some clever routing.

The downside to using the cheaper option is that the mild steel will rust. Every single bend in your tube will have a crush in the inside corner of the bends. The benefit is that its cheap, quick, and you dont have to do anything.


A good middle ground here is just doing it yourself. There are a bunch of ways you can do this to be cost effective, but it will cost you your time. I was able to do my own exhaust using high quality name brand stainless parts, stainless tubing, quality exhaust connectors for less than half of what i was quoted at a local exhaust shop to build the same exhaust out of mild steel using unknown parts. Think long and hard on this because the exhaust will be important. You have done all of this work so far on your LS Swap, might as well give the exhaust a shot. Before doing this, i have never welded any type of exhaust before.

The rest of this post is assuming you are planning on doing this yourself. A few things to keep in mind before even getting started.

-welding exhaust is all about fitment. You can not cut exhaust tubing with an angle grinder and cut off disc and expect it to look good or weld properly. Gaps in the fitment will cause really bad welds and your mig wire will blow straight through the work piece.
-You will need access to the proper cutting equipment
-you can use a mig welder on stainless exhaust just fine
-a belt sander is a life saver
-a rolling creeper will save your lower back!

So for fitment, it is really important you have access to a way to cut true square straight cuts in exhaust tubing. Heres a few from cheapest to most expensive:

-On the cheaper end of this you have an abrasive chop saw. This is basically a giant angle grinder that you use like a miter saw. These are cheap, loud, and make a ton of grinding dust and each cut will be needed to be cleaned up quite a bit.
-Portable band saw with a blade that will cut stainless can be used if you clamp your material down in a vise, but you have to keep a steady hand and ensure your cuts are very straight. Swag offroad makes stands for these that will turn them into vertical band saws.
-Cold chop saw like the evolution metal cutting chop saw will make quick work of this and give you super clean cuts with minimal clean up, but is very loud
-horizontal/vertical band saw with blade to cut stainless is the best bet here. This is the most expensive option though and not everyone will have access to this.

The way you are cutting these tubes is really important. If you want to butt two pieces of tubes together and weld them, you need perfect fitment. your cut across the pipe has to be perfectly square so the circle of the tubing is completely intact. An angle in your cut off of square will turn your round tubing into an oval and create gaps, weird connections of pipe that dont line up, and airflow restrictions. A nice way to get around not having perfect fitment is to use a tube expander to create a slip fit connection between the two pieces of tubing. These are nice because it will create a good fitment, and you do not lose any tubing diameter in the process. I personally did not like the look of the slip fits so i just made sure to ensure proper fitment and butt welded everything. If you use slip fits, your mandrel bend kit will come with slip fit ends already in them.

Something that will save you hours on this project is a belt sander. It will clean up your cuts and you can put a tiny bevel around the edge with ease. Then just wipe with acetone. You got to be careful cleaning up your cuts with a flap disc because you can easily create gaps in fitment by removing too much material.

Another thing to keep in mind is that whether you are Mig welding or tig welding, using mild steel or stainless… the material prep is just as important or if not more important than the welding technique. You can be the best welder on the planet but if you are welding contaminated improperly fitting materials it will never turn out looking good. For butt joint welds you have to have no gaps. I can’t stress this enough. Everything has to butt up together perfect.

Materials must be cleaned properly. After you cut each section of tube you will want to wipe each weld surface down with acetone and make sure it’s deburred. If you are using stainless exhaust you will want to use a sanding belt or abrasive disc or flap disc that has only ever seen stainless steel. For example if you use a sanding belt that has sanded mild steel you could potentially impregnate your stainless tubing with fine bits of mild steel and your welds will rust before your tubing. If you want to go even more OCD, just before welding you can hit the weld surfaces with a torch to burn off any remaining oils.



Now that you have a way to cut the tubing all lined up, you need to decide on what parts you are wanting to use. Whether or not you are wanting to use catalytic converters, and what kind of exhaust tubing you are wanting to use.

For tubing you can use mild steel, aluminized steel, 409 stainless, or 304 stainless. In that order it goes cheapest to most expensive, and will rust more to will rust the least. You can order the tubing from summit in a kit that comes with way way too much pipe that will have a lot of straights, and different angle bends. These posts are assuming you chose 409 or 304 stainless. Honestly, 409 is just fine for an offroad truck exhaust. Most of the "stainless" mufflers you buy are 409 stainless and not 304... looking at you magnaflow. If you look at the photo below, you can see that the muffler looks different than the resonator. Thats because Vibrant uses all 304 stainless and magnaflow uses 409

As far as diameter goes, 2.5 or 3 inch is just up to you. It is much easier to tuck up 2.5 inch tubing so that is what i went with. You could go 2.5 tubing to 3 inch once the two pipes hit your connector pipe as well. I wish i did this, but i just did 2.5 all the way back because i didnt feel like buying more exhaust tubing

Cats or not, thats a choice for you to make, as well as mufflers. There are entire threads on both of those topics longer than this swap thread. For me personally I stick to straight through mufflers, and stay away from chambered mufflers like flowmasters as they are more restrictive and i dont personally care for the sound of them. Cats will keep your exhaust from smelling like gas, thats about it. The longer the muffler, the quieter it will be. I used a 22 inch magnaflow straight through muffler with a vibrant ultra quiet resonator and it sounds absolutely amazing. Nice and quiet at idle. Opens up when you get on it, absolutely zero drone or rasp.

You will however want a resonator, as it will eliminate highway drone and exhaust rasp and pop.

There are many many ways to connect exhaust pieces, and for this exhaust you will at least need 4 connectors. I have yet to find anything that beats Vband clamps. In comparison everything else just seems old and outdated. No gaskets, easily removed and can be installed very quickly. If you splurge for anything in this, buy nice Vibrant vband clamps. You can do some research but they are machined differently than cheaper vbands to ensure proper fitment and no leaks. I would rather have a cheaper muffler than not have these vbands.

Youll need 2 flex joints, I used vibrant for these too but you can save a little money on these as well. These will allow your exhaust to move with your motor and alleviate the stress on your exhaust tubing.

You will also need one weld on exhaust hanger and three stainless exhaust hanger rods. Just get a straight rod for this, youll heat and bend it to suit your needs.

Last youll need a Y pipe or an X pipe (explained later) and 3 vibrant weld in O2 bungs with one O2 cap.


Heres an image of just about all the exhaust parts, missing 2 v bands here and the Y pipe in this photo looked way better online. Dont buy one like this, its garbage. Notice that the muffler is center inlet and offset outlet. Youll need this offset outlet to clear your driver rear shock absorber.

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This is the type of Y pipe you would want.

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If you were using an X pipe you would want this.

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The Xpipe will sound much better and has better exhaust scavenging than the y pipe will, but the y pipe will be much easier to install.



Now that you have your parts you are going to want to figure out the routing of the exhaust. Theres really two ways you can do it, either run a crossover under your front output of your tcase or over the rear output of your t case. From there you will be able to figure out what muffler and joiner pipe to use.

I chose to run the crossover under the front output of my transfer case as it gave me more room for a resonator and muffler on the drivers side of the transmission. It also gets the hot exhaust pipe away from your wires and fuel lines quicker this way. This is what i would recommend.

From here youll decide on the piping. you have a lot of options. Join the 2 sides of the exhaust into a y pipe then go back as one exhaust using a 1 in 1 out muffler and follow the stock exit location. You could also join the 2 sides of the exhaust into an xpipe and into a 2 in 1 out exhaust and back out to the stock location or even run both sides of the front exhaust into an x pipe and 2 separate mufflers and do true dual exhaust out the back. Only use the Xpipe if you are not planning on running a resonator. You can use two small bottle style resonators towards the end of the exhaust but they wont be as effective as a larger one more upstream.

As far as the resonator goes, you want this resonator to be as forward in your exhaust, closest to the motor as you can get it. The further back it is, the less it will do its job and the worse it will sound. A lot of the newer mustang 5.0s have this issue because they run the resonators all the way at the end of the exhaust right at the exit tips.

You will also need an anglefinder, i used a cheap digital husky one from home depot with great success, as well as a pack of zip ties, some sharpies, and a steel ruler.

As far as welding goes, you can weld stainless with mig, as long as your mig welder has a stainless setting. I welded all of this on a miller 211 on stainless setting, but you will have to use the appropriate wire. Hobart makes wire specifically for stainless, its ER308L. 0.030in wire works just fine. Technically you should use Trimix welding gas (mostly helium with argon and co2) to mig weld stainless, but i just used normal C25 (25% CO2/75% Argon) and it welded fine. It just spatters a bunch and isnt as shiny and pretty. I am planning on tearing all of this out and tig welding a new exhaust down the road, but ive not had one issue with any of my mig welds on my current setup.

There are HOURS of DIY exhaust videos on youtube. Make sure to watch the videos of the guys tig welding stainless exhaust, while you might not be doing that level of work, its good to see how they work and what they do before you give it a shot. You can get a good idea on cutting, fitment, routing, etc. Theres a lot out there to watch. Other good videos to watch are videos of guys building custom turbo charge piping as its similar in routing and cutting and fitment.



So at this point you should have a way to cut your exhaust tube, a way to clean your cuts, your exhaust system components, and a relative idea on the routing of your exhaust. All thats left is to just go do it.
 
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As far as welding the exhaust goes, its just a lot of trial and error. You will be using your steel ruler a lot to figure out distances of runs, you can use spare straight tubing to find longer lengths. For angles you will use the digital angle finder. You can use it to find the outside angles of your bends, then lock it and then transfer the angle onto your mandrel bends to cut. You can use zip ties or adjustable worm gear hose clamps to make marks in the angles of mandrel bends to ensure you have a square cut across the circle of the tubing. Get a big pack of zipties and when you have the zip tie in place to mark the cut tighten it down very tight. This will ensure accuracy when you mark your line for your cut. Youll have to cut the zip tie off after. You can keep the zip tie loose, and reuse them but they wont be as accurate. If you are planning on butt welding pieces together, if there are any gaps...try and look upstream as to what is causing the gap and star that piece over. Filling gaps on this thin material is kind of tricky. Its better to not have them in the first place, and you will have an abundance of exhaust tubing if you buy one of the kits.

Before starting on your exhaust get your wire speed and voltage settings locked in and practice on some scrap tubing to get a technique down. If you are using mig you are going to be using a lot of tack welds that overlap each other instead of a long bead. Youll want to start the tack and make sure you cross the gap in between pieces in a very very small Z like motion. This will be a somewhat quick zap and youll need to let off the trigger. Too long and youll overheat the weld or potentially burn through it. You need to find the right balance of time on the welds. Start the next tack after the tack you just did has started to change colors from orange to grey, but is still orange. You got to catch it before it fully cools. What i did was i set my auto darkening helmet to turn the darkening function in the time it took for the pool to start to solidify, once i could see again i would know it was time for the next tack. Make sure you overlap these tacks and make sure you are joining the two pieces together and not just putting a tack in the middle of the two if that makes any sense. On your practice pieces look at the inside and make sure you are getting good penetration. Unfortunately, doing the tack method for the exhaust creates a ton of fisheyes in the tacks. This tubing is only like 16ga and isnt structural whatsoever, so you are really just looking to get a leak free fit, not a ton of structural support, so the fisheyes arent the end of the world


Starting on your exhaust you will start at the two downpipes out of your exhaust manifolds. If you used the hooker manifolds listed earlier in the thread, your manifolds should have come with two Stainless flanges and bolts. Mount the flanges and tighten the bolts completely. Then use this as a reference as to where to begin your exhaust piping. Youll be adding and removing these bolts A LOT, but dont get lazy and just add one or not fully tighten them, you want the flanges to be where they will live when the exhaust is done.

Your first pieces will be the downpipes from these manifolds. You will want to measure out a little straight section of pipe, then use a 45* mandrel bend to get the exhaust started. Try and keep the exhaust up and above the bottom of the frame rail, and keep in mind that you are aiming for the gap in between the frame and the transmission when doing the drivers side down pipe (it helps to put your Y pipe into position in the gap and secure it to where it will live so you can see where to aim to). You want the flex joints to be first in line on these, and if you are using cats go straight into the cats to save some room. You can put a small piece between the two but i was cramped for room here and just welded them together.

*from here forward you will be laying under your truck, measuring, checking angles, marking, then cutting, then going back to ensure fitment, doing any changes, checking again, and then tacking the pipes. When you have a few pieces tacked together, youll remove the whole thing and fully weld each section and then reinstall. This stuff takes forever. I did my manifolds to my muffler in one very long day, and my muffler to tailpipe in another *

Here is the drivers side downpipe. It goes from downpipe to flex joint to cat to straight section of pipe, then youll use a Vband clamp to connect this straight section to your Y pipe. (i cheaped out here and welded straight to my ypipe and im paying for it. The Y pipe will need 2 v bands). Start with the drivers side because the passenger side is much harder and you need a quick win to get your project rolling. You can see for this one section i used the slip fit pipe end. It makes welding A LOT easier but i really did not care for how it looked.

If you are welding stainless with c25 gas the welds will spatter some. Wipe nozzle gel around the lip of the vband base pieces when you are welding them to your pipes. This will prevent spatter from sticking from the smooth surface that the clamp needs to clamp down onto.

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Wait for your welds to cool and use a center punch for your o2 sensor bungs. Then use a drill bit to drill a hole and then a step bit to open up the hole to the size of the lip of the o2 sensor bung to sit in.
Be sure to use Vibrant o2 exhaust bungs. They are stainless, and have a large lip around them so you can weld them easier. Do your best to only weld stainless to stainless. Dont mix mild steel and stainless. Try to keep in mind the length of the 02 sensors so there is room in there to install it later on. Put your 02 sensor bung up on the angled section of the pipe closest to the exhaust manifold, and on the driver side only put a second o2 sensor down in the flat. This will be capped for now, but this second o2 sensor is for a wide band sensor, so your dyno tuner can just pop the plug off and hook up his wide band and use it for tuning.

Here is the vibrant o2 sensor bung

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I was lucky enough to be able to use a Baileigh horizontal band saw for this, to ensure proper straight perfect cuts. Remember FITMENT IS EVERYTHING with this stuff, but the other saws listed in the previous posts will work just as well!
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The passenger side will be very very similar to the driver side, however it will only have one o2 sensor bung in place, and right after the cat you will weld in one side of your Vband clamp. I think i actually welded it to the cat itself. (this first picture was before i had to redo my center section)

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(after redoing the center section)
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The center section is the hardest part. I highly recommend welding the Y pipe vbands first, on the side with 2 pipes first, then welding the y pipe to your Resonator (if you are using one) and the resonator to your muffler before starting on it. You should at this point have the driver side already connected to the Ypipe so youll have the location of it under the truck. Use jack stands to position the resonator and the muffler and tack them into place and remove it all to weld them. Then bend 2 of the stainless exhaust hangers by heating them up in a vise with a map torch and bending them with pliers. Youll then use these to weld to the pipe in front of the muffler. Keep in mind, the muffler needs to be able to come out. If you look at my photo of my muffler here the bends on the hangers are too long for the gap between the cross bar and the muffler, the muffler hits the bar before clearing my hangers so its effectively stuck in there. Dont do this haha. while the muffler is out, you can weld half of a vband clamp to the outlet of the muffler too. Remember the outlet of the offset outlet muffler needs to be towards the center of the vehicle.

Ypipe to resonator to muffler

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Exhaust hangers to stock hanger location. Notice the small gap between the stock hanger and the muffler, this muffler can not be removed without cutting those hangers. Do what you can to avoid this. The center section here is crooked because i made a mistake and had to cut it. I couldnt fit this in the band saw to get a straight cut, so I had to use a sawsall. This is a good example of what a non square exhaust cut will look like... bad.

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The reason you are mounting the resonator,muffler and Ypipe is to get a solid mounted loacation for your crossover pipe. When the muffler is mounted in the stock exhaust hanger location that is its final resting place. Youll connect your driver side downpipe vband to the y pipe and its locked in. I made the mistake of not doing this, then made a fancy crossover pipe, and by the time i mounted the muffler to the stock hangers the whole thing shifted over (thanks to the flex joints) and my crossover was all out of alignment and had to be remade.

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So at this point you should have a completed driver side to y pipe, y pipe to muffler, and a passenger side Downtube that ends pretty much where your front driveshaft ujoints are. There will be a v band here.

You then you want to make cuts out of the bend of a 90* mandrel bend piece to create snaking tubing that will not only turn the pipe down, but it will turn towards the center of the truck, then turn back up, ride the channel in your trans pan, then turn up and then back into your Y pipe. This is the most difficult part of the entire exhaust. As long as you use the same center line radius of the same degree of bend... aka only use your 180* mandrel bends for this stuff... you should be able to make cuts out of the 90* bend and they give you 360* of adjustment. Cut the length you need before your turn. Then your next turn will be another small turn but you can rotate this piece 360* to aim it where you want to go... its the same for the next piece. Couple of things that are crucial for this to work. Your cuts across the 180* mandrel bend have to be PERFECTLY straight... meaning cut across the round tubing perfectly square, and you have to use the same 180* bend center line radius. Your 45* bends wont match up to your 180* bends. You are essentially trying to make lazy people pie cuts. you can get quite a few of these cuts out of one 90* mandrel bend.

Or you can just make pie cuts. Pie cuts are creating bends out of straight sections of pipe to accomplish the same thing, you can use steeper angled cuts to create a tighter bend.


When i go back and redo this, i plan to use pie cuts instead of mandrels. Here is a great video on how to do pie cuts, ive time marked it to a spot where it explains aiming the different pieces if you have them cut right.

If you have money to blow and dont have a way to cut the mandrel bends or pie cuts, they actually sell pre cut pie cuts that you can buy that are already perfectly cut for you already.

Anyways. Youll make your cuts, then aim, figure out where you need to change directions, then make your next piece. This crossover pipe is like 9 different pieces of cut tubing. Youll know you did this right if you look at the edge of the pipe. See how it follows one smooth line and theres no jagged pieces coming up that had to be welded and filled? That is caused by not cutting the tubing squarely across the tube. I see this A LOT.... it essentially will turn the circle tube into an oval and cause a gap and uneven mating surface. It will also change the direction of your pipe if you mount it flat

A good tip is to start from each of the V bands and work your way to the middle, that way you have a good reference to where you need the two ends to meet. This is how i ended up doing it. Once you are done with this crossover, youll have a vband on each end of it so if you ever need to drop your transmission oil pan its just 2 12mm bolts and the cross section completely drops out of the way.

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Once you have this cross over pipe done you are in smooth sailing and are almost done. The rear is very very easy. you already welded half of the vband onto the back of your muffler, so just start with a 90* bend and do the same style of cuts as the cross over pipe but just much larger. route the exhaust up and over the imaginary travel of your rear axle, and then back down your gas tank. This design is assuming you dont have a spare tire back there. Run the straight section of pipe and cut an easy 45* bend from your kit and aim it out and diagonally out of the back of the truck. Lastly youll weld your exhaust hanger bracket to the frame (youll need to change your welding wire back to solid copper for this, the bracket and your frame isnt stainless). Once the bracket is welded on, youll swap back over to your stainless wire and make your exhaust hanger and weld it to the tube and you are done.

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So you should be able to remove Each of your front downtubes individually by undoing one vband clamp and the bolts out of the manifold. You should be able to remove your crossover pipe individually by removing the vbands on each side of the crossover pipe. You should be able to remove your resonator and muffler in one piece by itself by removing the vbands on the y pipe and the back of the muffler. You should be able to remove the tail pipe by itself by removing the vband on the back of the muffler. Your entire exhaust system should be completely removable in 5 pieces. You did this and spent the money on vbands so if you have to remove anything to work on something under there, you dont have to remove huge chunks of your exhaust, just small portions of it.




Or you can just drop it off at a muffler shop
 
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Muffler shops will often use a pipe expander on the downstream cut pieces to make the receiving pipe become a receptacle of sorts. This make welding much easier.. more of a lap weld vs butt. This also gives you some angle adjustment without having to make multiple cuts to get it right . Problem is the machinery to do it quickly is very expensive. Can be done manually but it might take some time/practice.

If I redo my exhaust... it’s going straight to a mexicano muffler shop. If you don’t have a hydraulic lift .. exhaust work sucks big donkey
 
Muffler shops will often use a pipe expander on the downstream cut pieces to make the receiving pipe become a receptacle of sorts. This make welding much easier.. more of a lap weld vs butt. This also gives you some angle adjustment without having to make multiple cuts to get it right . Problem is the machinery to do it quickly is very expensive. Can be done manually but it might take some time/practice.

If I redo my exhaust... it’s going straight to a mexicano muffler shop. If you don’t have a hydraulic lift .. exhaust work sucks big donkey

I think oreileys rents the manual machine. Ive seen some people attach it to a 1/2 inch impact to make it go a little quicker. I actually had a muffler shop use the super nice hydraulic one you are talking about to make the steel adapter pieces for my airbox. The machine makes the steel tubing look like stretching playdough.

Youre totally right, i need to add to the post on required tools: a creeper. I used my own DIY Creeper... a big cardboard box, and while it sure beats sliding on the concrete, the creeper would help A LOT hah

Btw this guide is fantastic you’re doing a great service to future DIYers!!! Big 👍🏼
Man I appreciate it! Just wanted to show people that its really not that bad of a job to do. I was very hesitant to do this myself but once i got rolling on it, it became addicting! Hoping to share that feeling with others
 
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Now that your exhaust is done, you are on the home stretch to completion of your project. The next things are just tying up loose ends.


First youll want to fully fill up your auto trans if you used it. This is for a 4l60e but also any auto trans. Turn the truck on and let it idle and get up to its normal operating temprature (160ish degrees). This will take a while without actually driving it. Then check your auto trans dipstick. It should be very low on oil. You added extra lines and a cooler so you need to fill fluid to make up the added volume, plus when you drained your pan you drained your fluid so the trans needs to suck in fluid for each of the gears. If you added fluid while the trans was out of the truck you should have some in there. If you didnt add any fluid at all and the trans is empty, add fluid before idling the truck and getting it up to temp. You want some in there to start with. Add fluid until full on the dipstick and then sit in the truck while idling the motor and put the auto shifter in each of the gears, R, N, OD, D, 2, 1. Let it sit for a few seconds on each and then reverse the process back to P. Go back and check the fluid again, it will be back to empty. Repeat this process over and over until when you go back to check the dip stick the oil level doesnt move. You dont want to overfill it, so resist the urge to just dump a bunch of ATF in there at once. Each gear will suck in fluid as you go, so it will take a few tries. Youd be surprised how much fluid volume a large cooler and all the new trans lines you added will add.

Next since the truck is warm check your Power steering fluid. Same thing here, you added a cooler so just top the reservoir off a little at a time, go in and work the steering wheel lock to lock left to right and check again. If you overfill, you can remove excess with a turkey baster or soak it out with some shop towels.

Then youll want to double check your coolant levels and color. Run the truck with your heat on full blast with your rear heat valve open and rear heater on. If the coolant is a weird brownish color, you didnt get out all of the orange coolant and you need to drain/flush/refill assuming you went with green coolant. The Orange GM coolant crap will coagulate with other coolants and cause a bunch of problems, this is why you flushed the block before you installed the motor in the truck. If the coolant is green, filled up, and your overflow is full youre good here.


Next, with the truck off but exhaust still warm, youll want to go down under the passenger side of the frame rail where your fuel lines and wiring are and kinda feel around for heat. From where the manifolds are back down your exhaust until your crossover youll have wires and fuel lines running down the frame in pretty close proximity to the exhaust tubing. These are probably okay, but for added security, you can purchase DEI heat shield wrap with a velcro closure. You dont have to remove the lines to install this stuff, what i did was wrapped the lines while they were still bolted to the frame together in one heat wrap and secured it with Stainless steel zip ties. This allows any water to drain out since its not 100% closed and allows you to keep the wires and hoses mounted to the frame. The downside is it looks crappy. Run it from the firewall under the hood all the way back down the frame following your exhaust until the exhaust splits and goes under your trans. You can cover your wiring, the fuel lines, and your brake lines with the same sleeve. You are just trying to protect from radiating heat.

Do this for your trans lines where they come into close proximity with the exhaust as well. I tested these out for a while without it and you dont absolutely need this, but peace of mind is worth it.

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Another option is you can wrap your exhaust in that area with fiberglass exhaust wrap. This is only an option if you used 304 stainless for your exhaust. Do not wrap mild steel, aluminized steel, or even 409 stainless in this wrap, your pipes will disintegrate.

If you want to go even more overkill you can install a DEI Cat shield if you used a catalytic converter. This will physically block radiating heat coming from the very very hot catalytic converter in that small cramped area. This will need to be trimmed to fit, and is a very good thing to add if you are running cats.


So if you do all of these heat protection modifications, you should have already put insultherm heat shielding on your wiring harmess when you loomed it. You now have heat shielding on your fuel/trans/and brake lines, and you have redirected the radiant heat from your catalytic converter down and away from your wiring.


Go back and look at your wiring and tidy it all up, tuck it all up nice under your dash, make sure nothing is exposed in the engine bay or under the truck. Anything thats not inside the cab must have loom or abrasive protection on it. Everything near heat needs heat protection.


Now you will want to schedule your dyno tune. Schedule it for like a month after you think you are "done" with your swap. Assuming you got a good base tune on your PCM you can and need to drive the truck around for a month or so to work out any kinks before taking it to the dyno. In this month you can identify problems that need to be fixed like parts not installed right, leaks, etc. You want to take care of all of that before taking it to the tuner. If you have any codes you can use a code reader to track down what it is and fix the problem as it arises. You might notice your transfer case shifter makes a little bit of vibrating noise, so you can go in and fix it, small stuff like this takes forever to finally 100% but just knock them out as they arise.


Drive the truck around for a week or so, and go back and DO A BOLT CHECK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Go back to every. single. bolt. that you possibly touched and put a wrench on it to ensure it is tight and functioning properly. Check your motor mounts. Check your trans mounts. Check your rad mounts. Check your pcm and fuse box mounts. Check everything. Check your driveshaft bolts. Check EVERY SINGLE AN FITTING you built. ALUMINUM -6AN FITTINGS SHOULD BE TORQUED TO 150-195 IN.LBS OR 18-23 FTLBS. This is suuuuper important. Especially for your fuel fittings on your fuel rail on your engine. You can check torque on AN fittings by using a crows foot attachment for your torque wrench. They are super super cheap. Do not skip this step. Loose AN fittings on your fuel rail will catch your truck on fire in a super dramatic fireball. Ive seen it in person.


Dont get lazy and think your bolts and fittings are good. Go back out and check them!!!!


Once you are sure your truck is at a point where its fully done, its not going to fall apart or leak when the tuner does a bunch of high RPM pulls on it, take it to the tuner and get it tuned. This is one of the coolest parts of the whole swap. Ask them questions, its really interesting. Get some pics or a video of a pull. Save your dyno sheet.




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Just posting this twice to emphasize the point...


GO BACK AND DO A BOLT CHECK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Go back to every. single. bolt. that you possibly touched and put a wrench on it to ensure it is tight and functioning properly. Check your motor mounts. Check your trans mounts. Check your rad mounts. Check your pcm and fuse box mounts. Check everything. Check EVERY SINGLE AN FITTING you built. ALUMINUM -6AN FITTINGS SHOULD BE TORQUED TO 150-195 IN.LBS OR 18-23 FTLBS. This is suuuuper important. Especially for your fuel fittings on your fuel rail on your engine. You can check torque on AN fittings by using a crows foot attachment for your torque wrench. They are super super cheap. Do not skip this step. Loose AN fittings on your fuel rail will catch your truck on fire in a super dramatic fireball. Ive seen it in person.


Dont get lazy and think your bolts and fittings are good. Go back out and check them!!!!
 
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You installed a gen 3 setup, correct? Are you using the stock, inline fuel pressure regulator? Also, what fuel filter are you using? I couldn't make out the P/N you had on the drawn diagram.

thanks for all the info and taking the time.

Yes sir im using a gen 3 and using the FPR on the stock fuel rail on the motor. I reused the stock toyota fuel return hard line down the frame and made an adapter piece from the stock GM fuel line push lock connector hose to the toyota hard line on the frame. I just cut it where the metal hose starts, on the GM return line and put a barb in it and ran rubber fuel injection hose from it to the hard line on the frame.

The fuel filter Im using is PN: 90134190 from Speedway It comes with AN adapters to connect your female -6 hose ends to.

Not a problem at all man!
 
Good deal.

Do you think it would be possible to get rid of the gen 3 fuel pressure regulator with separate filter setup and use the Gen 4 style high pressure filter/regulator setup?
I think an 04+ Vortec returnless fuel rail will bolt up to the earlier trucks with the FPR on the fuel rail. Then youd just use the filter regulator like the Gen4. People swap the gen3s truck motors to returnless all the time when they put the LS6 intakes on them, but to use the car fuel rail you need the car intake. Im almost certain that the 04+ truck fuel rail will swap right in though. You could cap the return line on your current setup but i feel like thats just asking for trouble.

The reason i made my little adapter piece is because im planning to swap intakes as well so mine is just temporary but it works.

My buddy said when he swapped to the LS6 intake from his gen 3 5.3 he ran a little rich but they fixed it in the tune
 
Thanks.

My truck has a LM7 5.3 swap from a kit, so I just have high pressure rubber hose fuel line throughout with an aftermarket fuel pressure regulator mounted on the firewall.
Brainstorming a way to simplify it a bit.
Ah okay, so you are not using the FPR on the fuel rail already? If you wanted to simplify it you could just put the corvette fuel filter regulator where your fuel filter is and then run new hose back to your gas tank from your fuel filter. Then youll only have the one hose coming up to the fuel rail from underneath the truck
 
Returnless. Run a single (3/8 minimum) hard line (stainless?) from filter to upper firewall- to regulator/gauge. Then braded flex line to rail. It’s been done a billion different times in many ways. Many like A/N fittings. There are adapters available for A/N to GM style receptacles. A good hose shop will hook you right up
 
Yes you can swap the return/returnless rails between truck intakes.

the simplest way IMO is to just use the FPR that GM provided for you on the rails, one less thing to mount and they work perfectly... every 60/62 already has two fuel lines in it. If it's a 62 it's already set up for high pressure feed, if it's a 60 you just need to make the line adequate for high pressure, whether that's converting all the rubber hose to AN, running a new line, etc
 
My LM7 was a late 03 motor that came with returnless fuel from the factory. I would think the fuel rails are interchangeable. I like the returnless setup because you have less fuel navigating the vehicle and you are not just pouring in hot gas as it comes back to the tank. I used the Corvette filter at the gas tank to return the fuel.
 

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