after 6 weeks of waiting, i finally took possesion of the donor van for my v8 swap from my work. and after hanging christmas lights today i got the go ahead for my build. as of @ 730 tonight i have a '91 5.7 tbi with a 4l80e tranny on a hoist in my garage. The tranny is a 2 wheel drive but upon further inspection is splined the whole way and i believe will be able to be cut. i've decided to order a new harness since most of the clips broke as i removed them. the radiator from the donor was combined with the tranny cooler. any opinions on fitting that vs. purchasing a seperate tranny cooler and using my stock fj60 radiator? Any other parts worth hanging on to from the one ton van that i can use? and bman, if you could give me a rundown again of who you used for your harness, motor mount setup, and general knowledge dropping i'd much appreciate it. cheers, chris
i've finally started!
- Thread starter rightlane
- Start date
This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.
Glad you were able to finally score one. Looking forward to the project write up and pics! 
I used a 4l60e but the 2wd is the one you want if your using the toyota transfer case and the advanced adaptors adaptor. I'd ask them about the vss. in mine I bought their adaptor with the vss in the adaptor and it worked perfect kept the computer functioning like factory with my aftermarket harness. I got a transmission cooler off a truck at pick a part and it fits in front of the radiator as well as an oil cooler I installed. Did the donor vehicle come with thtat transmission? Are you doing anything to the motor before you install it? its a good time for a new intake, new cam upgrade your injectors, bore your throttle body or find one used and some vortec heads if your going through it anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if you could get those parts all for 700 bucks on craigslist and you'd have around 300 ponies and a probably close to 375 torque. This was the one thing I wish I would have done when I did mine.
- Thread starter
- #4
I drove the donor van for about 2 weeks and it ran great. I don't plan on upgrading anything on the engine right now, it only had 59k on it. I pulled the old harness off today, what was the 3 wire run that went from the computer to up under the dash by the fuse panel? and would the donor have a saginaw box on it?
with the 4l80e your going to have the vssb/drac somewhere. Its a little white box that converts the vss signal to something your computer can recognize. Where is the dataport on the factory harness? That connects with three wires. Could also be the fuel pump relay. The four plugs on my harness not connected directly to the engine transmission or computer are 1. data port. 2. fuel pump relay, 3. vssb/drac., 4. fuse panel. Other than that everything I have plugs into the engine,ecm and the trans.