If you can put this package together for 2,000.00 sign me up.
Sadly I have a full time job all week and most of it is spent at the airport or away from home but up in Oregon I suspect you probably have a plethora of low mileage rust bucket LS swap donor vehicles.
There has been guides on buying a GM service fan and they usually have the best combination of a LS and 4l80E combo. You can literally buy a high mileage van for 1500 to 2500 and take our your swap parts, perhaps end up with a beefier rear axle, then part out the rest of the van and not only break even but get money back on your expense. It all comes down to how much work you are willing to put into it. You can do your own ecm base tune for the cost of the devices to hook it to your PC. You can alter the harness and use what the general gave you in the van for as much as it costs to buy some fuse blocks and relays. There are just so many ways to do the swap and basically have the cost amount to nuts and bolts, but none of it is going to be turn key, and that is the trade. I can't really begin to write a how to on saving money, that is just up to your resourcefulness, mechanical ability (meaning tools and familiarity mostly), and available time.
I'd love to do LS swaps full time and make a living doing that and other work but it's just not in the cards right now, lol.
If you want a recipe for success and affordability I would combine to resources. Check into The Driveway engineer on youtubr, and then the facebook group I mentioned in the above post. That group has a files or pinned post section that has a recipe for installation guides, wiring, how to get CC working, etc etc. Research is the best place to start before I would spend one dollar. Determine your choice of mounts, radiator (you can use stock ultimately), trans choices... The list goes on and one change can affect many other items so just get a spreadsheet or notebook and make a project list is all I can start you out at.
keep in mind if you decide to start doing a cam swap out the gate, you will need a real tune before you start it up and can enjoy it, but a stock ecm will manage a stock motor just fine, all you need to do is remove VATS and turn off some error reporting codes and you can have instant gratification.
I always kind of recommend that to guys install the stock motor, get it running and establish a base install with no problems before they mess with tuning because it limits the amount of problems you introduce to the swap process initially, and then swapping an LS cam is really kind of easy from a mechanical standpoint, so it can be done once you are ready to go to a tune session (because its a roller cam so no break in needed).
Just some food for thought, please feel free to ask otherwise.
