88 1 ton suburban, 5.3L swap FINISHED! 11/15/11.....CUCV rear shackle help!

[xpndbl3]

This is a few pics and details of my 88 3/4 ton suburban sitting on 4.10 geared dana 60/14bff axles with sky crossover, diy4x shackle flip in the rear with 6" cross tied shackle, poly bushings, greaseable bolts and a zero rate. Truck is a 350tbi, th400, np208 with a set of pro comp 6" lift springs in the front and stock 7 leaf pack rear leaf. Truck has been swapped with a mint 91 interior out of my old truck and has a cobra 29 CB, cd player and a few other additions for longer trips. Truck also has a ORD bolt in steering box brace and the weld in brace as well. Here's a few pics hope you like the progress. I brought this truck back from the LA area 4 years ago and have been building it up ever since.

So far I have 14 hours into reworking this 2004 motor harness for my 5.3L engine. Have all the wires deleted that I won't be using(probably 30-35 all together) and just need to hook up all the pink wires(ign hots) along with the orange wires(constant hot) to my fuse panel.

started to paint the block/accessories. Almost done with the harness as well.

 

[xpndbl3]

new black H2 rims on the suburban....don't mind if I do lol

Motor is in, just need to hook everything up now lol. Rims are all painted and on the truck, I think it's a huge improvement in looks.

I definitely either need to remove a leaf out of the front spring pack or two or buy some softer springs. Bouncing on the bumper I can't get ANY suspension movement out of the truck now that this engine is 125 pounds lighter than the motor before.

bolted up the ported and polished throttle body today. Cut and welded my passenger side battery tray and mounted it to the drivers side fender so that I can run the stock air intake setup to the passenger side. Been sick the last two weeks coughing up fun stuff so haven't done as much as I would have liked. here's to hoping it's done before the snow falls lol.

Also got the computer tuned and all the emissions, vats, torque management deleted.

almost there!

 

[xpndbl3]

three hours into fabbing a y pipe, not bad for only having some mandrel u-bend pipe, a sawzall and a vice to make some educated "guesses" for the angles

 

[K85 Octane]

SWEET!! nice build and nice setup. Did the stock 5.3 exhaust manifolds work on the truck? Also, you may want to take a look at that rear shackle angle again. It really shouldn't be facing forward any, more like rearward ~45*. You may have to swap the shackle flip brackets from side to side, or something else, not sure.

 

[xpndbl3]

I want to a 63" rear spring swap, so I figured might as well install them facing that way. Although on suburbans I thought the brackets faced backwards, the shackle is pretty much straight up and down, the camera angle makes it look funny. Still unsure if the front leaf spring brackets need to be relocated further forward then, or how that all works. Searching around on here I didn't see a thread that explained it all in detail with pics.


I used trailblazer SS manifolds, they tuck much tighter to the engine block, so no frame grinding is necessary and they clear the TH400 column shifter linkage 100% so you don't have to remove that rod and bend it out of the way and readjust, basically just saving myself some time.

 

[texas4x4rebel]

Truck looks good man good job. That harness took me a while to do mainly taking all those pins out of the PCM. Have u mounted your PCM yet if so where and what did you use I haven't mounted mine up yet.

 

[xpndbl3]

it's sitting on the passenger floor right now, I extended the harness around 3 feet and ran all the wires to the back of the intake(then through the factory TBI wiring hole in the firewall) instead of the side of it like GM did. Not sure what I'm going to do to mount it, but was hoping to mount it where the factory TBI computer was located.

 

[xpndbl3]

Finished the exhaust late last night, also wired in a new autometer tach and hooked up my MIL light, which stays on all the time, so not sure if that means I wired it wrong or a code is set already lol. Also hooked up an engine block heater and ran that. Also bought a cold air intake for it, so that will clean up the engine bay more as well. The end is near!

 

[KansasTwister]

Looks awesome, im trying to talk my buddy into a 5.3 swap. Put one in another buddys 67 shortbed, and all its needed was wiring ran for the fuel pump for about 2 years now and he hasnt finished it!


btw, what did you have to do to make the trans work with the engine?

 

[xpndbl3]

just bought a spacer and bolt kit for the converter and used a stock flexplate. Same kit used for the motors with a 4L80e behind them

 

[texas4x4rebel]

Did you tune the trans codes out also when you did the emissions.

 

[xpndbl3]

yes because it's a th400 trans, so all those things are turned off.


Still need to figure out what bracket to use to mount the computer and see if I can put it in the OEM tbi computer location if possible.

 

[bad larry]

Thanks for detailing what you suspention set up is. I've got to buy some 6"ers for mine and I was wondering what i was gunna do with the rear in unison with the shackle flip; now I've got some perspective.

I definitely either need to remove a leaf out of the front spring pack or two or buy some softer springs.

Do you remember what brand they were or if they were "HD" or not? Thanks!

 

[xpndbl3]

pro comp fronts and they ride like a dump truck honestly. I'd only buy tuff country from here on out, they're the only lift springs in the front that ride halfway decent.

 

[Big Ray]

that is one sweet 'burb!!

purty work

 

[y5mgisi]

Thats so bad ass! Good work! Can i ask you something about the motor wire harness. How did you go about tieing all of the wires together to make them end up as one?

 

[muddysub]

i'm gonna try to find some of those exhaust manifolds.

 

[xpndbl3]

Thats so bad ass! Good work! Can i ask you something about the motor wire harness. How did you go about tieing all of the wires together to make them end up as one?

you mean soldering and lengthening the wires? Or the wires going into the computer factory plugs? There's two large plugs on this computer ones marked red, one marked blue. From there they go to a lot of sensors and plugs compared to a tbi computer, much more complicated.

i'm gonna try to find some of those exhaust manifolds.

hop on some trailblazer SS forums, those guys pull them off all the time for headers, so they let them go for $40-75 all the time.

 

[texas4x4rebel]

Did you match all the wire colors or just use the same color for all of them also what gauge did you use?

 

[y5mgisi]

you mean soldering and lengthening the wires? Or the wires going into the computer factory plugs? There's two large plugs on this computer ones marked red, one marked blue. From there they go to a lot of sensors and plugs compared to a tbi computer, much more complicated.



hop on some trailblazer SS forums, those guys pull them off all the time for headers, so they let them go for $40-75 all the time.

Thanks for the reply! Really I was talking about tieing all the pinks and Oranges together. say for example you have 12 pink wires that you need to have joined into one so that you can hook just one wire up at the fuse panel. How did you go about tieing those twelve wires together?