Builds Gen IV LS/NV4500 Swap (1 Viewer)

[Well Sorted]

Hey guys, I've mostly been lurking on this board for about a year now but figured it's time to start a build thread. I picked up my first FJ60 last year and over the past 10 months have been picking away at an LS swap. I come from a background of sportscars and road racing and am very familiar turning wrenches and fabricating but this is my first real foray into the realm of 4WD builds. The forum has been a great resource of info on these swaps so I figure I'll add my experience to the knowledge base here, maybe it will help someone in the future. On to the story...

I moved to Colorado in 2016 and decided to add a 4x4 to the fleet for camping and offroad usage. After looking at all the options (and discovering how expensive Defender 110's are) I decided to jump into the world of Japanese trucks and settled on the FJ60. My wife and I like to camp and we've got a 100 lb pup that rides along so the extra space of the 4-door wagon fit the bill nicely. I mostly work on vintage cars and love the classic look of round headlights so I gravitated towards the 60 versus the later 62's and 80's. And anybody can have a Jeep... I found this truck on Craigslist in Denver, it had been here a couple years but was registered in Seattle and wasn't smog legal here in Colorado. The body was clean and rust free and the price was fair so I brought it home with me.

The first thing on the list was re-smogging the truck. Torfab had done much of the prior maintenance so the truck was well cared for but I had to source all the missing bits to make the truck legal in Colorado. I sourced all the big components on here, ordered a supply of Toyota vacuum hoses and a new air pump, downloaded the service manual and set to re-assembling the whole system in OEM configuration. The job took me the better part of a day I'd say to sort out the spaghetti. Work in process...

But after getting it all worked out and back up and running, success! It ran pretty clean too...

So with a clean pass and a fresh Colorado license tag I took the truck out in the woods a few times with friends to get used to offroading. The suspension was an OME kit with 33x12.5's so it did reasonably well on the rocky trails here in Colorado. Obligatory flex shot...

But as many of you know, the 2F isn't exactly a thoroughbred when it comes to power and performance, and when you try to make it work at 8000' and above things just aren't much fun. The 2F was getting tired, with 220k on the clock and a few cylinders a little low on compression. After driving the truck a couple months and doing some research here I decided it's time for an LS swap. I've done engine swaps before and am pretty familiar with the LS in general but have never done a full swap project with one so this would be a good chance to build up some experience with that platform as well as give the truck the power it needs here in the mountains.

 

[Well Sorted]

So now that I was set on an LS swap, the next step was choosing the flavor. I read through a lot of threads and general info about the GenIII and GenIV versions of these engines to understand the differences. On top of that I started researching the laws here in Colorado around engine swaps and the procedures to get a pass. I considered picking up the full eRod LS package from GM because the 50-state CARB package is a really nice benefit, but at the end of the day it was a budget buster so I had to pass on that.

I finally settled in on a Gen IV engine, specifically the LC9 5.3L. I chose this for a few reasons, first off it's an all aluminum engine so the extra bit of weight savings is nice compared to the iron block variants. Second, I could find a fairly low mileage unit. I plan to keep this truck a very long time and ideally wanted something under 50k mileage. Third, GM Performance Parts makes a standalone swap computer and harness kit for this particular engine code. I am an automotive engineer by day and have worked in Detroit most of my career, I'm a bit biased but I really prefer a computer and harness sourced from the OEM over the many different aftermarket kits out there. The last thing I want to deal with in the woods is bad connections or other wiring issues so quality is paramount to me. This is a little more expensive than some of the aftermarket solutions but I'm okay with a few extra bucks to give me peace of mind, here's the GM kit, p/n 19354326:

So with the big engine decisions made, one easy click on ebay and this was headed my way, a 36k takeout from a 2012 GMC truck which had been wrecked.

Many of you are probably wondering about the emissions legality of this combo. In short, this won't pass a Colorado (or California) inspection. I went back and forth on this for a while but the bottom line is that it costs a significant amount more to be 50-state legal and my wife and I don't plan to live in the restricted region for all that long. It's certainly a debatable decision, but by the time I finish the project and the truck comes due for another inspection I expect this not to be an issue.

With the engine finalized I moved on to the next decision, which was to stay with a manual trans. An auto would probably make more sense for the rocky trails here but I'm just one of those people that really likes manual boxes and I decided that I had to stay true to the 60's heritage of rowing your own gears. I researched the options and selected the NV4500 as the weapon of choice. In hindsight I might go with the H55F if I were to do it again, but more on that later. In town here we've got a great shop that does transmission and differential work, so I had them rebuild a trans from one of the core units they keep on hand. We used the early GM variant with the 6.34:1 first gear which will help my crawl ratio. As you can see, I also had them install the rear adapter section from Advanced Adapters to mate the box to the split case.

 

[barefoot]

Do you know if that controller would also run a contemporary GM auto transmission?

 

[workingdog]

Yes, I'm almost positive all modern GM ECM runs engine and tranny

 

[MANUCHAO]

Many of you are probably wondering about the emissions legality of this combo. In short, this won't pass a Colorado (or California) inspection.

Why would it not pass emissions?
It should (be 50 state legal) provided you mimic the donor it came from?
Are you going to run only two O2 sensors?

Good looking rig...!!!

 

[workingdog]

You have to get all the emissions equipment to pass smog - at least in California. That would be Evap canister (with appropriate fuel level sensor to drive it), CATs, 4 O2 senseors, etc. It's a lot of work.

 

[gregnash]

So wait, I am confused, are you registering it in Co or CA? And are the emissions laws the exact same between the two states? Looks like this will be a fairly easy project for you with your occupational history.

 

[Well Sorted]

Do you know if that controller would also run a contemporary GM auto transmission?

I don't think so. The instructions briefly mention how you can hook up a standalone trans controller to the inputs. I'm pretty certain this is intended for only engine controls.

Regarding the Colorado/California questions:

I live in CO and intend to register it here, our rules are very similar to California if you live near Denver, if you live in the more remote parts of the state there are no inspections. Workingdog's comments are correct, to pass here I'd need to have the full fuel system and exhaust from the donor vehicle. Our referee advised me that he doesn't often pass them because people can't show that every functional piece of evap is there, he said it usually requires transplanting the whole fuel tank, charcoal canister, and lines to prevent CEL's from coming on. I think he exaggerated some, but it didn't seem worth the hassle to go up against him.

Thanks for the vote of confidence gregnash, I'm not sure I'd call it easy but it's not rocket science. Just takes a lot of time and patience to work out the little details. I'm sure if I do another one it will seem much easier and go a lot faster. The threads already created here have been a great help so far but I have taken my own path on a few areas, that's what makes most of these swaps unique.

 

[onemanarmy]

a fuel tank is a fuel tank and fuel lines are fuel lines. The tank being shaped different and having different lengths of lines shouldn't matter (this is AMERICA) As long as fumes aren't leaking out and all GM emissions controls (vents, number of O2s, evap, O2 placement) are in place, how would the tank and lines fail you?

 

[Well Sorted]

You're preaching to the choir to some degree. Playing Devil's Advocate - Evap systems can be fairly sensitive and tank size (and seal) could affect the performance of the system. Significant changes in volume might trigger a CEL. Modern vehicles also detect if the gas cap is left off, so to keep that light off you need to address the feedback to the system in some form. None of these are completely insurmountable, but you have to choose your battles. Maybe I could have made it all work, but at the end of the day I didn't feel like getting into a long debate with the referee and I'm not too concerned about getting it registered outside the emissions zone.

 

[MANUCHAO]

The tank being shaped different and having different lengths of lines shouldn't matter

But it does......
Algorithms change with a different size/shape fuel tank and that's where the devil lives (in that lil detail-- one of many )......
One of the biggest challenges is getting all the monitors be on ready mode when you take it to the ref.....
Having HP Tuners helps with all these details....

 

[Well Sorted]

So with parts arriving, I started the job on Nov 26th last year. I decided to remove the full front clip for the swap to give myself ample room to work and also to clean up the body some. My core support had some rust from leaky batteries and the inner fenders were showing some general wear and tear after 30 years so all the parts came off for cleanup and repaint. It's really nice working on the engine in this configuration, lots of room and a convenient tire to sit on!

During the disconnection of all the wiring I labeled a few things and took note of space claims. In this pic you can see how the factory 2F air cleaner sits in relation to the cowl. You need to stay below this to keep hood clearance for your swap.

While the motor was still in position I also measured the centerline of the crank relative to the frame rails. I don't have the scribbles handy right now, but if my memory is correct it was offset ~1" to the driver's side. It's not mandatory to match this with the V8 but worth noting. If you can stay in a similar region the shifter alignment and driveshafts will be similar to stock. With measurements done I hooked up the cherry picker and out came the 2F.

 

[Well Sorted]

The holiday season came and work on the truck slowed down. I definitely spent way more money on myself than anyone else last year and Santa delivered a nice pile of parts for the project...

On that table and on the floor are a number of necessary items, here are a few notes on each:

Clutch Setup: I sourced the flywheel, clutch, and bellhousing from Advanced (bellhousing p/n 712577, flywheel clutch 712500T) as does pretty much everyone doing this swap. The kit is generally complete and pretty good quality parts. Their bellhousing has a bolt pattern on the lower half that doesn't match up to the factory GenIV truck oil pan or the commonly used H3 swap pan (GM p/n 19212593) which is a bit disappointing. Powertrain bending is greatly reduced by having those lower bolts connecting the bellhousing to the pan so it would be nice to have a solution here. I was able to get at least one bolt in the lower portion with some cutting on the bellhousing I'll show later, but the second bolt hole on the bottom passenger side is unused.

Transmission: The adapter unit is Advanced p/n 50-0214 and as mentioned above was installed at the time of trans rebuild. I also decided to get the twin stick kit (p/n 715569); since the NV4500 doesn't have mounts for the stock T-case shifter you pretty much need to go this route. The transmission mount is attached to the adapter housing rather than the transmission, I picked up a urethane mount for a TH350 from Energy Suspension (p/n 3.1108G). Note that you'll need to fabricate a new transmission crossmember because the pad on the AA adapter is quite a bit rearward of the stock position.

Motor Mounts: I bought the Trans-dapt universal LS engine mounts (p/n TRD-4506) which fit 27-33" frame rails. I'm not a huge fan of these now that I've been working with them. The frame bracket and arms are fine, but the rubber pucks in these mounts seem like they aren't stiff enough for the weight. I may replace them with delrin or urethane after I get it running and see how well the motor is constrained. In hindsight I think I'd rather have used the factory motor mounts with a custom frame bracket to mate to them. I did consider that but decided not to go that route because of the time/effort involved, but I think it would be a much better solution. Next time...

Exhaust Manifolds: This was a bit of a process, but I've decided to use the aftermarket Hooker manifolds, p/n 8501-4HKR. I also purchased and tried a set of C6 Corvette manifolds since they are a common setup but I like a few things about the Hookers better. They do present some challenges though, especially in the slave cylinder mounting. For those of you planning an automatic they might be a really easy and nice solution. I'll detail the fitment challenges soon in a separate post.

So with lots of parts on hand it was time to get to work putting the puzzle together.

 

[Well Sorted]

With all the new parts in hand, first thing on the agenda was some test fitting. The AA kit for the clutch includes a new roller pilot bearing and adapter sleeve which needs to be installed in the rear of the crank. The sleeve is a steel ring that takes up the large ID in the rear of the LS crank and provides a smaller bore where the pilot bearing runs. The instructions specify that the sleeve should be installed with the groove on the face pointing out but they don't specify how deep to press the sleeve in. Here it is just loosely pushed in to start...

I took a guess that the most likely depth was flush with the rear face of the crank and drove the sleeve in with a large socket and hammer. I then assembled the bellhousing to the transmission and bolted it up to the engine. By looking through the clutch lever hole you can see how everything aligns. It turned out that my first guess of flush with the rear face seemed a little too far out so I pulled everything apart and drove the sleeve in a little deeper. There's a chamfer leading in to the bore and I ended up putting the sleeve even with the inside edge of the chamfer. The pic below shows the sleeve in that position, you can see the machined portion of the input shaft now aligns with the sleeve and the pilot bearing can be installed.

 

[Well Sorted]

Continuing withe the clutch area, I moved on to the slave cylinder. Advanced supplies a bracket (p/n 716286) which is supposed to mount the stock Land Cruiser slave cylinder to the bellhousing where it can actuate the release arm. Their bracket is designed to mount the cylinder in a forward position up under the #8 cylinder. I installed the bracket along with the original truck exhaust manifolds that came with the engine.

As you can see, the bracket is really close to the flange. I didn't like the idea of my slave cylinder sitting so close to the exhaust pipe, but figured it was worth considering. I installed the Trans-dapt block motor mount brackets to get a look at clearances. As you can see below, they do clear the truck manifolds but just barely.

With these parts on it was time to do the first test fit of the engine into the truck. Definitely a feel-good moment when it drops in for the first time and you can start to visualize the end product.

Immediately though, problems became apparent. First thing that was immediately obvious is the truck manifolds are a no-go. They are just too wide at the flanges to fit inside the Cruiser frame rails. Both DS and PS manifolds splay out at the flange and were wider than the frame rails themselves.

So with these manifolds clearly not suitable it was time to try the Hookers.

 

[Well Sorted]

The advantage of the Hooker manifolds versus the truck versions is that they hug the block tighter and should give more frame rail clearance. Unfortunately, that also meant a problem with the slave cylinder setup. As soon as I bolted them on for a test fit, it became clear the AA slave bracket wouldn't work. The manifold was hard against the bracket before being fully tightened down.

At this point I had a decision to make if I wanted to switch directions on exhaust or the clutch setup. I pulled the slave bracket off the engine and tightened up the manifolds then reinstalled the engine to check the fit. Clearance to both frame rails was much improved as you'd expect. The tighter fit to the block allowed me more freedom to move the engine inside the frame rails and I ended up in a position where it is offset to the driver side 1" and is limited more by the PS pump than the manifold. The clearance to the brake lines and distribution block on the passenger side was much better and I really liked where the flange location was for exhaust routing.

The only problem with this setup is that if I wanted to run these manifolds I knew I'd have to run a different clutch slave cylinder, either a concentric unit in the bellhousing or a rear mounted pull-style unit. I picked up a set of the Corvette manifolds that are commonly used and tried those in one test fitting. They required major cuts on the block brackets for the motor mounts, but did of course give more clearance around the slave cylinder. They too are wide at the flanges though, and didn't allow much room inside the frame rails. Unfortunately I didn't get pics of this setup so no visual reference here.

In the end I came back to these Hooker manifolds as my choice and moved forward. Since I was committed to a rear or concentric slave cylinder I cut off some excess material of the AA bellhousing to give more clearance to the exhaust flange and pipe. Before pic shows the casting features which are intended to be used with the forward mounted slave cylinder:

And after a few minutes with the sawzall and a little bit of cleanup with the die grinder...

So with the manifold selection done and clutch plans in place I went forward with locating the engine in it's final position. In the next post I'll show the detailed location and some of the tradeoffs.

 

[Well Sorted]

So with the manifolds decided and a plan for the clutch I finalized the engine mounting position. As noted above, I wanted to offset the engine to the Driver's side 1" to help with clearances so that was the first order of business. The key constraint here now was the PS pump. The truck FEAD pump is low mounted next to the PS box and I aimed for approximately 1" of clearance between the two. This is probably generous given the relatively stiff mounts so you could probably push this a bit.

The Trans-Dapt motor mounts unfortunately didn't quite work out to give me the 1" using the existing hole alignment, so I ended up turning their pre-existing holes into slots. After doing so, I added a flat "washer" made from 1/4" steel to set the position of the hole and welded everything back together. The pic below probably makes this more clear...

The next big question on mounting the engine is fore/aft location. The key tradeoffs here are shifter position and firewall clearance. I'll show some details below on exactly where my engine is but in hindsight I wish I'd pushed it back further. The downside of the NV4500 swap is that the shifter moves forward relative to the stock Toyota unit so fitting everything back in the original location is virtually impossible. The shifter will end up forward of the original location, the constraint to how much is the risk of contact between the cylinder heads and the firewall.

In my case I didn't want to push the clearance issues too much in the engine bay so I put the engine in a position where the head on the driver's side is ~ 2-1/4" from the firewall and the passenger side is ~1-1/2" from the firewall. These seemed like reasonable clearance amounts when I finalized the engine location, and if it were in factory rubber mounts I certainly wouldn't want to go too much less than that. The TransDapt mounts won't allow for much movement so in reality I probably could have gone back almost another 1" and made my shifter location a little easier to deal with.

 

[Well Sorted]

Vertical height of the engine is a little harder to measure/show but there are a few things to keep in mind. Setting the height with the NV4500 setup comes down to a tradeoff of hood clearance, front axle clearance and shifter position. I had the whole front clip off my truck so checking hood clearance wasn't really viable, but using that side view shot in post #12 above I eyeballed things and figured I was going to have plenty of room. The driving force became shifter position with hood clearance and axle clearance falling to variables that were checked out and deemed acceptable.

The shift tower on the NV4500 is really tall and farther forward than the factory shifter so clearance to the dash gets tight. While working through this placement phase I decided to add a 1" body lift to the truck. My reasoning was that it would help tire clearance (33 x 12.5's have been rubbing a little) and improved the shifter clearance to the dash. The fore/aft position I'm using puts the shift tower pretty tight to the HVAC ducting under the dash. In the pic below, you can see the forward bolt on the shifter is 1 3/4" behind the edge of the factory shift cutout in the trans tunnel.

Here's the wide angle shot. You can see the shifter is pretty far up under the dash in this one. The twin sticks are in a pretty good spot, the mechanism has a lot of adjustment so you can position them in whatever fore/aft position you want just by adjusting the rod ends. The clearance to the side of the tunnel hole is about 1/2" with the 1" offset of the powertrain. If you were to put the engine on the vehicle centerline it seems like this would be an issue. You can also see I bent the H/L selector rod, with them in the straight arrangement the two knobs basically touched each other.

In this shot you can see the shift tower clears the HVAC but the boot is going to be pretty much tight up against it. You also can somewhat see that the 1" body lift provides pretty ample room to the dash now to put the shift lever on.

I'm a lot farther along in the build than this thread is currently refelcting so I snapped a few more pics to show the height. By laying a straight piece of aluminum across the frame rails I eyeballed the crank centerline at the front bolt as ~1" below the top of the frame rails. You can also see hood clearance won't be much of a concern. I later measured it as 3 1/4" between the top of the throttle body and the hood blanket.

So net takeaway for an NV4500/LS combo is push that engine back as far as your comfortable, your shifter position will thank you. The dimensions I used are going to work, but farther back wouldn't hurt.

 

[tmxmotorsports]

I have done this swap before except using a np205 tease and a centred Currie enterprise 9 rear end...the shifter to air duck is a tight fit also pushed the motor as far back as possible and the 6.0 plastic cover over the engine couldn't be on unless the hood x member was cut. I didn't have the front clip on either when finalizing placement the 1 inch body lift should help out drastically. Are you going to install the body lift then finalize engine placement?

 

[tmxmotorsports]

I forgot to mention didn't use aa motor mounts I have used them years ago on an 85 pickup and a 93 pickup didn't really like them went another route was also able to use comaro manifolds. The slave cylinder was also a pain