8x Series V8 Swaps (19 Viewers)

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I cant believe thats where the mount is!. I had to move mine slighltly forward and over to get it to come up in the correct spot. I too had to get the earlier "square" shifter ,marks never mentioned that! I have the 6L80E and the adapter is about 8" long, Didn't those use a metal plate to mount the shifter too? Look up some posts on this thread from a year ago, maybe page 10ish. There was someont that showed how to wled the plates together.
 
image.jpeg FYI Transfer case shifter relocation plate with OE crossmember and rear mount location pic
 

Pretty sure hes putting the 4 low shifter in the wrong spot on that picture.... and mine was almost the same, but I had to move it up and over like an inch, your appears maybe 2 or 3 inches out, is the trans bolted to the factory cross member ???

and dont over think the firewall hitting, it doesnt take much, and where it needs to be hit has nothing behind it that can cause grief. I ended up putting some heat tape on it and you can barely tell I touched it
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Pretty sure hes putting the 4 low shifter in the wrong spot on that picture.... and mine was almost the same, but I had to move it up and over like an inch, your appears maybe 2 or 3 inches out, is the trans bolted to the factory cross member ???

and dont over think the firewall hitting, it doesnt take much, and where it needs to be hit has nothing behind it that can cause grief. I ended up putting some heat tape on it and you can barely tell I touched itView attachment 1425165

Is that regular HVAC aluminum tape? Or something more substantial?
 
that's what Marks recommended, they told me that the adapter was made for the right-hand-drive-five-speed trucks, they are not planning to make another version for the US left-hand model, they know about the poor high/low shifter location and they sent a pic of their plate they make but don't sell to relocate, yes you have to use an old high/low shifter,

IIRC most guys running 4LXX transmissions take that transfer shifter bracket, cut it in half, and weld it back together with the shifter offset to the side the appropriate amount. Seems to work fine and isn't too big of a job, considering everything else that needs to be done with a swap of this type.
 
Could one of you that's used a mechanical fan on the LS1 car accessories motor post the number of a mechanical fan water pump that will work? Is what Mark's said try about using a 99 LT1 mechanical fan water pump on the 01LS1? I'm using the cable-throttle body, I want simple mechanical fan for mud and water, not worried about Horsepower


On my LS3 I am running the Mark's Adapters mechanical fan set up. This is the only mechanical fan set up that I am aware of that works with the Corvette harmonic balancer. It looks like a standard GM water pump with a longer shaft that spaces the fan out towards the radiator. I just ordered a brushless electric pusher fan to put in front of the AC condenser to help cool at idle and slow speed stuff. The mechanical fan won't cut it at low RPM. Mark's might have an LS1 pump and fan.



Engine driven fan kit - LS series V8 engines
 
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Would anyone post pics of this shifter work around?

Search some of the build threads from RockJock82, pretty sure in one of those build threads there is a before and after picture showing the welded shifter bracket.
 
I seem to remember seeing at least four different versions of the same mod.. @geologic is gonna need to do the homework on this one.


Progress with the oilpan, finally. I took the LS3 pan to a local welder and had them cut two sections out and weld up the holes. This is the result, sitting on bump stops with 1.5" spacers

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About 5/8" clearance at the front right corner which is the closest part. Hopefully this is enough. If I had it do over again I'd have them move the reliefs back another half inch. I'll probably be going up to a 4" lift before too long and that will require adjustable panhard, which will make slightly more room.

Best part? Apparently lots of people are buying crate LS3s and putting F-body pans onto them, so it's pretty easy to find a brand new pan/pickup/windage tray/bolts/dipstick & tube for ~$100. Another $150 at the welder for the mods and I've spent less than what an F-body pan costs and get 3 extra quarts in the sump. AND, it has the extra pressure relief valve required in VVT/AFM engines.

We'll ignore that I paid $200 for a H3 pan setup that I can't use and probably won't be able to get any money for..

Plenty of room to the tie rod

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I also got my shifter setup finalized. The escalade shifter cable is WAAAAYYYY too long, so I went to the junkyard and got a trailblazer cable. They aren't expensive but I wasn't sure what I had in mind would work so I didn't want to throw away the $40 for a new one in case it didn't.

The shift-lever-end has a unique slot and tab setup that it slides into. This bracket emulates what was plastic in the trailblazer.. it is 1/4" thick to not have any slop, welded to 3/16 for the backing plate.

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The hole is were a tab snaps into, then the small plastic part hitting the nut in the above picture snaps around the back to prevent it working loose. To release the cable from the bracket you release the lock tab, then push something appropriately size into the hole and it will release the button. I wanted some adjustability in this mount so I set the base of it up to be clamped. The plate steel between my bracket and the trans tunnel sheetmetal is 3/16 and thick enough to space it out flush with the raised areas.. the trans tunnel is lightly corrugated in this area. On the other side there are bolts with large washers to make up for it being attached to sheetmetal.

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The factory jute is thick enough to not notice these bolt heads, but my extra layer will only help.

All-in this part of the shifter is rock solid and adjustable.. which ended up being important with how bad my mock-up plans were for the modified shifter length.

I came up with the shaft off the shift lever needing to be 90-95mm long to achieve the same throw as the escalade.. NOTE that this is for 6L80.. probably not the same ratio for 4LXX transmissions. It hits reverse/neutral/drive/2/1 perfectly.. have to put a little pressure to get the shifter all the way up into Park. As it is I don't think it's an issue of total throw but the toyota shifter not being in the "center" of the throw.. it favors the shifter leg hanging into the trans tunnel pointing rearward when the shifter itself is in the middle of the pattern.. which means there is a different amount of throw going forward and backward. But the 6L80 shift lever on the transmission is dead in the middle.

I'm rambling.. basically, it works.

Next post is about me switching the cable push/pull direction to better clear the cats and have the shift lever end be forward instead of back.

This is before I dialed in the lever length, which meant cutting it shorter and welding the two halves together
Looking up & backward
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MarkN ran his cable out the back and it seemed to work well. But when I was under there is sure seemed like it would close to the CDL actuator, though I didn't have the transfer case in yet to see HOW close. The other issue with running the cable out back is that's how the 6L80 comes set up from the factory, which means the shift cable is just above the pan mating flange. It would be VERY close to the catalytic converters in an 80.

So I decided to run the cable out the front, which meant switching the orientation of the lever on the side of the transmission. It is keyed to the shaft with two slots, so the lever itself is very simple to move around.. but for the cable to line up a bit of work was required.

I don't have a before pic, but this is what I ended up with

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The part with two bolt holes is factory, and the hook on the left is factory. The lever on the trans is 2.5" long, which means I needed 5" of offset to have it be tangential to the throw of the lever. I torched up a little 3/16" steel plate (could have used flat bar if I had it) and an old M8 battery tie-down bolt from a past car (bolt-bucket win again) and had a bracket that was plenty solid for the job.

before painting

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My only issue with the above setup is the bracket needed to be bent toward the transmission to avoid contact with the trans tunnel, which means the cable isn't lined up parallel with the throw of the lever. I'll twist the lever so that in Park (the most force) the pin is parallel and that'll get the job done. If it ends up being a problem I'll replace it with a ball-end of some kind.

This made a LOT more room for the DS cat. Now the PS will be the problem, only 4.5" of room over there between the driveshaft and the frame rail.
 
Just some pics of the clearances. Again, 6L80E transmission, drivetrain centered, useless chunk of metal cut off the bellhousing, 1.5" bump stop spacers but otherwise no springs installed

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Maybe 1/8-1/4" room at the rear. No way to get a CV front shaft either, without huge mods to the transmission case. @azcrackshot has already dealt with this. glad I have Part-time.
 
View attachment 1428244 View attachment 1428243 View attachment 1428242 View attachment 1428241 Found a lot of water pumps today that may do the trick, I need to know now if my belt set up will turn the pump clockwise or counter clockwise, wish the guy on the LS forum had posted the part numbers of the Chevy/Lexus concoction, any ideas???
What front accessories are you using? If I remember , you are using LS! car accessories. I have had great results with the truck front accessories ,but I suppose you are already invested in what you have. Electric fans? Check my posts, I am running a derale dual fan setup on the stock radiator. Works very well
 
I believe someone asked on this thread, part # for oil filter that fits Hot Rod pan # ACDelco #PF48
 
My harness is in the truck and other than the park/neutral interlock mostly done.. I'll wait to wire that up until I get the BCM wired and ready.

Figured a little broad info wouldn't hurt though.

Overall: Not finished with heat or abrasion protection but this is the general layout
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The remaining wires for IH1 and IH2. It is basically start (black/white), water temp gauge wire (green), power for the vss (yellow) and the rest are transfer case related. The orange/black runs from the 6L80E integrated Park/neutral switch and will be used to trigger a relay that will interrupt the Start wire when appropriate. I'll be reusing the factory LX450 alarm system starter interrupt.. so I know it is rated for the current.
The coiled gray/tan wires are extras that I laid into the engine harness from the ECM to the IH1/2 area for future use if needed.

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Remaining pins.. not many
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I chose to lay the GM transmission and DS O2 sensor harness parallel to the Toyota transfer case wiring.. for which toyota installed a large waterproof plug. I could have eliminated this and spliced/soldered everything but there is plenty of room, any splice/solder might not be quite as durable as factory toyota, and this connector is well waterproofed. So it stayed. Also visible is my joining of the oil pressure sender circuits. The gray/purple one is GM, the black and white ones and plastic box (diode) are for the toyota sender. I basically just copied the shielded setup toyota used with some shielded wire out of the toyota harness. This will run along the MAF wiring then drop down to the area of the AC comp clutch wiring and ED1 connector into the toyota front clip harness.

One important note about the transfer wiring.. in stripping the unused toyota transmission wiring a couple ground wires are eliminated, and these are necessary for some of the transfer case functions. Make sure you find a ground for these. The GM harness happened to have the wires I needed, but they'd be easy to overlook and whether those wires are so easily available is highly dependent upon each individual wiring setup

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ECM end. Pink wires go to the (now wired) new fuse block. Coiled stuff is for throttle/BCM/GMLAN. Gray round connector is my primary method of integrating tach/power/MIL into the factory front clip harness and fuse block. There is now another connector with large gauge wire parallel to the round gray one. I'll get more pictures but I decided to use the factory toyota block for the 2 relays I needed.. fuel pump and pwr trn. The old EFI Main relay (and fuse) is now fuel pump, triggered by one of the circuits in the round connector. In addition I added a relay exactly like the EFI Main to a blank spot in the box for Pwr Trn. This higher-current circuit goes through the other connector I mentioned then to the fuse block wired into all of the pink wires.


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One (IMO) clever thing I did is repurpose existing wires in the toyota harness. For instance.. the black/red wire on AM1 from the ignition switch goes through the body harness into the front clip harness via EA2 connector.. then on to the coil. I don't need that coil wire anymore. Now it is the Ign switched +12v for the Gm ECM and TCM. Each of those circuits needed fuses.. so they were added to the toyota block. This used up all of the available fuse space in the toyota box, so I did the rest of the fusing in a waterproof block made by littelfuse. More details on that later.

The toyota Red and red/yellow wires from the toyota EFI Main relay take a similar path to the area of the toyota ECM. One is now a tach signal.. which will get joined (through a SGI-8 to make up for 8-cylinders) with the stock tach wire from the toyota ECM to the cluster. The other is now the MIL. This minimizes the number of wires that need to be added to the engine harness across the engine bay, and reduces required trickery at IH1/2.

The white/black wire that went from the toyota ignitor to the coil isn't used.. so it is now moved to take +12v from what is now the fuel pump relay in the stock toyota block, through EA2, where it was joined with the red/black full-voltage wire under the DS hood strut to the stock toyota fuel-pump relay.

Hopefully when I get the BCM in I'll be able to run the alternator on two wires from the ECM.. if that's the case I pick up a few more potential circuits through EA2 that aren't used (and a spot in the block) for other accessories to be added without running new wires all over the place.

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Said round connector is what came off the toyota cruise control module. Fully waterproofed.

The seven wires are as follows:
+12v IGN to ECM
+12v IGN to TCM
+12v constant to 2 circuits in secondary fuse block for ECM/TCM memory
MIL
Tach
ECM trigger for PwrTrn relay
ECM trigger for fuel pump relay

The other connector with much larger pins not shown brings +12v from PwrTrn relay to the secondary fuse block for all of the engine electronics (injectors/maf/etc)

I'll try to get pics of the modified toyota and secondary fuse blocks tomorrow

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Edit: Also, while I'm not using electric fans the trigger wires are there for them. They'd be too high-current to use the toyota or small waterproof box I got, so I have a plan for them too.. the old ABS power wires provide a convenient 60A fuse in the toyota block.. all of this is IF I end up going that way. I hope to not need them.
 
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I wonder if the Toyota 60A circuit would survive the constant load a fan would create. The ABS system is only operational for a couple seconds at a time...
 
Good point, but I can't see them fusing it for 60 yet having the rest of the system not being up to the task. I can say that the wires to and from that fuse are substantial.

60 may not be enough anyway.. the derale 16838 setup that seems to work well pull almost 25 amps per fan. I don't know whether a 10-amp overhead is adequate.

Either way, it gives options, and personally I really like the idea of reusing as much of the existing wiring as possible.
 

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