LSX454 swapped 95 BASS burb.

[imiceman44]

Made a few changes to this thing.

New grille, headlights, and painted bumper.
View attachment 504041
Also have new fenders for it
Never got to the bodywork over the winter like I wanted.
Oh well. It'll happen.
When I do the fenders I'm going to do new hinges on the driver's door. They aren't in good shape at all.

For some reason, with this bumper it all looks OFF.
Looking down the hood gap it looks like that's perfect on both sides, but the bumper is touching one side and 2" away on the other.View attachment 504042View attachment 504043

I had the same problem, the brackets holding the bumper get tweaked a bit.
You can tweak them to the right a bit

 

[shady]

For some reason it wasn't like that with the other bumper
This one's about half as thick and I had to bend the bolt flanges flat.
Then push and tweak the outer mounts to line bolts up.
Old one, I threw it on and hand treaded all the bolts in then just tightened em up quick.
Get what you pay for I guess.

Only reason I swapped is I didn't want to fill all the plastic molding holes to smooth the old one.
Let alone Sanding the chrome to get paint to stick.

 

[shady]

I still might put in the time at some point.
Just not sure of the health concerns of welding and sanding on chrome.

 

[shady]

Oh, I modified my cold air intake to fit the bigger filter also...
Haven't gotten a chance to test it out

 

[shady]

Not sure where to begin this.
Sorry for the book, I mean LONG post...
Pics of the story to come,.

I just kind of decided life is short, play hard now, and decided to put the biggest engine I could in this thing.
It started out as building a 415 supercharged version of the engine it had.
Which turned into MAW, 632 BBC. And after heath pointing out I'd need to redo all my accessories, exhaust and all that...
I decided on a big LS build.
We started piecing an idea together..... But I just wanted to drive it this summer, not spend a bunch of time building the engine and all that, on top of the swap.
I've been sort of in lust with the LSX454 for a while. So I chose to just do that. Since it's an LS, all I'll have to do is pull one out and drop the other in right.......


Well. In the end I could have done a full build and still came out about the same time lol.
The logistics of swapping kind of went like,

Needed a new flex plate because it has 8 bolts not 6 in the crank flange. Bolts now hit the converter..
Turned out the washers need to get correct converter run out cured that.

Needed a new engine harness from the ECM due to it being a gen 4 style, not gen 3.
My harness was all integrated into the truck, so tear it out and rewire a bunch of chit.
Couldn't come up with coil mounts for truck coils. Planned to use what I had. ( Ended up buying new truck coils, so should have just bought coils that fit readily available mounts). Had to fab 2 styles together, Which made my wires not fit. So new plug wires.

On to the intake....
This engine has ls7 heads. My intake don't work.
Ls7 intakes are limited. Only the high ram type clear my accessories, being that they're the truck style.
Many days of tearing through intake data brought me to the fast lsxhr.
My truck injectors didn't fit any of the fuel rail mount points on it. Ok, buy extensions for the injectors.
They don't fit. Do research, find that I got the wrong ones.... Buy more.
They don't work either.... Damnit. Lol
Sit on it for a few days doing other chit.
Get back to injectors, and realized I can remove the O-ring holder clip, and trim a plastic tab and they fit.
SWEET, back in business.
Get it all put together, and bolted on the engine. Hook up the new fuel lines to the new fuel rails....
And the alternator now hits the fuel lines...

Always a step forward and a step back lol.

Build a bracket that looks pretty much like a leaf spring shackle to raise one side of the alt.
Now my belts too short.
More research to find a longer one that's just a bit longer. Think I got one that works. Hopefully lol.

Sweet, it's getting close now. So I'll just put the fan on and get my air intake tube lined out.
But wait... They hit each other.
F**K!.
Electric fans it is. But I'm getting short on cash after all this. So instead of $500 pre-fit ones. I actually made a good choice and after some (more) research, found that an 08 burb has the same size radiator core. And they have dual electric fans. Less than $200 later I have fans, relays and wire.
Find out 2 pieces of angle is all it took to mount the fans. Winning there.
Get it all mounted, modified the air box for the new element, found that all I had to do was turn my intake pipe around and it fit the new configuration.
More winning.
And after a full month of tearing my hair out, I actually got it all together and turned it over.
And over, and over, and over..... And over ...

It won't start. Turned out I wired all the coils backwards on each side. 1 was 7, 2 was 8, etc.
Got that put back correct, and it fired off.

I've now done the 30 minute initial run, drive it around the block, and changed the oil.

Now I'm in the putz around doing quick sub 4k pulls for 500miles stage. About 400 to go.

 

[JoshHefnerX]

You know what we'll be expecting here shortly, right..

 

[shady]

So... . Here go some pics

Started tearing it apart on April 4th.
At that time I thought I'd be driving it the 9th

I even took a sidelong pic half drunk on the 6th with a purple shop, and my grille sitting on the floor in the back of the pic as a hint that I was doing something lol.

Also, I don't know whyy drunk self thought anyone might notice. But id picked up the engine that morning and it was about 5' to my left .
The FAST sticker and the ATI super damper one, on the cabinet.
For some reason I thought someone might see those, because people used to find weird small details in pics on here lol.

Unboxing pic, and an excited first look of the intake on it.

First try of my coil bracket adapters. Combining 2 different bracket brands and models.

Took the chance to make a temporary center console board, and put my slap shifter in.

 

[shady]

Inside of the intake is kinda cool.
The little dimples in between the stacks are where the vac ports are supposed to be drilled.
There are spots underneath that they correspond to.
The directions given a vague, and well.... I drilled a hole out the side of my $1300 intake
In my panic to fix it I didn't get any pics of that.
But a little fiberglass and a bunch of resin later, I fixed it.... I hope.

 

[shady]

.... The fix

Hole was here.

New wires had these white heat protectors on em... Couldn't have that. So new black ones it was.

Injector drama in no particular order.

 

[shady]

Alt BS.

Intake clearance pics.
It's actually higher than the fenders, but I can push my fingers between the TB/tube and the hood.
Only the insulation touches.

PCV line routing.

 

[shady]

One piece of angle between the radiator mounts.

And one across the bottom of the core support.
Is all it took for the fan.

It clips over the angle at the bottom, and 2 bolts hold it to the top.

 

[shady]

TB peaking above the fenders

 

[76zimmer]

Looks simple on paper right?

 

[shady]

Yes.. very much so.
If I'd have built the engine, I could have used LS3 style heads
That alone would have made 90% of this far simpler and cost me less most likely. None of the issues I had really would have been a thing.

 

[shady]

Biggest silver lining to doing it this way, is I have almost all the old engine left.
So, guess what's going in the Cutlass

 

[Babaganoosh]

Oh dang, I leave for a few days and you come back with this! Whats the numbers on that lsx?

 

[shady]

From gm

 

[shady]

Should have more torque at 3000 rpm than the old engine had at peak.

 

[Babaganoosh]

Should have more torque at 3000 rpm than the old engine had at peak.

That is going to be fun.

 

[shady]

More numbers for the fork of it.