SoCal GenIII Vortec Project (1 Viewer)

[JohnCapoccia]

Awesome! Which ref/BAR station did you end up going to?

Dyno

San Bernardino Valley College

 

[87CRUSR]

Congrats

 

[Lowrecoil30]

What manifolds did you end up using and how did you route your exhaust?

I went to the BAR today and was given a whole list of to-dos. One of them being that I have to use the factory y-pipe till the downstream O2s? The issue being they will not fit in the vehicle, I questioned the tech about this and he told me that I would have to cut the frame and or body to make it fit.

Also what version of HP Tuners did you buy, Standard or Pro? I am running into issues with the factory fuel sender and need to calibrate it as well

 

[megolfer]

What rederee did u go to

 

[Lowrecoil30]

What rederee did u go to

The Sacramento one at American River College. Click on the link in my signature if you want to see everything I was written up on.

 

[JohnCapoccia]

The Sacramento one at American River College. Click on the link in my signature if you want to see everything I was written up on.

Wow, and I thought I had it bad! Your story confirms my point - you NEED to know who you’re dealing with before you choose a ref. I heard the Sacramento guy was bad. A fella told me he got hosed from that guy and went to a user-friendly one and got passed.

The San Berdo guy told me that what you experienced is the future in California. The CARB is getting more and more strict. At some point it’s going to be impossible to do a swap in California.

 

[erse]

I can finally close out this thread!

View attachment 1557098

It took me three months to do the conversion and 18 months to get the sticker.

A couple of key learnings:

1. Do your homework before choosing a vendor for your PCM flash and your harness. Just because they say that they can do California compliance, that may not be the case.

2. You need to have some intel on the referee before you choose a location. You need to KNOW that the ref has approved at least one RECENT Land Cruiser Conversion. DO NOT go blindly to an unknown ref. The rules are sufficiently vague such that if you get a guy that predisposed to interpreting the rules “to the book”, as opposed to a ref that sees you as a taxpaying customer, you could be in for a long hard slog.

I’ll elaborate: Pacific Fabrication sold me what they call a CA Emmissions compliant harness, but it was missing two components that were necessary to get the ref’s approval. They’re harness did not accommodate a GM fuel tank level sender nor a PRNDL connector. In all fairness to Pacific Fabrication, the interpretation of the rules may be different for NoCal vs. SoCal. To this day, I don’t understand why the PRNDL is necessary, but I believe the fuel level sender is absolutely necessary. You cannot get the Evap Monitor to fire without input from the fuel level sender. Even with the PRNDL switch wired in, there’s something in the Flash that’s not right. Today, the ref could not see the PRNDL status with his scan tool. I had to show him that the PCM sees the change of status using my laptop with HPTuners software.

Pacific Fabrication was very helpful, they always tried to help me and they even built a custom PRNDL harness for me, but basically I was on my own after that. Regarding the HPTuners software, a non-friendly ref could have rejected me today because HIS scan tool could not detect the change of status.

I had to do the “Georg” method of mounting the GM sender in tandem with the Toyota sender. I needed the HPTuners software to recalibrate the values that the PCM reads from the sender. You can’t get the evap monitor to fire unless certain conditions are met, one of which is that the fuel level needs to be between 15% and 85%.

Regarding the Ref, the biggest issue was rejecting the Corvette manifolds. The strict interpretation is that the exhaust manifold MUST be native to the donor VEHICLE. So technically you cannot mix and match manifolds. The corvette manifolds are obviously wrong because of the O2 sensor in the middle. If I went to the right ref right from the beginning, it’s possible that I could have achieved certification without swapping the manifolds or installing the PRNDL switch or installing the fuel level sender. Technically, on a 2004 engine, you are allowed to have one monitor in the not-ready state, so long as it’s the Evap monitor. But, interpretations are changing in the direction of being more strict.

Anyway, it feels really good to get this over with! BTW, I should mention that the swap has been fantastic. I’ve put over 20,000 miles on the rig over the last 18 months, including a trip this summer from SoCal to Alaska. I think I made the right rational choice with the 4.8. It’s more than adequate. I can go as fast as I want to go up any grade fully loaded, but if I was to do it all over again, the hell with gas mileage and gimme that low-end grunt of a 6.0!!

So you're retired and itching to do another one right?

Congrats on getting this thing through all of your bureaucracy, I would not have the patience let alone the skills to survive any of it. Hope you are enjoying the fruits of all your labor