Builds Gen IV LS/NV4500 Swap

[DickM]

Subscribed as well!
Thanks for posting this in such a clear, concise manner.
It is very evident that you have an engineer's approach to problem solving and attention to detail, and the results show it. Great build.

 

[Ol Yeller]

You've broken my first rule of enjoying this hobby...never EVER add it all up!

Keep up the excellent work, and keep posting it here

 

[Well Sorted]

On with the progress... With the trans and tcase done the next step was mounting it up to the engine. The AA kit had all the needed parts including clutch, pressure plate, flywheel, and dowel bolts to hold it all together. Installing and torquing that stuff isn't very interesting so I didn't snap photos. Once the engine and transmission were together, the next step was to deal with the slave cylinder.

As noted in earlier posts, the AA bracket doesn't play nice with the Hooker manifolds I'm using. The only space is really rearward, which means I need a pull-style slave cylinder to actuate the clutch arm. You can find these under a few different brand names, I chose the Wilwood one (p/n 260-1333). They are universal and have heim joint mounts so you'll need to fab up a bracket of some sort. I chose to make a bent steel bracket that mounts to two of the top bolts on the NV4500 and comes down the side. There are two 45 degree bends to make the corner then a flat plate with an outboard support to put the joint in double shear. I went pretty heavy on this to make sure it's nice and stiff, it's made from 3/16" steel. I didn't get shots of the bracket in process, but in the one below you can see it and the whole system mocked up. Based on some prior photos and measurements I was pretty confident this would fit in the tunnel, and after installing the powertrain that turned out to be true.

With the slave in place, I then worked on the hard line to supply this slave. The factory Toyota line comes down on the passenger side so I just scrapped it and made one from scratch using parts store hard line. The routing is shown below, I used both the factory mount on the firewall and my own points down lower. At the termination point in the transmission tunnel I flared the end for AN3 fittings to connect with a braided flex line.

Also, a little lesson learned later when bleeding this system - I found that I had a leak at the master after filling everything up with fluid. The fitting on the parts store line is too short by about 1mm to put adequate pressure on the flare, it's enough to just get snug and contact but not create a good seal. Toyota's inverted flare fittings are longer than standard and should be re-used on any replacement hard line so that means you need to cut off the end and reflare the tube. This also cropped up on a replacement axle line I had to make. If anyone knows of a source to buy those Toyota tube nuts I'd be interested to know.

One last step before installing the powertrain was to put a little insulation on the brake line running down the passenger frame rail to protect it from the exhaust pipe radiated heat. For this type of scenario I usually use something like this product from DEI - Cool-Tube Heat Sleeve. It comes in a number of diameters and varying lengths, it's pretty stiff and can be formed to follow bends and curves. It has worked well for me on my racecar to protect brake lines in a pretty extreme heat environment so it should be good for the Cruiser. Later in the build I added more of this around the junction block that is on the framerail and not yet installed in this pic.

 

[Well Sorted]

With the powertrain assembled and the engine bay ready it was time to drop the motor in for the last time. It definitely feels good to torque the motor mount bolts and know it's there to stay.

With the engine in place it was time to start making connections. First I tackled the fuel line jumper to the engine. This is a pretty short little run of the previously mentioned Earl's Vapor-Guard hose. I did a little research on adapter fittings and settled on using the Earl's AT991966 fitting for GM push-connect fuel rails. There are some reports online of earlier designs from Russell and others that use more simple lock mechanisms coming loose and spraying fuel with a few fires reported. This Earl's fitting is a newer design with a positive lock clip that should prevent that. It's a pricey little bugger at $32, but that's cheap insurance as compared to burning the truck down.

At this point I decided to reinstall the front clip so I could work on placement and routing of the wiring harness. Before doing that though, I found a few problems the address. The inner fenders and core support were pretty grimy so I wanted to have a friend spray a fresh coat of paint on them. As I inspected my core support though it was clear there was some cancer treatment to be done first. Under the battery tray there was a typical amount of rust from acid leaking out over the years. As I picked at it the magnitude of the problem became clear...

A couple hours of work with the grinder, welder, and sander and it looked pretty solid. The patch piece came from some leftover Mustang floor pan patches I had laying around so now it's a Toyota with both Chevy and Ford parts in it.

Another common trouble area reared it's head - the bolt holding the battery tray to the inner fender. I tried to loosen the bolt and got this for my efforts:

Again, a few hours of cutting, patching, welding, grinding and all was back to solid metal and ready for paint. We had the local parts store color match the gas cap and shot the panels then reinstalled everything.

 

[orangefj45]

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.

Mild steel tank. I'll try to get some pics next week when I'm back at the shop.

Georg @ Valley Hybrids & Cruiser Brothers

 

[Str8Razor]

Outstanding build, how is your oil pan to front dif clearance? Mine is super tight and my motor is about as high as I could get it....Lost all my pics in my build to photobucket, i need to go back and reload them..... keep it coming!!

 

[Well Sorted]

Outstanding build, how is your oil pan to front dif clearance? Mine is super tight and my motor is about as high as I could get it....Lost all my pics in my build to photobucket, i need to go back and reload them..... keep it coming!!

Your question made me realize I never really covered the oil pan. In my early test fittings I tried using the stock truck pan that came on the engine but it was definitely too close to the driveshaft. I purchased the GM swap pan p/n 19212593 which many have had good success with. For $200 you get the pan, windage tray, pickup, and oil dipstick. It's a nice little kit and the sump is definitely an improvement, it is significantly smaller than the truck piece. As a bonus, it comes with the oil cooler port cover which I also drilled and tapped to mount the factory oil pressure sender.

I snapped a few pics yesterday showing the driveshaft clearance from a few angles, this is with a Tough Dog suspension kit installed, probably about 2" over stock height.

Oil port cover drilled and tapped with 1/8-28 BSP threads for the factory oil pressure sender. It's a sort of unusual tap, found it on Amazon.

 

[Elbert]

is your engine sitting square with the radiator ? Some folks are having interference issues with either the driveshaft (issue with clearance on the side with the transmission) or potentially the oil pan sitting to low in relation to the front differential.

Looks good. On my 5.7 we have the engine sitting as high as possible where I can still close the hood. I have taken a few hits on the oil pan but thats been some rocks.

 

[Well Sorted]

is your engine sitting square with the radiator ? Some folks are having interference issues with either the driveshaft (issue with clearance on the side with the transmission) or potentially the oil pan sitting to low in relation to the front differential.

Looks good. On my 5.7 we have the engine sitting as high as possible where I can still close the hood. I have taken a few hits on the oil pan but thats been some rocks.

My engine is parallel to the vehicle centerline but offset to the driver's side by 1 inch. I could maybe raise my engine one more inch, but the throttle body would be getting close to the hood liner at that point. The clearance looks pretty good to me, but I'll be watching it once I get the truck back out on the trails. Mounting a GoPro on the underside is a good way to see what's really going on down there while crawling over rough terrain, just make sure you put the camera in a safe place!

 

[Well Sorted]

As mentioned above, with the engine mounted and in I went ahead and installed the front clip. At this point I wanted to be able to start routing the wiring harness and placing all the major components underhood. I left the inner fenders out as long as I could because it makes accessing the engine easier, but then reinstalled them when it was time to mount the PCM, airbox, etc.

The next major decision for me was cooling strategy. I'm a big fan of going overkill on cooling system and because I'll be spending time in the desert southwest I wanted to be sure I could cool the rig at low speeds on a hot day. With that in mind, I decided to go with a mechanical fan setup. Mechanical fans are more efficient and move more air than virtually any aftermarket electric setup you can come up with. Using a mechanical fan also frees up the electrical load required to power electric fans. I snagged the part numbers from other build threads on here and ordered AC Delco Fan Clutch p/n 15-4694 and Fan 15-80692.

For the radiator I read through most of the threads on here and narrowed it down to Griffin and Ron Davis. Both offer an FJ60 rad with LS connection ports and they are priced about the same at ~$850 for just the radiator. For another $300 or so Ron Davis will include a fan shroud with two electric fans they say are rated at 1600 cfm. Griffin can sell you a shroud but I don't think it includes a fan. The radiators are basically the same size and layout so it's pretty much a wash, however Griffin offers a 2 year warranty and Ron Davis offers a 90 day warranty. I've had good success with both companies in other builds so for this one I went with the better warranty and bought the Griffin.

With all parts in hand, I did the first mockup of the cooling system. The pic below shows the Griffin rad sitting in the factory mounts and fan installed. Remember that my truck has a 1" body lift... you can somewhat see here that the fan is pretty low on the radiator core. The second shot shows the front view and I didn't love how the radiator protrudes quite a bit above the core support. As I eyeballed the setup and was thinking about how to build a shroud I decided that this was just too high for the radiator so I decided to build new mounts to lower it down.

 

[JohnCapoccia]

I intially used the stock Toyota radiator with mods to accommodate the Vortec. It was inadequate so I bought a Griffin. It’s been great even in desert conditions. I’ve got abouty 20K miles on it so far. It does look like your fan is slightly lower in relation to the radiator than mine. You may have some room to raise the engine a bit if you want to get some more clearance between the pan and the front diff. I don’t know think it’s really necessary to either raise the engine or drop the radiator. You can design a shroud that will fit. There will be enough air flow to keep the temp down.

 

[Elbert]

gm fan clutch and fan clutch fan is the way to go, plus good radiator and good fan shroud. I tried other solutions...nothing else was adequate. I have the 5.7 version of the fan and fan clutch (similar to the 5.3 and 6.0 version). I'm using an aftermarket version of the OEM FJ60 4 core radiator, I did move the lower water neck on the radiator to the far right side (passenger side) of the radiator tank to allow for cooling fan clearance and I modified the top water neck on the radiator to allow for the stock use of GM radiator hose that matches the engine (1999 version of the 5.7 vortec). I did run an all aluminum radiator for a while but the core cracked after about 1.5 years of use which caused me a little frustration over the $$ spent. We did lower the radiator on my truck but that was an issue cause by a body lift I ran and then later I increased the lift which caused and interference issue with the fan shroud...etc. The ron davis radiator I had barely cleared the hood (given the height of the top tank).

 

[Well Sorted]

Looking through my photos I can't seem to find any pics of the new radiator mounts and they're pretty buried now so it will be hard to get a clean shot. I used the same rubber isolators as the factory setup and mounts on the radiator so that if I have to change it later it's a simple bolt in swap. For the body mounts I took a piece of 3" wide flat stock steel and bent a 90 in it then drilled two holes into the vertical face. I mocked up the radiator then drilled through the core support using the two holes as templates and just through bolted it. The core has some doubler plates in this area so it's plenty strong to carry the weight of a full radiator. I positioned it so that it's about 1" below the factory mount location, this helped line up my fan and moved the top tank down in line with the core support.

After that was done I reinstalled the radiator and fan and measured my clearance between the core and the fan. I decided to make the fan shroud from aluminum and started with the main box design. For my engine positioning, a 3" deep box with a 3" ring to enshroud the fan was feasible to leave good clearance to all key components. Step 1 was getting the flat pattern cut. The top and bottom wings are a simple extended wing for the 3" box depth. On the sides I added 1-3/4" on top of the 3" main section for return flanges to mount on the radiator, much like a factory unit. I used .065" 5052 aluminum which bends and welds easily and is plenty stiff for this application. In my tool collection I've got a band saw, shear, and box/pan brake so projects like this are pretty easy to manage. Here's the flat pattern before bending...

A few quick bends in the brake and some TIG welding on the corners yielded a simple 5-face box. I laid it on the radiator to drill the mount holes then assembled the two together.

The next trick to the job was figuring out where to put the fan ring. For this I installed the radiator/shroud combo back in the truck and put the fan/clutch assembly on the water pump. I held a sharpie on the clutch and spun it around to get a circle on the back of the shroud showing clutch position. I then used the fan blades in a similar manner to get some marks for the fan OD. After that I pulled everything back out checked position. The shot below shows the fan aligned with the marks for the clutch and blades. The fact that the two sets of marks both aligned simultaneously indicated my eyeballed sharpie method worked pretty well and I was confident I had the center very close to exact. As you can see, the fan blades extend beyond the core area of the radiator so that means I'll need a couple additional pieces to fully enclose the fan.

The ring to enclose the fan is a pretty simple geometry equation. I measured a Chevy truck and found they run ~1" of tip clearance in their factory shrouds. Since my engine is much more firmly mounted I cut that down to 3/4" and cut a 3" wide strip to the appropriate length to make the OD (62.75, if I remember correctly). I don't have a slip roll so I stopped by my local HVAC ducting shop that helps me out on occasion and they were able to run the strip through their slip roll and make a nice circle. I used the TIG to weld it into a solid ring and then tacked it onto the box using the fan as a guide and leaving the 3/4" tip clearance as planned. Everything then went back in the truck for final checks.

The last step was cutting out the fan opening and then closing out the portions where the blades protrude above and below the main box. The simplest method for this closeout would be just a flat face (much like the bottom of the factory shroud) but that basically makes that region of the fan ineffective so I wanted to do a radiused opening to connect the extended portion to the main box and promote airflow. I didn't take any in-process pics of this but it's not exactly easy. The shot below shows the mostly finished product from the back side, you can see how each piece is shaped in a sort of double crescent pattern. They also have compound curvature bowing out along the connection to the main box. I made everything in templates first using thin cardboard, then transferred it to alumunium, cut, formed, and then welded it all together.

 

[Well Sorted]

So after all the fab work was done I dropped the shroud off at my local powder coat shop and had them cover it in OEM black, which as about 80% gloss. I then sprayed the radiator itself with a similar semi-gloss black to give it all a sort of subtle look. I'm happy with the finished product, the fan clearance looks good, the lower position is a nicer fit to the core support and the semi-gloss black is sort of low-key and not as blingy as all the raw aluminum.

 

[Well Sorted]

Connecting the power steering pump to the box was a relatively simple affair, I've taken a shortcut to get the truck on the road and didn't add a cooler yet. After the truck is running and debugged I plan to work on integrating a cooler in with the AC condenser mounting but since it's winter here, neither are a huge priority at the moment.

On the stock PS pump (2012 Chevy 1500 pickup) the return connection pointed right at the steering box. I looked around at a few other late model GM pumps and some had marginally better configurations but I didn't see anything that looked like a home run. Rather than spend the money to buy a new pump when this one is fine I just decided to bend the return line to work. It came out okay, the tube shows a few lumps and bumps from the multiple bends and straightening, but it flows just fine. In the shot below you can see the final location of the inlet which is under the pump now. You can also see the factory oil cooler lines, more on that in a minute.

The pressure line from the truck had a pretty nice bend in it which routed it out and under the pump so I decided to reuse that. My local hydraulics shop took the end and added a new hose, then I had 90 degree bends put on the pump side to finish things off. Of note - the box threads are M16 x 1.5 for the pressure inlet and M17 x 1.5 for the return outlet - don't mistakenly assume they're the same (easy to do since they are quite close in appearance).

With everything installed here's how it looks from above. I've got nice clearance between the fan belt and the lines and good long sweep bends so there's no flow restrictions.

As I mentioned above, while working on this I tried to fit the factory oil cooler setup which has two hard lines that connect to the side of the oil system above the filter then come forward to mount a small cooler near the radiator. There's plenty of room for the lines and cooler but I ran into trouble with the exhaust manifolds, as you can see below they pretty much run right into the flange. I'm just running a blockoff plate with the sender in it for now, but may circle back to this at some point. For those of you who run Corvette manifolds this might be a nice setup, if anyone wants the lines I have PM me.

View attachment 1592369

 

[Well Sorted]

Oils done, on to the water and air...

The air inlet system and radiator hoses are closely related of course because you have to find a solution that makes room for both. For my air filter setup I wanted to get as close to an OEM look as possible so my first decision was to base it off Toyota air filter housings. I have read how others on here used later model housings and lids so I followed the same path. For the main body of the housing I picked up a used FJ62 part, this has all the right bolt locations for the factory mounting holes in the inner fender so it's a drop in part. The lid I chose was from an FZJ80, this drops right on the FJ62 housing and has a round outlet. Many use other lids and cut the neck off to make their own 90 degree silicon connection but I found a solution that works pretty well for this. Here's the assembly after blasting and powdercoating ready for install...

Connecting the throttle body to the air filter housing was a matter of digging through the Summit site to find appropriate ducts. I started with the 4" MAF mounting tube from Airaid, p/n 9641. Connecting the throttle body to this tube is a standard 4" elbow, Spectre 9781. With these two pieces in place I measured the angle from the MAF tube to the inlet duct on the air cleaner lid. There's some play in this connection because you can spin the lid on the housing but I averaged the angle to be around 30 degrees. Most people end up cutting off this neck because the outlet of the filter housing is 3.5" in diameter, however searching Summit turned up this lucky score, a 28 degree reducing elbow from 4" to 3.5" - Airaid p/n 9120. Putting it all together, the finished assembly looks like this...

I chose to retain that outlet duct on the lid for a couple reasons. One - it looks more stock. Two, inside that duct is a flow divider that helps distribute the air draw evenly around the filter itself. Three, even if it does create a small restriction because it's only 3.5" I've still got plenty of horsepower to move the FJ along much better than the original 2F. You can make your own choices of course, but that's the logic I was following for the setup.

 

[Elbert]

I can't "see" the attachment (picture of the air filter setup), mud says "attachment can't be found".

 

[Well Sorted]

With the air ducts and fan shroud in place it was time to find hoses to match. There's no rocket science to this, I'm pretty familiar to the local parts store crew and I just asked for their permission to dig through the hose rack in the back room. For the upper hose I took some basic measurements to get a feel for the length and then eyeballed options. For the lower, I took a long piece of aluminum foil and rolled it into a tube shape then roughly bent it to the shape I needed to help identify possible hoses. After digging around the backroom for a while I had about 6 good options that I brought back to the shop for evaluation. Lo and behold, two of them were darn near perfect. Each requires a little trimming of excess length but clears everything fantastically. Save yourself some time if you're using a similar setup to what I'm running and at least start with these... Top Hose: Gates 23283

Here's a shot of the upper hose installed with the air filter housing removed so you can see how it dives under the air duct and connects to the engine...

Lower Hose: MasterPro 21710

It's hard to get a good view of the lower installed, this shot is from inside the fender well. You can see a little bit how the hose stays low to clear the shroud, comes up around the frame rail, avoids the AC compressor and curls up to meet the water inlet on the block.

Here's another view from the top. Also note that in this view you can see the heater hoses connected. I used standard 5/8" heater line from the parts store for the supply side, the return side has a 3/4" inlet so for that one I found a mention of Dayco 87616 in another thread which has one end molded into a 3/4" ID flare. It's about 5' long so I had plenty to reach up to the heater control valve and connect the flare end here with no adapters.

At the valve itself I decided to use a molded hose and butt connector to make the bend around. I didn't make a note of the molded 180 degree hose part number, but it was off the shelf at my local O'Reilly's as a universal heater hose part. It probably doesn't matter, but this setup is a little less restrictive than one of those molded plastic 90 degree bends.

 

[Well Sorted]

And here's the full layout with everything in place. The reservoirs are looking pretty sad with all the new and clean parts around so those will be replaced shortly and there's still some tidying up work to be done with the wiring. At this phase I was almost ready to fire it up and still wanted access in case of electrical issues.

There's not a lot of interesting shots that go with routing wiring, but there are a few things to note in this pic. The GMPP PCM that comes with the harness kit is mounted on the passenger side firewall under the AC line connections. The PCM itself is weather and waterproof so having it lower down isn't too big of a risk. The main Power Distribution Center (PDC) is on the driver's side inner fenderwell where the carb fan used to be. The way they wrapped and taped the engine harness almost forced these two main components to be on these respective sides once it was all installed on the engine. The PDC is on an aluminum plate I cut to match the fan opening plate in the fenderwell and secured to the plate with 4 nylon standoffs. For the PCM I used the computer itself as a template to put four nutserts in the firewall and mounted it also on nylon standoffs.

The large red cover on the battery "+" post is from the stock GM wiring harness and covers up a terminal connector which houses a 175A fuse protecting the alternator line. On the terminal side I connected the main OEM Toyota leads to main fuse panel as well as an auxiliary 8ga line feeding the engine PDC. The 8ga cable runs down the inner fender and then across the firewall in the back of the engine bay, across the front would have been a little shorter but exposes it in the event of a frontal impact. There is a ground lead connecting the battery to the engine, a braided strap connecting the engine to the frame, and a secondary ground lead from the battery terminal to the chassis. The engine harness also has two grounds on the engine at the rear and I reconnected the one from the body to the engine at the firewall.

The PDC that GM provides has a nice feature of two auxiliary posts for accessory loads, each protected with a 50A fuse in the housing. Later on I'll be adding 12V accessory ports in the rear of the truck for things like a fridge, an ARB compressor and probably outdoor lighting and miscellaneous other loads so they'll be taken off these posts. A secondary battery will go in the driver's side location behind the core support at which point I'll ditch the headlight reservoir and move the radiator one to the inner fender.

 

[Well Sorted]

I can't "see" the attachment (picture of the air filter setup), mud says "attachment can't be found".

Problem with the upload fixed, thanks!