Builds Gen IV LS/NV4500 Swap (2 Viewers)

[Elbert]

I think the GM 5 speed is better suited for the torque/power of the GM V8 vs the Toyota 5 speed, specifically in consideration of the OD ratio for hwy driving. I have the toyota 5 speed in my truck with 5.7 and 5th gear is not much of an OD.

Given the GM engine harness setup you have chosen will a normal scan tool access the ECM? and can you modify the control parameters of the ECM as you can with the production ECMs that are OEM on the production vehicles? Off hand I don't know if this kit is made from production run parts or considered custom parts.

 

[Well Sorted]

Are you going to install the body lift then finalize engine placement?

In the shots you see here the body lift is already installed, so everything reflects the final placement. As I was doing the work I installed the engine without it at first, but then saw that it would help my clearance for the shifter and engine as well as benefit my tire clearance so it was a pretty easy and early decision.

 

[Well Sorted]

Given the GM engine harness setup you have chosen will a normal scan tool access the ECM? and can you modify the control parameters of the ECM as you can with the production ECMs that are OEM on the production vehicles? Off hand I don't know if this kit is made from production run parts or considered custom parts.

I think so, but the GM paperwork doesn't address it. Fortunately I'm at SEMA this week and will be talking to a number of vendors for OBDII scan tools and displays. The first guy I spoke with at Edge said the Insight monitor should read off the OBDII like any other PCM. I am going to stop in to HP Tuners to see what they have to say as well.

 

[Elbert]

I think so, but the GM paperwork doesn't address it. Fortunately I'm at SEMA this week and will be talking to a number of vendors for OBDII scan tools and displays. The first guy I spoke with at Edge said the Insight monitor should read off the OBDII like any other PCM. I am going to stop in to HP Tuners to see what they have to say as well.

I assume you are going to need the ability to "tune" edit your ECM parameters to make things work, because I doubt or I expect you will not replicate all aspects of a stock GM vehicle. I expect that if GM is populating the parts for the engine wiring kit from their production parts you will be fine, but if not....thats going to be a big issue. For one thing I would expect the stock parameters of the ECM are looking for an auto transmission (or inputs) and likely various emission items that you may not incorporate.

 

[workingdog]

My experience in California is that the actual gas tank doesn't matter - but everything else does. The ECM needs to see the fuel level and fuel pressure and the EVAP canister needs to be present with all it's parts.

Interestingly, I found out the other day that the installer just wiped all the CELs for all that stuff from the tune. The equipment is present, and I assume it's working, but it will never throw a code. They aren't sophisticated enough in California to check the state of all the CELs and they don't look at the tune as far as I know. Technically, I think what I have is illegal, but who is ever going to figure that out.

 

[Well Sorted]

Given the GM engine harness setup you have chosen will a normal scan tool access the ECM?

Most of the reps I talked to this week said it will work fine. The software in the various scan tool makers and dash display companies can either look by make/model or just look at the standard OBDII PIDs to display data. Since this PCM does not have a specific vehicle associated with it they'll just read the universal PIDS, I might not be getting quite as much data as some OEM applications but I'll get all the big stuff (temps, pressures, etc).

Given the GM engine harness setup you have chosen will a normal scan tool access the ECM? and can you modify the control parameters of the ECM as you can with the production ECMs that are OEM on the production vehicles? Off hand I don't know if this kit is made from production run parts or considered custom parts.

I think you missed a few of the details... the wiring and PCM both come from GM. The PCM is pre-calibrated for the LC9 engine and the wiring harness is plug and play for the engine as well. This is pretty much like an eRod kit, minus the 50-state legal CARB certification. It is intended specifically for engine swap projects that aren't trying to be California smog legal. It should/will fire right up with the necessary 12V connections. The only real question I had was whether or not the purge solenoid was active but the GMPP folks at SEMA this week confirmed it's not.

 

[Well Sorted]

After mounting the engine the next step was to build the transmission crossmember. The first step in that process was cutting off the factory mounts and grinding the framerails smooth. I ended up putting my crossmember about 6" behind the original one and didn't want to try some sort of cantilever arrangement so they weren't useful to me. Next up is getting the centerline of the transfer case input shaft in the same position as the engine, 1" offset to the driver's side. This is a little harder of a measurement to set up because the frame rails are not parallel in this area. The rails are angling in towards the center so you can't just toss a square on them.

I first hung a plumb bob off the input shaft to mark the centerline. I then used a tap measure to check distance to the frame rails and get things close to position. After that, I set up a straight section of aluminum spanning the two frame rails and measured the distance from the aluminum to the left and right most edges of the tcase flange, since the tcase was close to position and therefore perpendicular to crank centerline this got me roughly parallel. After that I checked the aluminum to some major features such as the front spring eyes and axle, made a few tweaks and called it good. Then, using the plumb bob as my crank centerline I measured the distance to each frame rail and set it to the 1" offset mentioned above.

In the pic below you can see the measurement setup and the beginnings of the trans crossmember. I had recently purchased a TIG welder so building the crossmember was a chance to practice some, I chose to make it from 3/16 x 3" steel flat bar. The adapter has a mounting pad on the bottom that fits the standard Chevy TH350 trans mounts, I chose to use the Energy Suspension urethane mount p/n 3.1108G which I found at my local parts store. I didn't want to cantilever mounts down below the frame so I bent the flat stock to follow the bottom of the tcase and then come up to meet the frame rail. There's a notch at the very bottom of the tcase to clear the bolts as you'll see in later pics.

With the bottom of the crossmember decided it was then time to create the rest. I chose a box design to maximize the strength, later I plan to add a skid plate to the underbody and this will be the main rear mounting point. The shot below shows all the pieces after cutting them out and prior to weld. All this was cut from the 3" flat bar, next time I'll draw it up in CAD and send it to the waterjet shop, this took a long time on the band saw! The bends are done in a press brake I have, as you saw in the pic above it's a pretty close fit to the transfer case so laying this out took some time and careful measurements.

After cleaning mill scale and prepping the surfaces I fired up the welder. This is an in-process shot to show some of the other details. The mounts to the frame rails are simple plates that get welded on parallel to the crossmember. A 1/2" bolt carries the load so inside the crossmember I welded in sleeves made from 3/4" OD .125" wall tubing. I also welded in two nuts on the bottom face to act as mounting points for the future skid plate. In order to provide maximum ground clearance I elected not to box it all the way across so that the tcase can recess into a U channel at it's lowest point. The top cover plates dive into the U-channel and are welded at the bottom, leaving an open area where the urethane mount nests into.

I swear I had a pic of it fully welded on the bench but can't seem to find it. Unfortunately it's in use now bolted in to the truck so it's hard to show that last bit about how it fits around the mount. Here's a final shot showing it installed in the truck though. The fit to the tcase is tight with around 1/4" in the closest spots but given the stiffness of the urethane mount I'm not worried about it hitting.

The last real question is exhaust routing. On the driver's side there's quite a bit of clearance and I'll route the pipe over the top of the crossmember. On the passenger's side I played around with the mounting height quite a bit in the mockup phase to try and find the best compromise. The brake and fuel lines run up the frame rail here so it's not a great place to be routing a hot exhaust pipe. The clearance between the tcase, the rail, and the underside of the body may be just enough to snake a 2.5" pipe through there and with heat shields to protect the lines and floor it might work. The alternative is to go under the crossmember which will leave the pipe hanging even or maybe just a bit below the bottom surface. With a good skid plate design, that might be okay too. I'm not yet to the exhaust fab so that challenge will be solved later.

 

[Seth S]

Maybe just run the exhaust up top on the roof.

 

[Seth S]

I really like the method you used for the cross member. Requires welding of course but simplifies the complexity of the shape significantly.

 

[Well Sorted]

Happy Turkey Day everyone, been a busy few weeks but time to update the thread again.

So after mounting the engine and trans I took a bit of a detour to the fuel system. This rig is intended to be more of an overland build and hopefully take the wife and I down into Baja and possibly beyond at some point, so I opted to get the long range tank from Man-a-Fre. I ordered the tank and received it fairly shortly afterwards, think I timed their production run well. I asked for mine to not be powdercoated because I was thinking of possibly modifying it. In the end I didn't do that, so I had a local shop powdercoat it for me.

A few thoughts on this tank - as many have shown before it's huge and heavy. The build quality looked pretty good, but I had a bit of buyer's remorse in that it's made from mild steel and can/will rust inside. For the price, I'd much rather see something out of stainless. I decided that before I installed it I was going to coat the inside, so I purchased a kit from KBS coatings. I'd recommend anyone considering this tank factor that in, with today's gasolines if you don't do something to protect the inner surface your tank will begin to rust fairly shortly.

The biggest decision for me in regards to fuel system was to go with an in tank pump setup. Many use frame rail mounted pumps and those are generally fine, you trade easy serviceability for the pump being exposed to the elements (dirt, mud, water, etc) and generally shorter life because the pump is not cooled as well as an in-tank unit. I've done a few other jobs where I used in-tank pumps and generally prefer them as long as you can get access for serviceability. Previous I have used the Tanks Inc. setup but I wasn't very happy with it, the top plate is really small and hard to get fittings on. In this build, I chose to go with the Holley fuel module. I chose part number 12-131 because I'm running the Gen IV LC9 engine with a returnless fuel system. It's a really nice piece, but a bit spendy...

This unit is pretty easy to mount in the tank, just need to cut a 3 1/4" hole in the top of the tank and drop the module in. Self locking fasteners and a gasket hold it in place and prevent leakage. The MAF tank has a sump near the front where they have installed pickup tubes for factory style fuel connections. Since this is a drop-in pump with a fuel sock pickup on the bottom, I centered the hole directly over that sump.

With the hole located, the next step is setting the pump depth so that you make sure you can draw all the fuel in. The MAF tank is deeper at the sump than the standard Holley pump setup is intended for so I had to extended the pump down to the bottom of it's travel and then extend the tubes. It also becomes obvious that the hydramat strainer which comes with the pump won't fit in the tank sump. At my local CarQuest I was able to find a smaller strainer that worked perfect, p/n is Delphi FS0093.

 

[Well Sorted]

Next up is the sender. The extra depth of the tank means that the factory unit must be extended. I dropped in the sender and through the fuel pump hole was able to see the distance quite well:

The sender arm has a bend in it for the factory tank which I straightened out so that the float would be near the front of the tank. Then I took a small piece of brake line to use as a sleeve and cut the float arm on the sender unit. I crimped the sleeve to the arm at the top using my bench vice then reinstalled the sender in the tank. I set the float just above the bottom floor, marked the position of the float portion of the arm and then took it back out and crimped the bottom in my vice. To make sure things stayed in place, I used my Tig welder to do a small fusion weld at the crimps, brazing would probably work fine too. Since this added some weight to the float arm I tested it in a jug of gasoline and verified that it still had plenty of buoyancy to actuate the sender. Final fitting and verification in the tank...

With both pump and sender set it was time to coat the tank. The KBS Tank Sealer is a pretty well known and respected product so I purchased their large kit for 25-50 gallon tanks (p/n 53010). If you decide to install the MAF tank, I'd factor in this as a $140 hidden cost you need to be aware of. The kit is a 3-step process to clean, etch, and then coat the inside of the tank. This isn't a complex job, just requires a few days of time to follow the steps, allow drying in-between, and a full cure at the end. Make sure you have a friend to help, it will require a lot of flipping the tank over, rolling it around to coat, etc. and this think is bulky and awkward to move around. I didn't actually get a shot of the finished coating, but imagine this metallic silve stuff coating all the interior surfaces.

 

[Well Sorted]

With the tank ready and pump/sender mounted, I installed the tank into the truck. I had some challenges getting the tank to bolt in, the front slots had to be enlarged by approximately 1/4" to get the bolt holes to line up with the stock crossmember holes on the body. For anyone installing this tank I'd be sure to do a dry fit and check this out on yours but I suspect you'll have the same issues. I'm sure there's some variation in the bodies but not this much. The shot below is with only one hole completed so you can see the difference, the modified hole is on the left of course.

Once I had the holes sorted out I installed the tank and went about hooking up the lines. For filtration, I chose an OEM style filter from the local parts store. I used Wix p/n 33243 which has quick connects on both sides. To connect this to the fuel lines I used Russel 644123 which have -6 connections on one side and push-connect on the other. I usually run braided hose on swaps, but instead I chose to use Earl's vapor guard rubber line with push connect fittings. The vapor guard is designed for modern fuels with no permeability and with no sleeve over there's no chance to trap dirt or debris. The hose installs on the ends with Oetiker clamps and is rated for 250 psi, which should be plenty for the 58 psi pump output.

As you all are aware, the factory hard lines are on the RH framerail. Due to the trans crossmember mounting and proximity of the exhaust, I decided not to use those and mounted the filter directly to the body near the tank. I then ran a hard line forward along the body up to the firewall area. This has the benefit of removing one flex line connection where the hard line would have jumped from the frame rail back to the body near the engine. With the 1" body lift there was plenty of clearance, on a stock setup it would be a little tight. The hard line is 3/8" NiCop tubing with -6 flared ends. The shot below shows the filter mounted to the body and you can see the hard line going forward.

The next step was firewall routing. The hard line is a single piece from front to back, so this was done in a few steps. I first mocked it up with some scrap tubing and then did the final bends on a long piece which connects all the way back to the filter. The firewall portion was bent first and then the long underbody section was done under the truck mostly by hand. At the top of the firewall run you can see the flex line which will connect to the fuel rail on the engine. Routing along the firewall is a matter of dodging all the other components and trying to find a clean looking job. I'm reasonably satisfied with this routing, I don't love the look of crossing the brake lines but the only way to avoid that was to come along the frame rail which I didn't want to do as noted above.

The last thing to note is pump access. I didn't get a good shot of this in progress, but with the new Holley pump in the tank I wanted to be able to access it from inside the truck. The factory sender access hole obviously isn't large enough so to provide room I cut the floor out in the rear hatch area. To make for a sealable panel I bent some 16ga steel to make a flange, put nutserts in to hold down the cover plate, tack welded everything together and sealed the back with seam sealer. I made a simple cover plate out of .095" aluminum and touched up the welded areas with some blue paint. Now I can change out the pump if I need to without having to drop the tank, I'll most likely keep a spare onboard with me at all times in case of a failure out in the wilderness.

 

[Well Sorted]

With the fuel system sorted out I then moved on to cleaning up the frame a bit. My truck is pretty much rust free but shows 30 years of life on the road so I did a light sand and scuff on the frame rails then coated everything with rattle can gloss black. It's not super durable, but it cleans up the look and is easy to touch up if/when it gets rock scratches and scrapes along the way. You'll also notice a set of Tough Dog springs in this shot, I picked up the full heavy kit from @reevesci for the truck. I had an OME kit on there prior but never felt that the truck rode all that well and I'm adding a fair bit of weight in this build so I figured I'd try something new. Another detail that stands out is the steering box, I sent my original out to Red Head Steering Gears for a full rebuild while it was out of the truck. Lastly, I also cleaned the axles with a wire wheel and sprayed them with a fresh coat of paint, again I used rattle cans to make repair of trail scrapes easy. One pic doesn't really do justice to the time spent laying on the creeper cleaning dirt, sanding, and spraying the frame - this wasn't a fun part of the job!

With the frame and fuel system done I moved back to the powertrain, next up was rebuilding the tcase. As noted, I'm sticking with a manual trans and have wheeled this truck a few times already. To help with the slow speed crawling that is common around here I decided to install the 4:1 low range gears from Advanced Adapters. I picked up a rebuild kit as well to freshen things up while the tcase was apart. As you probably know, the 4:1 gears require clearancing the inside of the case so I sent my rear case half to @orangefj45 for a fly cut operation since he runs many of these and already has a CNC program. I'd highly recommend it for anyone doing this install. Here's all the goodies prior to assembly, the tcase halves were cleaned, bead blasted, and sprayed with "aluminum" colored spray paint prior to starting the job.

There are a number of good threads on here about split case rebuilds, I probably used these the most:

Split Case Rebuild
some h55f and split case tech

Add to that the FSM and Georg's great YouTube video and it would be hard to screw this job up. Here's a couple highlights though...

Old vs new idler shaft, pretty clear that this was due for replacement.

Don't forget to plug the 5th gear oiler...

Gear stack nearing completion...

 

[74fj40]

Awesome looking 60. Hope to see this thing around Denver. We need more transplants that are Cruiser heads

 

[Well Sorted]

While rebuilding the Tcase I also installed the VSS kit from Jags That Run (FJ60-001). The parts are pretty decent quality, the only real challenge to the install is getting the reluctor ring positioned on the shaft so that the sensor aligns with the teeth. In the as-received condition mine was too far rearward but they provide a little press tool which made it easy to press the ring down further. Sensor depth has to be set with washers and clearances checked to ensure proper gap.

Also, don't forget to be very careful about drain plug clearance with these gears installed. This shows how close the gear tooth is to the threaded hole. I am running the normal hex head plugs but measured everything and added a shim to space the plug out .040" from the gear. I think the inverted hex plugs work without a shim, but check with Georg if you're not certain.

With all the tcase internals done I put the twin sticks on and mocked everything up. Everything looked good and it was starting to feel like I was making real progress.

 

[orangefj45]

Beautiful work, love the attention to detail plus the fact that you're taking the time to write up this build thread in such detail.

Fwiw, we're now the importer/distributor for Long Range Automotive tanks from Australia. We have a 60 tank at the shop waiting for install right after New Years.

Cheers!

Georg @ Valley Hybrids & Cruiser Brothers

 

[Well Sorted]

Fwiw, we're now the importer/distributor for Long Range Automotive tanks from Australia. We have a 60 tank at the shop waiting for install right after New Years.

Too late for me now obviously, but I'm just curious - can you post up a pic? Mild steel or stainless? Would be interested to see the install as you guys get to working on it.

 

[Trapper50cal]

Fantastic work! Love the crossmember in particular

Maybe I missed it, but what are the plans for the old 2F?

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Subscribed

Awesome attention to detail thus far.

 

[Well Sorted]

Maybe I missed it, but what are the plans for the old 2F?

Sold it in the classifieds here to a guy in AZ. It's getting a rebuild and a new home in an FJ40 he's working on.

Thanks for the compliments guys, I'm an anal-retentive engineer so tracking the details is a blessing and a curse. At the end of the thread maybe I'll share my build tracking spreadsheet. I'm afraid to look at the cost sum at the bottom though!