3 Years into a 6 month project ... SBC to LS

[hiss]

Well, after buying it , selling it , trading it, and trying to sell it multiple times I'm finally in too far to give up , so here goes ...

I was looking for a covid project as I was unable to work for 6 months. I had been driving my wife's jeep and getting more into offroad, and learnt to drive in a 45 so settled on a Land Cruiser. After binge watching 4WD 247 I knew a tan 60 series was my first pick. Just happened to find once within a week or so for what I thought was a good price and not too far away in Tucson, so drove down after work one day.

The seller had found it in the desert where it sat for 10+ years, he had dragged it home and done just enough work to make it a driver. Goodwrench 350, ranger OD and a 4 speed. Almost zero rust but lots of bruises. Dried out interior and faded paint. I heard it run, went through the lis tof whats done and what needs doing and we settled on a price that included delivery back to Scottsdale. At this point it was dark, and raining but the guy insisted on taking me on a test drive. It had one working headlight, no wipers, and no brakes after the first pump - all I saw was my life flashing before my eyes , and the occasional oncoming headlights through the rain on the windscreen. I am a sucker for a V8 though so was sold.

Delivery was scheduled for Saturday, I made a space down the side of the house and waited for it's arrival.

 

[hiss]

After an afternoon of staring at it with a beer in my hand I made a list of what it needed that i could A) Afford on no income and B) do myself with it parked outside. I settled on

1) Brakes - replace the soft lines between chassis and axle, and axle and knuckles , this appeared to be where the leaks were coming from, replace the master cylinder.
2) Clutch - replace leaky slave, master, and lines.
3) Exhaust - replace rusty exhaust with curious routing (between spring and frame, then along the outside of the chassis)
4) Radiator - repair/replace leaking radiator, ended up replacing with an aftermarket alloy job and selling the original as it wasn't that bad, and with the engine swap keeping it original wasnt an issue so alloy made sense.

I slowly picked away at these items over the next couple months as budget allowed, driving the truck a little further form the house each time.

 

[hiss]

It was around this time after lurking on mud I found a couple of build threads from @orion which became my field guide for later developments (hint hint). I also decided to open up the rust holes, ended up being only the arches. And got a new shiny oem tank.

I should also mention a lot of these early pics are actually from later but give the general idea. Technically the wheels and suspension come later.

 

[Paullus]

Is the exhaust coming from headers? So each header has a muffler? How did you find a new oem fuel tank? I have an 84 FJ60 that is the same color.

 

[hiss]

Is the exhaust coming from headers? So each header has a muffler? How did you find a new oem fuel tank? I have an 84 FJ60 that is the same color.

Yeah two separate exhausts with no crossover, have since gone to a y pipe and a single exhaust - easier to route.

Tank was from a dealer as there was an open recall, this was a few years ago now and I've heard they've recently dried up.

Nice! Best color in my opinion.

 

[hiss]

'Mostly Finished' all of the work I planned and drove it now and then, at this stage no AC and it wasn't running well off idle. Was back at work so it sat a bit and I started thinking about what direction to go next.

Ended up buying a nice FJ80 on impulse and drove that for a while, clean brown interior with 3rd row, everything worked, had a bunch of new parts.

Once a buddy found out I had the 80 we struck a deal on the 60 and it moved up north , for a while.

 

[hiss]

So I drove the 80 for about a year , used it for a daily driver, towing dirtbikes all over the state, snowboarding and wheeling. Few upgrades here and there. Overall a fantastic rig, except.

It was the slowest car I had ever owned, wasn't helped by the sets of wheels I had on it, but I recall going up the beeline to Payson riding in the breakdown lane getting passed by semi trucks.

I got the V8 itch again and decided the 3fe mafia wasn't for me, but I really liked everything else on the rig. Started getting quotes on a drive in drive out LS swap.

The quotes I got were all about 4x the price I paid for the 80 and I was right about to pull the trigger when I got to chatting with my buddy who bought the 60.

 

[hiss]

He was looking for less of a project, and I wanted a V8 , so we did some horse trading and struck a deal. The 60 was mine again!

Part of the deal involved getting some upgrades done before bringing it back home. He'd done a few minor things, one of which included getting into a dispute with his neighbors, and the windscreen of the 60 getting a few rocks thrown through it - how convenient.

New bilstein/dobinsons supension
New body mounts and body lift
New tundra big brake kit

Spent a few weekends at my buddies getting the work done before driving it home.

Mostly a painless install , jacking the body up off the frame a side at a time was a little sketchy, and the body lift cost me a radiator hose when the fan sliced it.

New suspension felt great but it has introduced 'cruiser lean' which I have yet to solve. The original sway bar links didnt work so I zip tied the bar out of the way so I could get the truck home.

I didn't get the brakes installed they are currently in the trunk, with hindsight I would have got the 1" body lift, and the anti inversion shackles with the suspension.

Also fitted a new starter solenoid as it was sticking on and cooking all the starter wiring.

Work done, it was ready for the trip home, I kept one set of the wheels off the 80 and put these on for the trip home, the tires on the stock wheels were disintegrating from the AZ heat and were pretty old to begin with. I had gone for the BIG big brake kit so 17's were going to be the minimum. I may go to 17" steelies in the future.

 

[hiss]

Got the truck home and mucked around with minor sh*t for a while, it still had an off idle stumble, no AC and a cracked windscreen. Got the hump a little and listed it for sale.

Anyone that lists a project on Marketplace knows the drill from here, lots of auto replies, offers to trade for used Tv's and pit bikes, people telling me its great but they have no money, or telling me I'm high and it's overvalued.

 

[hiss]

At this point it sat for a while, I was riding dirtbikes 2-3 times a week, working a new job and my buddy had sold his truck so the 60 got forgotten for a while.

Since buying it the first time I had read a project thread here on swapping the SBC out for an LS while keeping the ranger. I had in fact read it 30-40 times and even till now must read it at least once a month. Each time I read it I was convincing myself more and more I could do it, and with it sitting I figured I had to do something.

So, one weekend I decided the motor was coming out.

 

[RevISK]

And?

 

[matmattmatthew]

Where did you source the body mounts?

 

[hiss]

And?

I'm getting there

 

[hiss]

Where did you source the body mounts?

edit - sorry read that as engine mounts.

Bought poly mounts from 4Crawler Offroad - Custom Body Lift Kits - http://www.4crawler.com/4x4/ForSale/BodyLiftKit.shtml along with the body lift.

 

[hiss]

Using Builds - V8 (SBC) to V8 (Gen III Vortec) swap in my FJ60... - https://forum.ih8mud.com/threads/v8-sbc-to-v8-gen-iii-vortec-swap-in-my-fj60.943754/page-12#post-15048682 as a guide to my swap I copied his formula for most of the stuff. Flywheel / clutch / vehicle speed sensor / radiator and hoses.

From the time he did his swap and now, the price of aftermarket harnesses has come down a lot, I bought one from a guy in the US 'HPI Harnesses' - for about $200, I sent him photos of what ecu I had and my engine and trans combo he got me the exact loom I needed, came with detailed easy to follow instructions, relay setup etc. I could have got one even cheaper but having the support and contact was worth the extra $$$.

I also decided to reuse the current mount location of the SBC instead of welding in new mounts, so bought https://www.hedman.com/product-detail/4505 to replace the rubber mounts and engine side brackets, as well as some LS <-> SBC adapter plates. This worked out really well for the drivers side, but the passengers side was fouling the AC pump (Gotta have AC in AZ). So I set the adapter plate one hole back then cut and welded the engine bracket to clear the pump and the exhaust manifold - hopefully the pics explain better than I can. There's more clearance than the pics show but not a lot, I can trim a bit more here and there so not too concerned at this stage.

The stock manifolds interfere with the clutch slave on the ranger so found a set that dump straight down between the 2nd and 3rd cylinders off summit, they're ceramic coated and worked out really well.

 

[hiss]

Once I was sure I got the location and mounts right engine came back out, did a bunch of maintenance and gave it a wire brush and a coat of eastmans rust encapsulator. New starter and water pump, belts, dipstick tube, gaskets. Will get a new AC pump when im ready to tackle that. Not sure its standard put came with a drg144 alternator so plenty of juice available.

 

[hiss]

Fuel System:

The engine I bought is Drive By Wire, Flex Fuel and Returnless fuel system. I'm thinking about a long range tank in the future so decided to do something fairly cheap to begin with, I went with the same external pump as Orion , or at least a copy of, as the original E2000 is no longer available. Since my engine is returnless I went with a corvette filter/regulator in front of the external , used quick connect to AN or quick connect to barb adapters so I didn't have to chop any of the LS or fj60 fuel lines. I haven't got the engine under load yet but it revs out in neutral to red line so I'm pretty sure it will work for now.

I mounted it all on a plate that attaches to some existing holes in one of the crossmembers, and welded some angle to the shock bar, I debated on mounting the pump above the plate or below, but ended up going below as I was worried mud would get trapped around the pump on top of the plate . and that was a bigger concern to exposing the pump to rocks etc - time will tell.

 

[hiss]

I've been thinking of removing the stock return line, and the breather line to clean up the engine bay, with an LS swap that doesnt need to pass emissions, how important is running the breather up to the engine bay ?

 

[hiss]

I had dropped the rear hatch on my head too many times to mention so decided to order some new struts to keep it up, while I was in there I started looking around for hood options as well, and found a kit from @c2dfj45.

Chris was easy to deal with, luckily far less forgetful than I am and the kit arrive faster than I expected. Opening the package and reading through the instructions you can tell a lot of 'hard work' had been done and what appears to be a couple of simple brackets are actually very clever, and elegant in the how they solve the problem. I'm sure if I came up with something it would be far more complex and probably not work as well, I would definitely buy again. The hood sits at the same open position as the stock hood bar, it would be nice if there was a way to put it into 'full open' mode while working on the swap, but thats only an issue for short asses like me that sit in the engine bay while working on it.

 

[hiss]

Wiring Round 1:

Decided to attack the harness wiring in stages, starting wiht the bare minimum to get it running, zip ties etc, then as I figure out where things want to go can permanently mount them. One thing I was sure about was mounting the ecm in the engine bay, and on the drivers inner fender.

used a flat alloy plate with standoffs bolted to existing nuts on the inner fender, , then an generic ecm mount and rivnuts to attach the ecm and fuses/relays. Will eventually radius the endges and clean it up once Im happy with it.

Decided to tackle the VATS / odbd2 myself - hardest part was borrowing a windows laptop from my kids. Used the VX unit from odbxpro, works as a regular scanner over bluetooth to your phone, and for programming it has a usb port to your laptop. My particular ECM didnt have a 'config' file online so I couldn't use tunerpro software. Ended up using something called universal scanner that didn't need one - had the vats disabled and the rear o2's in a few minutes, reading/writing the file to the PCM prob took 3 hours total with getting everything set up, will clean up all the evap and egr codes later and that will prob taker all of 30 minutes now ive done it once.