y5mgisi
1 ton status
241's did come factory behind 4l80e's in both driver and passenger drop.
CK5
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Project Polar Bear: '89 V2500 Suburban
- Thread starter Larry
- Start date
You might have to ream out one hole.
Martin
Martin
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One small update…..Got the headers back from my powder coat buddy yesterday. They turned out great! I’m still about 4 to 6 weeks away from install as I still have a lot of install bits and pieces to collect. It is time consuming (and expensive) to collect everything as I use all new parts and pieces when I do swaps like this. The only parts that won't be new is the 2 year old Denso starter motor and the existing power steering pump that I will be reusing from the 5.7L.
The Howell Engine Development harness arrived a few weeks ago and I already spent a few hours reworking different ’89 Burb engine harness to prune away all of the TBI circuits. The old harness will run the starter, A/C, oil pressure gauge, temp gauge while the new Howell harness will run only the engine exactly the same way I have the K10 setup. I chose to use an another Suburban engine harness as I didn’t want to chop my original Suburban harness up so I could keep it all together to sell with the TBI 5.7L once it comes out. A TBI 5.7L and harness would be great pieces to swap EFI into something older. Getting exciting!
The Howell Engine Development harness arrived a few weeks ago and I already spent a few hours reworking different ’89 Burb engine harness to prune away all of the TBI circuits. The old harness will run the starter, A/C, oil pressure gauge, temp gauge while the new Howell harness will run only the engine exactly the same way I have the K10 setup. I chose to use an another Suburban engine harness as I didn’t want to chop my original Suburban harness up so I could keep it all together to sell with the TBI 5.7L once it comes out. A TBI 5.7L and harness would be great pieces to swap EFI into something older. Getting exciting!
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The 8.1 is done! Got a lot of little bugs to sort out but here is a time lapse video of the install to hold ya’ll over 
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y5mgisi
1 ton status
Excellent fun! Have you figured out the tps issue yet?
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Nope, haven't had a chance yet. The ladies are leaving to go to a wedding shower so I have a few hours to take a look around for the over heating issue and TPS ref voltage problem. Also concerned the big oil leak puring out of the bell housing maybe the cam plug leaking more so than a rear seal. Sumbish! Oh, well...the NV4500 needs to come out anyway to address a 5th gear synchro problem. Sounds like that will be happening sooner than later. Always something. Sorting out bugs will probably take longer than the actual install
y5mgisi
1 ton status
I hear ya. Good enough. And good luck! When does the secret exhaust get unveiled?
Looks nice! The time-lapse film was pretty neat.
Am I correct in surmising that wiring the harness took more time than the rest of the swap combined?
Am I correct in surmising that wiring the harness took more time than the rest of the swap combined?
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Soon! Don't expect anything too earth shattering!
The time lapse was a pain in the friggen ass to make. GoPro has some major issues with their software as it took me 4 evenings to make that damn thing. I got to give GoPro’s help line a lot of credit though… a really nice chick named Maria was more than helpful in trying to figure out the issue via phone and email. Probably the best customer service I experienced of this entire project was GoPro. Who would have thought!??? Yeah, the actual engine swap was quick and easy. Tweaking the chassis harness and massaging/installing the Howell Harness ate up several evenings. Most of those evenings I did not run the GoPro because it would have been boring to see those frames.
Current issues as of this evening.
1) TPS issue is fixed. I got two TPS codes and she was really running like dog meat once you tip into the throttle. I ran though GM Strategy Based Diagnostics for the P0122 and P1122 codes and found the new TPS I got off EBay was defective. A quick run into town for a new Napa TPS fixed that issue.
2) ECM needs some tuning badly to accommodate the RayLar cam. She runs like crap and the fuel trims are all maxed out at 25 while the ECM tries to compensate for the cam. It does not have any codes…. In speaking to Larry at RayLar that is indicative of needing a tune to accommodate the cam. Kinda bums me out as I was under the impression this cam was smaller and worked with a stockish tune. Ah, nope. Speaking of nope….she does have a pretty nice cam lope and perhaps more lope than I wanted in a quazi daily driver SUV. We’ll see once it gets a decent tune.
3) Still waiting on a new Spectra Premium CU774 4 core radiator. I ordered one from Pepboys EBay store on 2-14. It arrived 2-20 via FedEx Ground all beat to hell. The lower radiator snout was bent, twisted and shoved into the tank. Got the run around from Pepboys several weeks and finally told them to stick it up there ass and got my money back then reordered from another EBay store. The next one arrived 3-19 via UPS in the same condition. Lower rad hose snout bent and shoved into the tank. It is obvious Spectra is doing a less than sterling job of packing their radiators. There is a replacement on the way to me directly from Spectra in Canada now but don’t have an ETA as to when it will arrive. I have my doubts it will be in much better shape. We’ll see!
4) Because of the radiator debacle above I threw the little 5.7L radiator in it just to be able to run it on the car trailer to get over to the exhaust shop but it will not run more than 10 minutes or so and gets hotter than hell. I am fairly certain that issue is a rag I stuck in the old radiator when I pulled it out to keep it from leaking on the floor. I guess I forgot to pull it out when I decided to reuse it. Where ever it is stuck in the radiator it is preventing cross flow as one side of the rad is hot and the other is cold. I pulled the upper hose off of the engine and spun the water pump which it flowed great so I am not concerned that the flow issue is in the engine itself. It has to be the radiator.
5) Lastly and she is pumping oil out of the bell housing like the BP Deep Water Horizon. Its either the rear main seal or Cam plug and I’m betting cam plug. I was nervous I did a sucktastic job installing it and I suspect that is the case. So….the NV4500 is coming out in the next week or so to see WTF is going on. The good in this is the fact this NV4500 has a 5th gear syncho problem where it won’t accept 5th gear until it gets pretty high RPM’s. So since it needs to come out I’ll send it to my guy to have fixed up. The other good news is this NV4500/241 pop out quick and easy just due to the exhaust configuration. I bet I can have it on the floor in under and hour unlike the K10 with the NV4500/205 and its particular exhaust configuration requires at least 4 hours go get out.
On to the story….
I started prepping the 5.7L for removal on the afternoon of the February 25th. It was ready to start on about 1 AM on March 12th but I was missing the new 4 core radiator and a few air induction pieces. In all reality, 2 weeks for the swap working from 9 PM to midnight and a few afternoons was pretty quick. Had the issues not came up it would have been a nice record. The K10 had some major teething issues at first 7 years ago when it got its 8.1L as well.
3fidy before plucking!
Mileage at swap time for future reference. 142,063 Not sure how many miles the old 5.7L had on it but I don’t think it was more than 50K as looks like a GM service replacement engine. The complete old powerplant with harness and ECM is on CL Colorado Springs if anybody is interested in it.
More soon
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Off to the races!
Flywheel PN, pilot bearing and Crank sensors location for future reference
With clutch and pressure plate and oil sending unit pig tail
On the driver’s side of the engine the center bolt boss needs to be carved down for engine mount saddle clearance. I did not grab a picture of this during the K10 8.1L swap so here ya’ll go…
After
After ORD HD engine crossmember install. The 8.1L will not fit a square body GM 4x4 truck with the stock engine xmember due to oil pan clearance. I suppose you could be a hack and cut chunks out of the OEM xmember but that would be pretty crude
This is a comparo pic of the stock ’89 Suburban TBI underhood engine harness (Right) vs. a reworked ’89 Suburban underhood engine harness with all of the TBI circuits removed (Left). I had the luxury of having an extra harness so I didn’t have to chop up my stock harness that way I could sell the old harness along with the old 5.7L. Basically, everything on the right is the old brains of the TBI 5.7L
I scored a nice rubber plug from McMaster-Carr to plug the hole in the firewall where the old TBI harness ran into the cab to the ECM.
Then sprayed a heavy layer of undercoating over the plug to match the OEM undercoating. Even made sure it was all clumpy and runny just like some 1980's UAW flunky did it. Looks stock!
Ah! This was on a COLD snowy night in February.
Ah..HA!
Very weird. So when I did the 8.1L swap into the K10 the #5 coil pack cleared the brake vacuum booster where I didn’t convert the K10 to hydroboost for a couple years after the 8.1L swap. On the Burb, the #5 coil pack would NOT clear the brake booster at all so I was pushed into doing the hydroboost swap now. Hydroboost was in the plan for the Burb but I didn’t plan to do it on this round. Oh, well…it has it now!
RayLar spark plug wires with ceramic boots. An absolute MUST if running an 8.1L on headers. Very nice quality!
Hmmm, sexy!
Flywheel PN, pilot bearing and Crank sensors location for future reference
With clutch and pressure plate and oil sending unit pig tail
On the driver’s side of the engine the center bolt boss needs to be carved down for engine mount saddle clearance. I did not grab a picture of this during the K10 8.1L swap so here ya’ll go…
After
After ORD HD engine crossmember install. The 8.1L will not fit a square body GM 4x4 truck with the stock engine xmember due to oil pan clearance. I suppose you could be a hack and cut chunks out of the OEM xmember but that would be pretty crude
This is a comparo pic of the stock ’89 Suburban TBI underhood engine harness (Right) vs. a reworked ’89 Suburban underhood engine harness with all of the TBI circuits removed (Left). I had the luxury of having an extra harness so I didn’t have to chop up my stock harness that way I could sell the old harness along with the old 5.7L. Basically, everything on the right is the old brains of the TBI 5.7L
I scored a nice rubber plug from McMaster-Carr to plug the hole in the firewall where the old TBI harness ran into the cab to the ECM.
Then sprayed a heavy layer of undercoating over the plug to match the OEM undercoating. Even made sure it was all clumpy and runny just like some 1980's UAW flunky did it. Looks stock!
Ah! This was on a COLD snowy night in February.
Ah..HA!
Very weird. So when I did the 8.1L swap into the K10 the #5 coil pack cleared the brake vacuum booster where I didn’t convert the K10 to hydroboost for a couple years after the 8.1L swap. On the Burb, the #5 coil pack would NOT clear the brake booster at all so I was pushed into doing the hydroboost swap now. Hydroboost was in the plan for the Burb but I didn’t plan to do it on this round. Oh, well…it has it now!
RayLar spark plug wires with ceramic boots. An absolute MUST if running an 8.1L on headers. Very nice quality!
Hmmm, sexy!
y5mgisi
1 ton status
It does. Im sorry to see that so far you arent totally thrilled with the raylar cam. It sounds like it was misrepresented to you to some degree which is unfrotunate. I really hope a tune (which sucks that you have to do...) will smooth the idle some. And i REALLY hope your new radiator shows up good this time!
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No, don’t read me wrong on the cam. In the end I think it will be great and totally worthwhile as the OEM cam is very flat for emissions and rather wheezy. If I where to do it again, I probably still would chose this cam. Once it gets a solid ECM tune and all the bugs are worked out I am confident it will be the cat’s meow. Just a bit more lope than I hoped but we are still too early into to know for sure. Now the .555 lift cam in the 396 in my ’68 GMC has a LOPE!….the burb has a lope but not that crazy but still enough to know this family truckster is packing some punch
y5mgisi
1 ton status
Gotcha! Good then!
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Double checking circuits by comparing the old TBI underhood harness to the newly reworked '89 Burb underhood harness before I throw the reworked ’89 underhood harness on. A good wiring diagram like factory GM manuals are a must.
Um, ya…. For a while I had just about every tote of my GM truck harness hord opened for the sake of using ONLY factory GM connectors and wires with the proper color coding on extensions, etc. Call me anal but at least of if I ever die someone with GM logic can work on this thing.
Then it was time to start on the Howell Engine Development stand-a-lone harness. I want to be clear on this….I am a huge fan of Howell but keep in mind their harnesses are “UNIVERSAL” harnesses which most people may drop on an engine and be good with. I wanted circuits routed in certain locations and in a cleaner fashion so I ended up spending about 4 hours opening and reworking/rerouting circuits to lay the way I wanted them to go. Next time I order a Howell harness for a project I will request they do not tape their split loom unions so it is easier to open to tweak for personalized fitment.
After the engine harness was roughed in it was time to drop the fuel tank and remove the low fuel pressure TBI fuel pump (12 psi) to a higher PSI pump (60+ psi) EP381 pump
Once I dropped the tank it was a rat’s nest…..literally
After the new EP381 and sock were installed on the stock 1989 fuel sending unit
In process pic….roughing in the power wires to the passenger’s side mounted ECM
Dropping her off at the exhaust shop for new plumbing. It ran at this point but not well. 8.1L Silverado towing an 8.1L Suburban. 16.2Ls of awesome GASOLINE power!
Home from the exhaust shop. They made me a really nice new y-pipe with O2 bungs
This will probably be something to upgrade later but due to budget constraints I had them just connect the new Y-pipe to the existing old exhaust which is a single pipe where the old cat converter lived at one time then into a single inlet/dual outlet Flowmaster. It sounds pretty good put pretty poppy with the way the ECM is currently tuned. I’ll revisit the exhaust later but at least now I can hear myself think to run it enough to work out the bugs.
How she sits at this very moment.. She still needs A/C lines built, final ECM wiring/routing, missing some air induction pieces and the radiator/fan shroud still need to be installed whenever the Canuk radiator shows up.
Look at that piss-ant little 5.7L radiator and no fan shroud….errr
On to the videos…
Initial fire up. Pretty uneventful fireup. Started much easier and quicker than expected. After it didn’t fire on the second crank I had to double check the fuel pressure. The GoPro battery died while bleeding the power steering/hydrobooster
Loading it up on the trailer. Running pretty crappy with the O2’s swinging loose, TPS inop and mistuned ECM
That’s it for now. Got my work cut out for me to address the little bugs. I'll update as more as things happen. I don't expect much to happen for the next week or two until the canuk radiator gets here and a ECM tune solution is sorted out then if things drag out too far I have a bunch of work travel coming up then I need to get back on the K10 to prep it for Desert Trip 2015 plus FIL's Super Sportside will be coming home from the paint shop where I need to reassemble it back to a working truck. Poor Polar Bear project may drag on until summer
Um, ya…. For a while I had just about every tote of my GM truck harness hord opened for the sake of using ONLY factory GM connectors and wires with the proper color coding on extensions, etc. Call me anal but at least of if I ever die someone with GM logic can work on this thing.
Then it was time to start on the Howell Engine Development stand-a-lone harness. I want to be clear on this….I am a huge fan of Howell but keep in mind their harnesses are “UNIVERSAL” harnesses which most people may drop on an engine and be good with. I wanted circuits routed in certain locations and in a cleaner fashion so I ended up spending about 4 hours opening and reworking/rerouting circuits to lay the way I wanted them to go. Next time I order a Howell harness for a project I will request they do not tape their split loom unions so it is easier to open to tweak for personalized fitment.
After the engine harness was roughed in it was time to drop the fuel tank and remove the low fuel pressure TBI fuel pump (12 psi) to a higher PSI pump (60+ psi) EP381 pump
Once I dropped the tank it was a rat’s nest…..literally
After the new EP381 and sock were installed on the stock 1989 fuel sending unit
In process pic….roughing in the power wires to the passenger’s side mounted ECM
Dropping her off at the exhaust shop for new plumbing. It ran at this point but not well. 8.1L Silverado towing an 8.1L Suburban. 16.2Ls of awesome GASOLINE power!
Home from the exhaust shop. They made me a really nice new y-pipe with O2 bungs
This will probably be something to upgrade later but due to budget constraints I had them just connect the new Y-pipe to the existing old exhaust which is a single pipe where the old cat converter lived at one time then into a single inlet/dual outlet Flowmaster. It sounds pretty good put pretty poppy with the way the ECM is currently tuned. I’ll revisit the exhaust later but at least now I can hear myself think to run it enough to work out the bugs.
How she sits at this very moment.. She still needs A/C lines built, final ECM wiring/routing, missing some air induction pieces and the radiator/fan shroud still need to be installed whenever the Canuk radiator shows up.
Look at that piss-ant little 5.7L radiator and no fan shroud….errr
On to the videos…
Initial fire up. Pretty uneventful fireup. Started much easier and quicker than expected. After it didn’t fire on the second crank I had to double check the fuel pressure. The GoPro battery died while bleeding the power steering/hydrobooster
Loading it up on the trailer. Running pretty crappy with the O2’s swinging loose, TPS inop and mistuned ECM
That’s it for now. Got my work cut out for me to address the little bugs. I'll update as more as things happen. I don't expect much to happen for the next week or two until the canuk radiator gets here and a ECM tune solution is sorted out then if things drag out too far I have a bunch of work travel coming up then I need to get back on the K10 to prep it for Desert Trip 2015 plus FIL's Super Sportside will be coming home from the paint shop where I need to reassemble it back to a working truck. Poor Polar Bear project may drag on until summer
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y5mgisi
1 ton status
Thats how things go. At least you got what could be considered the bulk of the manual labor done.
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After listening to a sound clip of my little ’68 GMC…the Burb doesn’t have this roudy of a cam but not far off either. I haven't had this truck on the road since 1999 when I lived in Detroit although I had it registered in CO up until 2001. Never ran Michigan plates on it when I live there....always CO plates. Poor ole truck just sits in the front garage.....kinda lost interest in 2wd things. This was my first truck when I turned 15. It didn't look like this back the...it was a $150 beater when I got it
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y5mgisi
1 ton status
Still a cool truck.
