Racefiend's CA Legal 1992 LS Swap Build Thread (1 Viewer)

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Looking good, very impressive work.
 
I found a great condition FJZ frame with no rust and picked it up. I cleaned it, primed it, and painted it while I had it out:

View attachment 2971206

I then had to pull the body off the old frame. Wasn't much work as most of what was needed to be removed had already been done:

View attachment 2971210

I then began swapping everything over from the old frame to the new frame. A Tale of Two Frames:

View attachment 2971211

Goodbye old frame:

View attachment 2971212
interesting roof rack on the FZJ...
 
Well done....
I am curious how you get it past CARB... I have a 94 here in CA and want to go diesel
Also would like to know what kind of MPGs you get with this setup.
Thanks
 
The rules for engine changes haven't changed. I spoke to the ref. As long as it's same year or newer and the gvwr are in the same class, it's good to go. I gave him both vins and gvwr were in the same class so he gave it the thumbs up. He even gave me some tips. Should be the same for any 80 series. I'm in Solano county.
I'm also in Solano County
 
How's the build coming along?

I've been progressing as I have time to put into it. Mostly a lot of cleaning up the engine bay and front end, replacing gross bolts, and spending time mocking up, measuring, making brackets, etc. I'm almost ready for another picture update. Should have one next week or this weekend. Also waiting on a TIG machine to show up. Been wanting to learn to TIG for a while, and now that I need to make a fan shroud, I figured now was the time.
 
interesting roof rack on the FZJ...

Yeah that thing was connected to the rear bumper. I chucked the rear bumper because it sucked. But the rack is actually decent. I need to cut off those vertical connectors.

Well done....
I am curious how you get it past CARB... I have a 94 here in CA and want to go diesel
Also would like to know what kind of MPGs you get with this setup.
Thanks

Thanks. Unfortunately none of that will be answered until I'm finished. I'm hoping to get mid to high teens around town, and maybe low 20's on the highway. Either way it will be better than what was in there.

As far as putting a diesel in an FJ, I don't think you'd be able to. CA requires the donor and recipient to be in the same GVWR class, and diesels pretty much only come on 3/4 ton and up vehicles, which puts them outside of the acceptable class.
 
1995 and older vehicles no longer require CARB approval for intake modifications. You may do as you please.

I know they allow for intake mods as needed to package engine swaps on OBD1 vehicles (without any posted guidelines, of course). Is that what you're referring to? or do you mean intake mods in general, aside from engine swaps? If the latter, can you point me to where I could find that on CARB website? I have not seen anything regarding that.
 
I know they allow for intake mods as needed to package engine swaps on OBD1 vehicles (without any posted guidelines, of course). Is that what you're referring to? or do you mean intake mods in general, aside from engine swaps? If the latter, can you point me to where I could find that on CARB website? I have not seen anything regarding that.
I tried to find a link for you, but got lost in the webs. Like you point out, it is a gray area for initial engine conversion inspections on the "modified as needed". Perhaps my statement is misplaced in this area, but for everyday inspections, 1995 and older is CARB OE exempt unless a pre-heater tube is in place.

For reference it is in Appendix G of the smog regulations.
 
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Yeah that thing was connected to the rear bumper. I chucked the rear bumper because it sucked. But the rack is actually decent. I need to cut off those vertical connectors.



Thanks. Unfortunately none of that will be answered until I'm finished. I'm hoping to get mid to high teens around town, and maybe low 20's on the highway. Either way it will be better than what was in there.

As far as putting a diesel in an FJ, I don't think you'd be able to. CA requires the donor and recipient to be in the same GVWR class, and diesels pretty much only come on 3/4 ton and up vehicles, which puts them outside of the acceptable class.
I've got 361k on the OG head gasket... it's gonna fail at some point.... Yikes on the no diesel :-/ and thank you for the info :)
 
Well I got a little further on the road to being on the road. I started off by removing the front end components to get a good cleaning done. The previous owner thought a good wash after going off road is not necessary. The whole car was covered with clay dirt everywhere, and the front end was no exception. Got it all nice and clean:

Front End Clean.jpg


The previous owner installed a Slee headlight and AUX light rewire kit. The yellow sheathing was driving me nuts. It makes it look like someone wired up the headlights with Romex from Home Depot. Also the 3 separate relays were unsightly. That had to go. I removed the engine bay wiring harness to redo all of the loom with the newer woven wrap.

I decided to upgrade the headlight wiring and keep it inside the factory loom for a cleaner look. I found the low beam hot wires were already 14 GA wires coming off a 10 GA wire directly from the battery. The wiring looked good there so I kept it. The ground side of the low beams, however, were these dinky 20 GA wires. C'mon Toyota Engineer. Don't ya know current is the same on both sides of a load? I replaced the grounds with 14 GA wire as well. The high beams are 14 gauge hot and ground. The positive is spliced off the low beam 14 GA wire, so I wired in new high beam hot wires so each low beam has it's own 14 GA wire and so does each high beam. The high beam hot wires will run to the new fuse box. The 14 GA ground runs into the cabin and through the high beam switch. Too many connections plus an old switch may cause issues with resistance, so I wired new 14 GA grounds to the fenders. I also installed new low and high beam bulb connectors. Here is the harness complete:

Engine Bay Harness.jpg


The plastic headlight sight lenses to see the level markers were chalky white and you could not see anything through them. I removed them and sanded them down from 400 to 3000 grit and polished them up. Now you can see the levels so they can be adjusted later:

Headlight Adjuster Levels.jpg


The PO didn't do much in terms of coolant service. As such, the coolant was pretty gross when my GF bought the car. I had flushed the coolant system before, but I decided to get a good flush on the heater cores. My flushing setup is a 5 gallon bucket with a harbor freight pump. Two sections of garden hose connect the pump to the heater core, and the heater core back to the bucket. A car washing grit guard is on the bottom so the nasty bits don't get sucked back into the pump:

Heater Core Flush.jpg


I ran CLR through it for about 30 mins, then revers flushed it for another 30 mins. Then I ran DI water through it multiple times. Tons of crap came out of those cores. I probably had DI running through those cores for about 3 hours total. Every time I got less and less crud.

I then went to flush the radiator. When I took the upper radiator hose off the radiator, I got another little Easter egg from the previous owner:

Radiator - Bent.jpg


Geez, it never ends. The core was also full of a bunch of rusty chunks. I decided to take the radiator to my radiator repair guy and have him disassemble it and clean it. I also had him replace the upper pipe with a 1.25 inch pipe instead of the 1.5 inch one that was on there. The LS motor has a 1.5 inch hose for the lower, but it's only 1.25 inches for the upper. This would make fitting an upper hose easier.
 
I got the radiator back all nice and shiny. I and the GF then spent hours straightening every fin the best we could and touching up the paint.

Radiator Rebuilt.jpg


Next was mock up and make brackets for the PCM. Laying everything out, I wanted the PCM behind the driver headlight. I made this crazy ass bracket to mount the factory PCM plastic mounting assembly:

PCM Bracket.jpg


Here is the bracket installed:

PCM Bracket Installed.jpg


And the PCM installed:

PCM Installed.jpg
 
Then I made a bracket to install the new fuse box and Electronic Throttle Control module.

Fuse Box Bracket.jpg


Fuse Box Bracket 2.jpg


And installed using existing bolt holes:

Fuse Box Bracket Installed.jpg


The fuse box and ETC module mounted. The fuse box is a Littlefuse box. It is fully waterproof and has tons of space for relays and fuses. I won't be using all of them for the swap, so that leaves expansion room for later.

Fuse Box.jpg
 
Then I moved onto the airbox. I installed it behind the passenger headlight. It will not fit as it comes out of the donor. There are 2 attachments on the end to draw cold air from the fender. Those had to go.

Airbox Lower Pre Mod.png


I also had to remove the upper lid mounting tab that sits next to the radiator for clearance. For now only 3 bolts hold the airbox lid on. I'll mod the box to add a 4th mounting point in the future. Here are the brackets I made for the airbox. I used the 3 factory GM airbox mounting points. I removed the plastic push pin type mounts which left behind holes. I put studs on the brackets that use those holes to mount the airbox. I added some firewall grommets from a harbor freight assortment to the studs. These will help dampen vibrations from getting to the MAF :

Airbox Brackets.jpg


The brackets installed using existing LC holes:


Airbox Brackets Installed.jpg


And the airbox installed:

Airbox.jpg


There is no way to use the donor plastic intake tube. I removed the accordion hose from the intake assembly. That was a royal PITA. It is cemented to the plastic assembly. I had to remove it very carefully to not destroy it.
 
I decided to use the GM expansion tank instead of the Toyota overflow setup. I prefer the expansion tank as it's an easy visual indicator of coolant level. It's also the way the engine cooling system was designed on the donor, so might as well keep everything working factory. I made a bracket for lower tank mount:

Expansion Tank Bracket.jpg


Which goes here:

Expansion Tank Bracket Installed.jpg


The other bracket lined up with an existing hole:

Expansion Tank Mount 2.jpg


Looks like it was meant to be there:

Expansion Tank and Airbox.jpg


And I have space to run a hose from the snorkel to the GM airbox. I'll tackle that after it gets REF'd, as I don't want any possible reasons to fail.

I used the factory heater hose return/expansion tank hose. It's an aftermarket one, which is better for me since the hoses are attached to the 3 way tee with clamps. The original one is all one piece. This made it possible to remove the hoses for modification. Since the tank sits closer to the engine than it did in the donor, I had to trim the small hose that goes from the 3 way tee to the water pump. I also had to trim both ends of the hose that go from the tee to the tank. I removed the hose from the tee to the heater core return, as it was too short. I replaced it with a length of 5/8 heater hose. I also ran a length of 5/8 heater hose from the water pump to the heater inlet:

Heater Hose Expansion Tank Hose.jpg
 
The heater hoses connected at the heater core:

Heater Hose Firewall.jpg


I installed the radiator and checked fitment. I got all new rubber and mounting hardware from Toyota. I put in the factory fan shroud to see if by some miracle it would work. Unfortunately the shroud sits too far away from the fan, and it's positioned a little too high. The factory GM lower radiator hose is almost a perfect fit, just needs a little trimming. The upper radiator hose was way too long. I checked GATES' picture catalog and ordered up several hoses that looked promising. I ended up going with an upper radiator hose from a 2000-2005 Dodge Neon, Napa part number 9666. Looks like it's going to work out just fine.


Stock Fan Shroud Clearance.jpg


I found an aluminum shroud kit on Summit that had promising dimensions. It is Summit part number SUM-380457-SH. It is a universal kit that you can modify to fit your setup. I ordered it up and low and behold it's almost a perfect fit:

Summit Radiator Shroud Mockup.jpg


It's going to take some modifications to mount up to the radiator they way I want. I will also need to modify the upper passenger corner for clearance of the intake accordion hose. I've always wanted to learn to TIG, and now I have an excuse as I'll need to weld aluminum. So I bought a TIG machine, which will hopefully get here next week. Time to learn to stack dimes! Though I'm afraid the end result will probably be a mix of dimes, nickels, and quarters.

Next I'll tackle the wiring while I wait for the TIG machine.
 
I got the radiator back all nice and shiny. I and the GF then spent hours straightening every fin the best we could and touching up the paint.

View attachment 3048748

Next was mock up and make brackets for the PCM. Laying everything out, I wanted the PCM behind the driver headlight. I made this crazy ass bracket to mount the factory PCM plastic mounting assembly:

View attachment 3048749

Here is the bracket installed:

View attachment 3048750

And the PCM installed:

View attachment 3048751
Pretty rough stuff on that radiator... What did they charge you to clean that thing up?
 
Those brass radiators do not cool as well. I would switch to a TYC aluminum. Do it before shroud mods.
 

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