How to Freshen Up a Junkyard Chevy LS Engine for Cheap!

foreign s has a Jeep Cherokee and he was all stoked about our Jeep engine build that wasn't until he saw the price and being a cheap ass he decided to go another route this is a good route for a lot of people that want an economical motor the swap into your car instead of like whatever I trick Jeep motors or a trick LS he saw that uh the potential in the lm7 5.3 motor now we really like the 5.3 this is GM's bread and butter it was in a lot of trucks a lot of SUVs these things are solid and there's tons of them it's probably one of GM's highest number of production Motors so it's one of the cheapest late model Motors in the junkyard that makes it a wonderful thing to swap now we're talking about our buddy with the Jeep but hey man if you have an S chassis or you know an FD or anything that you want to swap an LS to and you're a little short on funds this is a good solid alternative now this engine has like an iron block that means it's pretty stout it can take boost but like our friend here uh he just wanted something that made way more power than the Jeep engine that was cheap and reliable that you could put in and well let's go over what he did basically he did a lot of The Prudent things that you should do if you get a good used engine he gave it a thorough checking out upon receiving the engine what he did is a compression and leak down check that was really good so he knew that he could continue now a lot of times if your engine has bad leak down compression your junkyard or used engine guys will let you swap it for another one so that's always a good step next thing he did is he uh stripped it all down cleaned everything up and he pulled the heads off when he pulled the heads off he saw that the boards were in great condition you could still see the factory honing marks there was no scratches and no Ridge when combined with the good compression compression leaked down you knew that he had the solid core that uh he would probably be able to drive for a while he also inspected the valves to make sure that they weren't sunk and they weren't leaking that'll look good so he knew he had something solid to proceed with then he went to the Holly Group which makes a bunch of parts to make you know freshening these things up really easy what he basically did is change some of the high wear items that are known to be minor problems with LSS and resealed the motor so start with the front of the engine he replaced the timing set with a Comp Cam set now this is the gears and the chain this is kind of a wear item the chain stretches it doesn't cost that much but it's an essential to have that in good shape for a reliable pretty powerful Motors so he uh switched that out now when you change that you should really change your cam thrust plate you know that's responsible for a lot of your oil pressure and also the cam it's securing the cam for thrust movement so he replaced the stock thrust plate with a Holley cam thrust plate while the engine was completely apart he also got a Holley overall gasket set so he could totally change all the gaskets and seals and this is always a good idea whenever you have an old engine because it sucks to have your fresh swabs start to leak all over the place so one of the major places you could have leaks of the front and rear main seals and these are in separate covers on an LS one of the things about the ls is it doesn't have dowel pins to assure a line into the seal so not only did he use the seals from the Holley overhaul kit but he also used Holly's timing cover and rear cover alignment tools now these hold everything totally Square while you're putting the bolts down see your seals are nice and centered on the crank it makes your job a lot easier since the heads are off you replace the head gaskets with Holley MLS gaskets that came with the kit an MLs gasket can withstand a lot more pressure and it works really good then your normal composite gasket so it's a pretty good choice while he was in the lifter Valley area he changed the old lifters with crane lifters now these aren't really trick or anything they're just cranes replacement lifters so those are some prudent like Andrew with Miles like hydraulic lifters can get gummy and tick and make noise they're pretty cheap so you might as well change them while you're in there so while we're going through the valve train we replace the push rods and the rocker arms so the SPI parts now the push rods are kind of just your brand new stock replacement parts but the rocker arms are a little bit heavier Duty than stock the fulcrum part is stuck in there better like the stock part is just swaged and with wear it can come apart and dump like little Parts all through your motor but the SBI parts are secured with the snap rings so they're not going to walk and come apart that's a good thing that doesn't cost much that prevents a major headache later when the engine was going back together the head bolts are replaced with Holly's replacement head bolts now these are not torqued to yield so you could just set them with torque it's a little bit easier I kind of like torque the yield head bolts myself but you know if you're a first time engine builder you can use these set the torque forget it and there's nothing wrong with it like I said this isn't a Performance Engine so those are a fine easier to use alternative replacement for this kind of motor so while we're cleaning everything up that also applied to the very very bottom of the engine which is the pen the oiling system the first thing we did is swap the stock oil pump for a melling's high pressure high volume pump now a lot of these ls's they run kind of low oil pressure and we've never been a fan of that the iron blocks usually aren't as bad in that respect as the aluminum blocks but you know a little bit more oil pressure and volume never hurt uh now Holly makes a bunch of different oil pans to make your engine swap a lot easier for this Jeep we found that the f-body rear sump pan works pretty good that's going to clear our Jeep's cross member but Holly makes a bunch of pans and a bunch of different configurations and chances are they have a pan that'll make your swap a lot easier too now we had to do a couple things with the stock windage tray to get it to fit but that's all documented and Holly's really good instructions and uh when we put it on we used Holly's pan bolt set and their dipstick to just clean everything up real nice Holly does make a few other things that really really make your swap cheaper and easier now if you've ever done a swap the biggest headache is your accessory drives figuring out what lash up of brackets belts alternators tensioners and whatnot there's always a headache to figure out how you're going to get in your car now Holly has complete accessory Drive systems available for you that include the alternator water pump tensioners even things like your power steering pump and AC compressor very complete very very competitively priced all figured out for you all you got to do is go to Holly's website look at what configuration is going to fit in your car the best order it up and bolt it on I mean these parts can nickel and dime you to death when you're doing a swap it could be a headache trying to research and figure out every possible lash-up of parts that could possibly fit and even having something like a the right belt can kick your butt but Holly really makes this a lot easier I can't talk enough about how much this really is a great thing to make your swap less headache prone another thing that's going to make our swap easier here is a swiveling water next so Holly makes one of these things that spins around and this can really help in the swap get your hoses lined up all these parts are really cool things and it's not just Jeep oriented it's for any of you that want to drop an LS and anything I mean if you have a classic Mustang one of these five threes would go in there too or like I said before and that's chassis so yeah check out Holly they got what you need and we'll see about how our chief ass friends Jeep runs no you gotta go the Moto IQ and follow along and the project LS Jeep swap to see how he does he's cheap but he's not dumb so we think it's going to actually come out really nice also go the mother iq.com check us out we have thousands of tech articles there if you like our content be sure to subscribe and come back we do this every couple weeks and we come out with a new interesting video so we'll see in the next one

Channel: MotoIQ

Views: 79,633

Keywords: LS engine, engine swap, lm7, jeep cherokee, lifters, gasket set, holley, overhaul, junkyard, rebuild, pistons, block, timing set, timing gears, comp cams, crane

Id: CFZSC2bx77Y

Length: 10min 18sec (618 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2023