The 5.3 Swap Begins: Glory or Absolute Failure and Destitution?

[88blazerboy]

Here is a shot of the pedal as it is now. As you can see, there is a huge gap between the brake pedal and gas. I designed a very durable steel pedal bracket that attaches to the stock pedal holes - it's about as good as it gets to fit this stupid pedal, and I might get a picture of it up at some point. My advice is to get a GenIII with Drive-By-Cable and not deal with this mess. If you go my rout, you're just going to have to get creative.

http://www.ls1truck.com/forums/attac...0&d=1422499451

Unless I want to move some circuitry around under the dash, this is just about the only position I can have the pedal. Another problem is that I had to have the pedal pushed out about 5 inches from the firewall so that the tip of the pedal doesn't hit the floor and cut short acceleration. The plug is right above the breaks, and I sometimes bump it with my foot. I'm thinking about cutting and modifying the Tahoe pedal so that I can move it back closer to the firewall and not hit the floor, but it will look like crap. Lokar makes an aftermarket pedal but it's around $400.00, and I still don't know if/how it will fit. Wouldn't buy it anyway.

[88blazerboy]

Thought I would add some other photos for now. If anyone wants specific information about them or the work, hit me up.

Here is the radiator I ended up going with:

http://www.ls1truck.com/forums/attac...5&d=1422499498

It's a radiator for a 2008 Tahoe, and it's significantly longer than the Blazer's stock radiator. I had the Tahoe's electric fans, so I wanted a radiator that would match and fit the best. I had to bend the lines straight on my condenser and will be hooking them up with some 90s in the next couple months. I don't really see a problem with this. I used the Blazer radiator brackets and whipped up some half-ugly bolt attachments that pull the fans and radiator to the grill and secure them from flopping around. By going with the Tahoe radiator, I didn't have to do any custom transmission line conversions to make them fit the Blazer's radiator (it was also leaking pretty good too). If I could do it over, i think I might have bought a clutch fan for the 5.3. since it had the attachment. I would have got a new 88 Blazer radiator (or something similar) and retained my old fan shroud. This would have ended costing a bit less than what I spent on the new radiator, the tank T with a filling spout, and redoing the harness, fuse box and fan relays to get the fans to work. It would have pulled better air too when pulling a trailer.

Here is a picture of the vacuum lines and such. Pretty basic, but I never found a photo like this on anyone's threads. Maybe it will help. All seems well here, but my brake booster is leaking for some reason and making a whoosh sound when I break. I'm going to be replacing it here shorty - easy surgery, and not too much money.

http://www.ls1truck.com/forums/attac...4&d=1422499488

Here is a shot of the CPU. I put it on the driver-side front tire well by the fuse box. Part of me wishes that I has the harness made longer so I could have put this behind the glove box where the old TBI computer went. But this would have been hard to get to when pulling up codes. It seems fine here - the computer has a pretty durable case.

http://www.ls1truck.com/forums/attac...1&d=1422499459

Here is a shot of the Tahoe duel fans. The hardly fit in here, but I got it all to work.

http://www.ls1truck.com/forums/attac...8&d=1422499430

Here is side-shot of the engine from the front passenger side. For my first swap, it doesn't look too out of place.

http://www.ls1truck.com/forums/attac...9&d=1422499440

While I had the engine out, I thought I would try making the steering a bit more tight. The gearbox wasn't leaking, and the rag joint was recently rebuilt, so I decided to replace the steering arm with a Bergenson. My advice is to save your money, go to a boneyard and pull one from an older Jeep that fits almost perfectly with one minor modification. This thing is heavy duty (it's already heavy duty starting to rust), and it was a complete pain in the ass to beat on. About $300 for one of these or $30 for the Jeep version at a salvage yard. The steering is significantly tighter now, so it worked.

http://www.ls1truck.com/forums/attac...2&d=1422499469

Lastly, I've got a shot looking up at the shiftier of the 4l60e transmission. My truck has a shiftier on the steering column that I wanted to retain so I had to buy a Kugel shiftier kit. It was easy to install and extremely aggravating to adjust. I think I spent about five hours screwing with it until i got everything set right - I also had to bend the rod in two places (approximately the same way the Blazer's stock rod is bent). I'm a bit worried about the durability of this kit. It sort of looks and feels like a piece of crap. I guess time will tell. Maybe I'll have to build in an electric shiftier in the the future.

http://www.ls1truck.com/forums/attac...3&d=1422499479

I think that's it for now. In a short while I'll post a video of the thing running.