Rough guesstimate on finishing LSx swap?

[brrymnvette]

I'm picking up my 79 on Saturday and am seriously contemplating dropping in the 5.3 I have sitting here. Car is 100% complete with 305/th350 down to the rusted out frame rails.

I have a complete 5.3 with harness and cpu. Only thing I don't have is the exhuast manifolds.

What's your rough guess on what I'll spend on putting it into the car?

Motor mounts? $65? the trans dapt ones.
Fuel system?
F-body manifolds, prob can get free locally.
elec fans from an LS1 or LT1 $100
PCM tuning, possibly free, a buddy owes me a couple tunes. What have you guys paid to get yours done? Eliminate VATS and that stuff.
Will the stock V8 radiator be fine?

Trying to convince myself I can do this pretty cheaply to finish the deal compared to just dropping in a used SBC

 

[Killerdave8813]

Check out Malibu Racing Father/Son project in the general catagory on this site,it's that very project and it may give you some insight as to what it takes to get it done,Later,KillerDave

 

[83LSWagon]

The biggest hurdle I ran into was A/C. If you arent running it, than it should be pretty easy considering I did most of the work myself with just the experience I have gained working in the garage in my backyard, and the help of these guys. As for expense, I believe I am in the area of 7-800 (without motor.) This is purely an estimate, and may be lower.

 

[blubaldmontess]

What's your rough guess on what I'll spend on putting it into the car?

Motor mounts? $65
Fuel system? --appx 200-300
F-body manifolds, prob can get free locally--40 shipped on http://www.ls1tech.com
elec fans from an LS1 or LT1--25 in a junkyard if you run into an intrepid or a mark VII
PCM tuning, possibly free, a buddy owes me a couple tunes. What have you guys paid to get yours done? Eliminate VATS and that stuff.--free is always good, but if you can find the right guy to tune it for a little more you'll save in the end

Will the stock V8 radiator be fine--Yes should be fine, I spent 4 dollars in parts to add in the coolant bypass parts!


Fuel system, you can keep the stock tank, look for the sending unit out of a 4.3 monte carlo that was FI (alont with tank if they have one). If you remind me monday (next week) I'll check the local salvage yard, they had the tank, but it was destroyed, may still have the sending unit in it. I bought my sending unit for 155 from gbodyparts.com Manifolds, try to get the 6.0l truck manifolds, so far they're teh best i've read about for stock. My PCM was done along with the complete wiring harness from jesse at http://www.wait4meperformance.com for about $350 or you can go to ls1tech.com and read up, they have a section that has how to rework it yourself. And when you rework it you can do teh electric fans. I actually used intrepid fans on mine, just cheap and easy to find.

As for the radiator, it'll be fine, the only thing I recommend doing is finding how everybody ran the coolant bypass to the radiator. I believe that boostedlq9 ran his back into the hoses, me I made a small hole at the top of the radiator so that it would go in there. If you need help, lemme know, I can get pics!