LS Swapping a Thirdgen. The Parts I Used, And What I Would Recommend

hey guys welcome back to the channel so today I'm just gonna run through a video on what you need to go through if you're looking to do an LS swap yourself I know I did a walk around video on the call where I basically just explained everything I did to it like modification wise so in this video I'm just going to tell you guys the stuff you need to look at you know the parts you need to gather if you're looking to ll swap your own third general so the first thing you want to do obviously you're gonna want to track down an engine and the transmission you want to decide which engine size you want to go to which transmission you want to use you want to manual you want to automatic that's going to decide on which wiring harness you're gonna want to buy if you're gonna have to buy a clutch if you're gonna have to get an aftermarket converter so once you get your engine size and your transmission choice down then you could start ordering parts like I said from my cars you all know I have a 5-3 iron block lm7 out of a Silverado now my transmission is a 6-speed t56 that came out of a 97 Camaro now when I originally put this car together I actually had a 350 small block in it it had the 2.8 v6 and then I went to a 350 small block with the t56 so what I did was I got an lt1 256 out of a 97 some of you may not know but you cannot use an ls1 like a 98 202 LS 1 6 bt 56 you cannot use it with a gen 1 small-block Chevy so you're gonna need to get the LS 1 version which was the 98 202 so like I said when I put this car together I had a small-block I got the the 4th gen 93 to 97 256 which was for the LT 1 so it was for the old small-block brand it was great and then when I decided I wanted to do the LS swap I had to either find another transmission because like I said the input shaft for the LS transmission is different I believe it's longer for the LS transmission I think the bellhousing is different I'm not 100% I'm pretty sure the bellhousing is different though and the end cover the front cover on the transmission is also different for the LS so what I had to do was I had to buy a different input shaft a different bell housing and the front cover I think all those parts came out to about 600 bucks I paid a thousand for the transmission for the the 93 you know the old small-block LT 156 I paid a thousand bucks for that on Craigslist with like ninety thousand miles so after getting all the parts to convert it to an l1 transmission I was in it about maybe fifteen sixteen hundred which I believe this was like four years ago back then the LS transmissions were going anywhere between fifteen hundred to two thousand so it I did the math it was gonna be the same price anyway so I just I decided it would be easier alright had the transmission I could just easily convert it so it'll work with an ls1 get your engine choice down they said i went with a 5-3 you go to six oh five seven engine size doesn't really matter the only thing you want to do is you want to make sure you got to decide if you're gonna be running truck accessories you know truck coils like truck injectors all that stuff makes a difference so what I ended up doing I got my motor on Craigslist three hundred bucks it was a long block the guy was putting a 6.0 in his silverado so he basically took the five through yot he took all the accessories sensors everything out and he swapped it over to his 6.0 so when I got this motor it had nothing on it basically it was a long block with heads and that was it no valve covers no rockers no sensors no oil pan the thing was just picked dry didn't even have the the cover that goes over the knock sensors so I mean it was pretty stripped out I mean I paid 300 bucks for it it had eighty nine thousand miles I believe I saw it was a good price anyway so it wasn't too bad but then I went on Rock Auto I tracked down all the sensors I decided like I said you gotta decide which sensors you're gonna run for your harness so I got all LS sensors I just went Rock Auto 2002 Camaro and I ordered cam sensor crank sensor I ordered Ellis one coils which these I have the round coils Atlas I knew I was going else one injector so I got all LS stuff LS one accessory drive and like I said all these LS motors did the same so all those parts just it doesn't matter it's a truck motor all the yellow stuff will fit you can swap all those sensors right over that's not a problem so once that was finished then I went ahead and I bought my harness and I'll put a link in the description below for the harness I used the companies called psi conversion psi like his entire pressure and it was the best harness I could find for the money I paid 580 for the harness and it comes completely wound it comes with an OBD connector it's literally plug and play you don't have to do anything to it you just there's a ground that goes behind the head there's two wires I believe that go to the starter and then there's a ground under the dash that goes near the computer and then the computer plugs right in I bought the harness for an ls1 computer so that's another thing you got to make sure I believe the trucks use like a green and blue connector the ls cars use a red and blue connector so you just want to match that to your harness but I'll go check out that website it has all different harnesses you could pick if you're running in Auto you could get an auto 5.3 Vortech harness so it'll have all the connectors for the truck sensors or you could get like a an LS harness with t56 and it won't have any of the auto connections you know it'll have all the LS sensor connectors that'll have the speed sensor for the t56 or you could get the LS with the 408 e I think again LS with 4l60 so I mean for 580 bucks a complete harness for your exact application it has all the emissions stuff deleted no rear o2 sensors so for the money it was the best harness I could find I mean a lot of people go with the painless harness too but I looked at them they've run maybe between like seven to nine hundred bucks for the painless and in my experience they're not very painless at all I mean the harness comes it has no loom on it it's just there's a bunch of extra wires that the whole thing's just a mess so for the money psi conversion if you're looking to do the swap definitely go pick up that harness they I have no affiliation with them not a sponsor whatsoever is just such a great harness for the money I can't recommend it enough you're doing a swap definitely look into that harness so once you decided what mode you're gonna use you know the sensors you're gonna run the accessory drive you're gonna run you know what's gonna fit under the hood you know you like let's just talk about my car for example you know okay I want a six-speed I'm gonna do a 5 3 I got an ls1 computer you go you get your harness I get miss motor in you're gonna need conversion brackets for my 3rd gen I'm using um your my performance conversion brackets they bolt in the spot of the original 3rd gen motor mount and then it accepts a factory fortune LS mount I'm just using a regular foot gen mount and that just lines right up with the adaptive bracket so that's really that's extremely easy they make a ton of saw aftermarket stuff as far as ll swaps goes to these now so motor mounts are in a problem I think those things cost like a hundred bucks for the pair that's all you need to do easiest way for a 3rd gen in my opinion I won't even bother with like the they have the adapter plates where you just slide the motor back and all that I didn't bother with that I just went with these both of them right at no problem crossmember a lot of you know if you're keeping AC with these cars you have to notch the crossmember I don't know how well you're gonna be able to see this you probably can't see it oh I mean I have when I had the motor out I cut a notch at the crossmember for the AC compressor to fit now you don't have to do that I just want to use the LS compressor you know keep everything you know looking OEM as far as an LS stand for standpoint but uh they make like a Sandin compressor kit where it bowls right up here you could keep your factory third gen compressor that's not a problem you could just get the engine market bracket that push the compressor up here so you don't really need to do that but you do however need to do is notch the oil pan not the other thing you got a notch the crossmember for the oil pan because I'm running an LS oil pan I'm gonna crawl in here and you could see but I'm running an ls1 oil pan here you can see it and I had to notch the back of the crossmember there because this pan doesn't hang very low so it kind of it stretches out over so it's shallow so too when you drop the engine in not only to get the clearance when you're dropping the engine in but when the motor is actually in the car the oil pan is gonna rub a little bit on that crossmember unless you have a semi solid mount I have like the poly bounce so that brings the motor up a little bit and it gives you enough clearance but before I did that I just had the factory rubber mounts and like when I go to the track and I would launch you would hear the motor like metal metal touching the frame and like it would just resonate through the whole car so to fix that I went I got the poly mounts that you know they don't squish down that much so it keeps the motor up a little higher so you don't have to worry about that happening so motor mount wise I would definitely eat the poly mounts you're my performance adapters AC if you're using it you can decide if you want to go and notch the crossmember to fit the compressor like I did or spend a little extra money you don't have to do it you want to fabricate anything and you can move get the compressor up here keep your factory compressor from the third gen or relocate it and use the LS compressor either way to make a kit to use either compressor that'll mount it up there also if you don't want to like have to fabricate anything and you have the cash you could just go and get like a tubular crossmember then you won't have any of these problems the AC compressor will clear it and you won't have to notch the back to the pen so that's another way to go if you're not running AC then you don't have that problem you're not to worry about it oh also for the lines I'm using Hawks third gen AC line so they fit the stock third gen stuff and it just got bolts right up to the factory LS compressor the other thing is then the transmission crossmember which also not a big deal they make lots of parts of these cars I am running I originally hit a spawn performance crossmember but now I have a Hawk sturgeon crossmember for the trans so it has like little hoops in it so the exhaust could clear it gives you a little more ground clean even though my grandparents is a pretty terrible as it is that bolts up to the exact same spot as the third gen crossmember like everything as far as uh you know drivetrain distance you know with the how everything sits it's pretty much the same as the factory motor like once you get these mounts the motor falls into like the perfect spot the transmission whether you go I'm guessing I'm assuming I can't speak for the four L eighty but I know because that didn't come in the F bodies they got to sixty but I know for a fact the 4l60 I'm pretty sure will the same thing the crossmember will fall in the exact same spot you don't have to like drilling the other holes but yeah the course remember screws right into the factory durjan frame holes you just put your mounts on dropping in that's a you know known modification needs to be done and it's like I said you go and get the tubular crossmember you don't have to notch anything everything's just bolt right in and so it that's it really your motors in your transmissions hooked up as far as the clutch goes you can use regular fortune master and slave cylinders I have the ticke performance for Chen slave cylinder it goes in the factory third gen spot hose comes up goes to the slave inside the bell housing once again everything bolts right in no modifications needed I'm not a hundred percent sure of how to modify the pedal I know you could swap to fourth gen pedals inside the car and then everything will hook up like as far as a clutch linkage sliding on to the pedal all that'll be you know no problem to line up the connections will all be the same I put the clip and everything um that's what I originally did and then I went back to the third gen pedals because I was out having a problem where my master was leaking because of the fire roll-flex when I was pressing the clutch and it turns out that the third gen pedals were a little beefier they had like these rods that come down and brace the firewall so that's why I switched back to them and I think I just I drilled a hole and I put like a bolt through the pedal so the linkage will line up I think that's how what I did to modify to make it fit with the the fourth gen clutch master because I believe the the eyelet on the end is like it's thicker than third gen one so there wasn't get a clip on there so I just popped out the stuff that was on there for the bull threw it in a nut some Loctite and that's what I ended up doing so we got motor wiring harness clutch transmission now you're gonna need fuel I like I said this was originally a v6 car so I had the wiring going back to the pump it was a MFI car so I kept the factory wiring in there I just pulled the old pump out I put in a walbro 255 pretty straightforward just swap the pump for the hoses I went with an braided fittings I'm using a I replaced a line but I'm using the factory 3/8 size hard line I just put like a new hard line in there to replace the old like 30-year old rusted one and then I just got these fittings off Amazon Summit and I just flared the line there and the aen fitting screws right onto the hard line that once you flare it make your braided hoses that screw everything in so that's pretty straightforward if you're using a truck like intake and railed the truck intake I'm pretty sure it has the regulator the fuel regulator built into the rail so literally you could just run your hose off the one your a fuel line off your pump put it into your fuel filter and then just run it up to your rail on the truck and you're done on this I'm using the ls3 rail it doesn't have a regulator in the rail so if you use I'm pretty sure it's early two-thousands there's a c5 Corvette fuel filter it has the regulator built into it and a lot of guys go that route on the tank end of the filter you have two fittings like that one goes in and then the bottoms of return so the return goes right through the filter and comes back out to the tank right the back of the car that are on the other end you just have the one hose coming out and that comes up to your fuel and that's it it's already regulated it at like 60 psi what it's supposed to be at you don't have to get an aftermarket regular that's the cheapest and the easiest way to get your filter get your regulator and not have to fumble around with like an adjustable lot aftermarket expensive regulator so if you're not running a Vortech intake and fuel rail definitely go with the c5 fuel filter regulator because unless you're doing like your plan on making big power right away the easiest way to get your car running is to do it that way as far as the fuel goes with the harness the PSI harness comes with a relay blog I would show you but I have the whole thing like tucked under the dash I don't want to have to take all the plastics out again and took the wires back but if you go and look at that harness the PSI conversion harness comes with the whole fuse block with the relays for the pump already intact in there all you have to do is hook your fuel pump wire into the relay and then like supply the relay with 12 volts there's a whole manual that comes with the harness like it's really easy to do the manual explains everything you just got to follow the steps it tells you what's supposed to be a ground you know what wires are supposed to get constant cranking voltage what goes to the starter so it's really a very straightforward easy to use harness all right so two more things that I want to cover probably the most difficult things of the whole swap believe or not yeah the wiring isn't the difficult parts well some of its wiring that's gonna be the gauges getting all your gauges to work and the exhaust now when I swap my car a few years ago there wasn't many exhaust options for this motor and third gens really the only thing you could do was either get the Hawks headers which were like 900 bucks or use the factory manifold and like make your own Y pipe so when I first swapped this car that's what I did I used factory fourth gen Camaro exhaust manifolds I bought the flanges off eBay and I just welded them to my own pipe and I had them come down and and then I also I used the Hawks the Y pipe I think was like 200 bucks that wife I have under the car I used the Hawks like got the kind of merge pipe and I just made my own two pipes coming down off the manifold and then it went into those two pipe those two Hawks pipes which you can see where the headers are going into now that's that whole piece there - the little flex part that's all from Hawks so I just had literally one pipe come down and did a 45 and right into that pipe there with a clamp and that's what I did I just wearing the factory manifolds for a while and because I don't want to spend the 900 bucks for the horse ones and eventually maybe a year later they started making like Chinese knockoffs on eBay and that's what I'm running now I have to basically hawks knockoffs of eBay there were 300 bucks for the pair there one in three-quarter inch long tubes and I've been running them for like three years so far they don't look too pretty they're a little crusty looking but I mean for the range at all or knockoff headers they don't leak the fitment is really good on them surprisingly I mean the only downside is the ground clearance on the passenger side the header is pretty low I know how to drive this car so I don't really scrape that much but you can see how much that hangs down past the frame I not a hundred percent sure I don't know if the Hawks because these are knock-offs I don't know if the Hawks headers like that now is also like that but I do know that hooker I think it's hooker Blackheart series they now make a really nice stainless header won't you pet it for this car full catback like Ellis watt exhaust system which I really want to do someday that's definitely on my list of things to do I know that header I've seen it online the header is more tucked up between the frame rail and the transmission so it doesn't hang down like that and I mean they're just really nice headers so that's something a different went out great down the line now for the gauges now to get the gauges to work in this car it's really not hard the only thing really depending on what year your car is much like I said this car is an 86 so as you know the 86 used the speedometer cable which ran off the gear on the back of the transmission and literally it's just a cable that comes up through the firewall and the cable spins the needle so when I first put this car together I was just using like the GPS on my phone for a speedometer because they they sold like a converter box it was like 400 bucks I didn't feel like buying and I just used the phone and if you have I think it's they did it in correct me if I'm wrong I think 1990 or 91 it maybe even earlier than that they went to the the speed sensor buffer box like I have in this car it took a digital signal instead of the cable so they got rid of the cable so like I said in my walk-around video that's the reason why when I had my roller car for the ground effects I old - out because I had this free 145 mile-per-hour speedo which was the fastest speedo he could get these cars and it was the digital so literally for nothing I just had to free with the car I wasn't even buying the car for the - I had a working speedometer definitely really good if you have the newer style - in these cars a commoner is really simple you just gotta use I think third gender lock has all the wiring diagrams that's what I used it tells you which colors for the speedometer signal I ran that - ran that wire to the wire that goes to the cluster for the attack and then that could be adjusted when you have the cartoon through HP tuners they can change the signal on the tach so it'll read accurate so that's the miles per hour that's the tag the odometer obviously goes with the miles per hour gas gauge nothing gets touched their gas gauge works just like it did before they're using the stock sender in the car oil pressure I'm using I originally I got an adapter and I was using the factory the 3rd gen oil pressure Sigma like the big like kind of canister sensor I got like a 90 degree adapter and I had that kind of like sitting back here so you can use the factory sender but then I found out that I think the LS used the same signal after I put the 90s clustering it would be like reading that you read the same so I just went to that sender and oil pressure gauge works fine but like I said you could just keep a 3rd gen piece and just go to a hardware store you just don't like the little brass adapters and make it so it clears the intake and you'll have a normal person gauge no problem where you just go after mark it either way it's really easy to do and then the only other thing really the most important I think I mean voltage obviously stood the same young got touched there that's just reading off like the artist for the coolant I used the well there's two sensors this one on the side of the head this goes to the computer that's what tells the computer how hot the engine is and then the hole in the back of the head back there is the one that I was using that one's for my gauge so my gauge doesn't read a hundred percent I know where the temperature is at it's off by maybe like 10 15 degrees but I know I'm driving the car long enough I know what temperature's you know if it's too hot if it's too cold so it doesn't really matter too much but I'm pretty sure I think the third-gen sensor is really huge it's like maybe like a half-inch fitting or something if I remember so it won't fit in the head so I just been running it this way for a while I never had a problem but like I said if you just use your phone or if you get like a scan gauge or some kind of like digital like an app or a tablet and just mounted on the dash which I was doing for a while that'll tell you basically everything going through the computer or bdy so that'll tell you the exact temperature that the computer is reading off the engine and I'll get you an idea of where you're at until you get your gauges hooked up but other than that that's the exhaust that's the gauges the wiring really isn't terrible if you're going into one of these things and you have my colleagues and my part was fuel-injected basically the whole harness on the left side of the car gets ripped out that's the whole computer harness to the old stuff that goes through the fender and to the factory computer so what I did I just cut that harness clean and just put the little grommet back in the firewall to plug the hole up and all that's gone you don't need any of that what you do need is the wiring on this side of the car however there are still a few like random sensors and stuff that you don't need so what I did I pull that whole harness out I looked at a wiring diagram online once again I think I got from durjan org and I went through through each wire individually clean up any connectors that like crossed over and fed into that harness you could get rid of you know cut them down real oome the thing that's nothing that just cleans it up and I'll get through it any wiring you don't need and then really what you're going to be left with are the wires for your oil pressure and coolant temperature and I think the oil pressures like a tan one and the coolants a green one so that's why you want to go you want to pull that harness out you're keeping everything on this side pull the harness out of the firewall go look at the wiring diagram it'll tell you what color does what and just market you know like oil pressure put a piece of tape on it you know coolant temperature gauge and then just leave them tied up get everything running and then those are the wires you're gonna hook back up to make your gauges work that's basically what this whole side this harness is gonna be for this is gonna make your gauges work all your gauge wiring is coming out of this side so that's what you want to use as far as actually powering the new fuel-injected harness I made a hole directly above it had the motor out direct ability a/c box is like a space behind this head I think it's like one an inch in an eighth or something like that hole the manual with the harness tells you how big the hole gotta be it comes in two grommet I mean the hole put the harness through I have the computer in the factory durjan spot like tucked it into the dash and as far as wiring up like with like I said like the instructions tell you the whining you're gonna need like what gets constant 12 volts what gets cranking all the you know cranking 12 volts what's a ground what goes to the pump all that stuff is explained and labeled in the instructions for the harness but as far as getting those wires for what you're gonna use the best part is all your wires from your fact your computer that you're not using anymore are just there you have the two connectors so I just went in with a power probe and probed each wire you know cranking voltage okay this one has cranking voltage and that's how I got all the wires I was going to use to power my new computer so it's really simply of all the wiring there you could just cut the white connectors off and heat shrink soldering your new connectors and you're really done you don't have to like go into the strip and you know take the - part over to the ignition you know looking for wires everything's there from the factory computer the same thing if you had a carburetor car I'm pretty the carburetors had the I think they also had a computer - so you'll have for like all this yeah the Quadra jets like with all the sensors and that are on those things they were in a computer - so the same thing you'll have you're not gonna have like a fuel pump in the back and all that you can have to run your own wires back to the fuel pump so it's gonna be easier if you had a fuel-injected car to begin with but still you're gonna have wires either they're not going to be using anymore that you could just tap into and make your new connection for your LS one PCM oh yeah also you're gonna wanna if you do figure pick a wire you're gonna use so you got like a purple wire it has constant cranking bolt if you want to try to look online and see if that wire does anything else in the car because for instance I had a problem when I put my car together when I would come to a stop the feds would turn it off only when my foot was on the brake P and what happened was I ended up tapping into wire for the torque converter lockup so my famil to be working and then I think when you hit the brake the converter supposed to unlock like if you're on the highway so yeah when I hit the brake the voltage would cut away from the wire it would turn off into my fans would turn off it took me a little time I don't like that awhile like with my handbrake I just too lazy to figure out what it was and then eventually I went under the brake switch I knew it had to be something with dad and then I realized it was to talk of her to lockup so just trying to figure out which wires are gonna connect it to any other switches in the car before you hook anything up because you might run into problems like that alright so I think the last thing I want to go over would be the fans once again back to the PSI conversion harness it has a wire that grounds the fan relayed as if you saw my pusher fan video there's a green wire that like it's the heart there's a separate section of the harness that just runs to the engine bay and I had that coming out over here and that has different wires for like fan relays and stuff like that for like AC fans and for the factory fans from the LS cars were controlled by the PCM so the PCM would ground that green wire and that will ground your relay in turn your fans on so the PSI conversion uses the same thing I think most harnesses do the same thing anyway but it has that wire here so I'm using the yellows one fans as you know and what the wirings here you just got to wire it up yourself you know you got to get your own fan relays or eBay you could get a they sell like LS like a whole relay block with the relays already in it and then you gotta like hook it up to power hook up your PCM green wire and then you're good to go and run the wires to the fans a woman thing I just want to touch on because I'm fine there's so much stuff so I go through I'm trying I'm looking at something I'm okay I got a head this on I got to tell you about this power steering for the car I'm using obviously an LS pump but I got I'm using the factory 3rd gen hose and literally all I did like the fittings the same going into the pump in the third jump pump so I just put it in a vise like I had to pull you off I put it in a vise and just literally bent it at an angle where it would screw in and it would clear the pulley so that's all I did but you can go and like get a hard a hard line and flare it yourself and do some bends and just reuse the 3rd gen fittings I'm pretty sure this is a 3/8 line I'm pretty sure so you just reuse your fittings and bend your own line it's really no big deal and then the return this is coming off the factory third gen cooler I just got a power steering hose here and just clamped it on that's the return you could use regular clamps on that so yeah I think I touched on and everything I wanted to here I don't think I'm forgetting anything but if you have any questions at all leave them in the comments I'll respond to you I'll try to answer them the best I can if you're working on the third gen obviously I could probably answer whatever you're asking I did have a g-body Monte Carlo before than it did the swamp into so I know a little about that as well I didn't have that car very long but I did swap it so I can help you out with some of that stuff so if you enjoyed this video as always be sure to LIKE comment subscribe and I'll see you next time

Channel: Lsxmatt

Views: 386,158

Keywords: thirdgen, 3rd gen, ls swap, hooker, psi conversion, longtubes, fast lsx, camaro

Id: 1Cl1Q66oZCM

Length: 30min 10sec (1810 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 31 2017