LS/NV4500 swap

[Ifyasquintitsmint]

Installing a 2005 5.3L and 94’ NV4500 into my K10.

Bought a good long block for $100, a rusty locked up 99 with everything to swap over for $400.
Sold the rusty block for $350 and the spare heads for $150.
$500 NV4500 from a 94’ part out. Sold the bell housing for $350.
Into the swap for almost nothing so far. However all the new parts will definitely add up.

Cam and one lifter was bad on the 05, going with a BTR stage 2 and new lifters, pushrods and camshaft bearings.

NV4500 got the AA adapter, waiting on fluid atm and havnt inspected the internals. The OO said it shifted perfectly fine and tbh I trust the fella.

My NP208 needs the splines swapped out, or I need to find a 32 spline NP208 that isn’t extremely expensive near Denver.

bought all the 87’ EFI stuff with a corvette fuel pressure regulator and a Walbro 255lph pump. Thinking of going AN but havnt decided what brand.

I have 3.08 gears and 31” tires, the NV should be fine moving the truck but I’m thinking I’d want gears closer to 3.4/3.7. I mostly do just city or long highway drives so there’s not a perfect gear it’s going to have to be a middle ground.

I have a local shop that I want to do paint/body work quoting me 3k to do the swap, minus the value of my engine and trans because they’ll buy them off me for other projects. I have a supposedly built 700R4 with a shift kit and a rebuilt low mileage 305/350 (don’t know which). What should I expect? I was thinking I could sell them for $700 minimum.

This is my second LS swap but the first never got finished prior to selling it so I’m looking forward to getting this done right.

 

[Ifyasquintitsmint]

For the NV4500 I’m running a 05’ 6.0LS flywheel and a 94’ clutch, throw out, and slave. I have a wilwood pedal installed and was going to adapt that to the slave somehow. The pedal placement is current 6/10 due to the trailer brake module being in the way and the stock brake pedal being Uber fat. Wondering how much of the brake pedal I should cut off to get it to fit better.

Unfortunately my truck didn’t have the stamping for the master on the firewall so I used the speedo cable grommet. It’s alright but should be moved over 2” to the right if anyone following this wants a better idea of optimal placement.

The Dakota digital gauges have been wonky to run, they sometimes cut out completely, sometimes it’s just a single gauge (water/oil). Guessing a bad ground but I’ve been running it like instructed so a tad frustrated.

The Littleton junkyard near me has been a god send for cheap parts. Much better than LKQ, it’s $200 for an engine vs $650.

From my photos it’s probably easy to see pedal placement is a tad goofy atm. Hoping to delete the trailer brake module thing an cut the brake pedal down to size. The position itself isn’t bad.

I have a spare Gen 4 LS intake with injectors and need to swap over a Gen3 with injectors, find a wiring harness and ECU. Can any 05 Gen3 truck work for an ECU? Are there any significant differences in ECUs by year?

 

[RanchWelder]

Sent you an email.
Nice looking engine and transmission.

Check out the OBDII ECU from a 2000-2001 truck with the same engine. The ECU's after 2000 are more likely able to be reprogrammed using your own laptop and tunerpro or another software.

You'll have to verify the specific model with somebody who can locate you a base map for your engine/transmission.

There's several good videos on youtube. You may have to buy a pin out sheet to swap a few pins between whichever year harness you get and the year of ECM you finally acquire.

Harnesses/ECU combo might be found at Affordable:
Check this guy out:

https://affordable-fuel-injection.com/product/ls-series-gen-iii-engine-operation-system/

After speaking with Norm at Affordable, I would almost always recommend buying a new harness, if you can possibly afford to. Bad grounds and corroded wires can really screw up your new engine's programming and operation with gremlins for days. He tends to work with people for the long haul too. However, if you expect him to trouble shoot, you'll want to buy his harness, so he doesn't get upset with incompetence of a semi-functional wiring. I can see his point. The systems are complicated enough, without damaged harness being the culprit.



If you think your harness is good enough and/or you cannot afford Norm's advice:

There's a guy on eBay from Houston TX who sells factory refurbished OEM ECM's with a great reputation and good pricing and lifetime warranty.

He might be able to pre-program for your key fob, and pre-program the VIN number you provide him, before he ships the ECM, if you need it. Or else you'll have to take it to a dealer to add your VIN for emissions testing requirements, if you have them in your state. I'm not certain what is required for a swap in your state.

You can email him from within eBay and verify what he can do.

You'll want to select the ECU model you want before you contact him though. Last I emailed him, he did not have the pin out charts and he did not know about cross use between engines and different years, but he was very polite and offered to learn how to pin out, if it would help him sell ECM's. He may have gotten them since we spoke last IDK.

His company rebuilds OEM ECM's in house for dealerships to factory specs.

autocomptechnologiesinc

The GMT400 forum might have good info, however some of the guys here are over there too. One of the members in the UK sells the pin out diagrams, if you email him and promise not to share your diagram. He sells you a spread sheet with the 2 connectors you'll need to wire and it takes an hour to do it. There are several cross patterns and I guess he wants to make certain guys do not just pin the wrong units to the wrong connectors and fry ECM/s by accident. Seems reasonable enough. I do not have the UK gentleman's email address yet. When you find it, please send it to my email address on this forum, using the email symbol and my username, please.

The spare connectors for whatever year ECM you would possibly need to re-pin are available on eBay too. Every year and every vehicle can have a different pin config, so be very aware of why you are buying.

Or you can buy new connectors from some of the vendors who support tunerpro. Here's a video of the re-pin process, if you end up having to do it.

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https://www.gmt400.com

http://tunerpro.net

If you have the budget, Norm is tough to beat on sales and service, from everyone I have spoken with.
He answered the phone when I asked to speak with him. His secretary was very polite too.

He can program for an extra $200 or leave it up to you. His system is around $695 for your engine and a manual gear box, with a brand new harness. I cannot imagine how much more simple it could be than getting it plug and play, preprogrammed from him.

Now about those bell housing alignment dowels and centering the output shaft... with a dial indicator...

Hope this gets you started.

 

[SquareRoot]

I basically have the same setup. The 3.08 gears are going to be a problem. 4:10 or 4:56.

 

[Ifyasquintitsmint]

Even if I'm mostly highway? I guess the LS needs to rev more than the SBC but I figured 3.7s would be fine. Do you run 4.10?

 

[Backyard]

Regarding the clutch master. When i changed to manual I used a factory petal assembly. 2 braces that come of the petal assembly ate used to hold the factory master. I was able yo drill and mount looks 100% factory in factory location and worked well

 

[Ifyasquintitsmint]

Shop I used for the Mt swap ended up messing up the install and is forking over time/labor to fix it.

I actually really vibe with the owner of the shop and he comes out personally to fix the work after hours. I don’t mind the wait as it’s not my daily and he always ends up teaching me stuff and chatting away about projects (he’s got a 68 suburban he’s LS swapping).

They fired the tech who installed it, but somehow he put the throwout bearing on backwards and infront of the fork, as you can see it are up the housing. Shop got me all new input, bearings, housing and throwout bearing. Thing was a PITA to drop but idm doing the work with the owner.

 

[Ifyasquintitsmint]

The LS itself is running great, had a single broken wire with the PSI harness to the 4th Coil but I diagnosed it and spliced in a new wire. Need to go back and trace the broke wire and properly fix it at some point but that’s a bit lower on the totem poll atm. Drove the truck for about a week before the noise from the clutch made me rip into and figured out the now obvious issue. Truck would die under load coming to a stop, but I think that's due to the tune and the BTR NVS 2 cam. Truck has a PSI base tune, all the gears worked on the NV4500 with no grinding, 1st to second was bit of a learning curve. I've never had a gear be "locked" unless I was in a very specific RPM range. I basically had to swap gears at 5MPH or I couldn't get it into second. Hoping the regear allows me to start in 2nd.

Put in some new carpet, seats, center console and a cheap radio just to fab everything up.

Very comfortable compared to the bench. I drive my truck/cars fast on the turns and hate sliding around with a bench seat.

 

[Ifyasquintitsmint]

Currently also restoring my dash, worst case I ruin it and have to buy a new one. I think if I take my time, use foam/epoxy and bondo it’ll come out okay. If it works out okay I'll start on my door cards. Have yet to decide what color I want to run with. Trucks white for now, carpets black, seats are black. Cant decide if I want all black or change it up/keep it stock.

 

[Ifyasquintitsmint]

Next on the to do list will be to reseal the differentials. The rear is leaking from the front and the front appears “wet” but not actively seeping yet.

Posted a few photos of how it’s sitting in the engine bay now, and how it was on the stand. For anyone doing a NV4500 swap on a K10 I found the shorty headers worked great for fitment, most headers ran right into the clutch line and wouldn’t work. This is the second engine I’ve rebuilt, first was a BMW M30b35 to swap into my E30. This was much easier lol!

I’d like to swap gears myself but it seems a bit daunting. When money opens up some options I’ll start looking more seriously at the 3.73/4.10.

Still need to swap in new shocks, rebuild the front end and do bodywork/paint. I welded in new cab corners but they are starting to show rust and i want to address it before it becomes rot.

Trucks going to become my hunting/camping rig. I did a bit of camping in HS on the western part of WA for a couple weeks and loved it. Def need to hit the CO mountains up more.

Just picked up hunting and looking to get this truck mobile in the next month for my dad/uncle to come out and teach me how to hunt ducks.

 

[83GMCK2500]

Do you have any pictures of the advanced adapters bellhousing? I'm trying to determine how many bolts end up bolting it to an LS. The pics I have seen look like the housing isn't drilled for the 12 o'clock bolt. And with the LS missing the 2ish o'clock bolt which leaves two bolts out of the equation. If the AA housing does have the 12 o'clock then I won't worry.