LS Engine Swap Part 8 - Holley EFI Installation

welcome back to Chuck's garage in our final installment of the LS engine swap series today Chuck takes us through the remaining steps of wiring and firing up the LS engine with Holley's EFI system hi I'm Chuck Hanson welcome back to Chuck's garage you know it's been a long time since the last time I saw you but you know I'm approaching this project probably just like a lot you approach yours things get the way it's been a long summer I've got a lot to car shows had yard work to do just been traveling a lot and well this things been put on the back burner in the meantime but guess what today we're gonna wire it and we're gonna fire it now if you're joining us for the first time let me tell you what we've got going on here what we did was we took a 5-3 LS engine out of a Tahoe & a 4L60E transmission and we've slammed into this 69 Chevelle chassis using motor mounts and an oil pan and other components here from Hooker and Holley now the reason we did that was to make this swap as easy as possible reduce the number of headaches and insure that we don't have compatibility issues down the road now what I've done today is I've gone ahead and and built this little control panel here and as you can see it mounts to the ignition switch a couple of gauges we got an oil pressure and a water temperature gauge and the fuel pressure regulator here now you see this big void right here that's where we're gonna mount the computer later on in the meantime though what I've done is I've gone ahead and wired a lot of the 12 volt stuff here and that's where I'm at right now we'll take a look at some other wiring harness in just a second after I get a couple things buttoned up now of the things I've learned over the years of working with electronics is you've got to have good electrical connections now for the starter and the main power source we're using a one gauge power cable here and the same thing on the negative side here now we've also our negative ground goes over here to the block and then we have a single ground wire that comes off the block and comes back over here to the frame so we've got that part handled pretty well and like say this 12 volt Hotwire here will go down to the battery this is another power wire here that will go back here and power up the gauges now I've topped off the engine with oil here and the transmission with fluid now we're ready to add coolant to the engine I'm gonna show you a little trick here now filling an LS engine with coolant presents a little bit of a problem because what you have is a thermostat that needs to get the water behind it so can operate properly and open when it gets hot if we just fill the radiator with coolant what happens is the radiator gets full but it doesn't get down in the block like it needs to and the radiator eventually will let the engine block open up but by then the engine could get hot you don't couple heat cycles there where the engine gets overheated so we're gonna go ahead and fill the block through the upper radiator hose here get water in the cooling passages like it needs to operate that thermostat properly course once you get the engine block filled you can go ahead top off the radiator with coolant until its full all the way up now what we're looking at here is the real meat of what we're going to be putting into play today as you can see we got a buncha harnesses here but the real deal is the ECU now what we're using here is Holley's Dominator EFI V2 computer here and the reason we're doing this is because not only will it control the basic functions of a fuel injected engine like it'll certainly control all the fuel injectors it'll turn your fuel pump off and on it'll control the fans it'll even control an electronic transmission but beyond that if you should decide for instance that you wanna bolt on some nitrous on this thing it'll control the nitrous multiple stages of nitrous it'll also control power adders like turbochargers a couple of add on solenoids will allow you to control the amount of boost through the pop-off valves and stuff so this is a very very capable ECU here that'll meet all our needs and then some no matter what we decide that we're going to do in the future and of course this is the main power harness that will connect to the battery and then plug right up to the computer what we've got down here is the main harness this thing has all of the controls that the go for throttle position sensor air inlet temperature all that kind of stuff there all the sensors and all the controllers all plug up now I wanna show you something here you'll see that each one of these is even tagged like TPS that's your throttle position sensor fuel pressure sensor the idle air control valve you've got your o2 sensor so this harness I'm is very complete and it use all weather pack connections and they're all foolproof because they only plug in one way so down here we've got the injector harnesses they plug into the main harness there and then we have the transmission control harness we're gonna get started by mounting up the ECU here first now one of the things I forgot to mention earlier is that this ECU here will also control drive by wire controls here and it's also self-learning now that's very important because we've tried to make this thing as easy a swap as possible and all of the Holley ECU's use that self-learning capability here I'll show you a little bit more about that later on the main power harness for the computer comes with plenty of length to trim it to the appropriate length that you need and as you can see I've already added the proper terminals now we want to make sure that the computer gets a real clean power source so we're gonna connect this directly to the battery here and in this particular case we've got top thermal with side terminals so we're gonna go ahead make use of those side terminals and hook it up right here now once that ECU is mounted we're ready for the main power harness here you can see this just plugs up like this now the harness also comes with its own 40 amp fuse here as a safety precaution now I'm gonna anticipate that things are going to get hot here after we get some some heat in the engine after we run it so we're gonna make sure that the harness stays away from those hot exhaust manifolds we're go ahead and ziptie them right here to the upper control arm cross brace right here now in order make this whole thing work here we're going to be a couple a sensors so we had to go ahead and go down to the local parts store and source this map sensor here it goes right in the back of the intake manifold like this it has a little O ring that will seal this thing up here to the intake manifold goes right in this port here and then you secure it with a quarter inch bolt well I guess we're ready for the main harness now I don't let all these connectors intimidate you because remember what I showed you they're all marked and they can only go on one location so well let's get after it now we're gonna start by plugging in these two main plugs hear that go right into the ECU our o2 sensors next you might remember that the sensor plugs into the exhaust pipe down tube right here and we just plug it right into the connector that says WB 02 which means wideband o2 sensor now this lead right here goes to the crank position sensor you can see the crank label on it for right now that crank sensors hidden behind the starter so we're just feed this down here and we'll plug that in later when we get underneath the car but for right now we need to just kinda position it there where we can go ahead and access it later on you'll also notice that we have a ground here and a ground here we're gonna attach those right to a couple of bolts on the end of the heads here that'll give us another couple a good grounds here for this electoral system this part of the harness as you can see has a lot of leads that will go towards the front of the engine so we're going to take this bundle just kinda fish them up through here and get them up close to the centers where they need to be this one says throttle position sensor this is IAC your idle air control fuel pressure we've got a mechanical gauge that I'll show you later on we won't be using that one and your manifold absolute temperature we gotta use that on our intake here later on coolant temperature sensor is down here on the side the nice thing about all these connectors as they work perfectly with all the original GM sensors where this wiring harness really is easy is you can see it's even denoted on here which side of the engine this goes this is ignition on the odd side all your odd numbered cylinders are over here and a course for the other side it says ignition even cylinders so we'll have this one over in that direction for the ignition it just plugs right into the original coil packs connector here there it is alright we're good and we'll just do the same on the other side here okay now here at the back of the engine we've got several more sensors here's the knock sensor this one comes from underneath the intake manifold we just plug that one up the cam sensor goes right here and the map sensor now remember the map sensor that we used here this is a late model LS3 sensor here we what we found out was the plugin here on the wiring harness is not compatible with this type of map sensor so let me go over here and get something that I I thought was pretty neat now Holley actually anticipated the incompatibility between that map sensor and their wiring harness so they made this little jumper here just plugs in like this and then the other end just plugs right into the map sensor and we're good to go on that we have one final connector and that's for the oil pressure it also goes right back in to this little sense right here snaps into place and we're done now we're ready for the injector harness and you can see that this is all just gonna plug in together just like that now what we're gonna do is identify right and left bank here cylinder 6 and 8 we know those are even numbered cylinders they're over here which means the odd numbered cylinders are over here we're just gonna thread this stuff through and hook them up to the injectors we'll start at the front with cylinder number two it just slides over the top of the injector snaps right into place and we just follow on down the line and we just repeat on the other side well all right we're getting close now we got one last big harness to deal with and this is the one that controls the transmission now we're gonna plug it in right here on the ECU well since the 4l60e is an electronically controlled transmission you got a couple other this is the BSS which is the speed sensor and turbine speed inputs here the main one though that's going to control the actual transmission is this big transmission connector right here that we plug the other end into the ECU it goes right into this connector on this side of the transmission well we've got this bag of snakes back here now that really needs to be tidied up and certainly needs be kept away from hot objects like the exhaust or even rotating objects there so I'm gonna spend a little bit of time now with zip ties and get things kinda bundled up and tied it up a bit and I'll be right back now we have one more red wire that comes out the main harness and it goes to a direct 12 volt source so we're gonna hook it up on the side terminal part of this battery again and we ought to be good to go we have two more wires that come out of the main harness there this red one with the white stripe will go to a 12 volt switch source which is going to be this lug right here on the ignition switch and the black one of course is a ground and we'll take it right here to this mounting bolt right here for the control console yeah I guess I should have mentioned that all these wires come with plenty of length on them for you to trim them to the proper length and then add the appropriate terminals on the and I've already done that here so we'll bolt up this one to the 12 volt switch source it'll be one step closer well we have two more wires that we need to concern ourselves with actually not so much this blue one with a white stripe on it thats you're tack lead we don't have a tack here so I'm just gonna wind this up and include it as part of the wound up bundle right there and we'll get to that later when we get a body and stuff figured out for this thing the other part though is this green wire this green wire actually comes out the ECU there and if hooks up to the wire that powers up the fuel pump that's in the tank back here so we're gonna go ahead strip that down and connect the two up and then we'll be ready to go with our fuel pump well now that we've got the crank position sensor hooked up we can throw the starter up into place here another piece of wiring that we need to take care of before we fire this thing up is the alternator now this yellow wire here goes to a switch 12 volt source over there on the ignition switch and it just plugs in back here on the alternator and what it does is it'll carry enough electricity to excite the alternator so we can go ahead and charge it now we just need to run a big 10 gauge wire from the charging post here over to the battery all right now we've gone ahead and run the big red wire from the alternator over to the battery that'll get the alternator 12 volts back to where it'll charge the battery and we've got the yellow wire plugged in the back of the alternator what I'm doing here now his putting a terminal on the end to this so we can put it to switch 12 volt source well it won't be long now till we hear this monster fire up but before we can do that we're gonna go ahead install this air intake that I've purchased off of the Internet now this is a pretty universal deal here it's got a 90 degree bend down here it's all aluminum got a 30 degree rubber flexible bellow here with the reusable cone filter on this end now I went ahead and I trimmed two inches off of this end here to give us the clearence that we need down here between the throttle body and the radiator let's see if it's going to work that's looking pretty good tighten this up all right that looks like it's pretty good on there now you might remember that I showed you that manifold air temperature sensor now it needs to go somewhere along here to give us a indication of how cool or hot the air is I think I'll go ahead and drill this thing and mount it right here right before the elbow that way we'll have plenty room for the harness lead to get over there and I'll just take this off then go ahead and drill the hole for the sensor I've gone ahead and put a mark here where I wanna mount that sensor as you can see it's right on the backside of that elbow there so let's go ahead start drilling this now since this is soft aluminum what we're going to do is we're gonna get this sensor started in here and see if it'll cut its own threads feels like it's doing pretty good on it now yeah that's going to work I believe wow we got lucky doesn't get much better than that alright we'll just go head now and reinstall this air intake then all we have to do is plug the lead into the sensor I'm kinda like one of those weirdos that likes to know everything that's going on with the engine there so what I want to do is add this little fuel pressure gauge here so i'll know just about how much fuel pressure we're caring here and it goes right here on this outlet port on the fuel regular we just have to remove this little plug here and then we'll be able to screw it right in well we're getting closer to the moment of truth now so what we're gonna do since we have the gauge here I'm gonna go ahead we've got all the electrical connections done I'm about ready to just go ahead and power the accessories up and see if the fuel pump is kicking in and see if it's pressurizing the fuel system then we'll go ahead and check for leaks we've got right at 40 PSI checking for any leaks to any the connections so we're pretty good I'm just about ready to pull the trigger on this thing yeah but before we can do that we've got one more thing thats absolutely essential to make this LS engine run here and that's to load the basemap into the ECU there now the way you can do that is you gotta have a Windows laptop and you've got to have the software that comes with the ECU now I've got the disc here but if you've misplaced yours or whatever it's no sweat you can download that software off of the internet off of Holley's website and just load it into the laptop but remember you gotta have a Windows machine if you got a Mac or something your gonna have to borrow one from your buddy now that ECU comes with its own cable here that you can use to connect the laptop to the ECU and it just plugs in right down here in the corner well now that we got the ECU hooked up to the cable we just take the USB into that cable and we jack it into the port here on the laptop now when you open up the software this is what you're gonna see we want to go over here too open global folder we just click on it there we go now we're gonna wanna find custom cal there it is right there now you're gonna get a lot of different calibrations for a lot of different stock applications but what we're looking for is the one that says LS1 4L60E with a cable throttle body that's what our application is we're gonna click on that there we go now that's our basic computer set up there but before we send this thing down to the ECU this our basic map before we send it there to the ECU we wanna check a couple more parameters just to make sure we've got everything ready to go right now the first thing that we want to do is the system ICF icon there we'll click on it and that'll open up the engine it's actually system parameters we're gonna go to the engine parameters first and first thing you wanna check is that o2 sensor make sure it matches the one that we're using we're using the Bosch so we'll go ahead and click on that we're good there and then we're gonna go down to ignition parameters and and there we go we're gonna we're using a 24 tooth reluctor now that's the one that we've indicated here that's what we're using in the engine so we're good on that they do make a 58 tooth reluctor but that's a different application we're locked in for what we've got now this is gonna be we've got our basic map here but you remember what I told you earlier about this being a self-learning system well we wanna make sure that the self learning capabilities are activated here so that as soon we fire this thing up it's gonna start learning and figuring out just exactly what that engine needs from idle all the way through full-throttle so will go ahead get there those up particular things activated and we'll be ready to start this thing up all right now we're ready to go down to the closed-loop learning and you'll see here that we're in the closed-loop and that box right there means that we've enabled the closed loops and we're going to learn some new parameters here okay there's the new base map we've got the base fuel learn enabled so we're gonna go ahead and save this and then we're gonna send it to the ECU now before we can send that program to the ECU here we're gonna have to power up the ECU make it ready to receive that and we go back over here to the computer all right there's an icon there that says sync with ECU we'll just go ahead and send the program alright one last thing before we fire this thing up we have to go head to the TPS autoset what that'll do is its gonna synchronize the throttle position sensor with the ECU down there and then this thing hopefully should run now what we're going to do is we're gonna go ahead and click on the Start button here and after we do that have a friend cycle the throttle a couple times now I'm just gonna go back over to the computer here and will click on done alright were good looks like we're ready to go here all right now that we've done the TPS autoset one more thing we just need a cycle the key one more time I think we're ready to crank here we go that ought to do it now one of the things I noticed when we first fired that up was that our fuel pressure was a little bit on the low side we want to have about 58 PSI there this thing was about 47 PSI so I just went ahead and adjusted it right on top of the regulator here and we've got 50 PSIthis thing ought to be good to go well that wraps up things for today now the LS man I'll tell you what what a sweet deal it started just like that it's running good and now the toughest part is gonna be trying to figure out which one my Chevelles all this needs to go on but I tell you what I've been kinda keep an eye on the old maroon convertible back here in the corner I think that is gonna be a likely candidate now along the way we've had a lot of fun we've learned a little bit and we hope that you learned a little that'll help make your LS swap a whole lot easier thanks for hanging in there with us

Channel: Holley

Views: 273,410

Rating: 4.8683729 out of 5

Keywords: Engine Swap, LS Engine, Chevrolet Performance (Business Operation), chevelle, General Motors Small-block Engine (Engine Type), fuel injection, holley efi, wiring, battery, software, fuel injection software

Id: VFrNgruoYxw

Length: 27min 50sec (1670 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 17 2014