5.3 swap into '94 Full Size Blazer - aka Big Ugly - build thread

[Blasphemy]

Welcome to the world of swaps and plenty of cursing!! I'm still in the tail end of my swap but have yet to fire because I keep getting pulled away for "work" issues. I'm in for the progress on your build!

[ibelonginprison]

ha, Thanks. Glad to know I'm not the only one heading down this path at the moment.

I came here to update the thread.... I went to go order parts the other day and had my friend send me the VIN so I could double check a few things. He was off on the year. In fact, he was WAY off on the year. That's what I get for not seeing it first before planning everything, but I'm glad I checked.

It's an LM7 from an 01. So, throttle by cable, not wire. No electric fans. And I had him send me a picture of the fuel rail, it's return style (with the regulator on the rail, not externally.) So, a little bit of bad news, and a little bit of good news. Now I just have to replan a few things. Guess I'll wait till Monday to order what I need. :/
I'll also be heading to a salvage yard to snag electric fans and make sure that I have the harness company still wire in the plugs for them.

Have only done reading on the DBW swaps, so I have to figure out if the donor truck cable will swap over with it, and if how cruise hooks up. At this point I suppose it's just going to be "shove it in the engine bay and just see what it's going to take."

Also sad to see that no one has found a way (at least that I can find) to use the donor truck / LS AC compressor etc. What bracket did you end up using for yours? I'm really considering the bracket and compressor package from Current Performance. Just order it all together, and be done with it.

PSI is winning the battle of the harness, but Speartech is a close second. John is super knowledgeable and I like the fact that he tests them fully before shipping, but PSI was really friendly, knowledgeable as well, and the real winner was their turnaround time is about two weeks faster. (John seemed like he was worth the extra money that you would spend with him though, for what it's worth.)

After I get back home on Sunday I'll take stock in what I have sitting here, what I'll need, and then drop some change on Monday with the parts folks.

Waiting on an email back from Black Bear Performance about a tune, and a response from Texas Speed about the Comp 265 cam... want to make sure that I land a cam that has a killer idle, but doesn't kill ALL the power below 2500rpm (I'm ok with a little less tq, just not 35-45 ft lbs kind of less)

From what I can tell, this is the best way to tell if you have a "return style" - it has the regulator built in on the fuel rail setup on the drivers side.

[Mickeymotormount]

Hi and welcome to the site. Sounds like your swap will be similar to mine. Make sure you grab the exhaust system too. You can never have too many pieces of the puzzle to get the engine up and running.

[ibelonginprison]

Thanks for the welcome, guys.
OK, made it home last night and back at my adult job today. 6 hour drive Friday night to North Carolina, spent 8 hours yanking the motor, trans and the rest of the stuff I (might) need, Saturday afternoon-evening, put it in the truck on Sunday morning, filled the bed with everything else and drove 6 hours back to Birmingham.

I'm pretty exhausted. I have some photos that I'll upload later this morning and a few lessons I learned.
First thing I learned, Evan Williams 10 year single barrel is actually pretty tasty. Has a good sweet nose to it, and I enjoyed it almost as much as my Basil Hayden's. Which surprised me.

[ibelonginprison]

So the donor truck had passenger side damage where it brushed a wall, and had some light damage to the front. Broken grill and headlight, and the bumper was dented. But no core support damage, and none of the lines up front were touched. Honestly, I should have bought the whole truck, brought it back with me minus the rear interior that my friend wanted for his 2500 ‘Burb, and then turned this thing into an SAS’d weekend trail bitch. But, I didn’t think of that till after I was halfway through yanking all the stuff out.

Pulled the covers and hoses before I remembered to snap a few pics. I was a little braindead after driving till 2am. So here’s pretty much where I started….








Mice had just begun to find a few wires, my friend jumped a few wires together to make sure that everything still fired up. I wasn’t terribly concerned because it was just in two spots, and I’m replacing the entire harness anyway. I did, however, check the rest of the wiring and pull all of it to take with me just in case. Looks like I’ll have to find a harness for the coil packs on the drivers side.







Continued to pull things out. Got the radiator, AC condenser etc. out of the way. I brought them home with me.













Decided to take the accel pedal and throttle cable. Hadn’t ever taken a gas pedal out before, so figured why not. It has a little c clip/retainer clip on each side that keeps it in the bracket. I used needle nose pliers to push the clips off, then slid the pedal to the left, then tilt and remove. The cable is easier, just snap the cover off and slide it back up the cable, push the head of the cable back, then slide the cable up and out. I took pictures of it a little more closely once I had it out, since it was hard to get shots under the dash. As for the cable itself where it goes through the firewall, just pinch the two tabs inward (or use a screwdriver and do one side at a time since it’s hard to get anything that far up behind the dash) and push it through. This was probably the easiest part of the day, ha.















Thankfully my cruise control question was answered when I looked at it. There’s a stand alone module with its own throttle cable. I just unbolted it from the firewall, unclicpped the harness, and laid it over the top of the motor to take with me. It should be a pretty straight forward process to bolt the module up on the firewall of the Big Ugly, make sure the cable doesn’t bind on anything, then just make sure I have the option for cruise built into the harness.




Since I didn’t make a blood sacrifice till much later, so I poured a double of basil, neat, and dumped a little out as a sacrifice to the swap gods. Seemed like that appeased them enough to make the afternoon go really well.




Rolled the truck inside when it started getting dark. Opted to cut the front core support since the truck is going to scrap after we’re done anyway. Certainly made life easier.
Went ahead and removed the fan while we were at it, for three reasons:
1. it was out of the way
2. probably easier to do it when it’s in the truck than on the ground
3. I’m planning on going electric fans, as of right now, so made sense to just get it out of the way.

Thankfully this was pretty straight forward. Put a large pipe wrench on the nut/shaft between the fan and the motor, use a pry bar with a piece of rubber (for extra friction) to hold pressure on the pulley, then smack the wrench with a deadblow hammer. Two quick knocks and it was loose, and the fan came off.

[ibelonginprison]

Towards the end of the evening we had a bottle of the Evan Williams single barrel from ’05. It was tasty, but I forgot to share a few drops with the swap gods, which evidently they noticed… the transmission knocked over the catch pan filled with transmission fluid as it was coming out, and as you can see in the last photo, made the floor look like we killed a hooker. Nothing that 4 bags of oil dry couldn’t handle.
-__-










I’d like to make it seem like it was “that easy” but there were a lot of little things we had to do once we thought we were ready to get it all out. We trimmed the fuel lines by the bellhousing, I’ll be running fresh ones so ‘eff em. The exhaust manifolds, downpipes etc. were a bit of trouble due to rusted bolts, but that’s normal I guess. A plasma cutter made short work of the stuck parts. I won’t be reusing that stuff anyway.
Had to disconnect the shift cable by the frame rail, not sure yet how it will mate up with my existing shift cable or if I’ll use it at all, but we’ll see. The motor mounts were a little bit of a pain in the @ss to get to, but with some extensions and an impact we came at it from the rear. We ended up just removing everything from the frame for clearance reasons. Decided to drop the front diff assembly, took 5 minutes and helped add another few inches of clearance for the oil pan. It would be easy to put back in place if you wanted to jack it up and put the bolts back, but we let it hang since it would come out in the next few days. Note: it disrupts the steering to the right if it’s chillin’ and gets in the way of the pitman arm. Haha

Hindsight being 20/20, I’d have loosened the transfer case, then dropped the transmission separately and pulled the transfer case off, then pulled the motor out the front by itself. That would have been “easier.” But this worked out alright.
Only casualty was a broken coil pack and a scrape or two on a knuckle. Other than that, it was just about what you would expect. All in all I’d say we had 8 hours in pulling it, maybe 9 hours if you include bourbon breaks and dinner.

The drive home Sunday felt pretty nice with a bed full of truck parts. Tonight I’ll pull the motor out of the back of the truck, take pics of the injector clips to make sure I tell them the right ones and get my wire harness ordered tomorrow. This week I’ll strip the existing harness off the motor, label everything appropriately so that it’s easy to plug and go when it’s time to drop the motor back in. Still haven’t decided if I’m going to do a camshaft or not, but that decision will be made by the weekend most likely.

This week I’m going to get video of the truck running with the TBI motor so I can sell it on Craigslist with proof of it running, then start the process to pull the motor out of Big Ugly in another couple weekends.

[ibelonginprison]

So that was an easy way to drop a smooth grand... have all these parts ordered and coming either this weekend or next week:

PSI harness, wired for cruise control and AC control. $570
http://secure.ultracart.com/catalog/.../KIT-1010.html

Dirty Dingo adjustable motor mounts: $120
http://dirtydingo.com/store/product_...oducts_id=1367

AC Delco Fuel Pump: $38 shipped
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Fuel pump strainer: $9 shipped
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

LS intake port... S&P mentioned it, figured it was better to buy it and not need it, than need it and not have it. It was only $6.
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/nal-12559760

5/16 fuel line fitting for the fuel return $15:
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/rus-644113

3/8 fuel line fitting for the fuel rail $15:
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/rus-644123

-6an host ends/fittings (x4) $20:
(4 items @$5 per) http://www.summitracing.com/parts/sum-220690

5/16 fuel line / tube fitting for return fuel line $10:
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/ea...6erl/overview/

20' -6an stainless braided hose $75:
http://www.summitracing.com/parts/sum-230620

And since I'm towing a 5,000+lb boat in the summer months every now and then, the biggest mother effing stacked plate transmission cooler I thought I could go overboard with behind the grille. roughly 9x23 inches. $130
http://www.amazon.com/Tru-Cool-LPD47...=AIRZZ7YDFO57W

[Blasphemy]

So far, you're blowing my build thread out of the water!!Good job with all the details!! Keep it up, we're all watching your progress and waiting for details. Now I'm off to rethink my thread lol