MG #195 - What you need to know before you LS Swap your Square!

what's going on guys welcome to this week's episode of Marik's garage I'm stuck in quarantine much like the rest of the world at this point so I've been poring through my channel comments messages and emails I received and a consistent topic is LS power LS swap motor to get how to put it in all those things so I thought over the next few weeks I'd put together a bunch of primer videos that would explain how I did the swap what to look for in a power plant how easy they go into the square bodies and what you need to be aware of it's gonna be fun we're gonna compare my lq9 powered k 30 blazer to my small-block Chevy powered k 30 burb I'll give you guys some tips and tricks and next week we're gonna get into some more detail let's go take a look at these beasts before we get into the engine one of the questions that I've gotten a lot is an LS swap really worth it and the short answer is yes there are so many reasons from the architecture of the block to the size of the engine to the fuel efficiency that make this an amazing amazing swap I'm gonna table that topic for a later time when we're gonna get into different engine options aluminum versus iron block things like that but just understand this isn't just like going from a 350 to a 383 stroker this is a massive change it really really is that good they're plentiful they're not that expensive and they're easy to put in obviously you guys are familiar with the K 30 blazer and most of you are probably familiar with the K 30 bird lq9 small-block Chevy let's take a look at the engine bay of the small-block Chevy and I can show you guys just side-by-side what you're gonna need to keep what you're gonna need to get rid of and what's gonna be in the way one of the first things you'll notice is the footprint of the engine is remarkably similar unsurprisingly to the small-block footprint what this means for you and I is there's not a lot of heavy fabrication modification work to make these guys fit they're relatively similar in size they're not gonna require heavy modification to the firewall or core support and apart from removing a crossmember and adding some motor mounts they pretty much bolt right in the lqi ever locks came in two different varieties you had your lq 4 and your lq 9 both iron blocks both using the same heads generally coming out of a suburban a Denali something along those lines the engine I picked up was a drive by wire which I think has a couple of advantages Packaging is very simple you don't need to worry about routing a throttle cable but you do need to make sure that you pick up the tack module I think that stands for a throttle actuator controller a little box that you got to make sure if you're getting a drive by wire that you get that box and the pedal assembly the pedal assembly will have a sensor on it that delivers an electrical signal to the tack module which will effectively control the throttle body and fuel delivery if you're doing a drive by cable it will be much simpler you can use your factory pedal you may have to do some tweaks to settle your idle down and things like that but it is rather simplistic I drove chose the drive by wire because I like the packaging don't happen to run a throttle cable is nice you can also do some more tweaks in terms of cruise control and things like that which I don't think you can do with the drive-by cable as easily but that's one of the most important things to recognize make sure you're getting all of the electronics that come with the donor engine you got to need the PCM which is the powertrain control module the tach module the drive-by-wire pedal if you've got it all the o2 sensors of which there should be four and exhaust manifolds if you can get them but one of the distinct advantages of the LS series of motors is they have moved from a distributor system which used to have the distributor in the back to a coil pack system so you can see each one of these guys is my coil that is dedicated to each cylinder much shorter runs on the wiring mean a hotter spark and more control through the computer to spark and fuel delivery so that adds to some of the packaging because you do not have to worry about a distributor in the back interfering with your firewall as I mentioned earlier these engines are relatively small considering what they're able to produce in terms of power they are a small footprint that will fit really nicely into this cavernous engine bay that we are lucky to have in the square bodies let's dive underneath and I'll show you some of the motor mounts there are several companies that are offering LS swap kits now and you can't really go wrong with any of them the factory oil pan will hit your crossmember so you will need to replace your crossmember I got this from a TNA automotive I don't know if they're still producing them I know offroad designs makes a great crossmember kit that works really well my motor mounts right up there are from DIY floor buy they are adjustable they come with the heavy-duty bushings in them and since I've installed them I haven't had to touch them once you will be using the stock mounts meaning stock placement on the frame for your LS you don't need to do any fab work on the frame to move any of the mounts for or aft because they will drop in relatively the same location and with the adjustable mount should you need to move it forward a little bit you can see up there the that guy up in the top center of the picture is the motor mount plate to the motor that gives you some adjustability when you're setting them up taking a look back towards the firewall you can see there's plenty of room this is my rear cylinder not coming close to the firewall the coil packs right on and let's take a look over here on you can see it's gonna be a very very similar position taking a look under the manifold you'll see the motor mounts right there the motor mounts on the LS swaps are gonna be in a similar spot once again you see them right down there so that isn't an issue the issue comes from this guy this is one of the cross members but then you have a secondary cross member up under here that you'll notice mounts forward of your motor mounts that one will need to be removed because it will interfere with the fuel pan with the oil pan you'll just slide it back onto the new one my small-block Chevy has a mechanical fan run off of the crank through a clutch being cooled through this radiator and shroud very simple age-old technology that has been proven to work and easy to work on what you will notice though your return line from your engine to your radiator is on your driver side and your supply line for cold to the engine is on the passenger side unlike the LS which has moved both the return from the engine and supply to the engine to the passenger side of the radiator now you can get a crossover radiator that will allow you to run it to your passengers to your drivers side but this may be a good time to consider upgrading your radiator while these things do work just fine as you can see mine is it's rather old and going to a new radiator is a great insurance for this new hotter running engine that you're going to be dropping into your square body I'm a fan of the Griffin radiators they make a radiator that drops right into these square bodies it comes plumbed with everything you need including steam ports and might actually has a transmission cooler on it and also moving from the mechanical fan to electrical fans frees up a lot of space no need for the heavy shroud but you're getting away from the mechanical fan and its simplicity that it has on the LS you can find LS models that have mechanical fans and if that's the one you choose great they're going to work perfectly I happen to like the simplicity and space-saving of the electric fans in addition to major architectural changes to the Bloch fundamental GM addressed some cooling issues with the LS series of motors there's a Tennessee with coolant whether it's 50/50 distilled and coolant or a full coolant mix or whatever to develop steam pockets where the water vapor turns to steam and will travel to a high point in the engine usually in the head and get trapped creating hot spots around the head that can affect that nation and pinging and performance and overheating and all those things to address that GM put in these steam ports you can see the steam port down there that orange crossover tube that we're looking at draws fluid and well steam from the top of both of the heads delivers it up to this port and right into your radiator while it's not necessary to have a radiator with a dedicated steam port on it as you can get a a splice that goes in right here that allows you to tee into your return it is something to be aware of that you will be plumbing for it's a really cool feature of the LS motors that does a very good job of getting air out of the top of the engine and keeping it running in its operating and it's correct operating range I know the wiring has been a major concern for people when they're swapping over to an LS it may seem intimidating and overwhelming at first to be running a new harness terminal everything and making sure everything's got the correct voltage and the sensors are reading appropriately and all that don't lose sleep over the electrical yes it's a lot of work but it's actually fairly simple there isn't a whole lot that the computer is doing that doesn't require just basic 12 volt knowledge it's using signals and voltage trips to basically make all its calculations I would suggest if you are not electronically capable and purchasing a standalone harness or purchasing a harness from the tons of companies that make them I purchase mine from Pacific fabrication I was able to tell him exactly what motor what controller what routing and they did all the work for me there was a couple of plugs that were wrong I sent the harness back they put the right plugs on and it just plugged right in I didn't have any of the concerns of using a junkyard harness where I wasn't sure if all the terminations were good I wasn't sure if maybe there was a crimp that had gone bad or a wire that gotten cut or a ground that wasn't in place by going to an all-new harness which does add to the cost but oftentimes can reduce the install time and increase the simplicity by going to a prebuilt harness I was able to basically take all of that electrical unknown out of the equation meaning that I knew my electrical really wasn't gonna have any problems because it was all new I know for those of you who haven't done serious wrenching before the motor swap does sound really intimidating and I was in the same boat as you guys I started off doing my one ton conversion gained a bit of confidence from the truck not burning down over that and eventually moved to swapping the motor out and putting in all the harness and electrical and now on to the rest of the work you've seen me do don't be overwhelmed by this we're gonna do more videos to talk about what motor you should be looking at transmission combinations and wiring configurations and PCM programming and all that kind of stuff it's all coming I just want to do a quick high-level on what they look like where they go what some of the pitfalls might be and the part that you have to have so to summarize if you are buying a motor off of Craigslist or Ebay or wherever else you might be getting a used motor just make sure that you're not only just getting the motor but you're also getting the tack module if it's drive-by-wire the pedal if it's drive-by-wire the PCM regardless the exhaust manifolds if you can because they will come with the o2 sensors and that's that's pretty much it if you can get it with the transmission you're ahead of the game but if you can't don't worry about it there's plenty of junkyards out there and these things were really really plentiful it's a fantastic upgrade and in the coming weeks I'll show you guys what I did to make it even easier for me

Channel: Merricks Garage

Views: 121,780

Keywords: Merricks Garage, K30 Blazer, Squarebody, K5 Blazer, Tube Bumper, Coilovers, Off Road, Rollcage, four link suspension, ls swap, one tons, chevy, chevy trucks, lift and tires, four link build, suburban, dana 60, jeep, Rockcrawling, linked blazer, off road design, Squarebody LS Swap, LS swap how to, how to, how to swap LS, K5 Blazer Jimmy, GMC Jimmy, Fullsize, LS POWER

Id: iJ8uXbfPQuY

Length: 14min 0sec (840 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 27 2020